You may have heard about the groundbreaking, showstopping, incredible 77 Years Zine that released late last year. You may also know that it was good enough to make Sacha Dhawan say ’wow’.
I thought that my story deserved to be released. Since it functioned a little like an add-on, not actually forming part of the original 77 years. So here it is, for free! Shares are appreciated. Those with a keen eye may spot the very spooky similarities between this story and parts of Power of the Doctor (this came first!).
[credit to aelizel on tumblr for the art- Dhawan!Master in 2030s fashion, modelling on the throne of a nearby planet he took over. Story unrelated, but he does slay.]
-
18th February 2031
Dear Diary.
To whomever this may concern.
Reader.
Dearest reader.
Svalbard is north—very much so. The summer is as cold as a winter already and in the winter it can drop to -50 degrees. Longyearbyen is a small town, its people are annoying but they tend to stay out of my way. I have a cat, she’s orange. It’s very human of me. I’m working on it.
I’m writing a little about this place so you can add it to the Black Archive when you find it, Kate. That and to prove my fingers are still working. I think UNIT would get a kick out of me, here. All that time tracking me down, resources too? Well, I’m not killing anyone. I suppose I’m not scheming either. There’s a breeze from the south and it is definitively not sunny. How’s the weather over there?
You’ll find me again. Soon. Preferably before you see this letter. I’ll be waiting in a very stationary position (see: bottom of ocean, under guillotine, end of-
Anyway. (You see how I paused in the middle of my sentence there? It’s dramatic effect.) Don’t think I’m doing you a favour. You can have my jacket and my TCE, they’re both very pretty and I’d love to see you try and store them as priceless artefacts. Tell Osgood I’m still not sorry about killing her sister.
The Master
xoxo
-
The Master puts down his pen, it clatters quietly and rolls across the note paper. There’s a howling wind outside, bitter enough that he can feel it seep through the windows and bite into his skin. Without a thing to break its path, it will build into a fierce snowstorm and he will have the task of breaking his door open when he next needs to go out.
Snow in the pitch black of perpetual night looks like the static you would get on ancient Earth televisions, only far deeper, longer and far, far darker. There is not a soul around for miles. If the Master needs to later, he will stare out at the static until whatever noise it is that’s pounding inside his head fades into the digital hiss of nothing.
He does not know how long it is since he last slept, only that it must be at least near to morning for the creature perched beside him. The Master reaches out, skimming his fingers lightly along the top of her head, the cat chirping to attention. Jaffa pushes her head into his arm, her orange fur shedding onto the page below. She meows loudly, still hungry though he fed her five minutes ago.
Mrrp? says Jaffa. It means many things: How could you be such a terrible owner? You’ve been writing an hour. Your hair is too long. I want to go outside.
“Mrrp,” he replies. “There’s still food in your bowl. Stop being stupid.”
The cat rubs her face through his fingers, he feels her wet nose drag a long kiss along his arm. He supposes he could feed her again.
The Master glances towards the mess of blankets in the corner before picking up the pen.
I fed Jaffa today.
I ate breakfast today.
I had a shower.
It’s probably time to sleep again—not that the world outside is anything other than dark. He sleeps most of the time to save from thinking or eating or any of the other menial tasks he writes in his journal.
He snakes his hands around the cat and lifts her gently towards the food bowl. “There. See?” Jaffa chirps, takes an offensively short look at the bowl and pads back to her napping spot at the foot of his ‘bed’.
The Master sighs, skims the letter in front of him and folds it neatly in half. Hopefully, he will make a habit of this. Recording the days, as opposed to the frantic scribbling he had been doing before.
He’ll go to bed now, it’s something to occupy the time.
19.02.31
I fed Jaffa today.
I ate breakfast today.
I did not have a shower.
Hi Kate.
Still here. I’m going to have to go outside again soon. Maybe you’ll catch me at the supermarket, now wouldn’t that be anticlimactic? I thought of a few evil plans the last time I went: put some banana skins on the floor… Replace the contents of the tomato soup tins… Buy some medication for Jaffa. I did the last one.
