Cosmo || Doctor Who

10 : Was It All Worth It

"Don't you even ask?"

"Why would I?"

  "You're a journalist!" He cried, sarcastically, and then suddenly serious. "Why's all the crew human?"

  Cathica was taken aback. "What's that got to do with anything?"

  "There's no aliens on board." The Doctor reiterated, as if it were the key to some great plan they didn't know of yet. "Why?"

"I dunno." She droned, her voice airy. "No real reason. They're not banned or anything."

"Then where are they?"

"I suppose immigrations tightened up... it's had to, what with all the threats."

"What threats?" The Doctor was teetering on the edge of his seat.

"I dunno," She reiterated. "All of them. Usual stuff. And the price of spacewarp doubled, so that kept the visitors away. Oh, and the government on Chavic Fice collapsed, so that lot stopped coming, y'see? Just, lots of little reasons, that's all."

"Adding up to one great big fact. And you didn't even notice."

EJ just shook his head. "Talk about ignorance."

"Doctor, I think if there was any sort of conspiracy, Satellite Five would have seen it." Cathica deflected. "We see everything."

"I can see better." He looked her dead in eyes and promised. "This societies the wrong shape, even the wrong technology."

"It's cutting edge!"

"It's backwards!" The Doctor gritted his teeth. "There's a great big door in your head! You should've chucked this out years ago!"

"So what d'ya thinks going on?" Rose approached him curiously.

"It's not just this space station, it's the whole attitude, it's the way people think. The Great and Bountiful Human Empire's stunted, somethings holding it back."

Sassily, Cathica responded. "And how would you know?"

Each of the people in the room looked to her unimpressed. "Trust me." The Doctor said with sincerity. "Humanities been set back about 90 years. When did Satellite Five start broadcasting?"

Dryly, she replied. "91 years ago."

He nodded, hardly surprised as EJ blurted unintentionally. "Well, that's not a bloody coincidence, is it?"

  "No." The Doctor paused. "No, it's not."

     His pondering did not go unnoticed, and within a moment, he was running from the room. EJ was the first to follow, glad to be out of the white space. It alleviated a weight from his chest that he had hardly realised was constricting him.

     Rather swiftly, the Doctor made his way towards one of the furthest walls. There he selected one of the grey panels, and revealed his sonic. It took him no time at all to start working on removing the panel from the wall, all eyes trained upon him as he did so.

     "We're so gonna get in trouble." Cathica panicked as she bounced on her feet. "You're not allowed to touch the mainframe. We'll get told off."

  "Rose." The Doctor called out, clearly busy. "Tell her to button it."

     EJ snorted, rather swiftly. He was starting to believe that Cathica hated him, and he was okay with it, really. She was the source of most of his entertainment. There wasn't much on Satellite Five, ironically.

     "You can't just vandalise the place." She continued. "Someone's gonna notice."

     But the Doctor didn't care; he just pulled the panel of the wall with ease. His sonic didn't falter as it started to work on the inside settings. There were far too many wires for EJ to understand and help out it with. He supposed that he was being a little useless.