Audio, public.

[ewestmarch]

[A sharp, scratchy female voice comes over the network, spitting her words like bullets.]

Where does the solidness of the objects come from when you turn on a spawner? How does it convert electrical energy into bread, or cloth, or gold? Is there a limit to how much of a certain material you can tell it to conjure?

It's all well and good to have spawners in every fucking color of the rainbow, but my world has too much power and not enough food. One of these could change the entire economy. Bring the bottom closer to the top.

And don't get any sly damned ideas. I saw it first. Just answer the questions.

[Private, also, to Braska.]

I've seen you over the network. What happens to the dead when they aren't Sent?

Comments

[timesbureaucrat]

That's exactly why it shouldn't be done at any old whim. If the problems no longer exist, then there is nothing to incite that future time traveller to go back in time and make the problems cease to exist. It creates a paradox, and those have to managed very carefully or else you can start fraying the very threads of reality. It requires discretion and a highly-trained professional touch.

Besides which, if we decided to use our powers to remake history we, like any race, would surely do it to our benefit, not out of altruism for the downtrodden. It is a sign of Rassilon's wisdom that he set down laws forbidding us from following that dark path. [A path which Narvin saw in an alternative universe. It wasn't pretty.]

[ewestmarch]

A law against preventing tragedies is a stupid law.

[timesbureaucrat]

It's a necessary law. If time travel isn't regulated, whose to say what's a tragedy that needs altering? One person's massacre is another's righteous victory against a threatening force. If everyone were changing the timelines to suit their personal moral tastes, it would be utter chaos. Plus, even the worst of tragedies are a critical part in the chain of events that make up history. Mess with that and you're inviting all sorts of trouble. Say you stop one primitive civilization from wiping out another. And those survivors who should-not-have-been procreate. And those children in turn procreate, and 2000 years down the line one of their distant descendants, who was not supposed to exit, writes a philosophical tract, which splits ideologies, which provokes a war, which leads to a nuclear apocalypse, wiping out the entire species. Changing history is not as simple as picking a particular event you don't like and rewriting the ending.

[Narvin's voice was slowly rising through the speech, getting downright shrill by the end. He clears his throat and his voice drops back to his more standard smooth tone.]

And that's not even addressing the very real problem of people abusing time travel for more selfish ends, if such a law did not exist.

[ewestmarch]

What's the penalty for breaking it, anyway?

[timesbureaucrat]

If you're one of the famous brothers from the House of Lungbarrow, you get a promotion.

[Narvin is never one to pass up a bitter jibe at Braxiatel and the Doctor. Even if they aren't here.]

Everyone else is punished with exile or vapourization.

[ewestmarch]

[Emilia laughs suddenly, a single burst of sound that stops in a matter of seconds.]

Oh, is that all? There are things I'd be exiled for. Or vaporized, hell.

[timesbureaucrat]

[Narvin raises an eyebrow at her laugh.]

We also send in a team to undo whatever damage was done to the timeline. Your actions would be undone. No martyrdom for the good of the cause.

[ewestmarch]

How can you undo what was done if it's always been that way? If the past changes, the present has to be influenced in turn.

[timesbureaucrat]

The Matrix records data outside of time. Regardless of what changes are make to history, the Matrix keeps a complete track of the original sequence of events. We can use that record to isolate and correct any untoward deviations in the time line.

[ewestmarch]

How can something be outside of time?

[timesbureaucrat]

Simple. Pocket universe. The Matrix exists within a space-time bubble. The Matrix's reality is not like the reality of the outside universe.

[ewestmarch]

Doesn't the word "universe" mean by its nature that nothing is outside of it?

[timesbureaucrat]

I've been to six distinct universes personally, including this one. Even met another version of myself.

[ewestmarch]

[Emilia's voice is sugary.]

Sure you have.

[timesbureaucrat]

Is it really so hard to believe? You accepted time travel easily enough. Alternate time line, alternate universe.

[ewestmarch]

Did I? My mistake.

You have no proof of anything you're saying.

[timesbureaucrat]

Funny, I didn't know I was trial and needed to present evidence.

[ewestmarch]

Oh, you aren't being judged. After all, the opinion of one silly woman doesn't matter in the grand Time Lord scheme, does it?

[She's having fun with this, somehow.]

[timesbureaucrat]

Not really, no. It doesn't. [Narvin says without shame.] Not because you're a woman, mind you, but because you're an alien.

[ewestmarch]

Of course. I probably wouldn't understand even if you showed it to me.

[timesbureaucrat]

Very likely, but it's irrelevant. Section 857 paragraph G of the rules and regulations expressly forbids showing schematics to off worlders.

[ewestmarch]

How official.

[timesbureaucrat]

I prefer it that way.