![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eve11Not finished yet on the ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
who_at_50 assignment. But definitely moving forward. I was thinking of posting what I have so far on the comm, but I want to wait until it's done. It's a bit raw right now. So... I'll just post it here.
It mentions some history from the story "Winter" in the Big Finish audio "Circular Time" (synopsis here). It takes place after the Wedding of River Song. Possibly?
**
She runs, everywhere and nowhere at once. She thinks she must be asleep because she keeps waking up.
Stormcage. Demons Run. The Bone Meadows.
A part of her knows it is a trap, but she can't find the way out. There is nothing to anchor her mind, so she keeps running.
Winter Quay. Graystark Hall. Stormcage.
There is no beginning. No end. There is just place after time after place after time. It must be a dream.
The Bone Meadows. Demons Run. Lake Silencio.
She keeps waking up.
**
A wise voice, lost now to history, had once likened science to a single candle lit against the darkness of a demon-haunted world. Like many metaphors, it was easier to contemplate from afar, than to live within such an embodiment. Days, weeks, and months like this--slipping through the cold of space, following plague and disasters with the relentless questions of "how?" and "why?"--reminded Nyssa how tenuous the light from Foster's Flame really was. The reality of a research vessel was planetside docks, quarantines and sickness.
Nyssa doubted neither the truth nor virtue of her life's mission. She had never done so, not once since the university ship had set off from Terminus as a tiny prototype of its current form, hardly able to support three mobile laboratories and a crew of ten. To find truth, one had to be willing to search, and her ship sought knowledge above all else. Nyssa never doubted her mission, although she understood, more than most, that true knowledge often came only at the cost of true grief. She saw it over and over again; desperate families filled chaotic field clinics, and the stories echoing across the triage centers were always the same.
On Tagana Three, there was again the elderly gentleman who had never received the instructions from Public Health ministries. How long have you had the cough, sir? When was your last booster? On Cetarus, again, the mother with red-rimmed eyes, whose child had been walking and talking just a day ago. Just a day. And who else did he play with yesterday afternoon? Where did you go after you left the park? On Presh, again it was the curly-haired woman, still in evening wear, cradled in the arms of a distraught but determined husband. Do you remember when her symptoms first started--
"It's not Richt's disease," the man said, so certain of the fact that it made Nyssa start and study him anew. Square jaw, deep-set green eyes, and a gangly frame that nonetheless cradled his companion with equal parts strength and tenderness. He was--had she seen that particular tie before? Too little sleep, she decided, and too much data collection. There were so many faces, they blurred together from world to world.
"What evidence do you have for that conclusion?" she snapped, fatigue sapping her patience more than it should have. The room was suddenly too hot, and her sterile mask was bulky and uncomfortable over her face. "Why did you break the quarantine to come here if she isn't infected?"
The woman stirred in his arms and the man held her closer. People pushed in around them in the triage queue. "I didn't know where else to go," he said. "I need a Sarteeze machine . . ."
Nyssa's confusion must have been plain on her face, because the man trailed off with a frown, shifted his burden, and checked a bulky wristwatch. She made out a muttered curse, and then a wail and a commotion at the street entrance caught her attention. When she turned back to the queue, it was to face a disheveled guardian with four young charges, all in different stages of Richt's fever. The couple had moved on, and the memory of them soon faded from Nyssa's mind.
Until she saw them again.
It was months later, on Sempter Station. They were huddled with a group of refugees orbiting around the gas rig's third colony moon. He shouted, "I don't have time to make an appointment!" as they shuffled Nyssa and her group onto the dropship for the trip down to the planet.
Another glimpse in a field hospital on Tran after the earthquake. Nyssa's mind triggered on a flash of curly hair nestled against his shoulder and a look--neither angry nor despairing, but guarded. They were gone before she could attribute it to anything other than back-to-back eighteen-hour shifts at the registry.
"It's not uncommon to have hallucinations when the mind is overworked and overtired," Lasarti said to her when she told him about the couple. Foster's Flame had sixteen separate study zones by the time he had joined them from the Chula sector. His speciality was the study of dreams and the unconscious mind. That should not have been enough for Nyssa to confide in him. Perhaps it was his easy demeanor, or his pleasant smile. Somehow, he made the difficult days more bearable.
"It was the same eyes," Nyssa said. "The same coat."
"Your mind falls into patterns and revisits the same story," Lasarti said.
Circular time, Nyssa thought, and tried to leave it behind and focus on her work.
