gileonnen, 'The Persistence of Memory' (Liz X, Doctor Who, PG)
Title: The Persistence of Memory
Author: gileonnen
Fandom: Doctor Who
Rating: PG
Warnings: None.
Prompt: 27) Let us not fear the hidden. Or each other. -- Muriel Rukeyser (1913-1980), poet, political activist, reporter, playwright, translator and president of the American branch of International PEN, a worldwide association of writers dedicated to freedom of expression and to opposing political censorship and speaking for writers who have been or are being silenced, harassed, attacked, arrested or killed for what they've written.
Summary: Liz X has learned to be afraid of forgetting.
Author's notes: Written for femgenficathon; beta-read by lareinenoire and angevin2.
Liz X dreams, and in her dreams there is a box.
She wakes sweating, reaching for her gun, swallowing a half-formed scream that could've been anguish as easily as rage. After a moment, she catches her breath and swings her legs over the side of the bed, putting on a red robe over her nightgown and padding down the marble hallways with her feet still bare. There was something in the box, but she can't remember what, and not remembering terrifies her.
* * *
Over the last thousand years, Liz X has come to accept that near-immortality comes with a certain brand of madness. Anything between the thirty-third and fortieth centuries C.E. is a bit of a blur; she remembers the day when Spaceship UK landed, and what came before that, but the process of rebuilding a civilization has run together in her memory until she can't remember whether Surrey Tower fell before or after they made contact with New Spain.
The Americans rediscovered Earth first (of course, as they'd be inclined to say); by then, the survivors had emerged from the underground chambers that they'd shared with the Silurians, creating a world that human and reptile could share in harmony. Liz can't remember in which century the New United Kingdom mounted an expedition to Earth, or what it was that made them so unwelcome at first. Something to do with languages, or with solar panels? She's forgotten, anyway.
Things slip away from her, and she can't make them stay. At first, she kept a diary--there are thousands of hours of video footage lingering on in the archives, and she can't make herself purge them even if she doesn't have anything like the time to view them all over again. She could download them all into her mind, she supposes, but her physicians insist that there simply isn't space for that much knowledge in a human mind. The data overload would kill her--or worse, it would shut her mind down and leave her body intact.
Liz X sometimes wonders if the risk wouldn't be worth it, just to remember everything again. This isn't the first time that she's been told that it would be best if she just forgot.
She doesn't expect to like curating the Royal Collection. It's all ancient books and pottery, locked in stasis-globes to keep it from falling to bits; Max gets antsy when she gets close to the paintings or the documents or anything else generally fragile, as though he thinks that she's about to start shooting up the place the moment he turns his back. He doesn't tell her how to work the stasis equipment, and she knows it's because he thinks she's going to break it.
She couldn't imagine breaking it. The Royal Collection is her past--the United Kingdom's past--and it's there for the seeing and sometimes even for the touching. Alphonse in Antiquities helps her to recognize the difference between eighteenth- and nineteenth-century plate on sight; Edwina from Research and Preservation lets her run her hands over ancient thirtieth-century plasticware. "It's safe to touch," she says, with a little smile for the queen. "Just don't let Dr. Dawes see you."
Liz knows that she ought to recognize it; she lived through the thirtieth century, probably saw a child drinking from that plastic cup or an old woman buying it from a salesman in London Market. That cup made the exodus with her on Starship UK; it's as old as she is, and as foreign to the modern era.
It's worn thin as a leaf with age, and she thinks that it would break if she filled it with water and placed it on the floor of the Department of Research and Preservation.
That night, though, she pours clear water into a tumbler, holding the glass up against the security lighting of the Royal Collection. The light comes through queer and bent, and Liz feels delight welling in her until she has to laugh.
The tumbler makes a glassy sort of clinking sound when she sets it down on the ground. The water slowly stills until its surface is smooth as a mirror's.
The Royal Collection teaches her to remember, and teaches it in bits and pieces that come upon her as suddenly and fully as dreams.
* * *
Liz X dreams, and in her dreams there is a box with a button inside. She must get the box open, but she can't think how, or what it has to do with the button.
