I wrote this story for The History Between Us zine/anthology/book (all of the above) in 2023 and adapted the story for audio last year with the help of some seriously talented VAs.
Coming up with the premise was a huge challenge. It had to include the two incarnations of the Doctor and the Master not yet included in other contributors’ stories… which made for an unusual pairing. I wanted to write something playful and as colourful as the TARDIS team, with a befitting level of camp.
So if you didn’t catch the zine when it was on sale, here’s my story! I’d recommend listening to the audio form as then you can hear my friend Taka’s mindblowing 8-bit soundtrack.
The castle of Middlematch was a lie. There had never been and would never be such a castle as the one that towered in front of the Doctor and Mel. Nor would there ever be such a frightful storm brewing as on that day, far, far up in the castle’s grey towers.
The fiction lay shaking in front of the Doctor’s eyes, not stable enough to stop its edges from breaking open and leaking the contents out. Turrets upon turrets rose upward and upward. The tips pushed like daggers into distortion, twisting skyward into static before spawning from the bottom of the castle and beginning their impossible path again.
A message had arrived for the Doctor. An invitation to the game taking the form of a small white card. In the centre of the card, a symbol was changing: from a crown to an eyeglass to a whirlwind. Crown, eyeglass, whirlwind. Back, forth, back, forth. It had appeared without fanfare in his pocket between adventures without any of the expected urgency that usually accompanied such things. No distress signal, no alarm, and most importantly no note.
After carrying it around for far too long, the Doctor had traced the card’s origin and, though it left a bitter taste in his mouth, taken a careful few hours to navigate through the star system. As well as crowded airspace, the Sysathin galaxy also boasted its unstable connection with the vortex.
Between tears in time and space were signs that flashed red and gold with the words “anything could happen”. If you played the Sysathin galaxy’s games, they were sure to be ones you would never forget.
Thanks to some spontaneous genius, the Doctor had haggled them both into the game that best matched up to the symbols on the card. One minute, himself and Mel had been standing beside a transporter on a nearby planet, the next they had materialised here at the start of a long, winding path—and the wind was beginning to howl…
“Doctor, it’s cold out here!” cried Mel, her arms wrapped tight around her spotted pink romper.
“It’s all in your mind, Ms Bush. Wind, chill, precipitation—tricks of the psyche. Presumably to ward off intruders,” the Doctor declared, suppressing a shiver.
There were many things bothering him. For one, the path up to the castle was long and winding. It would mean a steep climb, sweating in a freshly laundered shirt and displaying his humiliating lack of fitness in front of Mel. Secondly, below them both was a very steep drop and the side of the path—and the castle—looked to be slowly crumbling off into it. The most important thing bothering him however, was the storm. Whatever the storm was, hard-light hologram or real world weather, was incompatible with the castle. Whenever a thundering cloud came near, the castle would flinch, strands of it popping out and back into place like a glitching television set.
The Doctor pulled the invitation from his pocket and squinted at it. The symbols persisted: crown, eyeglass, whirlwind.
“Somebody must be in trouble. The energy needed to send a psychic signal through all this interference is colossal.”
“They could be hurt.”
“Quite right.” The Doctor fought off another shiver. “Let’s go.”
The Doctor slid the card into his jacket and began the journey up the winding road to the castle, Mel a step behind him. It was cold. Not windy as such, but the pixelated air still stung.
As they reached the very top of the path, the Doctor and Mel were greeted by an archway. There were no doors to speak of, simply an outline of where they should have been. He had imagined there would at least be some attempt at grandeur, but upon closer inspection the entire outside of the castle looked to be fading away.
Inside the open archway was a room. His immediate impression was that, for the grand castle they had seen from a distance only moments ago, the room was remarkably small. Perhaps the game was reserving power to generate larger rooms later on, possibly to render puzzle mechanisms. Still, it was a peculiar sight.
The Doctor blinked. There was something off about the floor too. It was patterned like a chessboard, white and black squares crisscrossed into a perfect grid. He had seen similar optical illusions on Earth, pictures designed to appear curved and distorted when in fact the lines were as straight as a ruler.
There were several stone archways dotted around the walls of the room. Through each, the Doctor could see the warm orange of a castle torch glowing against the grey. Their next destination, possibly.
“Brrr! It’s chilly in here too, Doctor.” Next to him, Mel’s teeth were chattering. She was right, the frosty air from outside hadn’t warmed, and there was still the phantom feeling of wind brushing past his cheek.
He made his way forward a few steps behind her, inspecting the walls with a sceptical expression. They hadn’t gotten far before Mel stopped.
She was looking back at him with a puzzled expression on her face and one finger pointed towards the ground. The Doctor followed her arm. Sure enough, on the floor in front of them, the chequered floor had changed. Black, white, black, white, black, black, black. He frowned, returning his companion’s quizzical expression.
“I’m sure that wasn’t there when we- Doctor!” Mel shrieked as the newly black floor tile sprang from the floor and into the air.
