CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

MISTAKES

‘It seems,’ Raljex said, staring at The Dr. ‘You have made a very serious mistake.’
‘No,’ The Dr. said defiantly. ‘This is wrong! You can’t be biased in a Challenge!’
‘Oh, but when his own interests are involved,’ The Manager said coyly. ‘I think you’ll find
that the rulebook gets thrown out of the window.’
‘And incinerated,’ Raljex agreed, folding his arms.
‘Face it, Dr.,’ The Manager laughed. ‘You have been beaten by a superior foe. You are
going to be destroyed! And once you’re gone, I’m going to make it my mission to seek out
each and every one of your little friends, and I’ll make them suffer.’
He glared around at The Dr.’s assembled friends. ‘And it will be suffering of a like
never heard of before.’
‘Bring it on!’ Will-ko said savagely, brandishing his want. ‘I’d like to see you try. I’ll stick
this thing so far up your arse that sparks’ll come out of your ears!’
The Manager leered at the wizard and flashed a toothy grin, his eyes igniting with
sickly green hypnotic energy. ‘You, I won’t kill.’ He said stiffly. ‘I’ll keep you alive in
absolute agony for the rest of time. Count on it.’
‘Should have kept your mouth shut, mate,’ Danny coughed.
‘I’ll fight you too,’ Fred said stiffly, running a hand over his healing skin. ‘I’ll devote every
hour I have left to making sure you pay for what you’ve done.’
‘Coming from you?’ The Manager laughed. ‘Well now, isn’t this the pot swearing
vengeance on the kettle?’
‘I’ll spend the rest of my days making up for what I’ve done,’ Fred snarled. ‘Starting with
taking you down.’
‘You tell him, Buster!’ Duffy said loudly, noticing his error but not correcting it.
‘I won’t stand for this!’ The Dr. said loudly. ‘This is a sacred contest. You cannot fix a
competition like this! There are rules!’
‘Give it a rest!’ The Manager cackled. ‘The rules no longer apply. The rules haven’t
applied since you pressed that button and destroyed our race. You have nobody but
yourself to blame for this.’ He stood back and nudged Raljex on the elbow. ‘Go on then.’
‘Go on then, what?’ Raljex replied quizzically.
‘Destroy him!’ The Manager said excitedly, rubbing his hands together and dancing on
the spot. ‘Urgh! I really can’t wait until I’m you and I get to tear him apart myself. But I’ll
settle for a spectator seat for the moment. Rip him to atoms! Erase him from history!
Make his name less than the merest flicker of a whispered half-considered recollection!’
‘All in good time, Nigel,’ Raljex said smoothly. ‘First, there is the matter of the
Redemptions I promised.’
‘Really?’ Nigel frowned. ‘You’re still going to do that? I wouldn’t bother. He’ll never know
the difference.’
‘It would be bad form to do otherwise,’ Raljex replied as he strode casually over to
where the lost pieces stood frozen on the spot.
He stood before The Twelfth Dr. and considered him momentarily before moving
on.
‘Aren’t you going to help him?’ CooCooKaJoo blustered. ‘He’s dying!’
‘It doesn’t matter anymore,’ The Dr. said. ‘What’s there to bring him back for? I’m going
to be destroyed.’
‘But you won!’ Angelus said, spreading his wings wide with anger. ‘We’ve got to fight this!’
‘Indeed!’ Duffy nodded. ‘He’s no Supreme Being! It’s simply The Manager with a little bit
of power. You could take him, Dr.!’
The Dr. waved a hand. ‘Let him do what he’s promised. Then we’ll talk tactics.’
Raljex walked up to Freaka-chu and snapped his fingers, bringing the Venchamon
back to consciousness.
‘Right, hang on now!’ Freaka-chu said, bounding away from Raljex to the other side of
the board with one almighty jump. ‘I don’t want your Redemption. Seriously, keep it.
Give it to somebody else if you like, or just keep it. I’m really happier the way I am. I can
do more good.’
‘A promise, I’m afraid, is a promise,’ Raljex said, raising his hand towards Freaka-chu.
‘If he says he doesn’t want it,’ The Dr. said, stepping in front of Raljex’s hand. ‘Then he
doesn’t want it. I release you from your obligation towards him.’
‘Fair enough,’ Raljex shrugged. ‘Then you, Venchamon, must choose to whom your
prize will go.’
‘Give it to CooCooKaJoo,’ Freaka-chu replied. ‘His whole race was destroyed.
‘So was mine!’ Duffy cried indignantly.
‘Oh yeah,’ Freaka-chu said, scratching his head. ‘Sorry.’
‘You did not allow me to finish,’ Raljex boomed. ‘You will choose to whom your prize
will go … from The Manager’s lost pieces.’
‘The-who-with-the-what-now?’ Freaka-chu blurted.
‘That’s not fair!’ Will-ko shouted, receiving a piercing glare from Raljex. His featureless
face bore down at the young wizard until Will-ko took several steps away from The
Supreme Being.
‘Him,’ Freaka-chu said, pointing to Alpha. ‘Give it to him. It’s either him, a Manager or
his wife. I’d rather give it to somebody that The Dr. actually liked at one time in his life.’
‘He’ll be destroyed in the Time War,’ The Dr. said quietly. ‘But it’s a better fate than what
has become of him here.’
‘Very well,’ Raljex said, snapping his fingers at Alpha who disappeared in a flash of white
light. ‘Richtocorricas Alpha was never abandoned by Grand Alf on a desolate world.
Instead, he was left in the care of another Grandmaster to train in the ways of the
Video Lords.’
‘Thank you,’ The Dr. said with a nod of appreciation.
‘At least now he won’t come barging into The Mercury Rooms with those Cidermen and
nearly kill us all,’
‘All that still happened,’ The Dr. corrected. ‘We will not remember those responsible, nor
will Alpha remember his actions. But they still occurred.’ He turned to Raljex. ‘Now, the
others, if you wouldn’t mind.’

