Omega Centauri

I've got a very definite backstory plotted out for the "Betwixt Silver and Gold" series of fanfics I hope to start posting on FIMFiction in the near future. This is the story I used to plot that backstory out.

I cannot post this as a story on FIMFiction. That's because it's what I call "crypto-fanfiction": a fanfic for one series cleverly disguised as a fanfic for another series. In this case, we have a Doctor Who fanfiction with no ponies whatsoever. Nevertheless, I expect that anybody reading carefully will be able to see where the ponies are hiding.

Three more things to note:

1. This story is proof of how incredibly far I'm willing to go to turn a fantasy series into a science-fiction series.

2. The selection of Doctor here is mostly because I think Five is the best one for this story out of the ones I've seen so far (i.e. all of then but Seven).

3. "Omega Centauri", besides being a beautiful astronomical object, is also Greek for "last of the horse-men".

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The miniscule blue box materialized in empty space. Empty, but what a view!

Below the base of the unusual craft floated an immense cloud of lights, diffuse and separate at the edges, but quickly grouping into a solid sphere of light that took up a quarter of the entire sky. Just visible below the cloud were distant, individual stars.

By contrast, the view overhead was a nearly featureless blackness. No part of space was empty--in that direction swarmed millions of galaxies and nebulae, but they were too dim to be seen by the human eye, especially with the “light pollution” from below.

The blue craft was a TARDIS, in particular the TARDIS operated by a Time Lord known as The Doctor. Standing at his control console, his hands nervously fiddled with knobs and switches.

“So where did we end up this time?” asked Tegan, one of the Doctor’s three companions. Tegan was once an airline stewardess from the planet Earth in its 20th Century. She tended to whine a lot.

“Tough to say,” muttered the tall, blonde Doctor, his eyes never leaving the controls. “What we are next to, however, is Omega Centauri, the largest globular cluster to orbit Mutter’s Spiral, colloquially known as The Gambler’s Friend. Right now...I’m attempting to locate a planet that doesn’t want to be found. Let’s see if this helps...”

As he pointed to the TARDIS’ viewscreen, the image of the cluster was overlaid with a fine grid of green lines, which then bent and curved until they had threaded themselves between those stars that could be made out distinctly.

“Ah!” exclaimed Adric. “Gravimetric potential lines!” Adric was a mathematics genius from the planet Alzarius in another dimension. Unlike Tegan, he was proficient in at least three different ways to be annoying that did not involve whining. “So the mystery planet will be the point where gravity is displaced without having a visible source, correct?”

The Doctor sighed. “Wrong, Adric. The cystallite sphere that hides this planet was designed to precisely counteract the effect of gravity, to make it harder to find.”

“Well then it’s hopeless!”

“No, Adric, as a matter of fact the effect is too clever by half. I just have to find the one bit of space in a sea of tugging gravitational influences with no bending of space-time whatsoever. Which is right...about...there!”

A dotted-line circle appeared on the screen around a clear area of space, with a couple of stars visible inside it. The rest of the overlay disappeared, and the circle gradually grew in size, the only sign that the TARDIS was now moving.

The Doctor was now intent on piloting the TARDIS (and presumably insuring that it didn’t go splat against the crystallite sphere), so the companions were thrown back on their own resources.

“I wonder if that planet is hiding for a good reason?” pondered Tegan.

“Well of course it’s a good reason!” blustered Adric. “Crystallite sounds expensive.”

Nyssa rolled her eyes. Nyssa was the third of the Doctor’s current companions, a noble-born scholar and sole survivor of the planet Traken. She was a very intelligent and sweet person, but easily cowed by others. With Tegan and Adric around, she rarely got the chance to speak.

Finally with a slight tremble, the TARDIS landed on the surface of the invisible sphere, the mass of Omega Centauri now floating overhead.

“The sphere is still rotating,” the Doctor observed. “Very close to twenty-four hours per revolution.”

“So, is there any chance you’re going to tell us what is going on this time before we leap feet first into danger?” Tegan asked sarcastically.

The Doctor checked his instruments. “Well, we are the first to arrive, so as a matter of fact, yes, I do believe I have the time to answer some questions.”

He turned to face the trio. “The TARDIS is currently resting on a hollow sphere of crystallite approximately seven and a half billion kilometers across and a thousand kilometers thick. This sphere diffracts all light around it so as to appear invisible, and has the effect on gravity that I already described. In fact, if I didn’t have a subprogram of the TARDIS tracking its predicted motion around the globular cluster for the past seven hundred years, it might have taken us years to have tracked it down.”

“You knew for that long that you would need to come here,” said Nyssa quietly.

