Making Memories, chapter 1

From NarcWiki

Chapter 1: Holiday

The door of the blue call-box opened, revealing a smiling Doctor with his companion Martha at his side. Before them, the bright blue sky and a narrow strip of sandy beach extended in either direction as far as the eye could see.

"Where are we?" Martha asked with a smile, grabbing the Doctor's hand as the two began to saunter down the beach, rows of towering buildings to their right and sparkling crystal water extending out passed the horizon on the left.

"Good old Tryad," the doctor said sending a bright smile in her direction, "Best vacation spot in all of time and space… well, for the moment," he said casting a glance up to the sky as if peering into a different time for a brief moment.

"Thought we could use a holiday, did you?" she asked with a grin.

"Ah, but isn't it all a holiday?"

She shook her head, and gave a small laugh. "Well, I suppose so. At any rate, it certainly is lov--," she began, but was cut off by the Doctor.

"What are they doing here?" he asked abruptly, more to himself than to her, his expression suddenly turning cold.

In front of a nearby skyscraper, that thrust hundreds of floors up into the sky, stood a group of heavily garbed figures.

"What do you mean," Martha asked quizzically, "I mean, sure, they're hardly dressed for such a sunny spot but--"

"Psycla," He said pointedly as if this somehow explained it all.

"Psycla?" she asked, waiting for a better explanation.

"They are an ancient race that are capable of seeing the past, present, and future," he said darkly.

"They can see the future?" Martha asked, somewhat intrigued.

"No," the Doctor asserted.

"But you said---"

"No" he said, never taking his eyes off of the Psycla. "The Psycla can see possibilities, that's all. Multiple possibilities. They see everything that could have happened since the beginning of time and they can see the possibilities the future might hold."

"You mean like you?"

The Doctor wrinkled his nose in disgust at the comparison. "The Psycla are nothing like the Time Lords. Time Lords can see the time and space in which they exist, the timeline. The Psycla see multiple timelines, their minds are filled with just a mass of extraneous information. They are incapable of sorting it out into anything viable or even coherent, much less tell the future. They claim to see see it,certainly, but their predictions are no more valid than your own.

"So all that knowledge, all that foresight, and it amounts to nothing?" she asked, a hint of pity in her voice.

"Absolutely nothing. They can see so much, in fact, that sometimes they cannot even tell what is real. They lose their own timeline," he paused with an almost sympathetic look in his eyes, "they lose their own place in the universe."

"That's so sad," Martha said casting a sympathetic look toward the robed group.

"No, it's not. What's sad is the fact that gullible people bought into their lies. In the end, people believe what they want to believe, and the Psycla took those people for all they were worth. People kept throwing their money away in hopes that some of it, some fragment, might possibly be real, that it might possibly come true."

With that, he broke away from Martha's hands and strolled right up to the group of Psycla. A broad smile crossed his face.

"Psycla! But what are Psycla doing so far away from home?"

"And you are?" the one in the middle asked .

He looked right into her face, where the eyes would have been, should have been, if they weren't covered by thick violet band of fabric.

"You don't remember me?" he asked, faking hurt.

"Should we?" the one on the right asked.

The one on the left stood silent for several moments. "It's good to see you again, Doctor." The one on the left said, a slight bit of sarcasm in her voice.

"Ah, see there, I knew you remembered me."

"You've changed since we last met. You used to have monstrous ears."

"Now was that really called for?"

"You look better than you did, but not as good as you could have. I see all the faces you could've had. Ginger hair, ebony, red-- so many possibilities. But, I suppose it's luck of the draw, isn't it? So, just what are you doing here? Care to destroy our livelihoods yet again?"

"Livelihoods!" the Doctor said incredulously. "You were scamming people out of their money!"

"Our sight is the only thing we have," she stated firmly.

"Sight? What sight?" he said putting his face right up to her violet blindfold, staring at her directly. "As far as I can tell, it's nothing more than the blind leading the blind."

"Sir!" the one in the center spoke up. "That will be quite enough! Do you have an invitation or a reservation for this establishment?"

The one on the left put a hand on the young one's shoulder. "You are too quick to anger. After all, the Doctor is a guest on this world.We shall put him up here."

"We have no more room!"

"The master suite, if I recall, is still available," the left one replied.

"The master suite is for paying customers only!"

"The Doctor will pay. His mind is filled with much knowledge, knowledge our employer, I'm sure, would be delighted to partake of. Ah, the stories that must lie just beyond his eyes, those ancient eyes."

The Doctor eyed the one on the left warily. "I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name."

"Minam," she said with a small bow. He looked to Martha, a look that signaled that she, too, had best be on her guard.

"Well Minam," he said, thrusting out a hand to shake hers vigorously, his exuberant smile making an appearance again, "it is a pleasure to see you again."

"This way to your room," Minam said, ignoring his last comment entirely.

She led them into a lobby that was so ostentatious it almost burned the eyes if you looked too long. It was entirely of gold, with carved statues, Trydians, in ancient and artistic poses, littering the walls. The only thing that drew the eye away from this sea of gold was a large portrait behind the front desk that spanned the whole back wall. It was of normal color, the poses more realistic. It was quite obviously a family portrait of some wealthy benefactor for the resort, a husband and wife standing regally in the center and just in front of them, a little girl with golden hair. All were Trydians and their eyes were of brightest gold.

He shook his head to bring himself back into the here and now when he realized he had fallen behind. He could just barely see the hem of Martha's jacket as the two ladies had already reached the top of the main spiral staircase and turned into a hallway.

He dashed up the stairs and after a few wrong turns managed to catch back up with them.

"Distracted by the art?" Martha joked, looking to a bare chested female Trydian sculpture used to support a candle holder on the wall, and then back to him.

