Doctor Who: BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures [063] - Reckless Engineering by Nick Walters

Author:Nick Walters
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Science-Fiction - Doctor Who
ISBN: 9780563486039
Publisher: Diamond Comic Distributors
Published: 2003-08-21T22:00:00+00:00

And then suddenly I was back in my own mind.’

He paused again.

Aboetta realised that her hands were trembling, so she clasped them together. ‘This being, this Watchlar, is it in your mind now?’

Malahyde smiled. ‘You’ll see what happened when I get to the end of the story.

‘It was a strange experience, sharing mind and body with another being. I could feel Watchlar’s presence there the whole time, at the back of my mind – not as a physical sensation, but as a kind of persistent memory. Say, one is in debt, and one’s creditors are beginning to threaten one’s life. You spend an evening at the theatre – you have read about the theatre, Aboetta? – so you become wrapped up in the experience, forget your woes. But the moment the curtain falls for the interval, the moment the distraction ends, the memory comes slamming hack and with it the feeling of helplessness and panic. That it what it was like. Watchlar and I were together – for better or for worse – closer than any man or wife.

‘When I got home, he filled my head with details of this machine. And I began to realise the impossibility of the task. It wasn’t so much the complexity – Watchlar would guide me – but the cost. Materials I had never heard of, processes not yet devised by man – it was beyond my means. But was the human race to fall because of a lack of funds?

‘And then the riots began.’

Malahyde fell silent once more.

‘Riots?’ prompted Aboetta.

‘Something to do with political reform.’ Malahyde waved a hand dismissively. ‘I didn’t care about the cause then, and now it is less than irrelevant. But at the time, those riots seemed to endorse the Eternines’ warning about the fall of humanity. If I wasn’t convinced before, I certainly was then. Convinced – and terrified. What a burden to shoulder – saving the entire future of Mankind! I must confess I lost control for a while. I tried to escape from Watchlar – but how do you escape from something that lives within your own head? I even tried to kill myself, by leaping from bridges, wading into the river with my pockets weighted with stones, but at the crucial moment, Watchlar would always seize control and remove me – us – to safety.

‘But as the riots died down, I began to reason. And I came up with a plan. The day after the riots ended, I put it into action.

‘I walked down to Queen Square, and saw the devastation at first hand. Two sides of the square had been burned down. I hadn’t imagined the damage to be so severe. Of course, this got my mind running on the warning of the Eternities once more, and so I hurried up from the town to Clifton, bearing with me the plans Watchlar and I had drawn up. Obtaining Brunel’s address had been easy enough, and I thanked the stars that I had encountered him upon the downs that fateful night, for at least I wouldn’t be approaching him as a total stranger.

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