“Precisely, Nyssa. This world is the site of an important event from the early years of Galifreyan history, when they were still willing to intervene in the affairs of other worlds.

“But one thing at a time. Inside the sphere is a very unusual system of worlds, in fact the only true geocentric system in the universe.”

“Geocentric?” asked Tegan, dredging up a bit of her primary education. “You mean the sun goes around the Earth?”

“Well,” clarified the Doctor, “there’s a rather-Earth like world in the center, and orbiting it in perfectly circular paths are a satellite, a Sun-like star and various sundry planets, yes.”

“Shouldn’t that be impossible?” Adric interrupted. “I mean, if the mass of the star so much outweighs that of the central planet...”

“Normally, you would be right, Adric, but this time the rules are stacked against you. Rather literally in fact: the space inside this sphere does not obey the same physical laws as the rest of the universe.”

For once, the companions were shocked speechless.

“The reason for this,” continued the Doctor, “is the presence of a portal in the very center of that planet, a portal to a pocket universe. We decided to call it Faerie.”

“‘We’?” asked Nyssa.

“A pocket universe--that’s like E-Space!” exclaimed Adric at the same time, referring to the realm where his home world was located.

Given the luxury to ignore a question he wasn’t ready to answer yet, the Doctor decided to address Adric. “It’s somewhat like E-Space. Like E-Space, it’s small, in fact smaller than the sphere. But it differs in one major respect: it operates by completely different physical laws than our own universe. So different in fact that life from our universe cannot survive in Faerie, and the inhabitants of Faerie cannot survive here.”

The Doctor paused to ensure he still had the companions’ attention before continuing. “The inhabitants of Faerie derive their existence by warping and consuming the very fabric of existence. In other words, magic, and the cost associated with magic. The faerie fought amongst themselves for unknown eons before one individual, the Supreme Will, assumed control. This being discovered the existence of our universe next door to its own, and hungered to conquer it. He opened a portal between universes and sent an army of his minions through, but they disintegrated, and so did the other army waiting on the Faerie side of the portal, as the laws of this universe leaked in. But the Supreme Will did not accept defeat so readily.

“The Supreme Will caused a world to come into existence under the portal in Faerie, which he called Disembarkation, and sent his servants to colonize the side of the planet opposite the portal. The colonists advanced towards the portal until they reached the point where the mixing effect was barely tolerable, and there they settled down. A few generations later, they had adapted enough to the blend of physical laws that they were able to advance a few hundred kilometers, before they were forced to stop again. In this way the Supreme Will bred an army capable of invading our universe.

“The Supreme Will’s power came from the sum of the abilities of all of his subjects, so he had been gaining control over the strange new laws at the same time as the colonization had progressed. For the second part of his plan, he caused interstellar dust to gather together into a world under our end of the portal, which he called Beachhead. A star was added when he discovered that his army could not survive on a frozen world. Just as Disembarkation became a mixture of two sets of physical laws, so did Beachhead. This mixture spread rapidly through Omega Centauri, where it destroyed life on hundreds of planets. This was only a taste of what the Faerie planned for all life, indeed for all structure of any kind in this universe.

“All this took place long, long ago. So long ago, in fact, that the Galifreyans were not the leaders of the movement to confront the Faerie. Instead, it was the Osirians. There was a Gallifreyan there as an observer, though, which is how I am able to tell you this tale.

“The Osirians pleaded with the Supreme Will to stop his plans, to allow peace and trade instead of war and destruction to grow between the two universes. After all, the nature of the two sets of physical laws allowed a sort of perpetual energy reaction to occur for both sides of the portal. But the faerie leader was set in his ways. He used his newfound power to bring the ambassadors safely into his universe, to show them how absolutely he controlled every particle of his world, and promised the same fate for our own. The Osirians now felt they had no choice but to stop this invasion.”

“And how did they accomplish that?” asked Adric, convinced that this foe was unbeatable.

“By dropping a rock on them,” the Doctor flippantly remarked. “Each end of the portal was incredibly-massive, and an awful lot of that free energy was being used to keep the portals from sinking into their respective worlds. The Supreme Will had never quite gotten used to how gravity worked in our universe, and so he did nothing when he saw a tremendous planetoid drifting ever-so-slowly closer to Beachhead. By the time he decided to push it aside, the momentum was too great to affect it. The impact caused both portals to sink into the center of their planets, completely deactivating them. That’s what everybody thought, since the destructive effect of mixing physical laws faded out of the cluster within a few centuries. So ended the First, or Faerie, Age of the planet inside the sphere.

