Doctor Who - 03 - The August Sky

.13.Debts of the Universe

"What's going on?" Gwen was the last one to barge into the room; dark hair flying, huge eyes even wider with curiosity. There was a little smile on her lips. For a brief moment Martha's thoughts drifted away from the Chameleon Arch and incomprehensible horror unfolding in front of her. "Rhys, even Jack, they have a rival."

"What is that?" Gwen asked.

"The Chameleon Arch," Martha whispered.

The Doctor shot her a glance form above the mess of tangled wires. His eyes were wide and absent, full of apprehension and of something that unnervingly suggested madness. Martha had seen similar looks in the past and feared them just like a little girl could fear the darkness sheltering the scariest monsters. On such occasions the Doctor would lose any resemblance to her dearest friend, becoming someone he actually was – a Time Lord, a being from an ancient, distant world; a being so absolutely alien and untamed, that it seemed to be bursting the prison of his apparently human body.

"Martha!" he yelled with morbid enthusiasm. "And Mickey Mickety Mick, my favourite protector of the Earth! Hello! How'r'you? Jack! Ianto! Oooh, hello, Gwen! Looking good, what month is it? If you don't mind me asking. And where's Rhys? You didn't fire him already, Jack, did you?!"

"Rhys went to..." Gwen started, but Jack would not let her finish.

"Can you explain this?" he asked, pointing at wires covering half the floor of the Freezer.

"Yes!" The Doctor switched on his sonic screwdriver and stuck it in the middle of the biggest knot of cables. "No! Not now!"

"This is the Chameleon Arch," Martha repeated with dread in her voice. "Doctor?"

"Mhumpsfihht," the Doctor announced through the sonic screwdriver he had put between his teeth to free his hands. He was fastening together two chaotic bundles of wire. "Aaught!"

"But it can only mask biological traits!" Martha shouted, pushing away from Mickey. "How is it supposed to help Donna? I don't understand!"

She remembered perfectly well the excruciating pain the device had inflicted on the Time Lord. Even now she would wake up sometimes with his screams ringing in her ears. The Chameleon Arch appeared in her nightmares more often than a Hath drowning in the swamp, or the Toclofane's spheres, bristling with blades.

The Doctor pressed his sonic to the tangle of wires again. He was running towards Donna's sarcophagus now, the horrible circlet hanging from his forearm, cables slung over his shoulder.

"No-no-no-no-no!" he yelled at a full dash. "Cause, you see, I've redeveloped the Arch; it doesn't mask the biological structure anymore, it doesn't have to, why would it do that for? And it doesn't replace the original memories with a set of new ones. It is more sensitive, precise, selective – yes, I guess that's a good word – selective! It can interpret memories; select memories; sift them and separate them from those she just shouldn't have, see?! The TARDIS has this slightly telepathic ability; she can get inside your head. She can extract anomalous set of memories; distinguish the gallifreyan signature from the terrestrial one, and divide them; separate those memories from everything that makes her Donna Noble!"

"But... You said it was impossible!"

"Impossible! Unheard of! Improbable! Except for the fact that I'm an improbability whiz!" The Doctor sent Martha a wide, completely insane smile. He was continuously on the move, his slim fingers constantly fiddling with the wires, weird devices and the circlet itself. "You can't remove those memories without damaging the basic personality matrix. No, you can't delete the memory of a first glance into an Untempered Schism; if it was possible, I'd do it myself; but if you look inside the Vortex it stays with you forever, burned, engraved in your brain, in your memory, in what describes you, in what defines your consciousness. But you can push it away, down into the subconscious mind, into regions usually unused, if you're not a Time Lord, that is; just..." He threw the screwdriver from one hand to the other. "...the subconscious mind has to be broadened. No, not even broadened. Awakened. Humans don't use much of their subconscious mind. It's simply present in you – a blank page, tabula rasa, terra incognita, an empty memory disc. All you need is a wee bit of technology. A speck of genius – that's me by the way. A good deal of cheating. Erm, a bit more than a good deal... A lot..."