This isn't my favourite episode of series one but it's definitely not my least. In some other news, I have plotted the key plot points from books 2-6 and have some scenes wrote for them which is slightly embarrassing considering we're not even done with the first book yet.

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The Protector stepped out of the TARDIS first, the TARDIS having parked herself in the corner of a large room. The Time Lady raised a brow glancing around as the Doctor and Rose stepped out of the TARDIS.

"So, it's two hundred thousand, and it's a spaceship." The Doctor told Rose after she shut the TARDIS door. The Protector had already begun to walk around the room, looking at where they had landed. "No, wait a minute, space station, and er, go and try that gate over there." The Doctor corrected. "Off you go."

"Two hundred thousand?" Rose questioned.

"Two hundred thousand." The Doctor repeated with a nod as he leaned against the TARDIS.

"Right." Rose opened the TARDIS door behind her. "Adam? Out you come."

The boy did as told and stepped out and his jaw dropped the second his eyes fell on the sight in front of him. "Oh, my God."

"Don't worry, you'll get used to it."

"Where are we?"

"Good question. Let's see." Rose paused, pretending to assess where they were. "So, er, judging by the architecture, I'd say we're around the year two hundred thousand," Rose repeated what the Doctor had told her. The Protector shook her head chuckling from a nearby pillar. Rose playfully narrowed her eyes at the Time Lady. "If you listen-"

"Yeah," Adam replied. They both stopped and a humming noise in the background continued through the silence.

"Engines. We're on some sort of space station." Rose smiled. "Yeah, definitely a space station. It's a bit warm in here. They could turn the heating down." She muttered then nodded at the gate. "Tell you what - let's try that gate." She headed over and Adam continued staring at the room. "Come on!"

The Protector shook her head and clicked her fingers in Adams's face as she walked past, the man blinked and then quickly followed the Time Lords after Rose.

"Here we go!" Rose went up a few steps after opening the gate, a large window showing the full view of the Earth. "And this is... I'll let the Protector describe it."

"Oh, but I was enjoying your explanation so much." The Protector smirked as she replied in a sarcastic tone. She sighed dramatically and rolled her eyes as Rose glared playfully at her. "Okay then, welcome to the Fourth great and vast Human Empire." She nodded at the planet and then frowned slightly. It looked... off but she couldn't place her finger on how or why. "And there it is right in front of you." She looked at Adam for a moment. "Is planet Earth at its great height and it's mighty. Covered with enormous cities, it currently has five moons and because you lot are like rabbits a population of ninety-six billion." She paused for a moment and shook her head at the thought, they really were rabbits. "And not only that but you've reached for the stars now, Earth is the hub of a galactic domain stretching across a million planets, a million species, with mankind right in the heart of it." She frowned again as she finished. "Or it should be..." She muttered.

Adam fainted a moment after the Protector finished her speech, the Time Lady rolled her eyes and the Doctor sighed slightly. "He's your boyfriend." He said to Rose.

"Not anymore." She replied in a dull tone.

"Well, I'm not babysitting him." The Protector shook her head and reached into her pocket while kneeling down beside Adam. She pulled out a small bottle no larger than her finger and opened the top, putting it under Adams's nose. The man instantly gasped and his eyes snapped open.

"Smelling salts." She stated and put the bottle back into her pocket. "But mine are a bit stronger." She winked at Rose. "Stop sleeping on the job." She patted his shoulder as he sat up.

"Sorry." He apologised.

"Although I've never had someone faint before which is impressive." The Protector shrugged. "At least you didn't throw up I guess." She shrivelled up her nose at the thought.

The Doctor rolled his eyes. "Come on Adam." He helped the man stand up and put his arm over his shoulder. The Doctor guided him out of the observation deck and they went down a corridor before walking into what looked like a central hub full of small vending stations.

The Protector instantly frowned. "This is wrong."

"You're going to like this." The Doctor said, ignoring the Time Lady's muttering. "Fantastic period of history. The human race at its most intelligent. Culture, art, politics. This era has got fine food, good manners."

"Out of the way!" A man shouted as he walked past. Suddenly a loud horn went off and loads of people appeared out of nowhere, walking towards vending stations as they opened.

"I knew it was wrong." The Protector muttered again frowning deeply. "It felt wrong, it looked wrong..."

"You kept your mouth quiet." The Doctor glanced at her. "With your great explanation and all."

The Protector rolled her eyes. "There's no point in me pointing it out to you, you'll just tell me that everything is fine. You'd see a great big red flag and just ignore that."

The Doctor rolled his eyes at her as Rose smirked slightly. "Fine cuisine?" She looked at the Doctor.

