‘You say this device actually recombined two creatures and split them into two other Entities each
of which, retained some aspects of the other?
Well, I’m not surprised. The technical term for this lash-up is
‘hodge-podge!’ – the elegant expert technical advisor cracked his knuckles and
rubbed his hands with professional eagerness.
‘Not the first time, except possibly, hmm, well it depends how you look
at it. The same thing happened on Alpha
177, or will do.’
‘We called you in hoping there
was still something that could be done Doctor…’ Hardy was a tall thin anxious
man who had taken over M9 after ‘The Admiral’ had needed to be retired, and his
voice trailed off as he realised his briefing had left this mysterious ‘Question-marked’
individual without even a codename. ‘But
that was before both Roland, and DM had expressed perfect satisfaction with
their new lives. Even if the process
could be reverted, there is an ethical consideration.’
‘If ethics had been a
consideration, this thing would never have been built,’ the Doctor said,
severely – ‘but I understand it was only a prototype stolen from a more ethical
project and subverted by someone I feel a certain responsibility for. Luckily things are not so impossible as you
might imagine. Are you familiar with the
idea of molecular-memory? It’s
postulated by charlatans and homeopaths to peddle water that recalls an
infinitesimal fragment of vital medicine, while completely forgetting every
other molecule its ever contacted, but like the Loch Ness monster or the
Minotaur there’s at least a grain of truth in the myth. It’s one of the reasons for ghosts, as they
discovered at Taskerlands, and a proper, ah, sonic stimulation, can throw the
machinery into reverse, so to speak. We
will need to add an appropriate amount of basic chemicals to this end but…’
The procedure was somewhat
hair-raising, but the Doctor was as good as his word.
In a sequence
that appeared as if time itself had been turned back upon itself, the raw
(sadly too true) material was sequenced and resorted atom by atom, into the
matrix retained by the SMALLRAT device.
‘Spacial Matter and Locally-Limited Relative Anthrophic Tranfiguration,’
the Doctor remarked proudly as a mouse, and a some what frazzled John Drake
popped out of the device's input cage.
‘I will take charge of this little fellow,’ the Doctor scooped up the mouse. ‘A course of vitamins A to Z, and I know an
alternate world where he’ll be mighty among his own kind. I’m afraid I don’t trust humanity with
superior animals, they treat each other badly enough. I hope you will be kind to your Mister
Drake. He’s had a trying time, and I
wouldn’t be surprised if he thought twice about carrying on in this line of
work.’
Hardy thanked
the annoying man, and showed him out, before summoning M9’s own medical staff
to take charge of Drake. It was good to
have recovered the agent intact, the necessary paperwork for death by molecular
subdivision was not only horrendous, it didn’t even exist yet. Easier by far to
retain the original, and list DM and Roland as new anomalous individuals. And while it was true that Drake had been
troublesome of late, and his status was due for review, his resignation - if it came to it - would
not be impossible to deal with. He could
always be sent to play chess with the Admiral.
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