Didn’t I mention? My cat is radioactive. I don’t let her out because a) it’s nice having a captive audience b) she’s glow-in-the-dark, as in fully luminescent. It would freak out the locals- great fun for me, not for Jaffa and c) they’d probably drop her off a cliff or something. There’s a law on Svalbard that says you can’t have cats. Cats kill pretty things and spread diseases apparently, so humans have decided to kill them. I’m determined to keep at least one thing alive, so I’ve made her into a nice little house cat. I kindly request that, upon the occasion of my death, you don’t dissect her.
Thanks.
Here’s something I learned today: if you stick your hands out the window and clap in Svalbard, you’re one step closer to causing a manmade avalanche. Every little helps!
The Master
xoxo
20.02.31
I fed Jaffa today.
I did not eat breakfast today.
I did not have a shower.
Darling Kate,
The fridge has gone. I think I’ve buried it under some blankets, but I can’t quite bring myself to care. I have to go outside soon so I tried braiding my hair. At least half of it worked. The other half I can’t reach without getting up and it’s probably too grim to do anything with. I thought about how off brand of me it would be to be found with only one side of my hair braided so I undid it and now half of it is wavy.
I hope UNIT is having fun tracking me down.
Yours untruthfully,
The Master
xoxo
21.02.31
I fed Jaffa today.
I ate breakfast today.
I did not have a shower.
I walked to the shop.
Dearest Kate,
I’m going to the shop. That’s all I have to say really. It’s a big day, I know. So many decisions… Spaghetti? Spaghetti shaped like rainforest animals? Spaghetti shaped like letters of the alphabet? I never quite know what to pick until I get to the shelf and then suddenly the choice couldn’t be more obvious. I’m feeling the alphabet, but who knows what could happen?
The Master
xoxo
-
The Master doesn’t look at his clock before he opens the door and trudges out into the snowfield. He’s wearing a heavy suit of thermals, a fleece bandana and a head torch. It’s an eerie navy colour outside, the blue not quite breaking through into daylight. Even if the Master could see properly, there would be nothing to see for miles.
The town, Longyearbyen, is in the direction of the light, where the faintest hints of sun tinge the sky. He walks for about an hour, the snow in front of him stretching into a plane before gently sloping downwards. From top of the slope, the Master can see the lights of the town twinkling in the dark. The path is rocky, a venture that will require disgusting amounts of energy getting down, not to mention back up. He begins well before half-walking, half-sliding down the rest of the slope, landing gracefully on a road leading into the town.
The main street is almost deserted. A few residents are out, one polishing his snowmobile and the others on their doorsteps, exchanging meaningless chatter. At the end of the road, dogs are playing by the water’s edge. It is quiet aside from the engine of a single car.
The shop is just as empty. There is one woman the Master recognises, sweeping the shop’s supply of cider into a wicker basket, and an older man walking in circles round the bread counter. They throw him sideways glances as he enters.
He grabs a basket and walks the route he returns to each week around the various aisles. Tuna (for Jaffa), nine cans of spaghetti (alphabetti), some strawberry sherbet and various flavours of meal pills, a packet of dish sponges so Jaffa has something to claw apart– and him too, he supposes.
There’s a promotional table on calming teas and bath salts in the middle aisle. The last time he visited, it had been various brands of hair shampoo. The time before, spaghetti. The Master has a strong suspicion that he’s being talked about.
He tosses a bottle of ginger beer into his basket and skulks towards the checkouts.
The Master stacks the cans of spaghetti onto the very end of the conveyor and watches as they slowly trundle towards the cashier. Since the shelves are automated, there’s only one staff member in the entire store and every time it is the same old lady. The Master thinks semi-affectionately of Janet as his arch nemesis.
Janet raises her eyebrows at his beard. “You look good.”
“You look old. Now scan it or I’ll die of boredom. Before you, isn’t that miraculous?”
The old woman ignores him, scanning through a packet of strawberry sherbet. “We’re organising a collection down at the centre, for the homeless, thought you might want to come.”
“Send the organiser my most heartfelt ‘sod off’. How are the kids?”
Janet smiles sweetly at him. “University. Astrophysics and Criminology. Getting on very well, all Firsts.”
“Boring,” says the Master. She raises a greying eyebrow at him.
“You’ve got cat hair. Right there on your ear.”