It was quite spectacular—far from smashing into pieces in front of their eyes, the tile transformed. From a flat black square, a smile emerged, then two glowing pixel eyes, then an ear-splitting mechanical screech. The Doctor watched in horror as four long spindly limbs shot through the air and pounced like coiled springs at his feet.
“How do you DO!”
The Doctor jumped backwards. Mel screamed. The creature wobbled, tipping forwards and back on two wiry metal legs. The screech faded fast from a fever pitch, quieting down into a robotic hum as the thing on the floor—a robot, the Doctor supposed—settled into a comfortable standing position on the tiles beneath its feet.
“My name is-“ the robot raised an arm and waved it at the Doctor and Mel. “Hipswitch!”
“And I’m the Doctor,” said the Doctor, brashly. “I don’t much care for your introduction.”
“‘A portable PA for your game experience!’ Courtesy of Pernicious Plotters and company.”
“Pernicious!” The Doctor raised his eyebrows, eyeing the robot as its head flipped back and forth.
“‘Having a harmful effect, especially in a gradual or subtle way’. I’m sure your employers realised what it meant.”
“The possessors of Pernicious Plotters and company are not liable for any distress or-“ the robot stuttered. “…p-p-pain. Perishment. Perishing. Prosecution.”
“You’re certainly a fan of ‘P’ words. Tell me then, Hipswitch, where are we?”
“You are present in the castle of Middlematch. Jewel of the shining systems where adventures await! Each part of your experience has been tailored to your needs and preferences and generates perpetually until your leisure experience has been fulfilled!”
The Doctor glanced upwards, at the strange orbs that hung like sunbeams on the ceiling. There were no windows in the room, nor stained glass nor lanterns. There was simply the presence of light, as real as if there had been a sun shining right beside it. Though the Doctor knew, from the storm outside and from the slight glitching of the castle’s ceiling, that the weather could only be getting worse.
The robot caught the Doctor's curious expression and craned its mechanical head toward the light.
“The castle of Middlematch consists of hard-light projection using only the smartest technologies.”
Mel turned to the Doctor. “What does it mean, hard-light projection?”
“It means when I do this—“ the Doctor lifted up his leg, planted the ball of his foot against Hipswitch and pushed. The robot swayed backwards before righting itself again. “You see? Light that responds to touch. Solid holograms for all the senses.”
Mel’s eyes widened. “So it’s alive?”
“As alive as something completely non-sentient can be,” The Doctor answered, trying and failing to keep the sarcasm from his voice.
“Prized players, to proceed you must pick your path! Stride forth and begin the game.” Hipswitch proclaimed, gesturing a metallic limb toward the walls of the room. “A perplexing problem, which to pick?”
The Doctor, who currently had no patience for a talking television on legs, strode immediately to the first corridor on the left. Mel followed.
The corridor, like the first room, was rather featureless. It had a plush red carpet, singular dull paintings hung at varying intervals to the walls and no windows whatsoever.
They hadn’t got very far though, when the relatively boring game suddenly got more interesting.
“You there!” shouted something.
The Doctor turned, the corridor was empty. All he could see was Mel and their new robot companion beside them.
“Over here! The painting!”
They exchanged a glance and then, together, walked slowly backwards to the last painting they had passed.
The painting’s frame looked like it was bursting. The Doctor could see about ten knights stacked in a pile on top of each other, each one wearing a shiny black suit of armour. He squinted, but they were all too tangled up to see where one body stopped and the other began.
“Hello?” said Mel.
“We’re trapped,” a muffled voice replied.
“They always said that the right art should speak to you. How did you get in there? Hm?” the Doctor hummed. From beside him, Hipswitch whirred.
“Sensors detect: puzzle!”
“How did you get in there?” Mel eyed them bemusedly.
“Never wanted to be a knight in the first place.” One of them grumbled, ignoring the question. “Just needed a shove in the right direction.”
Another voice piped up, a helmet moving uncomfortably somewhere inside the pile. “We’re always fighting, always out on the streets—and his majesty up there never gives us anything!”
“Whoever you are, we just want to go home!” Someone else had joined in. Seemingly, that was enough for the rest of them to pipe up too and in moments, the entire pile were protesting.
“We can help you. We’re here to help in—“ Mel falters, surveys the painting again. “Any way we can.”
“Oh yeah?”
“The Doctor will know something. He’s very good at these things so you don’t have to worry. Doctor?” She turned back towards him.
But the Doctor wasn’t listening.
“Hang on. A shove in the right direction… A shove in the right direction?”
“What is it Doctor?”
He began to pace, one finger raised and wagging at no one in particular. “Simulations only project what’s been programmed. Hard light simulations have the laws of physics programmed into them but there’s some things they don’t think of.” The Doctor looked at Mel. “What wouldn’t you think to put in a simulation?”
Mel paused, her eyes blank. “Taste? Smell? Oh I don’t know.”
