Doctor Who - 02 - The Art of Forgetting

.4. Dreams and Nightmares

He materialized in his chamber and immediately looked down, at his feet. He was still barefoot. He puffed irritably. Donna looked at him with a crooked smile. She was seated on a soft, leather sofa, arms wrapped around her knees.

"Did you plan to achieve something?" she mocked. "Or just waste a few minutes?"

"I don't understand it." He ran his fingers through his hair. "I just don't get it."

He stared, his eyebrows knitted, at a small computer interface, now completely dismantled, with bundles of wires jutting left and right and with a bunch of blinking optical fibres hanging nearly to the floor.

"It is almost as if there was something conscious, something alive, something intelligent."

"It is the most powerful computer in human's history," said Donna. "Excluding the Library."

"The Library!" yelled the Doctor. His face went white in an instant. He rubbed it with both his hands. "Owww!"

"Just don't you try and go there," warned Donna. "Vashta Nerada, remember?"

He slammed his hand against the wall.

"I need its computational power!" he burst out. "Just for a moment; just for a brief, tiny moment! But it won't give me access! Three quarters of its memory stuffed up with idiotic little plots; you should see them; they're pathetic! Humans! They get the best, the biggest, the fastest computer, that could help them speed up their development, help them evolve to a new level of knowledge, and what do they do? They play 'Quake'!"

He spun around quickly.

"And you!" He pointed accusing finger at Donna. "You have no right to be here!"

"Oh, now you're getting rude," she pouted.

"You have no right to look like her... and act like her... and even sound like her. Bloody hologram; but where is it coming from? How does the computer know so much about you?"

"After all, it is the most powerful computer in human's history," she repeated with a smile. "Why do you assume that it has no room for Donna Noble, a woman who saved the universe?"

She stretched on the sofa.

"Don't know about you, but I'm peckish."

The Doctor snorted irritably.

"It doesn't make sense," he snarled. "It's pointless. A waste of time."

"Oh, don't give up so easily."

"Easily?! You call it easy?!"

The Doctor tried to wrench the bunch of optical fibres from the interface, and when it resisted his efforts, he kicked the wall violently. Donna chuckled.

"I've got no shoes." The Doctor's voice was strangely even and quiet.

"No, you've not," confirmed Donna.

"Ow!" said the Doctor.

"Exactly."

The Doctor hobbled towards the TARDIS, parked in between the lounge and a beautiful, mahogany bar.

"Ow! A waste of time, ow, I told you, ow, a waste of time."

Donna waved him goodbye, wriggling her fingers. The Doctor yanked the blue box's door open and marched inside, carried by his own anger. Donna was waiting with a mocking smile. There was a sudden rumble as if something banged hard against a thin plywood wall. After a while the Doctor emerged from the TARDIS, walking backwards, one hand pressed to his forehead, confusion written clearly across his face.