“I don’t have a cat,” the Master snaps.
“And I’m the Queen of Sheba. That’ll be 30.55.”
“Put it on my tab.” He scowls and throws what he hopes is a valid credit card onto the till.
“Enjoy your alphabetti.”
“Have a horrible day!” he calls back at her.
22.02.31
I fed Jaffa today.
Kate, Kate, Kate.
Yesterday, a boy made fun of my beard as I walked back from the shop. I had the idea of making him into a human snowman or some sort of scarecrow for my snowfield, but… I didn’t. I’ve begun to embrace the radical idea that humans don’t deserve an ounce of my energy. You’re very lucky I haven’t ghosted you.
Yours unhelpfully,
The Master
xoxo
23.02.31
Jaffa went outside today.
26.02.31
I fed Jaffa today.
I painted my nails today. The purple has run out.
Hi Kate,
I’m sorry for the gap.
Jaffa went outside a few days ago. I’m going to be what humans call ‘honest’, it threw me. She’d been clawing at the door for a few weeks, it’s what cats do, I know. Only, she’d been weakening the locks on the bottom of the door, clawing away the support on the door bit by bit. I have to say, I feel immense pride in knowing that my cat is a bastard.
It wasn’t hard to see where she’d gone– the trail of melted snow and a ticking Geiger counter did the job for me– but I couldn’t walk more than a few hundred steps. My legs ache now (old humans get this. I am not an old human). Moving from my nest of blankets hurts and every time I get near the door the pounding in my head gets louder.
I tried, I really did try and look for her, from the doorstep and then the window. Whilst I was waiting, a light appeared at the edge of the snowfield. It was one of the townspeople, I know because of the ridiculously tacky LEDs. Somebody knows something. Janet has a big mouth and annoying friends. I will have to make them leave me alone.
Jaffa came back of her own accord around midnight (not that the time matters here). When she’d gone to sleep, I reinforced the locks. They’ll stop her from going out, but they won’t keep things from coming in. I guess I’ll just have to hope there isn’t a surprise Dalek invasion!
Disregards,
The Master
xoxo
27.02.31
I fed Jaffa today.
BANG BANG BANG
The Master wakes with a start. There is somebody knocking on his door.
BANG BANG BANG BANG
The walls of the cabin shudder. A pot of pens clatters to the floor, spilling ink across his blankets.
“Open up!” shouts a man’s voice.
He scrambles out from under the blankets and presses his back to the wall. There’s two of them, he can feel it in the way their heavy breath carries on the air. His eyes dart to where Jaffa is quivering at the foot of his bed, then to the TCE poking out of his jacket pocket. He could open the door and shoot them both, the flat terrain would make it easy to get a good shot if they started running. No. The humans would be too noticeably missed. If he can just stay quiet, they’ll likely go away again.
The knocking starts up again. This time, he can hear the murmurs of a conversation. The two men are talking in urgent whispers, the words too quiet for him to make out. They’re angry, but from the tone of their voices they’re not expecting him to answer. Maybe this is their version of an olive branch before something bigger…
“Open the door!” the voice grunts.
Jaffa begins to shake harder. The Master waits for the men to start talking again to scoop her into his arms.
We have to stay quiet. No ‘mrowing’, okay?
It takes a few rounds of knocking and shouting until the Master hears the pair step back from the door, the snow crunching under their feet. They’ll be heading back to the town, no doubt to report that the strange man in the wood cabin refuses to come out, that reinforcements are needed to kick down his door.
28.02.31
I fed Jaffa today
Kate,
If you’ve sent someone undercover to irritate me, bravo, it’s working! I had visitors yesterday— more company than I’ve had in ages. I think they know I’ve got a cat. Not sure if it’s her or the general lawbreaking they’re irritated about. You’ll be surprised to know that my body count is at zero, not a single tiny little murder for four months! I did kick over a child’s snowman and steal a coat from the mayor but it’s not exactly assassinating the president, is it?
Hoping you’re unwell,
The Master
xoxo
-
This time, when the men knock, the Master is awake. He doesn’t have a plan, his brain has produced nothing more than ‘do nothing’ and ‘kill them slowly’.
“We know you’re in there!” says one of the unnamed men. “Come out and we can do this the easy way.”