“Lateral thinking.” The Doctor pointed towards the painting’s gold frame. “There’s nothing to differentiate the image outside of the painting from the inside of the painting. Two planes of projection, two different images. So…?”
His companion narrowed her eyes in thought. “…the boundaries of the outside don’t apply to the picture inside?”
The Doctor clapped his hands. “Excellent! Now, grab that end. We’re going to give them just the shove they need…”
“Won’t they be too heavy?”
“If it’s what I think it is, we’ll find it quite easy indeed. Now, to me!”
Mel lifted the frame from its mounting on the wall, pushing it towards the Doctor. The painting tilted.
There was a loud clang and a sudden cacophony of yelling.
The Doctor peered inside the frame. The knight at the very top of the heap had fallen over the side and landed on his feet, half of his body now obscured by the frame. He was waving his arm at the Doctor.
“It worked! I can move!”
Mel waited until the knight had walked out of sight to lower the painting back down again. There was a second, smaller kerfuffle as the pile shifted again and another knight came free.
“Perfect!” said one. “That’s it,” said another.
One by one, as Mel and the Doctor tilted the painting, the knights tumbled from their stack and into the margins of the frame. After a few minutes, the clinking of armour had shrunk down almost completely. Only one knight now stood in the centre of the painting. His helmet was skewed, a mass of black curls poking from the side. The Doctor thought suddenly that he looked very, very young.
“Thank you for your help, kind strangers.”
“Happy to help!” Mel smiled and turned to the Doctor, there was a guarded expression on his face.
“What trapped you here anyway?”
“A man with a serpent’s tongue,” cursed the knight. “A strange voice and mocking words. Be warned of him, noble Doctor.”
“Keep yourself safe!” cried Mel.
The knight nodded before pulling his helmet over his face and shuffling out of the frame.
The clang of oversized armour quickly faded and the corridor drifted back into an uncomfortable stony ambience.
Mel raised her eyebrows at the Doctor’s sour expression. “What is it?”
He huffed. The cravat around his neck suddenly felt too tight. The Doctor scratched at his throat. “That painting was Time Lord technology. A stasis cube.”
“What do you mean? Nobody can paint time, can they?”
“No. Well, not paint it exactly. Stasis cubes capture a sliver of time held exactly in a moment. The paintings hold more than just frozen time, they’re dimensionally transcendental, bigger on the inside than they seem to the viewer on the outside. Not easily entered. Or exited.”
“What on earth for?” Mel frowned. He could understand her confusion. They had both seen far too recently how convoluted Gallifreyans could be.
“Time Lord art is for all six senses. More about tasting than merely looking.”
“The simulation must know you’re a Time Lord!”
He hadn’t thought about that. “Yes. I suppose it must. Though it is very advanced.”
The Doctor took one last look at the frame, lying propped against the stone castle wall, and set off in the opposite direction.
From then on the castle continued generating in much the same way. As one would expect from a castle, there were long corridors, regal looking bedrooms and courtyards all peeking out from artificial windows and doors. Certain rooms looked to have been set up as smaller puzzles, their doors left ajar to reveal equipment for various activities—side quests he supposed. If the castle generated itself ad infinitum as Hipswitch had implied, you could spend all the time in the world completing puzzle after puzzle.
The two of them walked on and on for a small eternity, Mel gradually acquiring pieces of jewellery to pin to her romper. After a little too long going round in circles, she piped up.
“Shouldn’t there have been another puzzle by now?”
“Quite possibly.” The Doctor frowned. “I think we have to choose to progress.”
“So if we tried thinking really hard…?”
“In theory, yes.”
The two of them stopped for a second, each pooling their focus to think clearly about the next puzzle. He could feel Mel struggling beside him but, the Doctor thought, surely the game would know what she meant.
“Did that work?”
“Let’s give it a try.”
The pair walked on and, sure enough, round the very next corner, was the next puzzle in plain sight. There was a painting dead ahead, down the end of another, wider this time, corridor.
“How could it tell?”
“A psychic interface then, for the game experience. Perfect player pleaser.” The Doctor announced, half kicking, half nudging Hipswitch with his foot.
In the centre was a woman: a beauty of some ancient time dressed like a damsel from a fairytale. The frame was tall and narrow, barely wide enough to track the curves of the figure’s dark dress and tumbling auburn hair. Clutched in her hand was a small locket, a red heart and broken string. Had it been torn from her hands?
“Hello.” His companion smiled. “I’m Mel and this is the Doctor, we’ve come to help. Are you alright?”
The woman sniffed, her glistening eyes opening and closing at the Doctor and Mel. “I saw the most monstrous things, oh the most monstrous creature! His eyes were like a snake’s. He wore a terrible black cloak. I was so scared.” A single water droplet dribbled from her eyes, down the painting and dripped onto the floor of the castle.
The Doctor was peering sideways, squinting sceptically at the locket in the woman’s hand. “You lost your husband?”
