“Doomclaw, as he has told us he wishes to be called these days, has now entered the final stage of his illness. As the days go by he becomes more and more aggressive, yet still maintaining his intelligence. Every time he is asked to be rational about how he is behaving, he simply tells us that this is the way of all of us. All Trixatins will be like this. We should all revert to our primary instincts. This, I do not believe.”
Extract From Medical Indicator Haltrix: Log 2789 - Patient: Doomclaw
“Today was Doomclaw’s last day inside the barrier. The wastelands lands are waiting for him and I can only hope that one day he will find peace as he is sent kicking and snarling to the rest of the pack. But I fear that one day we all may become the same as Doomclaw. I fear that one day our once proud race will no longer exist. May the Tri protect us.”
{{{END OF EXTRACT}}}
Blackmore, Caroline, the Doctor and Doomclaw were standing outside the pyramid. Blackmore was pacing up and down, kicking at the sand beneath his feet. It was as if he was waiting for the right moment to speak.
“Get on with it,” said the Doctor.
Blackmore looked at the Doctor and smiled. He then threw his arms into the air, turning on the spot. “All of this is fake,” he said, looking around him. “Everything you see here is a lie. None of this is real.”
“Feels real to me,” said Caroline, her arms folded and shivering slightly in the cool night air.
“It may look and feel real, Miss Parker, but it most certainly isn’t.” He crouched down and ran his hand through the sands. “It’s the product of a higher technology.”
“You’re still not making any sense,” said the Doctor, sighing.
“Stick your tongue out, Doctor,” said Blackmore.
“I beg your pardon,” said the Doctor, frowning.
“Stick your tongue out. Go on, try it.”
The Doctor opened his mouth, still frowning, and slowly stuck out his tongue.
“Can you taste it?”
The Doctor looked down at his tongue, puzzlement on his face.
Caroline copied.
“Can you taste it?” asked Blackmore again.
Something dawned on the Doctor and his put his tongue back in. “There’s a strange, metallic tang to the air.”
“Exactly,” said Blackmore, smiling. “Which is caused by…?”
The Doctor suddenly felt like he was in a school class. “Caused by holographic emitters!”
“That’s right.”
“So this place is a hologram?” asked Caroline, randomly sticking her tongue in and out to try and taste the air.
“Sort of. It’s an advanced form of hologram,” said Blackmore. “One which I am determined to pick apart.”
“Advanced in what way?” asked the Doctor.
Blackmore sat down on the ground. “Right now we are standing in the city of Optrix. Right where I am sat is the Fountain Of the Tri. To my left,” he pointed, “is the government building and over to the far side is the Ministry of Science.”
Caroline frowned. “It’s just desert though. Nothing but a desert.”
“That’s because this planet has two sides to it. There’s this side, the desert, and the other side, the paradise - the truth.”
“I’m still confused,” said Caroline, sitting down beside the Doctor.
Villa led Danny and Alison into the lift and descended down to the ground floor. When they emerged they were in a huge, hotel-like foyer. All around dogs wearing different coloured robes milled around. All of them noticed Danny and Alison and looked at them curiously, but none of them made any aggressive moves towards them.
Villa took them towards the huge, glass front of the building and out of the revolving doors. Danny counted about 100 steps that led them from the front of the building down towards a fountain.
“This is…unbelievable,” said Danny, trying to get his head around the scale of the city surrounding them.
He looked back at the massive sky scraper towering over them, reaching like a silver dart into the night sky.
“It’s just like the pictures,” said Alison, her eyes darting all around.
“Damn guide books,” said Villa under her breath. “All artistic impressions though. No photographs.”
She guided them towards a fountain in the square. All around skyscrapers and buildings towered above them and the blue trees blew gently in the breeze.
“Where’s the desert then?” asked Danny.
“Not here,” smiled Villa.
“Then where?”
“You may have already met some of my people in the wastelands - sorry, the desert.”
“Our teacher was killed by them,” said Alison sadly.
“Yes,” said Villa, “an unfortunate problem that we’re having.”
“An unfortunate problem?!” Danny said, with disdain.
“There’s a sickness running through my people.” She sat down on the wall next to the fountain. “Sit.”
Danny and Alison followed suit. “Who are you people?”
“We’re the Trixatins. We’re the inhabitants of this planet. We’re the ones you will have read about - the private people who never allow visitors to their home world.”
