Tuesday 13 October 2009

Mother Love

Doctor Who:
Mother Love
John Davies

Her mother had always protected her from the harsher aspects of life, so where was she now?

Sylvad tried to look around her, but it was hopeless. She could see nothing.

It had been this way since she had woken up – the brightness of her dreams swamped by an omnipresent darkness devoid even of the dust lights that normally swam across her vision.

She had tried to call out for help, but for some reason she could not speak. Maybe she was still asleep? She allowed time to pass, but nothing happened – certainly no slide slips into the surreal world of her dream state. Gradually, Sylvad had to acknowledge that she was awake; awake and blind and mute.

Sylvad wanted to panic, and yet she could not. Even though she was devoid of one sense and her ability to speak, Sylvad felt none of the basic, primal feelings of despair course through her body. Instead, she simply waited. Something had to happen to explain this. It just had to.

A wave of disorientation washed through Sylvad’s mind, and she attempted to yawn in an effort to increase the level of oxygen in her bloodstream. It was at this point that she realised why she had not been able to call out earlier.

She no longer had a mouth.

Once again, instead of falling into a panicked state of confusion, Sylvad simply added this fact to the others she was already aware of. She could not see, she could not speak and she had no mouth.

Of course! It was the treatment. They had warned her there might be side effects in the immediate aftermath. She was clearly just recovering and hallucinating.

Strangely, relief did not assail her senses. Instead, she simply kept on waiting.
From somewhere nearby, maybe in another room, Sylvad heard the sound of machinery creaking into life.

At least she could hear – maybe her sight would return in time.

The grinding of cogs grew in pitch, and then levelled of at a certain pitch. As the faintest glimmer of light started to swim into blurred focus before her, Sylvad felt the room she was in judder. Instead of surprise at the jolt, Sylvad was more now more preoccupied with the tingling sensation pulsing through her.

As the room was jolted again, she realised that this was no hallucination.

At that moment, in the hazy, translucent haze, things started to become clearer to Sylvad. She realised she was no longer Sylvad, nor was she a she. The buzzing feeling in her was not caused by blood returning to her limbs. It could not be that. She no longer had limbs. What was coursing through her body was power, pure and direct power.

She had become what she had feared the most throughout her life.

She had been betrayed!

Her mother had sold her to the research team. She would get her own back on them, she … would do nothing. She was no longer capable of individual thought.

As her room, now her house, now her, was jostled along the conveyer belt once again she finally found her voice. It joined those of the others around her.

“Daleks conquer and destroy! Daleks conquer and destroy!”

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