Go, Master. Think. Move! Do something. Do something!
The Master moves his hand slowly over to the desk where a pile of circuits and metal lie scattered in a vaguely connected heap. It’s something he’s been tinkering with, not for any real purpose other than occupying himself. It’s worthless, it’s utterly useless, but it moves things very, very well.
He curls his fingers around the contraption, the wires of it splaying out of his grasp. “I don’t take cold callers, thanks,” the Master shouts.
“I’m authorised to use force to open this door however I want. You want it kicked in?”
He inches towards the door, thumb stroking softly over the device in his hand. “Can I have your number? I’d love a chat.”
“I’m giving you the count of three. Three, two-“
“Stop! Stop!” he pants dramatically. “I’ll come out. Just don’t kick my door. It’s mahogany.”
The visitors are silent. The Master undoes the lock and ever so slowly inches the door open. The bitter air of the outside world pierces his skin. The two men outside are built like tanks. He, on the other hand, is in a week-old shirt. He raises his hands into the air.
“Throw your weapon down.”
He clenches his fist around the jumble of bolts and circuits and throws the device a few feet beside one of the men. It lets out an imperceptible bleep. One of the men gives him an angry glare before leaning down to pick it up.
A few things happen in a very short space of time. Firstly, the man closes his hand around the metal of the machine. When he raises it up again, the device is bleeping and flashing like a siren. The other man begins a murmured complaint which quickly transforms into a shriek of terror as the device explodes, whirling into a vortex of purple and sucking the forms of the two men through it.
The device drops to the floor. The Master lowers his hands and shivers. It’s cold in the polar night. He dreads to think where the men have been teleported to. Undoubtedly, it won’t be far enough away to warrant anything more than a day’s hike, but enough for a chance to leave. The men will come back tomorrow and he doesn’t have the energy to face them.
The Master slams the door of his cabin shut and begins to pack. He jams the pile of paper into his bag and one of the pens. He’ll need his jacket, the TCE, and a hairbrush for presentation’s sake. Perhaps some eyeliner too. What else? The Master stops and looks around the room. There are the blankets, the fridge, the pile of discarded paper in the corner. There’s almost nothing of him in the room. All of it sits in the bag in his hand.
He glances to a steel panel on the opposite wall. In the murky reflection, a man with bloodshot eyes and tangled hair looks back. The man hasn’t shaved, nor changed his stupid purple shirt from a week ago. If the Master ran into him, he would kill him just to stop having to look at him.
He puts the bag down and, slowly, drapes a blanket over the panel.
01.03.31
I fed Jaffa today.
The Master is ready for them when the first lights emerge from the snowfield. There’s more than a dozen of them: tall, short, muscled and scrawny, in every shape and size imaginable. The big hitters are at the front, armed to the teeth with gun upon gun strapped to their body. Janet is at the back, carrying a torch and a heavy nailed baseball bat. He recognises a few others as well: a man he’d stolen his winter coat from on arrival, a small child he’d pushed over, the alcoholic old lady from the shop.
He’s barricaded the cabin and hauled himself onto the roof. The TCE and an array of sharp pointed objects the Master has collected lie in a circle around him, as well as a half-finished bottle of ginger beer. His stomach is churning and there’s a twisting, stabbing sensation in his chest.
The mob are shouting threats and mindless noise, some are laughing and waving their weapons in the air. They stop when they reach the foot of his shack, the air electric with screamed abuse. The men who had visited yesterday are at the front, a shotgun in each hand. Unlike the mob, they’re staring at him with militaristic detachment. One of them holds a finger in the air and in a few seconds the screaming quietens to a whispered hush. The Master slowly and carefully slips one of the knives into his pocket.
“You will leave our island and bring out the vermin you brought here or-“ the man signals to his partner who cocks the gun in his hand and points it at the Master. “We kill you and the cat. If you cooperate, nobody needs to get hurt.”
“Seems like a one man job if you ask me. All this? I mean, you know how to flatter a man, truly, but I’m just a hermit. I stay here, I don’t hurt anyone, I’m an extra consumer in a rather isolated capitalist regime.” The Master smiles, his hearts pounding. “I’m no threat to you.”
