Doctor Who_ Bad Therapy - Matthew Jones [113]
from Patsy.’
The Doctor looked down from the top of the ladder. ‘What do you make of them? I should very much like to know?’
Chris thought about Patsy. ‘I’m not really sure. They’re. . . difficult. Strange.
Their empathic abilities unnerve me. It’s a little frightening to be around people who always know what sort of mood you’re in.’
‘Yes, I suppose that’s. . . true,’ the Doctor commented. Chris was left with the impression that the Doctor had been expecting a different response from him.
‘Anyway,’ the Doctor continued. ‘We managed to organize a break out and brought all the Toys that were being held at the Institute back here. I’ve agreed to hold a party for them; Tilda’s going to invite all her bohemian friends, see if we can’t get all the Toys bonded at one big party. I thought a masked ball would be most appropriate.’
‘Bonded?’
‘You know – joined. Hitched,’ the Doctor said, enjoying using the collo-quialism. ‘They really are quite remarkable. I’ve never seen such a complex artificial lifeform. Their ability to provide what is therapeutically needed is quite extraordinary. The human psychiatrist involved in the project, being American, is a humanist but I think even Sigmund would have approved of the Toys. After all, it was Freud who was the first to argue that the therapist ought to be a blank screen in order to receive the patient’s projections. Just imagine: all your needs, all your desires, your emotional needs – all met by one person. Moriah doesn’t know what he’s constructed. The Toys can be much more than therapy, I’m sure of it.’
Chris was finding it hard to follow what the Doctor was saying. ‘Constructed? What do you mean, constructed?’
‘Well, grown is probably more accurate. I’ve yet to see the actual process,’
the Doctor remarked, animatedly. ‘Although it sounds fascinating.’
‘Grown,’ Chris repeated, dully.
‘In tanks apparently,’ the Doctor added, brightly.
Chris turned away from the Doctor; he didn’t want his friend to see the expression on his face.
‘Christopher, is everything all right?’
196
‘Yes,’ Chris lied. A memory of Patsy entered his head. After he had been freed from the cells at the police station, she had appeared while he’d been sitting desolate and hung-over on the steps of Charing Cross Police Station.
Standing with one hand on her hip, squinting with a look of amused disapproval on her face.
That look.
A blank screen on to which he had projected his desire.
The woman he was falling in love with was not an alien hiding from some terrible extraterrestrial persecution, but instead a projection of his innermost desires; a shop window dummy on to which he had transferred his most private needs and fantasies.
Roz.
‘Chris, what’s the matter?’
‘Everything’s fine. Just fine,’ he whimpered and then doubled over. ‘Oh, cruk, I think I’m going to be sick,’ he muttered, covering his mouth with his hand and then sprinting from the room.
The Doctor found Chris a little further down Frith Street. He was bent over in the doorway of an empty shop. The Doctor winced as he heard Chris retching violently. He walked up to Chris and placed the flat of his hand on his back.
‘It’s Patsy, isn’t it?’ he guessed.
Chris nodded, almost imperceptibly.
‘I imagine that this must have come as a bit of a shock.’
Chris made a guttural noise in his throat, somewhere between indignation and vomiting. He wiped the bile from his lips with his shirt cuff and turned to face the Doctor. The expression of anger on Chris’s face was so intense that the Doctor physically recoiled, taking a couple of steps backward.
‘How could you be involved in this? I don’t understand how you can be helping them. What could you be thinking of?’
‘If they don’t have partners they’ll die.’
‘So it’s all right to allow people to be duped into relationships with creatures that are no more than their fantasies. Crukking hell, Doctor, what did you think you were doing?’
‘You don’t understand, Chris. I want to save lives. I don’t have another way of doing this.