She wakes slumped over a desk in R&P at the Royal Collection, her hands closed around a datareader. She has been scanning artifacts, gathering data so that Edwina's people can make replicas that the kiddies can touch and play with and use--but she's in the wrong room for that; this room is full of paintings waiting to be restored. There are ancient surrealist landscapes, even more ancient portraits by de Loutherbourg, twenty-third-century abstract pieces by Khaled that are nearly in bits.
Liz can't think why she came in here, unless she was sleepwalking. She's never had much use for paintings.
* * *
"Curator?" laughs the queen, bracing a hand on her hip as though she knows that she's been rude and isn't particularly ashamed. "Finally decided to stick me in a museum, eh? Getting a bit long in the tooth, at two thousand years old--"
"Two thousand, two hundred," says Max, which isn't helping his case at all. He's one to talk, at near three hundred; his skin is as thin as paper, and he's gone bald as an egg. Liz X's starting to go grey, but the old face is smooth as ever, thank you very much. "It is the Royal Collection--technically your private collection, ma'am--and by this point it's become rather valuable. There are artifacts from as far back as the twelfth century of the Common Era, of incalculable symbolic and monetary value to collectors--"
"And you're afraid someone's going to nick it, are you?"
"In ... in so many words, ma'am, yes."
Liz runs her free hand back through her hair, feeling that slight catch in her rotator cuff as she raises her arm. She's fairly sure she manages to keep from wincing as she drops her hand to her holster. "I'd be some sort of glorified security guard."
"Honoured, ma'am--"
"Oh, shut up, Max." The royal archivist makes a satisfying, squeaky sort of sound at the informality; if anyone's called Maximilian Lucius Dawes "Max" within the last two hundred years, Liz will eat her left shoe. If anyone's ever told him to shut up, she'll eat the whole leg. "I'm the bloody queen, mate--and if anyone wants to rob the Royal Collection, they'll have to come through me."
It probably isn't wise for her to show off her marksmanship on the Victorian vase directly behind the archivist's ear; the look on his face before he faints dead away, though, is more than worth it.
She'll tell him when he wakes that it was only a replica.
* * *
Liz X dreams, and in her dreams there is a box with a button inside. To open the box, she has to press the button that's inside it. For ten years, she dreams it, while her subjects go into their voting booths and vote on ... Liz doesn't know what, but every five years, they vote, and nothing changes, and she sits in the booth and screams at the screens to accept that she protests. She doesn't know what she's protesting, yet, but she's in the box with her hand pounding the protest button and her mask on the ground at her feet.
Nothing happens, of course. Queens can depose, or conquer, or fail in the attempt, but they can't protest.
In her dreams there is a little girl with her hair in pigtails and a scowl on her face, and she chants, Mistress Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow?
There are gardens on every level, on Spaceship UK; she needs to feed a nation, and silver bells and cockleshells aren't going to cut it. There are water reclamation plants at the stern that hum softly in the night, filtering ... Liz doesn't know what they filter, but from those plants comes fresh, clean water. There is a hum of machinery there that sends vibrations running from her heels to the tip of her nose, and she stares over the reclamation vats with her elbows on the railing and watches the water rippling. That mechanical thrum aches in her hands and her ears and her gut, aches in her when she lies awake in her bed and feels the stillness all around her.
On her bedside table, there is a glass of water, and she places it on her floor and watches the water shimmering in the lamplight. For a second, she thinks that she must be wrong--then the water stills in the cup, and Liz feels as though she's about to fall.
She says that there are secrets, secrets that the government is keeping from the queen, but she understands that more than secrets, there are forgettings. Every five years, her people go into the voting booths with the round buttons, and whatever it is they see, they choose to forget--and that much she understands; that much is institutional. But there are quiet forgettings, as well, and those ones run deeper. There are men in black robes who watch her place glasses on the floor of her chamber, who keep their eyes peeled for a stranger who knows what it means that the water lies quiet in glasses; there are decoupled lines in all of the fuse boxes, and inexplicable holes in the walkways, and no one asks what this means or why such things should be secret.
Then she is sitting before a screen and listening to her own voice, listening to the terrible choice that she doesn't remember making and blinking back tears at having to make it all over again.
She touches the forget button, and for a moment, she feels ever so much older than fifty.
Liz X dreams that there is a box with a button inside, and to open the box, she has to press the button that's inside it. For ten years, she dreams it, while her subjects go into their voting booths and vote on ... Liz doesn't know what.
