Two Truths and a Lie

‘There’s a very simple game I came across on Earth. It’s called two truths, one lie. I give you three statements. Two are true, one is a lie. You have to say which is the lie. If you get it right – you win. Should be easy, really, for someone who’s been in charge of almost everything I’ve ever done.’
‘Oh, you’re going to try to trick me!’ said the Toymaker. ‘How delightful. You suggest it will be easy, which means you’ve come up with something you think is impossible for me to know. Now, go ahead, Doctor. Play your game.’
‘These are my statements,’ said the Doctor. ‘Statement one: I am a toy of the Toymaker. Statement two: I am not a puppet controlled by the Toymaker, so he must let me go free. Statement three: This is an elaborate trap designed to put me under the Toymaker’s control. Which one of those is false?’
The Toymaker gaped, as the Doctor smiled. It was the smile that many of his opponents had seen: the smile of someone who had successfully set a trap. It was a smile that had been on the Toymaker’s own face a thousand times, but that he had rarely seen on others’ faces.
‘You were wrong,’ said the Doctor. ‘I didn’t want to play this game because I’d come up with something it was impossible for you to know. I’d come up with something you knew only too well. None of this is real. I did win the game back then. Dodo, Steven and I did escape from you, and one of the reasons I know that for a fact is that I saw their TARDIS leave as I arrived, which wouldn’t have happened if you’d kept them here as toys – and which you couldn’t have fabricated and put in my head if I had temporarily obtained autonomy, as you claimed. Your world was destroyed. All of this –’ he swept a hand around, indicating the entire mansion, the trappings of Hallowe’en – ‘has been rebuilt by you.’
He went back to the previous room and stood in front of the toy TARDIS, staring at the companion dolls. So much trouble taken. He had no doubt that the Toymaker had found a way to watch him over the years, waiting to find a good time to spring his trap. A time when the Doctor had no friends travelling with him, a time when he could be psychically manipulated without anyone there to pull him back to reality.
As the Toymaker joined him, he continued. ‘Oh, the trick-or-treat boys were an excellent touch. Making me think I was trying to give myself a message, making me think I’d found a clever way to break through. You fooled me for a while. Although not for as long as you thought. This whole charade was to build up to another game: I was supposed to think a loss would merely lead to an extension of the status quo and therefore I really had nothing to lose, whereas in reality the loss would turn me into one of your playthings for the first time. So tell me: what is your answer? Which of my statements is false?’
But the Toymaker couldn’t answer. To give the correct answer would have been an admission of the truth and would have handed victory to the Doctor. To give an incorrect answer would have been to lose the game.
‘Remember that thing I was talking about called a no-win situation?’ said the Doctor. ‘I think this might just be one. But for you this time, not for me. Goodbye.’
He looked again at the dolls, wishing for a moment that they were capable of becoming real people, that he could see again all the friends he had lost.
But no. Dwelling on the past was what had brought the Toymaker to this situation. The Doctor had to look on, to the future.
So, leaving the Toymaker trapped, forever unable to end the game without losing it, the Doctor returned to his TARDIS.

**

Trick or Treat, Tales of Terror