Last Lady Of Time

The long game part three

The Doctor is using his sonic screwdriver on a pair of double doors.
"We are so going to get in trouble. You're not allowed to touch the mainframe. You're going to get told off." Cathica whines.
"Rose, Kyraiah, one of you tell her to button it."
"Button it you." Ky says to Cathica. The Doctor just laughs looking at the young girl and Rose is smiling with her tongue between her teeth at her best friend.
"You can't just vandalise the place. Someone's going to notice!" Cathica tries again to pathetically stop the trio.
The doors open and The Doctor is having fun making things go sput amongst the mare's nest of wiring.
"This is nothing to do with me. I'm going back to work." The annoyed employee says.
"Go on, then. See you!" Ky cheerily says for the Doctor
"I can't just leave you, can I!"
"Yes you can just go on back to work with you, Cathica. Off you pop, go on." Ky says annoying the woman even more. The Doctor looks at her amused, the smile on her face makes him smile more, considering where they found her only yesterday.
"If you want to be useful, get them to turn the heating down. It's boiling. What's wrong with this place? Can't they do something about it?" Rose says to the woman. She also see the smile on her friends face making her smile, think a similar thing to the Doctor. That and her smile is contagious.
"I don't know. We keep asking. Something to do with the turbine." Cathica replied.
"Something to do with the turbine." The Doctor mocked her.
"Well, I don't know!" An agitated Cathica said to him.
"Exactly. I give up on you, Cathica. Now, Rose. Look at Rose. Rose is asking the right kind of question." The Doctor said beaming at Rose.
"Oh, thank you." Rose said beaming back.
"Why is it so hot?" Ky asked.
"One minutes you're worried about the Empire and the next it's the central heating!" An exasperated Cathica replies.
"Well, never underestimate plumbing. Plumbing's very important." The Doctor tells her.

The Doctor produces a monitor with a schematic on it.
"Here we go. Satellite Five, pipes and plumbing. Look at the layout."
"This is ridiculous. You've got access to the computer's core. You can look at the archive, the news, the stock exchange and you're looking at pipes?" Cathica says confused.
"But there's something wrong, isn't there Doctor?" Ky says looking at the monitor over his arm. He just looks at her and subtly nods.
"I suppose." Cathica answers her instead not seeing the exchange between the two Timelords.
"Why, what is it?" Rose asks her.
"The ventilation system. Cooling ducts, ice filters, all working flat out channelling massive amounts of heat down." Cathica says looking confused at the schematics.
"All the way from the top."
"Floor five hundred." Rise realises.
"Something up there is generating tons and tons of heat."
"Well, I don't know about you, but I feel like I'm missing out on a party. It's all going on upstairs. Fancy a trip?" Rose says to them.
"You can't. You need a key." Cathica says as the Doctor gets out his sonic screwdriver.
"Keys are just codes, and I've got the codes right here. Here we go. Override two one five point nine." The Doctor says
The monitor shows 215.9976/31
"How come it's given you the code?" Cathica questions him
"Someone up there likes me." He answers her.
"Come on. Come with us." Ky says to Cathica, trying to convince her.
"No way."
"Bye!"
"Well, don't mention my name. When you get in trouble, just don't involve me." Cathica says as she walks away.
"That's her gone. Adam's given up. Looks like it's just you two and me." The Doctor says to the two girls.
"Yeah." Both Rose and Kyraiah say grinning at each other.
"Good."
"Yep."

