Doctor Who_ The Infinity Doctors - Lance Parkin [135]
With no predators to hold them in check, insect life swarmed across the planet. The corpses were beginning to defrost.
Epidemics and pandemics spread with nothing to stop them, What could survive here, what would want to survive?’
Omega’s eyes narrowed. ‘The Time Lords could have prevented this. With our powers, we could prevent this from happening here and on the million planets where the same pattern was repeated, over and over. Or we could simply remove this from history, excise it.’
The Doctor pursed his lips, apparently impressed. ‘So you can destroy it?’
‘Gladly.’ Omega waved his glove, and the planet’s star went nova, obliterating the dead planet in an instant. They watched the destruction from a safe vantage point in a neighbouring star system.
The Doctor gave a quiet, satisfied smile.
‘Now bring it back.’
Omega grunted, but with another wave of the hand, the planet was back in place.
‘Destroy it,’ the Doctor repeated.
As the planet blew itself apart once again, he turned to the Doctor.
‘What is this meant to prove? All this proves is that we have the power of the gods.’
‘You’re nothing,’ the Doctor said finally.
‘You will not deny me. I am everything!’ Omega shouted.
‘You’re both,’ the Doctor snapped, silencing him.
‘Destroying and undestroying planets with the merest thought.’
‘What I can do to one planet I can do a thousandfold. I live in infinity, Doctor, not in some narrow universe where only one thing can happen. Now you can kill and let live. We can make the universe dance to our every whim, to all our whims.’
The Doctor smiled sympathetically. ‘Of course we can.’
‘You doubt me?’ Omega snarled.
The Doctor gave a tiny shake of his head. ‘Oh no. I pity you.’
‘You are not worthy of godhood.’
‘No, it’s not that. What’s the point of controlling a universe without meaning, where nothing of any consequence ever happens? Why shed tears when someone dies if they can be brought back, why cheer on your favourite team when if they lose they can also win? I don’t want to be a god.’
‘You are weak.’
The Doctor shook his head. ‘Answer me this, Omega: what’s the opposite of matter?’
‘Anti-matter,’ Omega replied instantly.
‘Wrong, wrong, wrong. The opposite of matter is “doesn’t matter”.’ The Doctor sighed. ‘That’s what we’ve created – a universe where everything is nothing. A universe where nothing matters. Of course you can rewrite history, but you shouldn’t. As long as you have these great powers, nothing is real.’
‘I am god, Doctor, I define reality. I am all.’
‘Of course you are, of course you do, of course you are,’
the Doctor said, smirking.
Omega roared and raised his hand.
The Doctor smiled. ‘Even if you could kill me, you’d only get bored sooner or later and bring me back. You’re trapped.
You’re trapped by your omnipotence, just as you were trapped in the anti-matter universe.’
‘That is not true,’ Omega insisted. But for all his omniscience and omnipotence he couldn’t say why.
‘Because you will it?’
Omega felt the galaxies within him. He felt the stars and planets in his mouth and his eyes, time and space flowing through him like blood. ‘I am infinite. I am everything.’
The Doctor raised his head. ‘Is that all you are? Infinity? Is there nothing more than you?’
Omega faltered. ‘You are right.’
There was silence for a moment.
‘Is this all that I am?’ Omega asked, looking down at his hands. ‘Is this it? My moment of triumph? I have dreamt of this moment for more nights than the Time Lords have ever dreamt. To be a god! To be the god!’
The Doctor grinned. ‘I knew you’d see sense. You can still be a man, Omega. Before you were a god you were a great man. Become that again. Come back to Gallifrey and resume