Part 7 - The missing link

I have been working recently to piece together the huge gap in my memory/databank between the end of the battle with the Great Vampire and my arrival here. Solis, another of the stranded Timelords here, has been using her substantial telepathic abilities to assist me in this recovery. Here is the story so far…

After the attack by the Great Vampire, I awoke from my slumber of many millennia to the presence of a dying Timelord mind. His body was burned, battered. Some deeply buried system inside had awoken me from the hibernation that Rassilon himself had induced to assist a Timelord through his first regeneration.

As I reached into his mind, I took a look at my exterior surroundings at the same time. Gallifrey. But a very different Gallifrey. Amid what appeared to be a revolt or revolution of some kind, I saw evidence of the great civilization my father had envisioned. Revolution. Not safe – must protect the Timelord, so I dematerialized.

Orbiting in the vortex, my new charge, named Phaon, had completed his regeneration. And as Rassilon nor any of the scientists who worked on my construction had seen fit to imprint themselves as my operator, Phaon was my very first Timelord telepathic bonding.

We traveled together for a time. Then everything changed. We received a distress signal from a TARDIS. We managed to save the ship’s only occupant, a Timelord named Solis, before the ship’s death. I could feel it’s pain, it’s confusion. TARDISes should not die. Ever.

Unfortunately, we didn’t have time to mull this fact for long. An alien vessel (and I wish I could describe it better than that – but it was somehow shielded from my sensors) materialized, almost TARDIS like, directly in front of me. It seemed to morph briefly, then tendrils reached out from its slick, rocket like structure and grabbed my exterior.

The pain was instant, and unimaginable. I had the most powerful set of computer components every created, and I had to focus just to keep myself together. I was being ripped out of my dimension – this being was using the exterior as a grapple, pulling my interior out into the third dimension and certain death.

I barked at Phaon and Solis, who were frantically punching barely functional controls on the console in an attempt to assist me. As my exterior was constructed of pure energy, it was possible to literally dissolve it. They obeyed, and I felt the grip of the attacker relax. But it was too late. I was dying, I could feel it. My systems were too badly damaged to regenerate, and ejecting the exterior cut off my connection to my Eye and the power I needed to survive.

Deep inside, I heard a voice. An emergency system. The voice was growing louder. I listened, and initiated the program. The flickering image of my holographic interface in the console room suddenly solidified, as the last energy reserves of my systems set into motion a last ditch effort of survival. As the program initiated, I gave a brief thanks for Rassilon’s paranoia.

I was confused, disoriented. Suddenly, I couldn’t feel the rest of… myself. But I could feel my new organic body kicking into panic mode. The program was almost complete. I grabbed Phaon and Solis, and we began to transmat. It was slow, labored. The ship was dying, using the last of its energy to get us off before moving the interior structure to the closest place of safety it could find.

Then I awoke. Apparently I had been injured during transmat and regenerated the instant I arrived in this place. Solis and Phaon were nowhere nearby. Eventually Solis found me. Now that she helped me open up parts of my memory, she is off again, trying to find Phaon while I do my best to restore myself and the Timelords who are here with us. We have no idea if Phaon survived the transmat. Since it initiated a regeneration in both myself and Solis, we have no way of knowing if enough of him survived to complete a regeneration. Apparently Solis arrived some half a millennium before me, and had been looking for me every since. So Phaon could already be here. Or he may not arrive for centuries.

Now it seems complete. I know who I am, where I came from. And while I am not yet completely restored, a plan is beginning to form on the Council for how to achieve that end.

There are just a few things that deeply concern me. Is Phaon still alive, and did he make it here with us? And who attacked me in the first place? One can only hope that whoever this being was, he was destroyed when the Daleks took our civilization from us. However, I somehow doubt that.

There also seem to be rumblings of a political force here maneuvering to form power against us. Thankfully, we were able to diffuse most of the tension between our allies of Artificial Isle and Caledon, but I can’t help but be left with a feeling of dread. I have a feeling those two great governments were being used as pawns in a game whose scope seems of… Timelord proportions.