Doctor Who_ Wooden Heart - Martin Day [29]
‘Well, yeah,’ said Martha. ‘I suppose.’
‘I didn’t tell you earlier,’ said the Doctor. ‘When I scanned Saul… some of his readings were of a perfectly normal thirty-five‐year-old bloke. And some said he was only four hours old!’
‘What?’
‘So, for sake of argument, let’s assume that all this is some sort of vast computer simulation, some… imagined world for the benefit of the people that live here.’
‘I thought you said you didn’t think it was virtual reality,’ said Martha.
‘Just bear with me,’ said the Doctor, impatient. ‘What if the land and the people are one? What if when all the people go to sleep… Everything else switches off?’
‘So you’re saying this whole world stops when everyone falls asleep?’
‘Why not?’ said the Doctor. ‘Something the Dazai said earlier – when we sleep, if we’re not dreaming… It’s as if the universe blinks out of existence.’
‘And what’s this got to do with us?’
‘We don’t belong here,’ said the Doctor. ‘We can interact with this environment, but we’re not sustained by it. We breath its air, we can feel the soil under our feet – we can be hurt by its inhabitants. But if I’m right and the Castor switches back to night-time mode to save energy… And whatever is maintaining this world just turns it off until morning…’
‘Surely we’d find ourselves back on the research station,’ said Martha.
The Doctor sighed. ‘It might not be as simple as that. We’ve walked for miles. For all I know we’re actually in deep space now, with just this bubble of unreality protecting us from…’
Martha swallowed hard, imagining the vast and deadly emptiness of space. Suddenly the ground she stood on felt a lot less solid. Without thinking she gripped the Doctor’s arm for support.
‘What are we going to do?’ she asked.
‘Get back into the forest,’ said the Doctor. ‘We’ve got to find the point where we appeared – the metal floor, the tree with the impression of a door on it. That’s our best chance.’
‘Saul says the woods are full of monsters that stop you going too far,’ said Martha.
‘Then he’d best be our guide,’ said the Doctor. ‘Hopefully he can take us back to the clearing where he found us.’
Martha nodded. She supposed it made sense. ‘If what you’re saying is true… It explains something weird that happened earlier.’
‘Oh?’
‘When Saul and I came back from the forest…’ Martha thought for a moment, trying to remember where she had seen the sun setting. ‘We appeared on the north side of the village, over by the lake.’
‘But when you left…’
‘We left the village heading south, towards the woods.’ She paused. ‘There’s no way we can have looped around like that. Absolutely no way. What we did was… impossible.’
‘Space is folded up on itself,’ observed the Doctor. ‘You can probably walk in a straight line and find yourself back where you began.’
‘But why’s this happening?’
‘To conserve energy, I suppose,’ said the Doctor. ‘Just like the day/night cycle on the Castor. This world… It’s not running off a couple of triple-A batteries, you know. When I was inspecting the Dazai’s library, the books seemed normal enough at first. Loads of information, vast amounts of data, all written down in ink, page after page… And then suddenly the books became blank…’
‘Like you’d used up all the data in a computer’s memory or something?’ said Martha. ‘There’s a delay as new data has to be fetched from somewhere else.’
The Doctor nodded. ‘And remember how it felt like we were going round in circles in the forest? Well, perhaps we were.’
‘We couldn’t go any further until the next bit of reality was ready for us,’ said Martha.
‘Yeah, that’s right.’
Martha considered this for a few moments. ‘Reminds me a bit of when you’re dreaming,’ said Martha. ‘Your mind only supplies the important bits of information, and pretty much makes the rest of it up as you go along. Even changing the rules if it has to, like you’ll start off somewhere, then imagine you’re somewhere else, but with