A few people begin to whisper, some exchanging sideways glances. The man holding the shotgun readjusts his grip, fingers squeezing tighter around the barrel. “We’ve received a message from the mainland, a warrant for your arrest. Kate Stewart sends her regards.”
The Master’s smile twitches. His eyes flick downwards, to where the pile of letters is sitting beneath his feet. “Is that so? We’re due for a catch up. Tell Kate if she wanted a chat she should have just called round.”
“That won’t be necessary.”
“You should know, I won’t hesitate to kill you.” Several of the crowd snort. He realises how it must look. “I’ll give you a chance to run. I won’t shoot. Kate wouldn’t blame you for it, I’m quite impossible to pin down.”
“Kate understands that the safety of our town always comes first. ‘Alive is better’, she said, but I think she’d be more than sympathetic.”
The Master looks down at the men at the front, each readying their guns. He gets the feeling that capture isn’t high on their priority list. Even so, he’ll talk his way down. Put on a show so good they won’t want to kill him. He can try mass hypnosis, he can try playing dead and stabbing them all in the back, he could even try appealing to their conscience. They have to feel too guilty to shoot him.
“Now, listen to me-“
The shotgun fires. The Master ducks, a split second too late to stop the bullet from grazing his shoulder. The man reloads. The Master lies as flat as he can against the roof, pressing his head into the damp timber below. A voice yells and suddenly there is an explosion of noise.
The rest of the mob are charging, swinging their weapons at his shack. He can hear the wooden barricades splintering apart, the vibrations shaking his head from side to side. Jaffa must be inside. With the locks reinforced, she can’t get out— but the humans can get in. It’ll only take them a few minutes to get through, if that— it’s likely the shack will collapse before they get inside.
The man fires another shot. It flies into the space just above his head. The sound of it shudders through him like a second impact. His hearts are pounding now. The twisting sensation in his chest is threatening to burst, compounded by the stupid heavy lump in his throat. It’s almost too hard to breathe.
They’re reloading again, both of them. If the mob smash down enough of the cabin, they’ll have a clear shot to his head. One bullet and he’ll start to regenerate. Several in the right places and his hearts will stop for good. Which would be better? He knows which would make him feel the sickest.
He shouldn’t feel like this. He’s the Master, that in itself should be enough. Ever since Missy had died and this body had been born, the Master’s existence has been nothing but a collection of unbroken habits and miseries.
There was waking up on the burnt forest floor, the air choking him, the dress around him tight and squeezing like a vice. The Master moved on, forgot. There was looking for the Doctor, returning to Gallifrey for even half a chance to see them. There was the Matrix, the pain, the guilt, the burning self-hatred, the urge to reach into himself and tear like he could rip it all out. Confronting her and getting burnt again and again. Telling her the truth like it was the last thing he ever did and seeing her finger slip from the trigger. The half-drawn existence he has lived since her last muttered jab.
His life in the cabin is over now, ripped from him by greedy human hands.
He wants to stay still, wait until the mob tear him to pieces. Perhaps they can do the job he has been so hesitant to do…
If he’s going to do this, he’s going to do it on his feet. Face them head on and look them in the eyes as they shoot. Because as much as his limbs ache, his hearts are still alive. Since Missy had died, the Master has never stopped burning.
He pushes himself forward, flinching as the shotgun fires again. The mob must be nearly through the barricade now because he can hear the metal lock on his door slamming. He’s bleeding from a rip in his coat. The bullet can’t have done any serious damage but it seems to have touched on an old scar and now the flesh is open and weeping.
He inches forward. Then, staying pressed low against the roof, reaches out his arm and closes his fingers around the TCE.
The shot must hit something because somebody in the crowd screams. Then there’s a moment of stunned silence. The Master hauls himself upright.
A dozen people are staring, in one of the army men’s hands is a tiny shotgun. The crowd of voices erupts.
“Shut up!” He screams. There’s a hot pressure rising in his chest. “Or I bury every single one of you in this house.” Somebody moves in the crowd, the Master swings round to them. They freeze on the spot. “I don’t even want to kill you, but touch this house again and I’ll paint this field with your blood.”
The men at the front exchange a smirk. “We can do this dignified or you can die like a dog. You want it to take longer, keep pointing that thing at us.”
