Entry Ten - Kalab Ting (2)

I don't quite fancy being tied up and told I may be mutating. It's just... well I can't imagine anyone would like it really. I had rather hoped to get out of it myself, but things were not looking good with my new, red, best friend hovering over me and telling me I'd be required to stay here for a few weeks. But I still wasn't too concerned. The Doctor was still around somewhere and I knew he wouldn't just leave me fallen in a hole. He'd come find me. But I hate being rescued.

"Well, if I'm contaminated and may be mutating why are you here? Aren't you afraid you're going to get contaminated too?"

"I have been selected by the council," she said.

I raised my eyebrows, any other gesture was a bit beyond me at this point, "You have a council?"

She looked confused and vaguely insulted, "We have a society."

"Right yes, of course you do, didn't mean..." I trailed off, not quite knowing what to say anyway and knowing that whatever it was wasn't going to make a rit of difference.

I took this opportunity to look around. Well it was definitely some sort of cave. Like an Earth cave, but then again the topside didn't look all that different from Earth either.


"I'm called Rose," I finally said after a long time of silence, "what's your name?"

Her face sort of lit up and she said, "Like the flower! I have heard of them! I saw them in a book once, beautiful. We had flowers here once, my name is Monlie."

I asked her what had happened, and she told me. Kalab Ting was an uninhabitable planetary body made of nothing but rocks and dirt. It's orbit was far enough from it's suns that it was perpetual winter, but there was never any snow because there was no water. It could not sustain life. Until the Piroquay Corporation moved in. They specialised in some sort of newfangled technological terraforming. They created an atmospheric shell to simulate seasons, they created a water source by importing hydration and irrigation, they basically covered the entire planet in a sort of sod from the sound of it. And then it was habitable. Beautiful and pleasant.

It seemed a bit off to me, they still didn't have a natural water supply and surrounding a rock with grass doesn't mean that grass is getting nourishment. Apparently Piroquay intended to do this to thousands of planets in order to make more room for the expanding Human Empire. Or so said my dear friend, Monlie.

"So you weren't born here?"

"No no," she said, "I was born on Malinking, a beautiful planet. The grounds were red and the forests blue, I had trouble understanding the colours when I first came here."

"Why did you come here?"

"I was brought here, my whole family. Our planet was becoming more and more crowded when the humans moved in, so we were brought here."

I sat up, well, as best I could, which was not much, "You were relocated?" She nodded, "That's horrible. How long after you arrived did the virus come?"

She shrugged, and it seemed to me like she didn't want to answer. "About a month," she finally said, and I wondered how many people she'd lost. How many of her friends and family had died or been mutated or whatever, but it seemed clear to me by now that Piroquay had mucked it up.
It was about this time that I heard the familiar sounds of the TARDIS materialisation circuit and sighed a breath of relief. Monlie on the other hand jumped to her feet, grabbed her makeshift spear and stood there gaping at the police box that was now standing in front of her.

"'Bout time!" I called when the Doctor walked out of the TARDIS and stood there staring at Monlie with a bit of a shocked expression.

"You okay?" he asked me.

"Oh yeah, just fine, contaminated, mutating, tied up... nothing serious. Doctor, this is Monlie my friendly captor, don't worry she's just following orders we're getting on quite nicely, and Monlie, this is the Doctor."

He took a step forward but Monlie poked her spear at him and he stopped, raising his arms in surrender. I told him everything Monlie'd told me about the terraforming, the virus, and Piroquay.

"Of course!" he shouted, "Why didn't I see it before? It's so obvious, oh I am thick!"

I was still tied up by the way, "What? Something got mucked up, right?"

"Yeah, it's the terraforming, it's gone wrong. Terraforming is all well and good providing a stable environment, Kalab Ting didn't have that! They created it artificially! It's like, um.. Oh! Star Trek III!" I shook my head, never seen it. "Okay there's this planet and they terraform it with this Genesis thingamabobsis and it's all right as rain for a while but then it all starts collapsing. It's not really all that realisitic in the film, obviously, it is a film, the ground starts shaking and everything collapses, literally and these Klingons are doing their Klingon thing and-"

"Doctor, please can you just get to the point?" The ground really was cutting into my back at this point.

"Oh, yes, of course, point: This planet is collapsing, but it's doing so in a natural state of accelerated progression. It was made and now it's breaking. Like a transplant patient. It's rejecting the terraform. And the parasites living on it. Sorry," he said to Monlie, "that's you lot."

"But they're dying and they've got me all tied up and ho can they just be rejected? Where are they meant to go?" I asked and then coughed.

The Doctor got very pensive for a moment and I watched him trying to think of something, but then my throat felt like it was constricting, and I coughed again trying to get air through my windpipe, but couldn't quite manage. I wasn't choking or anything, but there definitely wasn't enough air coming through. If I'd been scared at all before, I was plain terrified now. And then it wasn't just my throat, it was my chest and my head. It sort of felt like I was going to explode. I realised I'd had my eyes closed and opened them. Monlie had taken a few steps back from me and was holding her spear in front of the Doctor who looked like he was trying to take a few steps forward. I could see his mouth moving, and he was saying my name, but I couldn't hear anything. Nothing. Not even the sounds of the cave.

More tomorrow.