The Missing Bird
There was a newspaper held in mid air and on it, a picture of a painting. It was a painting that was on the front page of every newspaper that day, and had been for days before.
Because this painting had changed.
'An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump', it had written under the photograph of the painting. But there was no bird in the painting, ( Read more... )
Because this painting had changed.
'An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump', it had written under the photograph of the painting. But there was no bird in the painting, ( Read more... )
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"Ah," he swallowed.
He took one step backwards, and another and another.
"Right. Yes. Well. Basically... Run!."
In one move, he grabbed hold of her hand, and sped from the room.
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It then let out a roar that swallowed all other sense of hearing and she cried out as she covered her ears as best she could, still scrambling on after the Doctor, their hands gripped tight as though it should always have been that way.
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"Back here," the Doctor told her, moving back against the wall.
"He'll be along in a minute."
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"Can't you make it go away, like you did with the horses?" she then asked, a hint of panic creeping into her tone for the first time. This had already become far bigger than she had expected, dangerous even. She couldn't afford dangerous, not now, and that was a thought that made her subconsciously touch at her necklace, where a silver locket hung on a chain.
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And then he was. The cry of the dragon met with the bray of a horse and the noise of it charging. Another cry from the dragon, this one pained.
"Good old St. George," the Doctor grinned.
"Oh and I'm the Doctor, by the way."
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When the Doctor introduced himself, she brought her attention back to him, hesitating before she responded. She didn't want to admit she knew who he was, not any extent of it. She didn't want to be seen that way, she wanted to observe him without the handicap of such knowledge.
That's why, when it came to naming herself, she opted for a normal human name, to go along with the persona she'd been creating here on Earth. But what was a normal human name? Her eyes searched around quickly, groping for a response.
"My name is Alex," she then answered quickly, a staff member's dropped name badge giving her a sudden inspiration.
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"Well these paintings really have ambitions above their station," he said, again looking around, his fingers stroking against the edges of frames though he might find something there.
"Though not really. Holographic modulation. Bit of a toy really. Not sure what it's doing here though."
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"Holographic modulation? Sounds a bit advanced for humans," she said, making an effort to be dismissive.
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"Ever heard the phrase 'a picture paints a thousand words'? Well with holographic modulation it can. It's a clever little trick. Like projecting film onto a screen. But there's no screen..."
He trailed off as he looked over towards a doorway. It was the direction he'd come from earlier, where he'd seen the dripping painting. Water was pooling at the bottom of the doorway.
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Instead, she forced an innocent smile and tried to look as pleasantly intrigued as any other Earth girl might.
"I thought it was triggering a moving image, not words," she said flippantly, turning to look at him when she saw he had his attention elsewhere.
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He crouched down then, fingers against the skirting boards, tapping gently.
"Problem is," he went on, "these things were removed from use. There's a glitch. So I need to find the base unit before the glitch... well... glitches."
He pressed against the skirting until a part of it came loose, revealing a mass of wires that connected the security cameras in the gallery.
"That's the trouble when clever people create things that turn out to be cleverer than they are. Images that stop being images. Projections that stop being projections. An energy stamp, Alex, that twists and forms and learns itself, until what once was an idea, becomes reality."
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She folded her arms and looked down at him, shaking her head.
"They're just paintings," she said, in a tone that chided him for being melodramatic. "How can it become anything more than what it is?"
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"And they won't be paintings for long. But while they are, we have a chance."
On that moment, as if on cue, the Doctor saw a cat walking across from the doorway. He pointed his screwdriver at it and aimed. The once orange cat became a pile of paint on the floor.
"See?"
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She hadn't considered the long term effects of the technology. She supposed it was possible, that a long term exposure would make the images harder to pull off the fabric of reality. But she hadn't intended to be here that long, just a few days, for as long as it had taken to attract his attention. Now she had his attention, she needed to turn off the device.
"Ok. You've been looking for something, let me look too. Tell me what to find and I'll find it."
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As he spoke he was moving, fingertips running along the underside of delicate frames with gilt edges, as old and as delicate as the paintings themselves.
"It won't matter if we don't get to it soon, though. Because it's cleverer than that. Before long it won't need the device to keep working. It'll need something stronger to stop it."
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