“Death by firing squad? You’re so brave- and I thought you were taking me to Kate.”
“Resisting arrest? It’s blameless. This is for our town, nobody would plead for your life. So, I’ll let you decide: struggle or suicide?”
He yells and kicks at the circle of knives by his feet, they skim off the edge of the roof and plunge into the snow. A few onlookers laugh, the blades barely making it past the shack.
“Any last words?”
The pressure in the Master’s chest is so hot. The lump in his throat is burning now, a sickening tightness that is stealing the air from his lungs. He heaves a deep breath in.
“Please leave me alone.” The townspeople are silent. Nothing but the wind and the fluttering of cloaks and clothes makes a sound. “Just let me have my cat.”
The men smirk. “Owning a cat is a punishable offence on Svalbard. I think you know that.”
The Master screws his eyes shut, tries to block out the humans’ heavy breaths and the crunch of their too-big snow boots. It’s sweltering, even in the arctic cold.
“I’m a man in a shack. My hair’s too long, my beard is disgusting. I used to travel in time and space, now I just sit and wait for something to happen to me. I do nothing. I kill no one. I just sit. Leave me alone.”
“We’re not going to do that.”
“Fine.” He raises his TCE. “You still want to shoot me? That’s fine. Let’s see how many of you I can get before I go.”
The gunmen shout, raising their weapons as the Master pushes down on the trigger.
The shot is halfway through the air when his vision turns orange. The Master stumbles backwards, the bullets from the mob invisible behind the light.
In the haze, somebody screams, then another, then another. At first the Master thinks the cabin is on fire. The orange light is like a spark, leaping around the edge of his vision like a flame to kindling. The heat in his chest isn’t rising, he can’t feel the lick of flames but his lungs feel full of metal.
It must be a minute before the light fades and the Master opens his eyes again.
In front of him, Jaffa stands on the edge of the rooftop, glowing a bright, unnatural orange. Her tail is wafting side to side, the end of it forked into two. There’s a rash of what looks like eyes on the side of her neck, bleeding neon yellow pus, the stuff the shop’s medication would never work on.
On the top of her head, her third ear twitches and flicks.
A woman in the crowd starts running, her torch flung hastily at the snow. Then her partner. After that it’s like dominos, people pushing and shoving their way into a sprint. One of the men fires a panicked shot into the air, then at the cabin before bolting. A woman falls face first in her struggle to get away, marking the ground like a blurry snow angel. Half of the torches faceplant into the ground, pointing up like spotlights. The others streak their lights across the snow as they’re carried behind frantic bodies.
Mrow, says Jaffa.
The Master blinks hard, his feet frozen to the roof of the cabin as he watches the townspeople get smaller and smaller. The light of their remaining torches trails away like a comet. He looks down at Jaffa, her mutated head nudging against his foot. She’s purring like a kitten, the fur on her body shedding onto his shoes.
“You saved me.”
Jaffa looks up at him, the eyes on her neck and head blinking slowly as she meets his.
“They’ll kill you,” says the Master. “They’ll hunt you down and stuff you in a museum.” He looks at her like she has an answer, but Jaffa says nothing. She’s a cat, just a stupid cat.
“I hate you.” He sniffs.
02.03.31
I did not feed Jaffa today.
Dear Kate,
The first sun arrived today. I watched it arrive from the top of the hill. After this, day and night will return to Svalbard and after that it’ll never go dark. Not for a while at least.
When I came back home, Jaffa wasn’t there anymore. I trust that she’s enough like me that she’s gone somewhere nobody can ever find her. The stupid, sentimental part of me wants to believe that Jaffa has become the sun in a distant solar system, giving everyone so much radiation sickness that they grow extra toes.
I’m sorry your little plan didn’t work, I would’ve loved a chat. You really should know by now that I don’t show up for half formed threats. Come down here yourself next time, make sure to bring Osgood so I can kill her too.
It was nice writing letters to you and even nicer to hear that you will find them and probably put them on a little evidence board somewhere. I’m going away now. Good luck finding me where I’m going. I could end this with something sentimental but I don’t want to give you the blackmail material.
Bye!
The Master
xoxo
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