Iceberg (David Banks) by Iceberg (by Kate Orman) (html)

Author:Iceberg (by Kate Orman) (html)
Language: eng
Format: epub

15 Where You’ll Find Me

Blackness.

The Doctor came round to the clack of footsteps. But he saw nothing. He was lying on his back on a hard surface. His head throbbed. He was in a bad way.

He was sure his eyes were open. He tried closing them tight. He opened them again.

Blackness.

Perhaps he’d gone blind. His head was throbbing loudly. Almost vibrating. He remembered hitting his head on something hard as he came out of the TARDIS. Perhaps he had damaged the optical nerves.

The footsteps were dying away. He still had his hearing.

He sat up.

The vibration was not in his head at all. He could hear a distant pounding. He felt the vibration under his palms on the hard cold surface. The air was cool and smelt of metal and oil.

He got to his feet and swayed in the blackness. He felt for the pulse beats of his double heart. Quite normal. If it was not concussion that made him sway, perhaps the steady rolling motion he felt was caused by effects outside his body. Perhaps he was inside a moving vehicle.

So. He may not be concussed. He wasn’t deaf. And now he realized he couldn’t be blind. Some parts of the blackness around him were denser than others. He could make out certain vague shapes.

There was a large denseness of black rearing above him. He put out his hand to touch it. A hard, greasy, metal surface. A massive limb extended away and above him. He looked around and peered into the gloom.

Other metal limbs loomed at him out the darkness. He stood beneath some giant mechanical spider. It watched and waited.

The further one goes, the less one knows,’ he murmured.

Soft flesh

Skin under sunlit warmth.

Moisture. The dampness of bodies clamped together. Moving together.

Rush of wave on a shingle shore. Shock of sea spray.

Lips. Curving in laughter. Bodies shaking together.

Shava.

The beauty of Shava.

And Talaron.

She kisses. Lips to moist lips.

She kisses Talaron.

The impassive observer was aware of the malfunction. Images were manifesting spontaneously from within.

The phenomenon was well established. It was a curious experience, nevertheless. It might only happen once in a hundred years, but when it did, it could be disruptive of efficient working practices.

The technical term was emotional memory, a left‐over from the pre‐mechanical time. A redundant reflex. An echo of their ages‐old, original primitive existence, the organic life.

There was a well‐defined procedure for dealing with attacks of emotional memory. Attention was to be directed away from the images and focused on underlying cybernetic principles.

The observer re‐ordered the monitoring priorities.

She slammed her cabin door behind her. She leant on it, panting. Her heart was thumping. She did as Barbara had taught her. She sucked air deep to the pit of her stomach and expelled it in a controlled, slow exhalation.

She was such a wimp.

She pulled the power‐pack angrily from the Holocam and replaced it with a full one, plugged the empty one into a socket to recharge. Her hands were shaking. This would not do. She had to reclaim some power over herself.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.