Doctor Who: Surprise Holiday

Chapter 13: Madman with a Button

Clara felt faint as she considered the Doctor's words. "Hang on a tick," she said to the Doctor. "You say it's already spread?"

"Yes, that's what I said. Remember all that scanning I've been doing? Every single person I've scanned has Vananisi nano plague in them to some degree. Native Neuesonners have the greatest degree of exposure. Your level, Clara, is nearly the same. Clyde and his people have been here less time and have had less exposure, so they have correspondingly less in them. It's in the air we breathe. It's even in the soil."

Clara shook her head. "How could it have spread so far, so fast?"

Clyde smiled. "Because I was angry and released it remotely the day I was put in isolation. That was about two months ago—plenty of time for people to be exposed and spread it everywhere as they traveled the world. And if Zyklon-X didn't behave as it should, then at least I'd be in protective isolation as everyone around me died."

"You selfish bastard!" Clara growled, then made an effort to clamp down. Her friends, after all, were depending on her. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and opened them again. "If it's already spread, then why is no one sick?"

"Because I haven't activated it yet!" declared Clyde. He held up a small box with a touch screen. "This is something the machines lashed together during the A.I. War. I call it a Zyklon-X controller. It allows you to turn it on and off, and even simulate the symptoms of different diseases."

"Except of course," the Doctor pointed out, "the machine intelligences never fully understood what they were attempting to reprogram. They only achieved partial success with limited control, and it eventually turned on them."

"Now I do hope you realize," the Doctor continued, "you can never press that button to activate it. If you do, you'll suffer the same fate as everyone else on this planet."

"I'm not a complete idiot!" Clyde fired back. "Of course I know that." He smiled. "That's why I have another, hidden controller set up with a timer. Once I'm off-planet, it will activate on its own."

The Doctor smiled. "Two problems with your plan. One: there's a quarantine in place. You can't leave by commercial flight, and any private ship will be stopped and turned away."

Clyde sneered. "The quarantine isn't as tight as you think. The people here simply aren't used to dealing with smugglers equipped to evade ships with far more advanced tech than anything this backwater planet has. And besides, I have another option. What's your second point?"

The Doctor looked at Clara. "Remember when I said I detected Artron energy? Vananisi nano plague communicates with itself through quantum entanglement, and quantum entanglement has no range limit."

He looked back at Clyde Moon. "The moment your timer goes off, the nanites in your body will instantly receive the signal, no matter how many light-years away you are by then. You can never press that button."

Clyde looked stunned at that revelation. "Ah," was all he managed to say.

"But you know what I think?" the Doctor said. He suddenly reached out and snatched away the controller Clyde held in numb fingers and walked away a few steps before turning around to face both Clara and Clyde.

"Doctor! Be careful with that!" Clara called out frantically.

"Ah! Ah! Ah!" the Doctor said with a wag of a finger as Clyde started forward. Clyde stopped. The Doctor held the controller high over his head. "I have the controller now. You can never press this button, Clyde Moon, and neither can you, Clara Oswald. But I have a theory."

"Butch!" Clyde thundered. "Get out here!"

Within seconds, Butch came running. He stopped and looked around, not sure what was going on or what to do next.