3.
At the fourth floor we reached the roof by climbing up some old steel ladder. The Zombies, or whatever they were, hadn’t figured out how to swing the ground floor ladder down so they simply milled around the alley, shuffling around in the snow. Hundreds and hundreds were congregating around building and thousands more were in the streets, as far as the eye could see.
In awe, I asked, “Is this affecting the whole city?”
“Not yet, but if we don’t shut down the wave source soon, it will affect the entire planet,” said the Doctor, with a surprising amount of concern.
“So do you think we’ve found the antenna?” said Rose. She pointed at roof beyond the fire escape ladder. In addition to the usual vents and air conditioners almost every amount of open space on the flat roof of the old factory had been completely covered with some kind of grid-like metal tubing which glowed with a faint blue light. It was warm enough that most of the snow on the roof had melted, and was dripping into the drains.
“I think we are in the neighbourhood.”
Carefully stepping over the tubes, we moved over to the roof access door. It was locked, but this didn’t seem to bother my new friends. “Oh Doctor, can I?” begged Rose.
He grinned and tossed her the pen thing. “1124″, he said. “if that doesn’t work, try 1126.”
She fiddled with the device for a second or two, pointed it at the lock and pressed the button. The lock went *click* and she opened the door.
“OK, I’m impressed. Does it clean sinks too?” I asked, amazed.
“4523,” said the Doctor nonchalantly, as he walked through the door.
Although the factory was four stories tall, it only had the one main floor. We climbed down a metal staircase to a grated metal walkway that surrounded the fourth floor like a ring. It went all around the building, like the floors in a hockey arena, giving access to what were once offices at the edges. The centre was completely open giving us a bird’s eye view of the gallery exhibits. The zombies were everywhere on the main floor, standing room only. The jazzy music had become accelerated into a bizarre cacophony of notes, at an unbelievable cadence, almost like static. Luckily, the zombies hadn’t figured out yet how to go up the three flights of stairs leading to this floor.
“There’s the base of the antenna,” said the Doctor, pointing at a mass of glowing wires leading from the roof to a small walkway just off the catwalk. The base of the bundle ended in a pile of strange looking machinery, and a single large wire headed to an office just ahead. “That’s where the wave generator will be.”
We moved up to it. “Doctor!” cried Rose, as she moved up to the door.
We looked into the room. It was an old place, a factory office from a time long ago with clouded windows on the door and yellow, dingy walls. It was however, equipped as a modern office, with a desk, chairs, shelves and a computer, but also with a strange alien creature strung up on the walls with the hundreds of wires attached to its back. Tentacles and organs and slime seemingly penetrated every part of its body and anchored him to the one wall. The wires were attached to bizarre machinery, covering the opposite wall, and the glowing blue wire from the antenna went into it. But its face seemed so familiar, like it was human.
It looked like John Wilson, the head of the PUC. It was as if he had been ensnared, consumed by this… whatever this was. The machines pulsed as he breathed. As I looked at the horror, the noise of the band down below was deafening.
“Ok,” I yelled, “This thing looks like my boss!” I gestured at the machines. “What the hell is this!”
“This is a partially polymorphed Xingian, interfaced with a large scale transmat emitter,” the Doctor answered. “But why do it like this? Why?” He paused and looked around, but only for a few seconds, then realized what needed to be done. “Take my disrupter, Rose” the Doctor said, pulling the triangular device from his jacket pocket, “and attach it to the base of the emitter.”
Rose ran out of the office and screamed as a zombie grabbed at her. They had found a way up! I grabbed an old mop from a corner of the office and struck out at the zombies, pushing them off of her. They were shuffling their way up the stairs by the dozens, as if they had come to protect that thing in the office. “Go Rose, go!” She made a dash for the emitter along the tiny walkway as I shoved a bunch of zombies back. One pulled at my collar and I smashed him hard in the face with the end of the mop.
“Don’t hurt them, Robert! They’re regular people like you, only trapped by this machine,” the Doctor yelled.
“That’s great and all, Doc, but whatever you are going to do, do it fast ’cause there are a lot of them and they don’t seem to like me. Or you!”
Rose shoved the Doctor’s disrupter into some kind of receptacle in the emitter machine at the base of the catwalk with all the wires. It did little, so Rose grabbed her own disrupter and jammed it into the emitter too. The wires dimmed markedly, but still gave off some of that evil blue light. “It’s not enough!” yelled Rose, “It’s still blue!”