“He was taken from me. On the table, they took a knife to his chest and- oh, it’s too terrible!” The woman burst into tears. Mel’s eyes widened.
“He died in surgery?”
“I cannot mourn him! I am bound to the confines of this gruesome frame. Oh, I must see him, I have to see him!” She wailed.
“Don’t worry, we’ll get you out of there. Won’t we, Doctor?”
The Doctor nodded, already rushing to the side of the painting’s golden frame. But despite pushing it back and forth, the woman showed no signs of moving.
“Different puzzle, different solution.” Mel huffed, dropping her side of the frame back to its mount.
“Either that or it’s learning.” The Doctor replied, shaking his crushed fingers frantically through the air. “Though I’m not out of bright ideas yet!”
Mel raised her eyebrows.
He turned to the robot. “Hipswitch! How many sensory-input transistors are behind this wall?”
“One! Of the finest craftsmanship from Pernicious Plotters and Co. Though I regret I cannot provide you details of its relevance to this puzzle.” Hipswitch shook his television head from side to side. The Doctor pondered for a moment.
“Very well. In which department of Pernicious Plotters and Co would I be able to purchase such a magnificent piece of metalwork?”
“Your nearest store is 9 kliks away and contains the department: Audiology and sound systems.”
The Doctor grinned his brightest grin. “Excellent. That’ll be all.”
“You mean, there’s a secret password?”
He nodded, and then murmured, “A trigger. A phrase or word or- oh I don’t know. Keep her talking.”
Mel nodded, she was good at talking. She turned back to the woman in the frame, keeping her eyes fixed on the locket in her hand.
“I know how hard it is to be away from the people you love.”
“I hope you do not,” she whispered. “There is a sadness now that I cannot undo.”
“What do you like to do? There has to be something that makes you smile, even when everything seems so horrible.”
“Well…” the woman trailed off. Her eyes swum, a fresh flood held back only by a brief pause for thought. “Music. I love music.”
“Oh! Me too! I love musicals—and pop, like Kajagoogoo or-“
“Oh no, nothing vulgar,” the woman sniffed. “I like classical music. My favourite pieces to see, they are opera.”
The Doctor gestured encouragingly at Mel. “Oh yeah? Which song is your favourite?”
“I don’t remember a song but…” she trailed off. “There was an animal, or an insect. They were singing about a flying creature.”
“Madame Butterfly!” exclaimed Mel. “Now I know exactly what will cheer you up!”
The Doctor cleared his throat. His companion was looking at him expectantly. She put her hands on her hips.
“Well Doctor?”
“Never in my nine hundred and fifty years-“ he spluttered.
“I believe the lady would like a song!”
He glared at Mel, but it was half-hearted. She couldn’t know any of the songs, especially not as much as he did.
It had certainly been a while since the Doctor had heard the opera. He had been briefly acquainted with the singer who had debuted the songs in Milan, though for no much longer than to pass on his appreciation.
Out of the many songs in the opera that had brought a tear to his eye, he could remember a select few.
The Doctor picked one at random.
“Un bel dì, vedremo! Levarsi un fil di fumo, sull'estremo confin del mare…” The Doctor sang, landing nowhere near the beauty Puccini had surely intended. “E poi la nave appare. Poi la nave bianca, entra nel porto. Romba il suo saluto. Vedi? È venuto!” He trailed off, voice leaving him as he choked on the words. He seemed…embarrassed?
To his relief, the few lines were more than enough to activate whatever component had been stashed in the wall.
“Thank you Doctor! Oh thank you!” The woman sobbed. She was fading fast from view, freed at last by the sound of the song. As she vanished, the locket tumbled from her grip, shattering on the ground within the painting.
Mel gave him a look. The Doctor shrugged. “Don’t thank me. It was nothing.”
She giggled. “I thought it was splendid. Have you ever thought of-“
“No! Absolutely not. Now, no time to waste!” He was just about to march them both swiftly away when Mel flinched beside him.
“Ech!” She cried, shaking her hand in disgust. A blue glob of paint splattered onto the stone floor below.
The Doctor looked up. Where water had been dribbling from the crying lady’s eye, blue paint was now streaming down the walls. A droplet landed on the Doctor’s shoe. He shook it, face wrinkled in disgust, expecting the liquid to fly off. Another large drop hit, then another and another. He pulled back. Was that just him or were they sticking on top of each other?
A gush of paint spewed from the wall. Mel staggered backwards.
“What is that?”
“Trouble.”
What had started only moments ago as a stream suddenly burst into a tide, the corridor quickly flooding with its new colour. It came faster and faster, swelling and sticking fast to the walls. He looked around—Hipswitch was gone and that could only mean that they had to get out of there, fast.
“Run!” The Doctor shouted.
Mel screamed. The two of them took off, running as fast as they could away from the blue wave.
