Part 1 – what am I… for Timelord eyes only.

I am called Sen. Simple. However, there is nothing simple about me. The knowledge of my own past has come to me in small pieces. The trauma that brought me to this place seems to have erased many memories of my early life, and blocks put in place by my creator seemed to have just about finished the job. But between the gift of regeneration and the fact that computer firewalls were never meant to function in an organic brain, I have been able to piece most of what/who/when I am together.

I am a TARDIS. Perhaps it would be more accurate to call me *the* TARDIS. I have been called many things. “Rassilon’s Chariot” is the name given to me in Timelord lore. Those in the know sometimes call me the Daughter of Rassilon. Simple Sen to the people of this odd place. But officially, I am known as Project S.A.S.T.A.P. (Sentient Artron Shelled TArdis Protype). Let me explain… the cliff notes version as Terry would say.

Rassilon and Omega were the founders of Timelord society. Imagine the greatest leaders and scientists in history together in a team of two people. FDR, Caesar, Einstein, Newton, Da Vinci, Aristotle, all alive at once, working together. Gallifrey wasn’t really better than the rest of the universe, just lucky to have these two geniuses alive at the same time.

Omega developed a device that could execute the controlled collapse of a star into a predictably sized black hole. This would have been useless in any real sense without the reflective gravitational forcefield technology that Rassilon developed alongside Omega. Rassilon’s forcefield got stronger by exactly mirroring the energy output of whatever it was containing.

The short of it – the duo managed to collapse a star into a black hole, and then perfectly and safely contain it. Then, with some technical work on the forcefield, draw off energy gradually. This perfect balance, which the ever eloquent Omega dubbed the Eye of Harmony, would power all of the Timelord’s experiments and eventual success into perfectly controlled travel through the higher dimensions. All of Timelord society believed that their first try, last, and only try was a perfect success. They were wrong. The Timelord Eye was *not* the first try. I was.

Rassilon was a perpetual pessimist, conspiracy theorist, and political mastermind. These things in combination lead to an entire shadow research division into TARDIS development. The more unstable and dangerous concepts that were rejected for the Type 10 program were not abandoned. They were all installed into one secret project, called the SASTAP. In order to convince all of the extremely unstable and energy demanding test systems to function together without blowing up half the quadrant, the most powerful computer in the known universe was developed to run the ship’s systems.

Called an Amplified Panatropic Computer Network, or APC Net, this computer was so advanced that it gained a natural sentience that slowly developed into a full blown conscious intelligence during testing. This “bug” was eventually worked out of the second development of the Net, which would become The Matrix on Gallifrey. This, however, is the S in SASTAP. Sentient. Sen for short. This is how I was born.

The SASTAP was powered by its own Eye of Harmony. The first experimental use of the Hand of Omega Stellar Manipulator and the Transduction Barrier forcefields in conjunction. This TARDIS needed its own Eye for the AS, or Artron Shelled portion of the name.

TARDIS exteriors are constructed of cold plasma. This plasma can be molded at the subatomic level into nearly any shape. The manipulation process is difficult for even the most advanced TARDIS, so the form is usually static on each landing. A stone, a tree, a local communications device, etc. However, I am different. My exterior shell is pure energy. Arton energy – the telepathic force that drives every sentient consciousness in the universe. I can land as anything, even a living being, accurate down to the smallest sub-quantum particle.

I am the ultimate space-ship. In the entire existence of the Universe, no other piece of technology as advanced has been, or ever will be, created. I was perfect. Until I died.