Short Trips - The Doctor Who Audio Dramas

‘Yeah, I’m equally depressed by you being right for once,’ said Dillion dryly.
‘But why are you here? Did you get sucked in as well?’
‘No, I followed you into the wetware. Without me to stabilize you, your mind
would have fallen apart like a wet cake.’
Dillion grimaced at the mental image. ‘Ouch. Well... thank you.’
‘Please, Dillion,’ Landon groaned. ‘It’s embarrassing enough as it is.’
>DILLION
>LANDON
>ME
‘Any idea who that is?’ asked Dillion quietly, trying not to offend.
‘A whole new life form,’ Landon replied.
‘So you don’t know who it is.’
Landon glared at him. ‘Of course I know who it is! I learned quite a lot during
the trip here while you were having your little existential fit. Now, this space
station was a development platform specializing in artificial intelligences with
experimental liquid data storage. The ultimate aim was to gather the sum total of
all knowledge and history into a living mind as an archive. To make it sentient, it
was exposed to all sorts of different mind-scans. Presumably the war forced the
project to be abandoned, just before they were able to complete the program.’
‘To create a whole new life form?’ Dillion asked. ‘Well, someone finished it for
them. I wonder who?’
‘The neural network only needed exposure to one more living mind,’ Landon
explained impatiently. ‘And you somehow managed to qualify. Thus, the network
has become alive as a direct consequence of your actions.’
Dillion looked smug.
‘What are you looking so smug about?’ asked Landon, annoyed.
‘I was just thinking about your little declaration tonight,’ the Canisian replied.
‘You know, that bit about no one being able to benefit from my interference.’
Landon seethed. ‘Well, we are definitely not benefiting from it. The computer
system is so busy evolving that we are trapped inside until someone gets us out
and that is hardly a guarantee considering our survival depends on a mute human
girl with even less idea what’s going on than you do, a robot dog with delusions of
grandeur and, oh yes, the overbearing arrogant smartass that got us all into this
mess in the first place!’
‘The Doctor will get us out!’
‘Oh yes, of course the Doctor will get us out! And just what sort of chaos will
he have to unleash to do that?!’
Words appeared above their heads.
>IRRECONCILABLE VIEWPOINTS YET MUTUAL COOPERATION
>TOLERANCE FOR THE INTOLERANT
>YOU ARE MOST ILLUMINATING
Landon preened. ‘Thank you.’
‘Mutual cooperation?’ asked Dillion, confused.
‘Our minds are focused onto each other, thus preventing discorporation,’
Landon explained. ‘On our own we’d simply... fall apart. That’s why someone had
to join the network, so the two of us could balance each other out.’