I pushed the zombies back and poked at them with the mop handle as if they were wild animals. Without thinking I pulled out my disrupter yelled, “Here. Take it!” Rose ran partway back down the walkway. I threw my wave disrupter at her and she caught it. “Quick!” I pushed at the zombies again. Behind my shoulder I could see Rose frantically trying to fit the third Disrupter into the weird alien machinery at the base of the antenna. Through the dingy window of the office I could see the Doctor trying to stop the machines hooked up to the alien. In front of me, I faced up to the drooling, moaning zombie art patrons trying to stop us. With my wave disrupter gone, I could feel it. The radiation from the array was telling me what to do. Protect the Master. Protect the array. “Doctor! I can’t hold them back much longer! Whatever you’re going to do, man, do it now!”
“Robert! Hold on! Give me another minute. Give me anything!” He was as much talking to himself as he was to me as he tried to make sense of the machinery. “Come on, come on! Wave manifold interface! Feedback containment circuit. Feedback containment re-phaser! Come on. Come on. COME ON!” He altered a switch and the machine began to make a loud noise. “OH YES!” His pen thing was glowing. The machines were glowing. The Xingian was glowing. The zombies were glowing. I was glowing. “Rose! Get the last one in there. Do it. DO IT NOW!!”
The zombie crowd surged at me, breaking the old handle of the mop. Pushing, pulling, climbing, gnawing, gnashing, biting. I desperately pushed them back, shoving them back, smacking them with the two ends, they kept coming… coming to defend their master…. I could feel myself turning… willpower and memories fading… all I could think of was the antenna and my boss… my Master…
Dizzy. Eyes refocusing. The people in front of me looked confused, mumbling about how there was nothing up here and moving back to the staircase. Looking over the railing I could see the crowd down below milling around the exhibits but something had changed — they were talking. They were laughing. The music played at normal rate. There were waiters darting from place to place with glasses of wine and snacks. Assistants offered tours and explanations of the exhibits. It was like nothing had happened. The old guy in front of me who had chewed the mop in half now looked at me a little confused. “What’s up here again?”
Quickly pulling myself together, I looked at him and lied, “There’s only offices up here, sir, no exhibits. Just maintenance. This area is for maintenance. Nothing much to see up here.”
“Oh. OK.” He turned around and shuffled off toward the stairs.
Rose ran down the small walkway. “I think I did it!” she exclaimed.
“Damn right you did! It’s like it never happened!” I cried. “We’d better find the Doctor.” We ran down the walk to the control room. The Doctor and the Xingian were sitting in the old chairs. The Xingian looked completely human now, just like my boss, only now there was this weariness and sadness in his face.
He looked at each of us, “I’m so very, very sorry about all of this. It’s all my fault. I should have known better.” He hung his head in his hands.
“Ahh, well transmat is a tricky business,” said the Doctor, “it can get away from anyone. No harm done.”
I decided to ask a very pertinent and serious question that took even the Doctor by surprise. “So what have you done with John?”
He looked up at me. “There was no original John Wilson.”
“You made him up?” asked Rose.
“Yes. My homeworld is in the Vinmar galaxy. My real job is as a xenobiologist. I was heading to Panjoulantis-6 to assist in the study there. A lot of exciting megaflora on that world, let me tell you. Trees the size of mountains!
“But then something went wrong with the shuttle, there was a stellar flare or something, and my ship was badly damaged. The only planet I could get to was Earth. I crashed into Lake Ontario during a terrible storm. Only myself and four thralls survived. We made our way to this city and hid in this building. That was 1985.”
We looked at each other. The alien had been on the planet for over twenty years.
“You’ve been here longer than me,” Rose replied.
He sighed. “It was the thought of my home that kept me going. I was able to salvage some equipment from the wreckage of the ship. I managed to get a polymat working and I was able to change my appearance into that of a human. I made up the identity of John Wilson so I could blend in and… well… get a job. I eventually worked my way up in the City Works until I was head of the PUC.”
“So why the art show?” I asked.
“It seemed like a decent way to get a lot of people into a location that housed the transmat and the converter. A sports stadium would have been better, but I figured it would raise too much suspicion. All I needed to do was borrow a little bit of energy from a few thousand stimulated humanoid brains. I know that sounds like some kind of violation, but it’s not. You get an great art show and in return I get just enough energy to power the transmat. Everyone is happy. I didn’t want to hurt anyone.
“But it all went wrong. It started to turn every human around it into a thrall. It wasn’t supposed to do that, you have to believe me.”