The corridors twisted and turned, sloping up then down before branching off into a maze of stone and carpet. Mel ran ahead, the Doctor a few paces behind. His legs were burning with fresh adrenaline but the splashing of paint was getting louder. Judging from the flecks of blue that were landing around his ankles, it wouldn’t be long until the wave caught up with them both.
“Pick- a door!” The Doctor shouted between gasps. The floor was sloping upwards now, climbing towards a summit close by. “Quickly!”
“Which one!”
“Where is that robot?” A splash of blue squelched beneath his feet, the paint accelerating somehow as it scaled the corridor. “Hipswitch!”
“You are requesting a hint. Hipswitch recommends door number eight! In 200 yards, you will reach your destination.”
The Doctor looked to the wall on his right. The doors were all different shapes and sizes, each one a different colour.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven… Eight!
“Now!” The Doctor shouted and Mel skidded to a stop in front of the eighth door—large, red, with a golden crown in place of a knocker.
With only a second to spare, the Doctor pushed forward with all of his strength and the two of them surged through the door, falling immediately back against it. The door slammed shut with a deafening bang-slosh of wood meeting water.
For a moment, all they could do was breathe. The Doctor’s hearts thumped hard in his chest, making him shudder with adrenaline.
His coat was soaked through, every inch of colour sodden with bluer than blue. Even the once ginger cat the Doctor had on his lapel had turned a cartoonish shade of turquoise.
Mel looked no better, her usually orange ponytail dripping beads of colour down her face
“Excellent,” said the Doctor, whose face said anything but. “Oh the indignity of messing up a good coat.”
“Doctor, I’m more glad we didn’t drown!” Mel shuddered.
The Doctor huffed. “This is why I travel with an optimist. Now, where is that asinine automaton?”
Beside them, Hipswitch beeped into life. “You have reached your destination!”
“And?”
“I suggest you investigate. High spectrum energy levels are detected. Presence of time distortion: probable!”
The Doctor caught Mel’s alarmed face.
“This galaxy is teeming with tears in time. The simulation should be sophisticated enough to keep them out,” He explained, looking straight at Mel. “We’ll be fine.”
At that, the Doctor let his hand slip from the door. Mercifully, it stayed closed. For the first time since entering, he turned to look at the room.
For such a large door, the room was relatively small. It looked like the top of a tower in a fairytale castle, a real one that was. The Doctor couldn’t remember seeing a tower as wide as the room nor so many corridors as they had run through.
The most obvious thing about the room was how bare it was. The rest of the castle had been embellished and decorated with red and gold trimmings, but the room in front of the Doctor now was extraordinarily plain. More like a circle somebody had tried to colour in.
Over on the right, a small window peeked through the curved wall. Artificial sunlight beamed through it, brushing yellow and gold streaks onto a plush red carpet. Funny. That the simulation was stronger in this one room than the rest of the castle and even outside it.
“How strong did you say Middlematch’s simulation generators were, Hipswitch?”
“At the very top! Second to none, courtesy of Pernicious Plotters and co-“
“So an awful lot of power is going into this room. So much that it’s taken it from other parts of the castle.” He sighed, there was certainly more here than met the eye. “That’s one energy inefficient room.”
Directly opposite the window, deposited on the other side of the room was a large golden frame. In it, the Doctor observed, was a painting that really shouldn’t have been there.
The most prominent thing was the storm. At the very top of the painting was a black cloud, huge and heaving, almost ready to spill. A man was stood in front of it, one foot mounted on the very edge of a cliff. He wasn’t looking down, instead the figure’s gaze pointed skyward at the storm brewing ahead
He wore a long coat. Glitched, black but faded, flowing into infinite regress. The edges of it were moving, the sliver of time oscillating between the coat’s tip flowing down and up, down and up.
“That must be the king!”
“Hang on,” said Mel. “I’ve seen that painting before!”
“Wanderer above the Sea of Fog.” The Doctor raised his eyebrow, “One of Friedrich’s, commonly—or so I thought—known to be housed in Hamburg. This must be a recreation.”
“I suppose you’ve met him then?”
“Not once.” The Doctor shook his head. “Now look at that! The coat is all wrong. No gentleman of that period in their right mind would have a flared collar—and the coat is far too long.”
“No crown either.”
“Hm?”
“Well wouldn’t you think the king of the castle would have a crown? Robes too! All the other paintings had identifying features. Like the knights and their armour, and the lady had her locket. You’d at least think there’d be some sort of clue.”
The Doctor stepped away from the painting and looked around the room again. It was small and relatively featureless. Nothing there that could signal a hint, nothing except the robot.
“Maybe the storm is the clue. This is where the problems all started and we’re at its very eye.”
The Doctor fished the card from his inside pocket, the card still crisp and clean. Crown. Eyeglass. Whirlwind.
“The king, the man in the painting, he’s the crown.” Mel pointed at the figure. “Then the storm, that’s the whirlwind. We’re just missing the eyeglass.”
“I suppose we should ask the man himself,” the Doctor murmured, frowning at the symbols on the card.
