Doctor Who_ Wonderland - Mark Chadbourn [38]
'Stay calm, Summer,' the Doctor said firmly but gently. 'Remain focused. I can't see anything – you are my eyes.'
I tried to describe what I saw, failed miserably, thought I was going to be sick.
'Your brain is having trouble comprehending the signals it's being sent. The nausea will pass.'
'How can I see it?' I murmured.
'You may have noticed the strobing effect as hallucinogens take hold. It's caused by the alpha rhythm of the brain modulating the visual field, producing a flicker effect. And again when the drug wears off.' He paused to steady me; the tension in the room was rising dramatically. 'I think this being we see before us modulates its natural colour at hyperspeed, effectively making it one colour and all colours, certainly too much for our normal faculties to deal with.'
'But the acid adjusts us – '
'Just enough to comprehend it, exactly.'
'Strange ... I don't feel it's a threat.' Despite the soaring anxiety levels, at its heart I sensed something almost gentle.
'No. Despite what Ben and Polly thought, I always believed the communication it established was an honest attempt to reach out.'
Suddenly the squirming in my head returned with renewed force. I pitched forward, clutching my temple. I heard the Doctor cry out my name, and then...
I was standing in the Oval Office. Honest to God, I swear I was there. The seal on the carpet, the desk, the windows open to the sun-drenched garden beyond, dust motes drifting in a shaft of light. It was so peaceful I wanted to cry.
'Hello.' JFK stood before me smiling, though the space had been empty a split-second before.
I think I cried out, maybe jumped back a step, but, really, I can hardly
recall a thing about my reactions. The experience was so rich and deep I was lost inside it. And JFK spoke to me in that familiar Boston twang as if bad things had never happened, would never happen, though I remember nothing of the actual words.
Instead my head swarmed with stars, galaxies, the entire universe from the beginning of time to the very end. I was aware of a race of tremendous beings so powerful we couldn't even begin to comprehend their true nature, but good, wildly, excellently good in the way that I believe the universe is good. They existed beyond us, moving back and forward through time, through space, always watching, never interfering. They knew our every thought, our hopes and dreams and petty little hatreds. And they understood...
As lights flickered through the void between stars, I accepted how they could alter perception at the most fundamental level, how their essence could infect the mind... the building blocks of life... to create hybrids of themselves. I saw the extremes of wonder, the glitter and glow of existence.
And then the fall... Dragged down to our time, our place. Something out there, specific to here and now, that weakened them incredibly. A sucking blackness, as cold as the grave, thrusting them out of their glorious existence into the cold, hard world, dampening their power enough to be captured and contained by... by whom? Mathilda? Did the witch cast some spell? Did...
And then it told me the meaning of life, and though I knew I'd never remember it when I came out of that state, it filled me with light; I could feel my tears hot on my face.
An explosion. I thought: It's happened again. Someone's killed him again. JFK, receding through space, no Jackie there to clutch for the rest of him. Desolation... the awful pain of separation...
And my eyes cleared...
The creeps were in the room, holding the Doctor back, six of them, those cemetery-faces sucking me in. One of them had slapped me round the face to jolt me out of the connection. The leader, a creep with a streak of grey in his hair, said, 'Get them out of here.'
We were hauled into an adjoining room with one of those long windows so I could still