"It's not Zed-Influenza," the man said, clutching his wife. They were on Lihat Seven this time, four years and six parsecs away from Tran, pressed with the throng against the outer edge of a compassionate electrostatic quarantine field. Nyssa's mind settled on minute facts: her evening dress, a particularly coral shade of blue. His bulky wristwatch, strapped over his shirtsleeve. The rest of the world was bleary and disconnected, the way planetary daylight warred with the shipboard time that told her body it was the middle of the night.
"Please," the man said. "Nyssa--"
She blinked. "How do you know my name?" she started to ask, but the gates opened, the crowds muscled through, and she suddenly had more mundane mysteries on which to focus. Hours later, she searched the logs thoroughly. The couple never checked in with a triage unit.
"Barriers break down when the mind cannot rest. It may be a missed opportunity intertwining with reality," Lasarti suggested. "Someone from Terminus, or the Corporate Wars, that you couldn't save."
"If it's symptomatic of a recurring unconscious desire," Nyssa said, leaning her head against Lasarti's chest in their shared cabin bed, "the best way to combat it is to trace it to the source."
"Lucid, directed dreaming. Now there's a thought," Lasarti mused as Nyssa nodded off. Around them, the thin shell of Foster's Flame kept the void at bay, creeping along in the cold between the stars.
Lasari's thought took root in the research station and grew. It wasn't until after her husband's prototype was completed, after that strange night where they met an old friend on the brink of death in a dreamscape, that the pieces of the mystery finally slotted into place.
"It's not Appa Virus!" the man, the same man, implored her on Telax Beta, storming through the clinic door. His eyes were bright and desperate. His wife was as white as death, limp in his arms. "I need--"
"Lasarti's machine!" she called out. He stopped as soon as she said the words, relief flooding his frame. His knees buckled, but Nyssa was prepared. She had been waiting for him this time, waiting for almost three years since they last had met. She leaped across the triage desk, catching both him and his companion as they slumped to the ground.
"Doctor, you need Lasarti's dreaming machine!"
**
Underwater, the lake is a still and silent cocoon. The only sound is the breath the suit forces into her lungs. The water slows them down but not enough. She rises, inevitably, boots sucking at sand.
She lifts her face plate, begging him to run, please. It's too strong and she can't fight it.
But the face that greets her is someone new.
"Let it go," the strange woman says. She offers a hand. "You can't hurt me."
**
who_at_50 assignment. But definitely moving forward. I was thinking of posting what I have so far on the comm, but I want to wait until it's done. It's a bit raw right now. So... I'll just post it here.It mentions some history from the story "Winter" in the Big Finish audio "Circular Time" (synopsis here). It takes place after the Wedding of River Song. Possibly?
**
She runs, everywhere and nowhere at once. She thinks she must be asleep because she keeps waking up.
Stormcage. Demons Run. The Bone Meadows.
A part of her knows it is a trap, but she can't find the way out. There is nothing to anchor her mind, so she keeps running.
Winter Quay. Graystark Hall. Stormcage.
There is no beginning. No end. There is just place after time after place after time. It must be a dream.
The Bone Meadows. Demons Run. Lake Silencio.
She keeps waking up.
**
A wise voice, lost now to history, had once likened science to a single candle lit against the darkness of a demon-haunted world. Like many metaphors, it was easier to contemplate from afar, than to live within such an embodiment. Days, weeks, and months like this--slipping through the cold of space, following plague and disasters with the relentless questions of "how?" and "why?"--reminded Nyssa how tenuous the light from Foster's Flame really was. The reality of a research vessel was planetside docks, quarantines and sickness.
Nyssa doubted neither the truth nor virtue of her life's mission. She had never done so, not once since the university ship had set off from Terminus as a tiny prototype of its current form, hardly able to support three mobile laboratories and a crew of ten. To find truth, one had to be willing to search, and her ship sought knowledge above all else. Nyssa never doubted her mission, although she understood, more than most, that true knowledge often came only at the cost of true grief. She saw it over and over again; desperate families filled chaotic field clinics, and the stories echoing across the triage centers were always the same.
On Tagana Three, there was again the elderly gentleman who had never received the instructions from Public Health ministries. How long have you had the cough, sir? When was your last booster? On Cetarus, again, the mother with red-rimmed eyes, whose child had been walking and talking just a day ago. Just a day. And who else did he play with yesterday afternoon? Where did you go after you left the park? On Presh, again it was the curly-haired woman, still in evening wear, cradled in the arms of a distraught but determined husband. Do you remember when her symptoms first started--
"It's not Richt's disease," the man said, so certain of the fact that it made Nyssa start and study him anew. Square jaw, deep-set green eyes, and a gangly frame that nonetheless cradled his companion with equal parts strength and tenderness. He was--had she seen that particular tie before? Too little sleep, she decided, and too much data collection. There were so many faces, they blurred together from world to world.