When the lift arrives upstairs the Doctor looks around and says "The walls are not made of gold. You both should go back downstairs."
"Tough."
They find the Editor and his staff.
"I started without you. This is fascinating. Satellite Five contains every piece of information within the Fourth Great and Bountiful Human Empire. Birth certificates, shopping habits, bank statements, but you three, you don't exist. Not a trace. No birth, no job, not the slightest kiss. How can you walk through the world and not leave a single footprint?" He asks them.
"By treading very lightly, I think." Ky say back at the man with a smirk and he just stares back at her whilst the Doctor tries to hide a smile, unsuccessfully.
"Suki. Suki! Hello? Can you hear me? Suki? What have you done to her?" Rose says as she rushes forward to the woman she was talking to earlier.
"I think she's dead." The Doctor sadly tells her.
"She's working." Rose retorts.
"They've all got chips in their head, remember, and the chips keep going, like puppets." Ky says to Rose.
"Oh! You're full of information. But it's only fair we get some information back, because apparently, you're no one. It's so rare not to know something. Who are you?" The editor says to them eyes lingering on the Doctor and Kyraiah.
"It doesn't matter, because we're off. Nice to meet you. Come on." The Doctor says as Suki grabs Rose's arm. Three other zombies grab the Doctor and Kyraiah .
"Tell me who you are." The white haired man insists.
"Since that information's keeping us alive, I'm hardly going to say, am I." The Doctor says.
"Well, perhaps my Editor in Chief can convince you otherwise." The man says to the trio.
"And who's that?" Ky asks him.
"It may interest you to know that this is not the Fourth Great and Bountiful Human Empire. In fact, it's not actually human at all. It's merely a place where humans happen to live. (Growl, snarl.)
Yeah. Yeah, sorry. It's a place where humans are allowed to live by kind permission of my client." The man says. The three look up and finally see a giant lump hanging from the ceiling, with a very nasty set of teeth in a mouth on the end of a pseudopod.
"What is that?" Rose asks a little scared and a bit disgusted.
"You mean that thing's in charge of Satellite Five?" The Doctor asks the editor.
"That thing, as you put it, is in charge of the human race. For almost a hundred years, mankind has been shaped and guided, his knowledge and ambition strictly controlled by it's broadcast news, edited by my superior, your master, and humanity's guiding light, the mighty Jagrafess of the Holy Hadrojassic Maxarodenfoe. I call him Max."
The Doctor, Ky and Rose have been placed in hefty sets of manacles.
"Create a climate of fear and it's easy to keep the borders closed. It's just a matter of emphasis. The right word in the right broadcast repeated often enough can destabilise an economy, invent an enemy, change a vote." The editor boasts
"So all the people on Earth are like, slaves." Rose says to the man.
"Well, now, there's an interesting point. Is a slave a slave if he doesn't know he's enslaved?" He asks them.
"Yes." Yes the two Timelords answer him.
"Oh. I was hoping for a philosophical debate. Is that all I'm going to get? Yes?"
"Yes." They say in unison again.
"You're no fun." He jokes with them.
"Let us out of these manacles. You'll find out how much fun we are." Ky spit at the man.
"Oh, he's tough, isn't he. And she's feisty, isn't she. But, come on. Isn't it a great system? You've got to admire it, just a little bit."
"You can't hide something on this scale. Somebody must have noticed." Rose points out.
"From time to time, someone, yes, but the computer chip system allows me to see inside their brains. I can see the smallest doubt and crush it." He says not realising that Cathica has just arrived upstairs. "Then they just carry on, living the life, strutting about downstairs and all over the surface of the Earth like they're so individual, when of course, they're not. They're just cattle. In that respect, the Jagrafess hasn't changed a thing."
The three spot Cathica behind the Editor's back.
"What about you? You're not a Jagrabelly" Rose says
"Jagrafess." Both Timelords correct her.
"Jagrafess. You're not a Jagrafess. You're human." Rose continues.
"Yeah, well, simply being human doesn't pay very well."  The editor informs them.
"But you couldn't have done this all on your own." Rose says getting him to continue talking whilst Cathica spies on them.
"No. I represent a consortium of banks. Money prefers a long-term investment. Also, the Jagrafess needed a little hand to install himself." The editor yet again tells them, not worried in the slightest.
"No wonder, a creature that size. What's his life span?" Ky asks him, genuinely intrigued.
"Three thousand years."
"That's one hell of a metabolism generating all that heat. That's why Satellite Five's so hot. You pump it out of the creature, channel it downstairs. Jagrafess stays cool, it stays alive. Satellite Five is one great big life support system." The Doctor says mainly to Cathica.