“Why not?”
“Because we’re private people,” said Villa. “People are allowed to be private, you know. There’s nothing sinister about it. We rarely like to mix with other races.”
“That desert looks sinister to me,” said Danny, running his fingers through the cool fountain water.
“Well, that’s only a recent problem. All across out world our inhabitants are starting to change. Thousands and thousands of years ago our race were savages, but over time we learnt to curb our rage and anger. We stopped eating each other and we evolved into intelligent creatures capable of building cities, like this,” she said, indicating with her hands all around her. “And then, a number of years ago, we started noticing some of our kind reverting to their basic, animalistic instincts. There has peace on this planet for thousands of years, but we started to attack and kill each other. And then eat each other again.”
The Doctor and Caroline listened on to what Blackmore told them.
“They tried to cure the ones that had reverted to their savage ways, but they couldn’t. Compared to the millions living all over the planet a few hundred Trixatins going savage was nothing, really. Except that this planet had never known violence. Not for generations.”
“So they were banished out of the cities?”
“Not exactly,” said Blackmore. “The Directors of each city came up with a plan to deal with the savage kind. They couldn’t kill them. That would be wrong, but they couldn’t banish them into space either, and all over their planet were inhabited areas. There was nowhere on the planet to put them and safely contain them.”
Doomclaw looked up at the sky. “None of us could fly a spaceship anyway.”
“So, in their infinite wisdom,” continued Blackmore, “they developed the Shroud.”
“Which is a hologram?” asked Caroline.
“No. Not exactly. It’s a huge device which covers the entire plane. It shrouds it in a holographic cloak. An image to disguise what’s really underneath.”
“So a beautiful planet covered in cities and skyscrapers-”
“Becomes a desert wasteland.”
Caroline frowned. “That doesn’t make any sense though. Surely the rest of the planet would be walking around and we’d see them. There’s nothing. After all, a hologram is just light and illusion, surely.”
Villa sat beside the fountain, running her claws through the cool water. “The beauty of the Shroud is not that it gives you a fake environment. It actually creates a separate dimension.”
“Getting confused,” said Danny. Alison had already lost interest.
“It’s almost like it pushes the real world back. The fake, holographic world becomes a separate dimension. Very powerful technology.”
“So where we landed in our ship -?”
“Is the fake world. You then have to find a window in the barrier to get through to what’s inside.”
“So it’s like a Russian doll?”
“A what?” Villa was confused.
“An item from my planet. Various different wooden dolls sit inside each other. A bigger one goes over a small one and then an even bigger one goes over that.”
“That sounds about right.”
“But how did you even come up with that kind of technology?”
“We may look like animals to your kind,” said Villa, looking him straight in the eyes, “but we have some of the most intelligent beings ever to have lived. It’s a technology that we are very proud of.”
Alison suddenly piped up. “How did you get us through the barrier?”
Villa turned to her a smiled. “All along the barrier are weaker points in the Shroud. Points which we can manipulate and walk through. That’s how we pulled you through.”
“It gave me a hell of a headache,” said Danny, remembering how they were both knocked out.
“Yes, we didn’t know how it would affect other species.”
“But surely there’s a worry that the savage dogs will try and get back in?”
“In the twenty years or so that we’ve been using the Shroud, none of them have worked it out yet. They don’t possess the intelligence to or the technology to.”
The Doctor sat with his fingers interlocked, thinking. “How did you find out about this technology, Blackmore?”
Blackmore smiled, his eyes glittering. “Now that would be telling.”
“You’ve told me everything else,” said the Doctor quickly.
“I’ve told you what you need to know to pull you out of the darkness. I’m not about to reveal everything, am I?”
“No. That’d make you a bad villain,” said the Doctor, smiling sarcastically.
“Believe it or not, I’m not a villain. I’m simply doing my job.”
“As a maths teacher?” asked Caroline. “Doesn’t sound very maths-teacher-like to me.”
Doomclaw suddenly looked up, sniffing at the air.
“What’s wrong?”
“There’s someone coming,” he growled.
The four of them stood up and looked around them. Then, over a dune, two figures appeared. The closer they got the more recognisable they became.
It was Annie and a confused and bewildered Tointon who was holding a large rucksack.
“Perhaps it’d be better if you did know the whole story,” said Blackmore, having a change of heart. “Perhaps you can help Annie and I in our little mission.”
No comments:
Post a Comment