“Hello,” said Mel to the painting, before adding quickly, “your highness.”
The figure didn’t move, his cloak twisting backwards and forwards, flowing in the pixel wind. Perhaps some paintings were silent, he thought. More like a logic puzzle than a murder mystery. That was fine. He could simply talk at it instead.
The Doctor stepped closer to the painting and opened his mouth, but before he could say a word, the figure’s head moved.
“After all this time,” said the king. “You’re here.”
“You’re American?” The Doctor baulked and turned to Mel. “He’s American.” American. Californian? The type of accent you’d hear in Hollywood movies, thought the Doctor. It made sense, of course a simulation generated for him would need a good old fashioned hero.
“I regret, I cannot turn to face you. I am bound to remain imprisoned in this place, as is this kingdom. That is why I called for you, Doctor. Your reputation reached even my realm.”
“I got your invite. Far too advanced for a simulation of this capability—especially impressive for one that’s tearing itself apart.” The Doctor hummed sceptically, recalling the shower of pixels he and Mel had navigated through on their way up to the castle.
The king ignored him. “You freed my subjects. For that you have my eternal gratitude.”
Mel frowned and turned to the Doctor. “Aren’t they a part of the simulation?”
“They’re real to him. Still doesn’t explain how he sent this.” The Doctor patted the card in his coat pocket and turned to face the painting once more. “The paintings, those are Time Lord art. No species in this parsec is capable of replicating that technology. Too sophisticated for this level of simulation too.”
“You mean this is all real?”
“Not quite. Part psychic projection, part hard light simulation. Ninety-nine percent hologram with a tiny sliver of reality, and you are a part of that sliver!” He pointed towards the painting. The king sighed.
“I am not. I was trapped here by one of the species you speak of. For the others, I cannot say.”
“A Time Lord did this to you?” The Doctor said, surprised. “A painting for punishment…” He huffed—beside him, Hipswitch’s eyes lit up at the alliteration.
“So you aren’t a king then?” said Mel.
“I am, of sorts. Though whilst I am bound to this frame, I am king of nothing at all.” He sounded distant.
“The others needed some sort of key to free them. We had to solve something, a puzzle. Like singing! You must have a key too. Do you know anything? Can you give us any clues?” She was pacing, fixated in a way the Doctor had seen her when left alone with a computer.
The king took a heavy breath in. “I can exit this painting only once the wall that separates us is no more.”
Mel looked at the Doctor, worried expression on her face. “Are we going to have to tear the walls down?”
“I don’t think our new friend here is speaking literally. There is certainly more at play here.”
Truthfully, the room was too plain. No props or objects but the artificial window and the plush red carpet. There was the door too, but surely if it had triggered anything it would have done so in their escape from the blue earlier.
Mel pulled at the painting on the wall, smoothing her hands over stumps and grooves in the frame for a secret trigger. Nothing was happening. The Doctor could see the beginning of an idea start to form in her head and then, a thought on her tongue.
“Well if this whole thing is a psychic projection, Doctor, then surely anyone can change it.” He raised his eyebrows. She continued. “Earlier, when we were lost in the castle, all we needed to do was think of a way forward and one appeared! Like we did with that door! If we thought hard enough at the same time then we could get rid of whatever it is he’s talking about.”
“I have a feeling you’re right.”
“I usually am.” She grinned. “Now you do that psychic stuff all the time—what do I do?”
He wasn’t sure that Mel would be able to change much by herself, but that was the thing with humans, they were often prone to being underestimated. He racked his brains. There should still be some of Borusa’s old telepathic manipulation classes in there. Something to explain to a beginner how to form a thought with intention.
“Concentrate your thoughts on a single thing. Like you’re running from something and it’s two seconds behind. Let the thought pull you in, consume you, terrify you.” He imagined the feeling himself. Though he’d done it countless times before, the thrill of being chased never faded. “Keep looking at the painting. Imagine something breaking it down, tearing it apart. Like someone’s cutting and shredding it to pieces.”
Mel screwed her eyes shut. The Doctor could feel her concentration. She was doing exactly as he had asked, letting the single thought take over her whole body.
The Doctor kept his eyes focused on the fabric of the canvas, willing it to tear in two. He pictured the king’s cloak bleeding pixels onto the red carpet before them, the wall between simulation and painting ripped apart. The combination of their two efforts was surely enough for the game.
Sure enough, after only a few seconds, he felt something shift. In front of the painting a small wisp of cloud hung in the air, like a streak of paint taken from the canvas. It was shaking, multiplying as the Doctor concentrated.
“It’s working!” shouted Mel with delight.
Quickly, the streak grew, expanding into a wad of grey. As the two of them continued, it grew bigger, tiny cracks forming in the painting canvas behind it.
“It’s not just bringing the king,” his companion laughed. “It’s bringing the whole painting!”
