Until We Burn | Dr Who

Chapter Seventy-Three: A Hard Pill to Swallow

TW// Diet pills, talk of weight and dieting

—

"What are you working on?" the Doctor curiously asks, finding me working over the Tardis console early in the morning.

I stifle a yawn and look up from the screen. "Narrowing down the locations for the Coin. I'm done waiting around, hoping to find it. Gods know I've gotten distracted, haven't been trying hard enough... so I'm doing what I did in Pete's world and I'm making this happen."

His concern is clear but he knows better than to discourage me. "And how are you doing that?"

Pushing the screen around to him, I explain, "Remember those buttons I made to reality hop? They were built on the parallel Coin's energy, resonating frequencies and wavelengths. The whole reason why I figured that out was that it set off the same type of energy as the Tardis when we fell through the Vortex. I hypothesise that it all came from the same source — the Void. It's all Primordial. I mean, this is the stuff of the Gods!"

He nods to himself, deep in thought. The glasses come on and he peers at the energy readings I have translated. "So they came from the Void?"

"Well, everything did. Every single being in all of creation came from the abyss — Chaos. From itself, all things were born; all the Gods, the planets." Laughing almost hysterically, I continue, "I can't believe I never realised it before! The Void is Chaos! All of these parallel universes are separated by the very thing they came from, woven together. Now, I reckon that means all of the original Children of Chaos have direct parallels. They are at the beginning of every branch of reality — variations are more obvious further down the line but since they came first, they exist in the exact same, pure form in every reality. The Coin is not a creation of the Gods but— but more of a... sibling. It is a God itself that took inanimate form. So..."

"So you're tracking down the same energy readings that the parallel Coin had," he realises, his fingers raking down his cheeks to his chin in slow understanding. "Do you have the energy readings still?"

I scoff, "Spent two years translating them into reality-hopping technology, it's unlikely I'll forget. It's a whole new type of wave, though. Similar to Gamma but far stronger and easily missed. But if I amplify my search range across the Vortex by using the Tardis as a sort of radar, I might be able to run a background scan and track it down to a precise time period. After all, the prophecy said, 'Home of the usurper'. That's Earth. I just need to pinpoint when. I can find it, Doctor. I can actually find it."

A smile creeps across his face. Taking my hand in his, he gives it a firm squeeze. "Anything you need, just tell me. I will do whatever I can to make sure you find it. That's a promise."

——————

After a break from travelling, I am eager to start again. We leave it a while before we return to Earth, drawn in by mysterious energy readings and reports of a new diet pill. We pose as health and safety inspectors to get into the London headquarters of Adipose Industries.

Smoothing down my suit as we walk down the back corridors, I check the notepad from my pocket. "There's a press briefing going on in Screening Room Two right now, just started."

"Best to stay hidden, I think."

The projector room gives us an easy view of the theatre. Peering through the small window, I see a woman with rectangular glasses and blonde hair scraped back into a twist. Her lips and nails are blood red. She addresses the press with a faked, simpering smile, "Adipose Industries — the twenty-first century way to lose weight. No exercise, no diet, no pain. Just lifelong freedom from fat, the Holy Grail of the modern age. And here it is."