Raljex went through each lost member in turn. L96A1 was never programmed to
kill members of The Mercury Rooms. Roxy never made it aboard The Titanic and thus,
never left her own time with The Dr. Beakedbard was given a renewed sense of purpose
in his life and, when he returned to where he came from, Raljex assured them all that he
would go on to become King of the Hippos. Whether this was simply a drug-fuelled
fantasy or not, he was unable to determine.
Jeebus never overheard the Croutons and thus, never became the demented
psychotic that the Allucians had encountered. Likewise, Red and his partner went on a
stakeout concerning a murder investigation. Red and his partner were able to apprehend
the guilty culprits without mishap and no paranormal events that would ruin Red’s
career and drive him to the brink of madness transpired.
Raljex came to Skelifish and stopped. ‘I was rather hoping that things would
not turn out this way,’ he said longingly. ‘I knew from the very beginning that I
would stand here and do as I have done. Now that I am here, I cannot help but
contemplate alternatives.’
‘What are you talking about, alternatives?’ The Manager grumbled. ‘Do what you have to
and then destroy The Dr.! It is simple!’
‘No, Nigel, it is not that simple. For you see, I knew how everything here would
transpire because I have been here before. My earlier self is here already. I am here
and I am conscious of it. Now, in the moments before I come into being for the first
time, I have been observing. I have been watching and listening, taking in all of the
information. That was how I knew about you and The Dr. being brothers. How I
knew who your father was. I am present here, to obtain the information.’
‘Yes,’ The Manager nodded. ‘I’m stood right here! Are you saying that whatever upgrade
makes me into you is about to happen? Right here? Is that my prize for winning?’
‘We are merely moments away,’ Raljex nodded. ‘I have been subconsciously
communicating with my earlier self throughout this game and have already relayed
what was relayed to me at the moment before I fully entered this world as a truly
conscious, sentient Supreme Being.’
‘I haven’t noticed anything,’ The Manager said, scratching his head.
‘My attempts to prolong the contest so that we might be still here to witness the
event have proven effective,’ Raljex continued, ignoring Nigel’s comment. ‘However,
my infant self will be contained no longer. The time is at hand.’
‘You’re not making sense any more,’ The Manager frowned, chewing on one of his finger
nails. ‘You’re talking like you’re … … …’ He looked up at Raljex with a look of horror. ‘I
was wrong, wasn’t it?’ He gasped. ‘You’re not just me are you? You’re something else
along with me. You’re something with no body of its own! You need the anatomy of a
Video Lord to bond with so that you have something to anchor you to a physical form!’
‘Correct,’ Raljex said, sweeping back through the group. ‘I require a body through
which to wield my awesome power. I am the Supreme Being, make no mistake,
though I am ethereal in nature. I am a survivor of what existed before the
Universes came into being. I am the raw energy from before the beginning of time.
The fury of the cosmos is mine to control. The powers of time itself are mine to
corrupt, twist and bend to my will.
‘Though to do this, I require a living being. A Video Lord was the natural
choice. I tricked the High Council of Video Lords into using my Eye of Harassment.
All those who were cast into it were destroyed, giving me their Degeneration
energy in the process. It is how I have survived for the trillions of years that I have
existed in millions of places at the same time throughout the Universes.’
‘Still,’ The Manager shrugged. ‘Having to share my body. It is a small price to pay for the
ultimate power that I will be imbued with.’
‘True,’ Raljex nodded. ‘However,’ he said as he continued down to the far end of the
board. ‘There is one matter upon which you are still harbouring under false beliefs.
It was to you, Nigel that I directed the earlier comment about making a very
serious mistake.’
‘And what might that be?’ The Manager snickered as Raljex snapped his fingers.
Then, the Twelfth Dr. sat upright and screamed.