Doctor Who NA10 - Transit by Ben Aaronovitch

Author:Ben Aaronovitch
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2011-07-13T01:06:21+00:00

PART TWO

And Thucydides said: '

Consider the vast influence of accident in war before you are engaged in it.

As it continues it generally becomes an affair of chances from which neither of us is exempt, and whose event we must risk in the dark.'

The Doctor considered this for a long moment as he watched the waves of the Aegean break against the Piraievs breakwater.

'Speak for yourself,' said the Doctor.

Conversations that never happened.

6: Red Queen

Sol Transit System

It had been created out of endless movement. It had a certain degree of self-knowledge, more when it was using quick-thought than when it was thinking slow. Slow-thought was more comforting; in slow-thought it had only the most basic awareness of human beings. Quick-thought gave it access to the total sum of human knowledge but much of that was useless without reference points. It laboured to build up comparisons between itself and human concepts of self - it was a slow process because slow thought was, well, slow. Quick-time was too dangerous to sustain over long periods: it put vital parts of itself within the human domain and it wasn't willing to risk exposure just yet.

It had taken much quick-thought to establish the sequence of events surrounding the attack. The main injury had occurred while much of its slow-thought consciousness was paralysed. Many big concepts were unaccountably terminated in a progressive loss of self. This had allowed the attack to be successful. In the first moments of pain and confusion it had mistakenly believed that the paralysis was part of the attack, but quick-thinking revealed otherwise. There was a link, though. hi the moment of the attack that part of its functions that it had taught itself to think of as its autoimmune system had allowed the infection to penetrate. Why this should have happened was unclear.

It investigated the problem using quick-thought, calving off subsets to track down and assimilate the data as fast as possible and in quick-thought that was fast indeed. Fear of discovery was replaced by the imperatives of survival; indeed it was possible that communication with humans might be a necessary part of the solution.

In view of this possibility a subset attempted to visualize the problem in human anatomical terms. It found a workable metaphor in the concept of viral cancer. Certainly it felt that something malignant was eating up parts of itself. This subset now operating permanently in quick-thought sub-divided itself to look for solutions. One of the baby subsets shot down a chain of logic that started with the concept of illness and ended in the concept of calling a doctor.

The baby subset started looking for a suitable specialist.

The House

'Think of it as a computer virus,' said the Doctor.

Kadiatu reached out for a third time to fill her plate from the steaming earthenware bowl. Blondie noticed that the bruising on the back of her right hand had noticeably abated.

'In what sense?' she asked.

'In the sense of the transit network being a computer,' said the Doctor.

'You're not serious,' said Kadiatu with her mouth full.

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