The Paradox Virus

Posted by Rampant Coyote on March 11, 2013

Every once in a while I find that my subconscious is still every bit as creative and clever as I wish my conscious mind would be. From thermal-sensor-resistant cowboy zombies to this, I occasionally get these very clever dreams that I wish I could do something with.

In this case, it was a Doctor Who dream. Which is a little weird, as I haven’t watched the show while it’s been on hiatus (but it is about the only show I regularly watch). However, the Doctor was only a secondary character. ‘Cuz it was my dream, and while I apparently took on different roles, it was still about me. And the Silence.

And if the Doctor Who writers choose to borrow this idea, I’d love a public tip o’ the beanie this way, but no financial compensation is required. Yes, I’m sure the BBC will be calling me any moment…

For those who don’t watch the show, the Silence is one of those marvelous creepy creations that I love about it. The silence are some monsters dressed in wrinkled suits who are apparently quite common – especially here on Earth – and have in fact guided the development of the human race forever. But we don’t know of them for a particularly handy bit of mind-affecting camouflage – once you look away from them, you immediately forget entirely about them. Even images or videos of them have this mind-fogging ability… so it’s apparently an involuntary reflex somehow coded into the minds of humanoids all over the universe, rather than an active power of the Silence.

So the larger first part of the dream had these guys actually as the Good Guys, apparently. Things in the distant future were going poorly for an entire civilization of these guys. They had some small level of time travel (and certainly time perception) ability themselves, and found somehow that they’d invoked some sort of paradox that was going to doom their entire civilization. Their own little corner of the time-space continuum was disintegrating due to this paradox, and they were frantic for help. They’d managed to establish a giant Quarantine to keep the time-based destruction at bay, but it merely slowed their ultimate dissolution.

So they call on the experts throughout time and space to save them. One of these experts was, of course, our favorite Tardis pilot, the Doctor. Ever concerned about the repercussions of the destructive paradox that will ultimately unmake them, they institute all kinds of protective barriers around those who answer their plea.

Except they learn too late that these mini-quarantines were ineffective. Slowly but surely, all those who came to help them are not only destroyed by the paradox, but anything they have touched in all of time and space (retroactively, in fact, throughout their history – which in the case of the Doctor is quite extensive) is likewise “infected” with this paradox virally, and is now suffering the same destruction – and without a Quarantine to limit or slow the damage to the universe. In short, those who came to help the peaceful Silence have accidentally spread the Paradox Virus to the entire universe, and it is going to be unmade.  And the Doctor himself is eventually one of the more high-profile victims, as he and the Tardis are destroyed.

The Silence see one opportunity to avert this disaster – which was the second part (half?) of the dream. Fighting Paradox with paradox, they decide that while their own doom may be inevitable, they will not let the universe be destroyed for their sake. By going back throughout history and the universe itself and eradicating all trace of their own existence, they can ‘cure’ the universe of the Paradox forever, so that they will be the only ones subject to its destruction. To this end, they obtain the ability to make all beings forget their existence, and they wipe the slate clean.

Unfortunately, it’s not perfect, and certain beings – like the Doctor, prior to his rendering of assistance to the Silence, who stubbornly refuses to simply accept the holes in history and memory where the Silence has been. His continued meddling and effort to solve the mystery and ‘repair’ whatever damage is being done – not realizing the damage amounts to emergency surgery to save all of time and space – threatens to re-release the viral Paradox and undo all that the Silence has done to inoculate the universe. So the Silence end up forced to destroy the Doctor – or at least attempt to do so – to stop him.

Of course, my dream was full of a great amount of vivid detail, and vignettes that I’ve already partly forgotten even since writing this. But I thought the high concept was interesting enough to share. How would that be for a twist on the Scary Monster theme?

 

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