I did, and so did the Doctor and Rose. He sighed deeply and looked at the sky through the shabby windows. “How will I get home? The only way I can use this energy to get me back is to swing the signal around the Sun and three other stars. The next good stellar alignment won’t be for another 24 years. Even then, the thralls are set to discorporate by morning and the emitter is fried.” He looked at the Doctor. “Even if I could, I don’t think I should be trying this again.”
He turned his gaze to the floor. It occurred to me that John had always looked kind of sad and out of place the few times I had met him. He always said funny stuff at the Christmas parties but then tended to hang around in a corner all by himself. In the eight years I’d known him, I’d never seen him with a wife or a girlfriend. I now knew why. To be trapped on an alien world in an alien body for so many years. All of a sudden I felt really bad for him.
Rose looked at the Doctor and he looked back, as if he knew what she was thinking. “You know, I do have a spaceship of sorts…” he offered.
Although the show was in full swing, we sneaked out the back and walked to the city yard. Paulie was in the little hut at the gate packing up to leave for the day as if nothing had happened. “So you going to get that plough or… oh, hello sir.” He noticed our boss and looked around at his messy booth in a guilty sort of a way.
“Working late Paulie?” asked the Xingian. “I appreciate that, thank you. You know, there is a great art showing just down the street. Free food and drinks.”
It was dark now and the yard was lit with massive sodium-arc lights on the tops of poles throughout the yard. They created brilliant orange patches on the snow and strange dark shadows with the machinery giving it the look of an alien world. “How do you feel?” I asked him as we walked along the road.
He looked at me and smiled. “This is a beautiful planet, Robert, even with all the problems. I don’t regret my time here, but it’s not my home. I’m glad to be going back.” We stopped beside a blue police box, like the kind they used to have in England in the 50s. Odd that it would be out here in the yard. Rose pulled out a key on a string around her neck and unlocked the door. There was a big room in there, far larger than the police box itself. I blinked a couple of times, but it was still there. The Xingian had noticed too and was agape. “Is that a…? then you must be a… but you can’t be, they’re a legend.”
The Doctor looked strangely serious for a moment, then perked up and grinned a big grin. “Well… I’m just a traveller.” He looked steadfastly at Rose. “We are. Going from place to place, seeing the sights, doing what we can. You don’t want to stay in one place too long, though.” He looked at the darkening sky.
I rocked my head back and forth a couple of times to confirm the seemingly impossible angles inside the box. “You know, that thing is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside so I’m thinking it’s alien. And I ain’t never seen the kind of stuff like I’ve seen tonight…” I composed myself. “It was good to have met you,” I said to the Doctor and Rose, “and you too, sir,” I said to the Xingian, “You were a heck of a Controller, I’m glad we’ve been able to help you… retire, sir.” I still call him ’sir’. Even though he’s actually an alien from another planet in another galaxy, technically he’s still my boss, no sense in being rude.
“No retiring for me, son,” the Xingian said and he shook my hand, like a human would. He produced a triangular device from his pocket, similar to the ones we used to stop the emitter. ”I may have not arrived a Panjoulantis-6, but the amount of data I recorded on this planet will keep the researchers back home going for years. Humans are so interesting! Thank you so much. I wish you well!”
Being a good city worker, I offered, “You should all stop by in the summer. It’s so much warmer and there’s like festivals and parades and such. It’s a great town. Just don’t park that box of yours downtown. It’ll get towed.”
Rose and the Xingian laughed and the Doctor smiled. “We’ll be back,” he said, “We always seem to find our way back. But that’s not such a bad thing, now is it! Goodbye, Robert.” He grinned. “See you in the summer.”
“You bet, Doc.”
They stepped inside the box and shut the door. A roaring noise, a screeching noise, an engine noise, with the top light blinking bright. The cold air pushed past my cheeks as it disappeared, off this planet, out of this time, leaving only a barren square imprint surrounded by the snow-dusted the gravel of the yard. I contemplated this for a few minutes, then I went over to my plough and turned it on. The strange little knock the engine used to make was gone. I guess Xingian radiation isn’t so bad after all.
With the mystery solved and the Doctor on his way, I cranked up the heater in my little plough and resumed my work. Even though it was dusk, I happily worked my way down the east side of a large residential street, heading north to Yard #5, not caring that sidewalk ploughs weren’t supposed to be out past 6pm. Hey, the sidewalks still need to get cleaned. And I think they can cut me some slack — I just helped save the world.
This little thing is a chassis intrusion switch. Some computers actually use these annoying little things. You open the hood on your PC, tinker a bit, put the cover back on and the computer has the nerve to tell you that there has been a chassis intrusion, and it will not start, go into BIOS or anything, even if you unplug the damn thing.
