Tag Archive: Mutually Assured Destruction

Cpt 4

Sprong.

With a rippling of its mighty engines, the golden Osirian Pyramid ship rends the fabric of reality asunder and pops into existence in THE DARK TIMES.

Arissa stares at the viewscreen with a mixture of amusement and disbelief, both that the ship actually arrived in THE DARK TIMES, and that the author allowed it to happen without killing her.

And that he continues to type THE DARK TIMES in all capital letters.

And that the Osirian Pyramid ship, technological marvel of the 35th Century, actually makes a “Sprong” noise.

What can she say? She is easily amused.

She fiddles with the view screen to get a look at her surroundings, and despite the desperate circumstances, feels a weight of relief at no longer being in the year 2020. The jokes and internet memes had started early, but if humanity only knew the depths to which time travelers actively avoided the year, they might feel better about having survived it.

Assuming, of course, this was THAT timeline. There was after all, still a couple of weeks to go.

The sensor readings bounce back to her display, confirming the worst: Major temporal disruptions. Arissa always thought of time (incorrectly) as the surface of a lake. A temporal disruption was like dropping a rock in the middle of it, sending ripples and waves out in concentric rings that changed the surface reflection. These readings indicated someone had dropped a dump truck full of gravel over the water, seeding it with minor blips and ripples that were cascading back and forth into each other before being wiped out by the impact wave when the truck itself fell in.

Time was tearing itself apart as forward moving paradoxes begat backward traveling paradoxes.

She hadn’t seen anything like this since The Time War (which, she notes, only warrants capitalization of the first letters, not the whole title). The sensors also show her a myriad of wreckage outside. The Pyramid ship had materialized in the middle of a debris field. And quite the interesting on at that. She detects pieces of Dalek saucers, hull fragments of Arkanian star liners, the burned-out hulks of Draconian battlecruisers, and what appeared to be stonework from the monolithic Cathedral-Class Coffin ships of the Great Vampires. Very few of these races occupy the same plot of history as each other, and yet here they all are, mingling in yet another paradox mixer as the flotsam and jetsam tumble endlessly in space.

These wrecks did not belong here, not in this when. Had they been pulled to their destruction by the paradoxes? Or had they arrived intact and fought amongst themselves until only scrap remains? She backs away from the monitors and sensors intending to step out onto the terrace and see the devastation firsthand, to see if the distortions are visible to the naked eye. Pyramid ships are quite capable of holding an atmosphere over their ray-shielded observation decks—when her heel strikes something, sending her suddenly tumbling over backward.

At this point, there was any number of things Arissa was prepared to accept, but a gigantic stone tablet was not among them. Her fingers snaked out to caress the tablet, which is covered with a combination of hieroglyphics, runes, symbols, and pictograms, all deeply etched upon its surface.

“Is this High Galifreyan?” She asks, knowing the author will not reply, but unable to stop herself. She’s rusty but manages to decipher a few pieces of the tablet while the Rosetta circuits embedded behind her eyes and ears translate the rest.

TTV #477 – A Christmas Carol Revisited, Eleventh Doctor Chronicles “The Top of the Tree” (Big Finish Audio)

TTV #478 – TLV: The Last Message, Mission to the Known, (Eagle Moss / Hero Collector short stories), Mutually Assured Destruction (Big Finish Audio)

TTV #479 – Revolution of the Daleks

TTV #480 – TLV: Exit Strategy, Genetics of the Daleks (Big Finish Audio)

TTV #481 – TLV: Tales of the Dark Times Episodes 4 & 5 (Comic Maker), All Flesh is Grass (Novel)

“Really? There’s no one here who could possibly listen to your podcast. Why would you send me your schedule to post…” She trails off, suddenly understanding. “You really have no control over this, do you? I suspected as much, but this bloody well confirms it, doesn’t it?”

She rises, moving back to the controls. If things are this bad, she has less time than she thought. Scouring the debris for salvage would have to wait. Arissa transmits the schedule—because despite it being a worthless gesture that would not gain them listeners, she had been contracted to do the job, and therefore it was going to get done—and fiddling with the sensors, slaved them to the navigation controls and set a new course. As the Pyramid ship moves off, she heads to the wardrobe.

You can’t save the universe wearing a silk robe, no matter what the movies say.