“Tens of thousands of years passed. The Osirians ended their time on this plane and the Galifreyans turned inward, choosing to forget much of their history. Omega Centauri was resettled from the Milky Way, mostly by humans, and by the 25th Century of human reckoning, it was loyal to the Earth Empire. A group of colonists ventured out to this world, which they called Planet Leabie after their empress, in search of solar aluminium, a cheap substance for building spaceships. Unfortunately, the stuff reverted to normal aluminium after about a decade. That’s because it was normal aluminium all along. The mixture of physical laws still persisted on Leabie, but in a form that humans could tolerate. The effect had in fact spread back through the cluster, causing modifications in the laws of probability.”

“Which is why it was called The Gambler’s Friend?” asked Tegan.

“Yes,” said the Doctor. “Because of the failure of solar aluminium, Leabie became a backwater world, increasingly inhabited by separatists who wanted no part with the Empire. In the 32nd Century, the inhabitants of Leabie learned that the Empire had collapsed, and they changed the name of their world to the rather unoriginal name of New Earth. Soon, New Earth was swept up in a violent civil war fought against a group that sought to revive the empire from a new seat in Omega Centauri. For a while, this new Empire had the upper hand, and began wiping out planet after planet of rebels. The inhabitants of New Earth # 11,486 had become so disgusted with civilization by this point that they gave what little money they had left to the Usarians in return for construction of the crystallite sphere, complete with the constellations of Old Earth inscribed on the inside. Before it was even completed, a vast Luddite uprising had destroyed all machines and burned all books on the planet. New Earth truly returned to the ‘old ways’ it had long desired: the old ways of the European Dark Ages. And so ended the Second, or Imperial, Age of the hidden planet.

“With the completion of the sphere, New Earth dropped out of history. It was very easy to lose track of a world with such a common name, and it had never had a significant impact on trade or been located near any useful warp nexi.

“That was until I ran across the records of the fall of Beachhead and put it together with the cluster’s nickname. I came out here to confirm that the laws of the universe in Omega Centauri were just slightly askew; although it appeared that the effect had faded in the century since New Earth had mysteriously disappeared. I tracked down the transaction with the Usarians, and then I spent several years tracking down the sphere; I was still young then, with time to waste.

“When I finally got here, I found that I could not safely enter the sphere. The mixture of physical laws had changed once again: too much magic and not enough science. I can only speculate, but I believe that the humans of New Earth after many generations had gained the ability to manipulate reality like the Faerie, making New Earth into a world of wizards. They probably did all the things that wizards do in stories: create dragons and unicorns and beholders, and war with other wizards. Unfortunately for them, all of this magic flying back and forth would prove to be a fatal temptation, because the more they practiced this ability, the less compatible New Earth became for human life. Finally, sometime in the 42nd Century, the level of magic reached its peak, and the sphere stopped rotating. I consider this to be the end of the Third, or Fantastic, Age of the hidden planet, which puts us in the Fourth, or Unknown, Age.

“After a few centuries of dropping, the level of magic on that nameless world began to rise again, at the same time as the sphere began to rotate again, albeit in a more irregular way than before. There was no way that any humans could have survived, so I concluded that the Faerie had returned.

“I presented my findings to the Galifrey High Council and unsurprisingly, I failed to get any support for a fuller investigation.

“This put me in a dilemma: I could, if necessary, take the TARDIS into the sphere. But it would be a one-way trip. Unless I could succeed in reducing the level of magic, I’d never be able to escape.

“And so here we are at the moment of crisis. I’ve bent a few rules in order to gather the only help I can find to go in there and do something. Maybe I’ll find another invasion in progress. Maybe I’ll find the planet ruled by dragons instead, or by some kind of twisted magical monstrosity that turns anyone who sees them into madly-worshiping fanboys. I just don’t know.

“And so I give you three a choice. First choice: I can put you back...somewhere. Probably not precisely where you want to be. And if I get out of this, I promise I’ll come back for you.

“Second choice: Live in the TARDIS. This place is enormous. You can probably find something interesting to do for years. You’ll be safe in the TARDIS.

“And third choice: You come with me out of the TARDIS, and you change. Because the only way to survive on that world down there is to become like the inhabitants. If the Faerie are in charge, then you’ll end up as these sort-of scribble/crystal things. If it’s dragons, well...I’ve always wanted to see what it would be like to be a dragon, what about you? I’ll give you a few hours to make up your minds.”

[ ] [ ] [ ]

“Doctor, look!” Tegan interrupted him, pointing at the viewer. “It’s another TARDIS. And another! And another!”

“Doctor,” Nyssa said with some alarm, “I thought your TARDIS was the only one that looked like a blue box. Is this some trick of the Master?”

“No, Nyssa, these are the help I mentioned before. One thing before we go to meet them, though: you might find it a lot less confusing if you start calling me ‘Five’ from now on.”