"What evidence do you have for that conclusion?" she snapped, fatigue sapping her patience more than it should have. The room was suddenly too hot, and her sterile mask was bulky and uncomfortable over her face. "Why did you break the quarantine to come here if she isn't infected?"
The woman stirred in his arms and the man held her closer. People pushed in around them in the triage queue. "I didn't know where else to go," he said. "I need a Sarteeze machine . . ."
Nyssa's confusion must have been plain on her face, because the man trailed off with a frown, shifted his burden, and checked a bulky wristwatch. She made out a muttered curse, and then a wail and a commotion at the street entrance caught her attention. When she turned back to the queue, it was to face a disheveled guardian with four young charges, all in different stages of Richt's fever. The couple had moved on, and the memory of them soon faded from Nyssa's mind.
Until she saw them again.
It was months later, on Sempter Station. They were huddled with a group of refugees orbiting around the gas rig's third colony moon. He shouted, "I don't have time to make an appointment!" as they shuffled Nyssa and her group onto the dropship for the trip down to the planet.
Another glimpse in a field hospital on Tran after the earthquake. Nyssa's mind triggered on a flash of curly hair nestled against his shoulder and a look--neither angry nor despairing, but guarded. They were gone before she could attribute it to anything other than back-to-back eighteen-hour shifts at the registry.
"It's not uncommon to have hallucinations when the mind is overworked and overtired," Lasarti said to her when she told him about the couple. Foster's Flame had sixteen separate study zones by the time he had joined them from the Chula sector. His speciality was the study of dreams and the unconscious mind. That should not have been enough for Nyssa to confide in him. Perhaps it was his easy demeanor, or his pleasant smile. Somehow, he made the difficult days more bearable.
"It was the same eyes," Nyssa said. "The same coat."
"Your mind falls into patterns and revisits the same story," Lasarti said.
Circular time, Nyssa thought, and tried to leave it behind and focus on her work.
"It's not Zed-Influenza," the man said, clutching his wife. They were on Lihat Seven this time, four years and six parsecs away from Tran, pressed with the throng against the outer edge of a compassionate electrostatic quarantine field. Nyssa's mind settled on minute facts: her evening dress, a particularly coral shade of blue. His bulky wristwatch, strapped over his shirtsleeve. The rest of the world was bleary and disconnected, the way planetary daylight warred with the shipboard time that told her body it was the middle of the night.
"Please," the man said. "Nyssa--"
She blinked. "How do you know my name?" she started to ask, but the gates opened, the crowds muscled through, and she suddenly had more mundane mysteries on which to focus. Hours later, she searched the logs thoroughly. The couple never checked in with a triage unit.
"Barriers break down when the mind cannot rest. It may be a missed opportunity intertwining with reality," Lasarti suggested. "Someone from Terminus, or the Corporate Wars, that you couldn't save."
"If it's symptomatic of a recurring unconscious desire," Nyssa said, leaning her head against Lasarti's chest in their shared cabin bed, "the best way to combat it is to trace it to the source."
"Lucid, directed dreaming. Now there's a thought," Lasarti mused as Nyssa nodded off. Around them, the thin shell of Foster's Flame kept the void at bay, creeping along in the cold between the stars.
Lasari's thought took root in the research station and grew. It wasn't until after her husband's prototype was completed, after that strange night where they met an old friend on the brink of death in a dreamscape, that the pieces of the mystery finally slotted into place.
"It's not Appa Virus!" the man, the same man, implored her on Telax Beta, storming through the clinic door. His eyes were bright and desperate. His wife was as white as death, limp in his arms. "I need--"
"Lasarti's machine!" she called out. He stopped as soon as she said the words, relief flooding his frame. His knees buckled, but Nyssa was prepared. She had been waiting for him this time, waiting for almost three years since they last had met. She leaped across the triage desk, catching both him and his companion as they slumped to the ground.
"Doctor, you need Lasarti's dreaming machine!"
**
Underwater, the lake is a still and silent cocoon. The only sound is the breath the suit forces into her lungs. The water slows them down but not enough. She rises, inevitably, boots sucking at sand.
She lifts her face plate, begging him to run, please. It's too strong and she can't fight it.
But the face that greets her is someone new.
"Let it go," the strange woman says. She offers a hand. "You can't hurt me."
**