Author: gileonnen
Fandom: Doctor Who
Rating: PG
Warnings: None.
Prompt: 27) Let us not fear the hidden. Or each other. -- Muriel Rukeyser (1913-1980), poet, political activist, reporter, playwright, translator and president of the American branch of International PEN, a worldwide association of writers dedicated to freedom of expression and to opposing political censorship and speaking for writers who have been or are being silenced, harassed, attacked, arrested or killed for what they've written.
Summary: Liz X has learned to be afraid of forgetting.
Author's notes: Written for femgenficathon; beta-read by lareinenoire and angevin2.
Liz X dreams, and in her dreams there is a box.
She wakes sweating, reaching for her gun, swallowing a half-formed scream that could've been anguish as easily as rage. After a moment, she catches her breath and swings her legs over the side of the bed, putting on a red robe over her nightgown and padding down the marble hallways with her feet still bare. There was something in the box, but she can't remember what, and not remembering terrifies her.
* * *
Over the last thousand years, Liz X has come to accept that near-immortality comes with a certain brand of madness. Anything between the thirty-third and fortieth centuries C.E. is a bit of a blur; she remembers the day when Spaceship UK landed, and what came before that, but the process of rebuilding a civilization has run together in her memory until she can't remember whether Surrey Tower fell before or after they made contact with New Spain.
The Americans rediscovered Earth first (of course, as they'd be inclined to say); by then, the survivors had emerged from the underground chambers that they'd shared with the Silurians, creating a world that human and reptile could share in harmony. Liz can't remember in which century the New United Kingdom mounted an expedition to Earth, or what it was that made them so unwelcome at first. Something to do with languages, or with solar panels? She's forgotten, anyway.
Things slip away from her, and she can't make them stay. At first, she kept a diary--there are thousands of hours of video footage lingering on in the archives, and she can't make herself purge them even if she doesn't have anything like the time to view them all over again. She could download them all into her mind, she supposes, but her physicians insist that there simply isn't space for that much knowledge in a human mind. The data overload would kill her--or worse, it would shut her mind down and leave her body intact.
Liz X sometimes wonders if the risk wouldn't be worth it, just to remember everything again. This isn't the first time that she's been told that it would be best if she just forgot.
She doesn't expect to like curating the Royal Collection. It's all ancient books and pottery, locked in stasis-globes to keep it from falling to bits; Max gets antsy when she gets close to the paintings or the documents or anything else generally fragile, as though he thinks that she's about to start shooting up the place the moment he turns his back. He doesn't tell her how to work the stasis equipment, and she knows it's because he thinks she's going to break it.
She couldn't imagine breaking it. The Royal Collection is her past--the United Kingdom's past--and it's there for the seeing and sometimes even for the touching. Alphonse in Antiquities helps her to recognize the difference between eighteenth- and nineteenth-century plate on sight; Edwina from Research and Preservation lets her run her hands over ancient thirtieth-century plasticware. "It's safe to touch," she says, with a little smile for the queen. "Just don't let Dr. Dawes see you."
Liz knows that she ought to recognize it; she lived through the thirtieth century, probably saw a child drinking from that plastic cup or an old woman buying it from a salesman in London Market. That cup made the exodus with her on Starship UK; it's as old as she is, and as foreign to the modern era.
It's worn thin as a leaf with age, and she thinks that it would break if she filled it with water and placed it on the floor of the Department of Research and Preservation.
That night, though, she pours clear water into a tumbler, holding the glass up against the security lighting of the Royal Collection. The light comes through queer and bent, and Liz feels delight welling in her until she has to laugh.
The tumbler makes a glassy sort of clinking sound when she sets it down on the ground. The water slowly stills until its surface is smooth as a mirror's.
The Royal Collection teaches her to remember, and teaches it in bits and pieces that come upon her as suddenly and fully as dreams.
* * *
Liz X dreams, and in her dreams there is a box with a button inside. She must get the box open, but she can't think how, or what it has to do with the button.
She wakes slumped over a desk in R&P at the Royal Collection, her hands closed around a datareader. She has been scanning artifacts, gathering data so that Edwina's people can make replicas that the kiddies can touch and play with and use--but she's in the wrong room for that; this room is full of paintings waiting to be restored. There are ancient surrealist landscapes, even more ancient portraits by de Loutherbourg, twenty-third-century abstract pieces by Khaled that are nearly in bits.