Before he could answer, they had reached the room. It was more simplistic than the hall, the walls not ornately carved but simply covered in a red and gold colored wallpaper. In the center of the room was a large bed, covered in multiple draperies following the same color scheme.

At the sight of something soft and warm that looked as comfortable as those back in her own home in her own time, Martha took a running leap to land on the bed. She rolled onto her back, crossed her ankles and leaned back against the pillowed headboard.

"I take it I did good on the location?" the Doctor asked with a smile.

"You did good," Martha said, smiling back at him.

The Psycla gestured to a large glass door that led out onto a balcony. "From this room you have the best view of the landscape," Minam said. "If you have any questions, you can call me up."

The Doctor turned his attention from the view back to her. "I have a few questions for you. How did your organization manage to blossom again, after the Fall? What is your affiliation with the Trydians?"

"Perhaps another time, Doctor. For the moment, The Psyc is pleased to offer you both free readings."

"Free readings?" Martha asked, her curiosity piqued. "You're going to tell us our future, for free?"

"They can't tell the future!" the Doctor said exasperatedly, turning his attention back to Martha.

Martha crossed her arms and gave a small pout. "It's just for fun. Curiosity never killed anybody."

"It seems you are still skeptical, Doctor," Minam said, shaking her head. "Much time has passed since our last encounter. Our methods have evolved. It is naive to judge us by our past."

"No one can evolve that fast. You couldn't see the future then, and I have no reason to believe you can see it now," the Doctor asserted, his attention on Minam.

"We hope to change your mind, sir Time Lord. You can see all of time and space, and for so long we have striven to achieve the same. Now we have," she said, her tone one of admiration.

"You have failed in the past. I have no reason to believe this time is any different," he asserted harshly.

She shook her head. "Aren't you even curious?"

"No."

"Regardless, our offer still stands." And with that she left the room.

"I can't believe you'd even consider a reading!" he said, turning to Martha.

"The king of curiosity can't understand why I could consider it? You seek knowledge out. By any means you can. How is this any different?"

"The Psycla are frauds, they're up to their old tricks again. This is a scam."

"But how can you be sure?"

"Trust me, I'm sure."

She sighed. "All right, don't get your knickers in a knot. If you don't want me to go, I won't go."

"Don't go."

"Okay."

The two sat in silence for several moments before Martha pulled a thin screen from the nightstand. She held it up to the light. She eyed it carefully for several moments before the Doctor broke the silence. "It's a brochure."

"How can you tell?" she asked, still eyeing the object quizzically. It seemed to have little more than the hotel name "The Psyc" written on the front.

"Push the gold oval" he said, seating himself in a nearby red velvet chair.

She did and immediately the screen filled with new, much smaller, text. "Ah, here we go," she said cheerily. "Welcome to The Psyc," she began aloud. "The Psyc is privileged to be a part of the Trydian strip, the only land on the planet, which stretches all the way across its center. It is surrounded on both sides by water." She turned to the Doctor, who was staring somewhat pensively out the window. "So we're on the only land of the entire planet?"

He turned to his attention back to her. "Yep. Not a lot of room here, that's why the buildings stretch all the way to the sky -- there's nowhere left to go but up. Not much good for anything but a tourist attraction. It's far too tiny."

"What about the Trydians, don't they live here too?"

"Of course they do, on the far side of the planet, in apartments that stretch nearly as high. Toron is right nearby, nearly vacant, though certainly not as pretty, but vacant, and yet, none of them move."

"Why not?"

"This is their homeworld, they have an amazing deal of loyalty to their world and their race. Some might call it obsessive even. They consider themselves a superior race. Living with the Torons would be absolute hell for the Trydians."

"You mean they're racist? They run a tourist organization, how can they be racist?"

"Well, luckily, the Trydians are ruled by an even more powerful force."

"And what would that be?"

"Their pocketbooks. As long as they're getting money, any race can be tolerated."

"I see," Martha said wrinkling her nose slightly in disgust.

"No worries though," the Doctor said with a smile.

"Oh, well, then," Martha said, returning her attention to the brochure. She continued reading it silently to herself.

"The question is," he mused aloud, "what are the Psycla doing here? The Trydians may tolerate aliens as their guests, but never as their staff."

"What I'd like to know, " Martha said, looking up from the Brochure, "is what happened with you and the Psycla."

He paused for a moment, caught off guard, unsure of what to say or how to begin.

"This "fall" as you called it," she prodded further.

He breathed a sigh of relief. "Oh, that. I simply exposed them as the frauds they were. You see, the problem with people, and not just people, is that they believe what everyone else believes. They are sheep. One person, one sheep for whatever reason, picks some direction completely at random and wanders off from the herd. The other sheep are so mesmerized by his ambition, they figure he must certainly know something they don't. And so the first sheep becomes an involuntary leader, and the others just follow en masse. They never stop to ask where he's going or why he's going, they just follow blindly behind him. And then, after hours, days, weeks of this mindless following, questions begin to surface. Certain sheep begin to question it, yet they don't speak up because certainly there must be some divine bit of information they're not privy to. This assumption, this vacuum is too great, and so on they follow on, until eternity, or until some cataclysmic causes a single sheep, just one, to turn around."

Martha grinned at him. "And let me guess -- you were that cataclysmic event."

The Doctor puffed out his chest proudly. "Yep."

She shook her head and gave a small laugh. She looked back to her brochure for a moment before turning her attention back to him. "It says here there's a buffet down in the ballroom. I'm starved. Haven't eaten since we left Da Vinci's place, and that feels like ages ago."

"Well, what are we waiting for?" the Doctor said, standing and offering her his elbow for escort.

"Why thank you, Doctor," she said, accepting his elbow.

"Certainly, m'lady," he replied, and, with that, the two headed down to the ballroom together.