Origin and sore loser

‘You’re alone,’ he croaked hoarsely at the Toymaker.

‘One. One alone. There’s just you, no one like you. Ever.

This game – an empty city, a ghost city. And one, just one fighter, one enemy, one on his own... You’re not from this Universe, are you?’ He turned and walked towards the Toymaker, past the speechless Stefan, who had just witnessed, for the first time in eight hundred years another being’s victory over his Lord and at one of his Lord’s own games!

‘The Game,’ stammered the Mandarin, ‘you’re not thinking about the Game!’

There was a blare from the machine as the Doctor’s last life was lost. The counter had come to a stop. 131,000, and the Toymaker’s score was languishing under ‘Last Player’.

The Doctor appeared not to notice.

‘You’re not from this Universe,’ he repeated, ‘that’s why there’s no trace. That’s why the Laws of this Universe don’t concern you. You’re from another Time and Space!’

(...)

The Doctor was in full flow as the ramifications of his theory crashed in on him. Behind him, the game machine’s ominous crunchcrunchcrunch had started distantly in the background. No one took any notice of it. Not yet...

‘Whatever catastrophe it was,’ the Doctor continued, as much to himself as to anyone else, ‘it hurled you from your own universe into this one. You carry your own matter with you – you’d have to – not anti-matter, of course, otherwise you’d have started the next Big Bang – but different from ours.’ He paused, thunderstruck by his own conclusions. ‘Relativity,’ he breathed, ‘follow it through...’

He swung round on the Toymaker again, ‘Your own universe is receding from this one so fast, it’s pushing your time back as it goes!’ He stared at the Toymaker, awestuck.

‘You’ll live for millions of years!’

The Toymaker had a look of crushing despair on his face as he croaked out, ‘I have done...’

The crunchcrunchcrunch was getting louder. A figure had appeared at the centre of the screen, and was growing larger, growing closer...

‘The isolation of aeons,’ whispered the Doctor, overcome with compassion for the being he’d detested all his adult life. ‘The crushing loneliness of thousands of millenia... you poor, poor creature...’

(...)

The Toymaker’s eye was cast on a far, far distant horizon, lost in a world vanished aeons ago.

‘... and then I grew tired of even creating... ships, cities, continents, whole planets even. I transported life. I colonised, I helped it survive and thrive for millenia, hundreds of millenia, thousands...’ His voice trailed off as he remembered, as the bitterness and the loneliness overcame him. He rounded on the Doctor, his eyes turning away from the softness of remembrance to the fury of the present. ‘Until I came to destroy, wantonly, wilfully, the same ships, the same planets I’d helped to create, and that too became too easy and too empty... meaningless destruction is as appetising as meaningless creation and just as unfulfilling... Until I found distraction in the world of games, until I could throw off the pretence of purpose and meaning, until I too could be a prey to chance and hazard...’

The glint was back in his eye now, more dangerous than ever before as it merged with the gleam of triumph. The Doctor, seeing the difference, whirled round to see the formation of the monster on the screen, to see it grow larger and larger until the screen could not contain it. The crunchcrunchcrunch had reached its inevitable crescendo, and the electronic monster stood outside the machine, brighter, if anything, and more terrible than before. The Toymaker’s triumph screeched out at last.

‘A hazard, Doctor, which you have lost!’

The monster turned and lumbered slowly towards the transfixed Time Lord.

***

The Nightmare Fair, Chapter 9