The more the Doctor stared at the painting, the more he thought about it. The more he thought about it, the more the canvas ripped and cracked. Whatever was in front of them was more than just its colourful projection. No. The Doctor knew for certain. The king was alive.
The wind was picking up, the air in the room no longer stale and stony but ice cold. It was completely unlike the pixelated chill he had felt outside. No, this felt like proper ice. Like thousands of tiny icicles were being held against his skin. It was the sort of feeling you would get clinging to the outside of the TARDIS. Or when travelling through the Vortex without a capsule.
“Hipswitch! What are you reading?”
“High spectrum energy! Profusions of power! Fluctuating rapidly. Increasing exponentially. Something is coming! I must stabilise the simulation-“
“No! Only when I say!” the Doctor screamed above the noise. He was beginning to see more and more of the king’s silhouette. Yes! Their plan was working.
And it was. He was more than a little proud of his companion, their combined effort evidenced in the chaos in front of him. When they were finished here, perhaps he should tell Mel that. Yes, he thought, concentrating hard on the figure, he would most certainly do that.
“Predictable as ever, Doctor.”
The icicles against the Doctor’s skin pricked sharply. The words of his oldest friend, said in the same tone, with that same sense of mocking. If the game was tapping into his psyche it had gone too far. It had gone too deep. He scrambled for words.
“Predictable as, predictable as what-?“
And then the king started to laugh. It was the type of cackling the Doctor hadn’t heard since the very worst time of his life. The type that made the hairs on his neck stand on end and his hearts pump blood at a million miles per hour. Like all the air had been knocked from his lungs.
He knew who the man in the painting was. He knew the man who called himself king, who played mind games, who lied, who cheated, who could hide himself in plain sight.
“Master,” the Doctor breathed. “It’s you.”
The figure turned, his face tilting slowly until the Doctor could see nothing but the dark, dark cloak and a single glittering green eye.
“Me.”
It was too late. “No!” the Doctor screamed, but the corners of the painting were already peeling themselves out of the frame.
“Thank you Doctor. For your foolishness.”
The storm burst from the fabric of the canvas, the black clouds surging outwards with a loud boom. He felt the air strike his chest, sending him flying backwards and clattering to the floor against the curved stone. Out of the way of the Master’s emergence and almost completely blinded by thick vapour.
On the other side of the room, he could just see Mel’s head above the storm. She was struggling to keep her eyes open against the wind, blue-painted hair whipping streaks across her face.
There was nowhere to run, no way to keep his companion safe. He had seen the Master desperate before. Clinging onto life, he was the most deadly of all. The Master an inch from death could destroy universes. The only weapon against the sheer force of what was to come were his words.
Very suddenly, the air filled with electricity. The Doctor could feel the hairs on the back of his neck sizzling like tiny live-wires. It was like the feeling of being in the TARDIS, but a thousand times more: it was a sensation you could only feel standing next to the Eye of Harmony.
“I will survive! I must survive!” The Master screamed. “I have been trapped, imprisoned, for so long but now I’m free. You may have trapped me in hell, Doctor, but see me now.”
Through the thick black cloud, he could barely see in front of him, just far enough to glimpse the painting’s gargantuan frame fluctuating in and out of reality. It was the type of distortion young Time Tots were taught to stay away from in the academy. Whatever careful projection had been holding the illusion together had shattered under the sheer force of the Eye. There was no telling where they really were. What lay under the land of Middlematch.
What had he said? About being trapped. Imprisoned?
The Doctor realised all at once. He had done this to the Master, or more accurately he would. “Master!” he cried, horrified. “Whatever I did to you-“
“Enough! You are the reason for my pain, the bane of my existence!”
“You have to stop—you’ll tear reality apart!”
“I must take form. I have that power now.”
Whatever his oldest friend had done had torn apart his body for good. The atoms that remained had been scattered into time itself, formless, leaving a wandering soul and what the Doctor knew was a stolen voice. Even with no body, a ferocious will still remained, the Doctor could feel the Master’s determination in his very bones.
“I’m sorry!” He shouted, the wind stealing his breath. “I’m sorry for what I did!”
“Sorry? You’re sorry? I will tear you apart.”
“I can help you! I don’t know what happened but I can stop it, I can fix it.”
“Doctor!” He heard Mel scream over the roaring, tearing noise of the dimension itself. “Whatever you did to open it, reverse it!”
He could see the black silhouette of the Master emerging from the painting, half of his body shadowed behind angry clouds and the other held tight in the loosening grip of the Eye of Harmony. It would only be a matter of moments before the gap between realities broke down completely.
If any part of the Eye, including the Master, broke containment, the thin fabric of Middlematch would be torn in two. The fabric of spacetime. He was sure himself and Mel wouldn't be able to stop themselves from falling into the chasm themselves. As a Time Lord, the Doctor would take longer to die but Mel…
The thought of his companion’s very self dissolving was enough to send a fresh wave of terror through the Doctor. Mel, mindless, the essence of her very self screaming through the void. No, he couldn’t let that happen. His pain on the Master’s behalf couldn’t cloud his judgement.