Liz can't think why she came in here, unless she was sleepwalking. She's never had much use for paintings.
* * *
"Curator?" laughs the queen, bracing a hand on her hip as though she knows that she's been rude and isn't particularly ashamed. "Finally decided to stick me in a museum, eh? Getting a bit long in the tooth, at two thousand years old--"
"Two thousand, two hundred," says Max, which isn't helping his case at all. He's one to talk, at near three hundred; his skin is as thin as paper, and he's gone bald as an egg. Liz X's starting to go grey, but the old face is smooth as ever, thank you very much. "It is the Royal Collection--technically your private collection, ma'am--and by this point it's become rather valuable. There are artifacts from as far back as the twelfth century of the Common Era, of incalculable symbolic and monetary value to collectors--"
"And you're afraid someone's going to nick it, are you?"
"In ... in so many words, ma'am, yes."
Liz runs her free hand back through her hair, feeling that slight catch in her rotator cuff as she raises her arm. She's fairly sure she manages to keep from wincing as she drops her hand to her holster. "I'd be some sort of glorified security guard."
"Honoured, ma'am--"
"Oh, shut up, Max." The royal archivist makes a satisfying, squeaky sort of sound at the informality; if anyone's called Maximilian Lucius Dawes "Max" within the last two hundred years, Liz will eat her left shoe. If anyone's ever told him to shut up, she'll eat the whole leg. "I'm the bloody queen, mate--and if anyone wants to rob the Royal Collection, they'll have to come through me."
It probably isn't wise for her to show off her marksmanship on the Victorian vase directly behind the archivist's ear; the look on his face before he faints dead away, though, is more than worth it.
She'll tell him when he wakes that it was only a replica.
* * *
Liz X dreams, and in her dreams there is a box with a button inside. To open the box, she has to press the button that's inside it. For ten years, she dreams it, while her subjects go into their voting booths and vote on ... Liz doesn't know what, but every five years, they vote, and nothing changes, and she sits in the booth and screams at the screens to accept that she protests. She doesn't know what she's protesting, yet, but she's in the box with her hand pounding the protest button and her mask on the ground at her feet.
Nothing happens, of course. Queens can depose, or conquer, or fail in the attempt, but they can't protest.
In her dreams there is a little girl with her hair in pigtails and a scowl on her face, and she chants, Mistress Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow?
There are gardens on every level, on Spaceship UK; she needs to feed a nation, and silver bells and cockleshells aren't going to cut it. There are water reclamation plants at the stern that hum softly in the night, filtering ... Liz doesn't know what they filter, but from those plants comes fresh, clean water. There is a hum of machinery there that sends vibrations running from her heels to the tip of her nose, and she stares over the reclamation vats with her elbows on the railing and watches the water rippling. That mechanical thrum aches in her hands and her ears and her gut, aches in her when she lies awake in her bed and feels the stillness all around her.
On her bedside table, there is a glass of water, and she places it on her floor and watches the water shimmering in the lamplight. For a second, she thinks that she must be wrong--then the water stills in the cup, and Liz feels as though she's about to fall.
She says that there are secrets, secrets that the government is keeping from the queen, but she understands that more than secrets, there are forgettings. Every five years, her people go into the voting booths with the round buttons, and whatever it is they see, they choose to forget--and that much she understands; that much is institutional. But there are quiet forgettings, as well, and those ones run deeper. There are men in black robes who watch her place glasses on the floor of her chamber, who keep their eyes peeled for a stranger who knows what it means that the water lies quiet in glasses; there are decoupled lines in all of the fuse boxes, and inexplicable holes in the walkways, and no one asks what this means or why such things should be secret.
Then she is sitting before a screen and listening to her own voice, listening to the terrible choice that she doesn't remember making and blinking back tears at having to make it all over again.
She touches the forget button, and for a moment, she feels ever so much older than fifty.
Liz X dreams that there is a box with a button inside, and to open the box, she has to press the button that's inside it. For ten years, she dreams it, while her subjects go into their voting booths and vote on ... Liz doesn't know what.