The Master had made him think he was freeing someone in trouble. It was a mind game. The Master needed the Doctor to see the world differently in order to let him go.
The Master had done this before. The Doctor had seen it, been tricked by the Matrix and escaped.
It probably wouldn’t be the last time.
I deny this reality.
The Doctor took a deep breath in and closed his eyes. He didn’t need to overpower the Master’s will. No, that would be impossible. He just needed to weaken it enough to control an illusion of his own.
“Master! I can help you!”
“You would never help me.”
“I will always help you.” The Doctor swallowed. “...And I will always be your friend.”
“Doctor no!” cried Mel. “He’ll destroy you!”
The Doctor concentrated. Singular focus, like he was running with certain death two steps behind him. The projection of the Doctor materialised in front of the vortex, amongst the swirling storm whipped clouds. His arm was outstretched.
“It’s the only way out. I can pull you into this dimension, the walls between the two are thin enough.” The Doctor shouted. His fingers pressed unbearably hard into the sides of his head. The other Doctor’s lips moved along with the words, the avatar’s face a mirror of his own. It was true. The walls between the vortex and Middlematch were tearing themselves apart. One connection to the “real world” and the Master—or what was left of him—would be able to break through.
“I can escape without your help, Doctor.” The Master snarled, his voice quivering. Despite his oldest friend’s new voice, he knew what hope sounded like. He had a chance.
“You need a connection to the real world! One that isn’t part of the simulation.”
“I could kill you,” the Master’s voice hissed, like rain through the storm.
The Doctor’s mind felt heavy; he couldn’t sustain the illusion much longer. The weight of the Master’s will coupled with the entire simulation, was bearing down against his very lifeforce. He was sure Mel could feel it too, like a boulder pressing down on their chests. Pure telepathic power. He had to do it now.
“Take my hand!”
“No!” the Master screamed, but he could tell that his oldest friend had run out of options.
“I’m asking you, Master, trust me. I can stop this. Whatever you want, whatever you need, we can make it happen together. Please just… trust me.”
Neither of them spoke. There was a long silence, like the storm standing still. Then, slowly, ever so slowly, the Master’s hand reached across and grasped his. For one brief second, the Doctor felt the dizzying weight of the Master’s soul crash against his. All the energy of the Eye held in a vortex of pain, intelligence and desperate yearning. And of course, now he knew, he couldn’t do anything else but forget.
“Now Hipswitch!” Yelled the Doctor.
“Stabilising simulation! Troubleshooting services courtesy of Pernicious Plotters and company, for your game experience.”
The Doctor let go.
“Doctor!” A shout filled with anguish.
His hearts seized in his chest. A wall of shadows tore inward, canvas limbs pulling the Master backwards into the painting’s golden frame. The Master’s silhouette slammed backwards.
The Master screamed.
The clouds roared, the thunder in the air clapped again and again and again as the storm rushed backwards into the emptied frame. The air in front of the Doctor went from black to grey to white, settling in seconds back to still and stale. Just like that, it was over.
Perfect, untouched silence.
Neither of them moved, their breath coming in shallow gasps into the still room.
The two of them were staring at each other. The Doctor could feel his chest rising, his lungs were working though it felt like all the air had been stolen from the room.
Across from him, Mel was a state. Her clothes were torn, her blue soaked hair tangled from the wind and still dripping with paint. He could tell how exhausted she was with a look.
“Simulation stabilised! Proud to present Pernicious Plotters and company simulation patch services.”
The clouds had cleared completely now. When he dared a glance up, he saw no evidence of the Master. Only the same gloomy painting that hung back in Hamburg, on Earth. The wanderer was still again, coat frozen, the dimensions of the painting stuck like stones. The fog ahead of them was looming, still waiting calmly laid over the valleys.
The Doctor couldn’t imagine it. Whatever the Master had done to him, it couldn’t have warranted a fate worse than death. The Master he remembered had made him plans to foil whilst stuck on Earth, found the Rani again to get his attention, defended him at his trial… Whatever the two of them had become… The Doctor wanted to run far, far away from it.
He swallowed back a lump in his throat and scrambled upright from the floor. “Let’s go.”
Mel rushed to his side, her hand suddenly gripping his arm. “Doctor are you okay?”
“We should be able to find a transporter at the entrance to the castle. The simulation will start folding in on itself so we have to be quick.”
“But Hipswitch said-“
“And do you trust him, Mel?” He snapped, though he couldn’t bring himself to leave. Mel took her hand from his arm. Though she looked beaten, there was still light in her eyes.
“He’ll be alright.” She smiled.
The Doctor stammered “But he almost killed-“
“I know he’ll be okay. No matter what anyone has to say about it. Come on, you’re right. Let’s get going.”
Mel took the Doctor’s hand and the two began the long route back to the TARDIS.
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