"My watch must be wrong." He frowned and tapped it. "No, it's fine..." He looked around. "It's weird." 

"That's what comes of showing off." Rose looked between the Time Lords. "Your history's not as good as you thought it was."

"Showing off?" The Protector chuckled. "Need I remind you of what happened just after exiting the TARDIS?" She raised a brown.

The Doctor nodded. "And my history's perfect."

"Your ability to pilot the TARDIS with your 'perfect history' however, is not." The Protector pointed out with a smug grin. Rose shook her head at them both.

The Doctor just glared at the Protector.

"They're all human," Adam said quietly. "What about the millions of planets, the millions of species?" He looked at the Protector. "Where are they?"

"Yes." The Protector nodded, pulling her attention away from annoying the Doctor to look at the young man. "That's actually a very good question." She said before she walked off, looking at the vendors and the people waiting in line. "I'm just going to take a look..."

The Doctor shook his head at the Time Lady and guided Adam towards one of the vending stations. "Adam, me old mate, you must be starving."

"No, I'm just a bit time sick."

"No, you just need a bit of grub." He corrected. "Oi, mate - how much is a kronkburger?" He asked the man standing on the other side of the counter.

"Two credits twenty, sweetheart." He replied. "Now join the queue."

"Money. We need money." The Doctor looked around and smiled at a nearby cash machine nearby. "Let's use a cashpoint."

Attention all staff. A loud voice through the floors speakers announced. All coverage of the Glasgow water riots being transferred five through nine.

'The news?' The Protector frowned as she continued looking around. 'Is that what this is?'

Meanwhile, the Doctor used his screwdriver on a nearby cashpoint and a small white plastic stick came out of it. "There you go, pocket money." He handed it to Adam. "Don't spend it all on sweets."

"How does it work?" He asked.

The Doctor sighed while rolling his eyes. "Go and find out. Stop nagging me. The thing is, Adam, time travel's like visiting Paris. You can't just read the guidebook, you've got to throw yourself in. Eat the food, use the wrong verbs, get charged double and end up kissing complete strangers." He frowned. "Or is that just me?" He waved both Rose and Adam off. "Stop asking questions, go and do it. Off you go, then. Your first date."

"You're going to get a smack, you are," Rose warned, pointing at the Doctor as she walked away.

The Doctor only grinned and turned around before spotting the Protector walking up to two women. The Doctor quickly walked up to her. The Protector sighed as the Doctor grinned, the two of them getting to the humans at the same time. "Er, this is going to sound daft, but can you tell me where I am?"

The Protector rolled her eyes. "You have to poke your big ears into things when I'm just about to ask them what is going on."

"Floor One Three Nine." A dark-skinned woman answered giving the Time Lord an odd look. "Could they write it any bigger?" She looked up at the wall where the numbers were painting into it.

"Floor one three nine of what?" The Doctor questioned aloud before speaking telepathically to the Time Lady while he narrowed his eyes at her. "Not my fault you walked off and I had to babysit Adam."

"Must've been a hell of a party." The other woman with light skin commented.

"I did say I'm not babysitting him, and you even agreed yourself."

The dark-skinned woman who wore a blazer compared to the other woman who wore a flower-pattened top. "You're on Satellite Five."

The Protector frowned as the Doctor questioned: "And what is Satellite Five."

"Come on, how could you get on board without knowing where you are?" The woman in the blazer rolled her eyes.

"Look at him, he's stupid." The Protector cut in, nodding at the Doctor, who narrowed his eyes at her.

"Hold on, wait a minute." The woman in the flowery top frowned. "Are you a test?" She looked between them. "Some sort of management test kind of thing?"

"Damn it, they saw right through us." The Protector said while exaggerating a sigh. The Doctor shook his head and held up his psychic paper.

"We were warned about this in basic training. All workers have to be versed in company promotion."

"Right, fire away, ask your questions." The woman in the blazer nodded. "If it gets me to Floor five hundred I'll do anything."

The Protector frowned. "Floor five hundred, what's so special there?"

"The walls are made of gold." She nodded. "And you should know, Management." She looked between them. "So, this is what we do." She walked over to a monitor on the wall, and the Time Lords followed along with the other woman. "Latest news, sandstorms on the new Venus archipelago. Two hundred dead. Glasgow water riots into their third day. Space Lane seventy-seven closed by sunspot activity. And over on the Bad Wolf channel, the Face of Bo has just announced he's pregnant."

The Protector raised a brow. "Congratulations to the Face of Bo." She nodded.

"I get it. You broadcast the news." The Doctor nodded.

"Catch up." The Doctor narrowed his eyes at the Time Lady's comment.

"We are the news." The woman corrected. "We're the journalists. We write it, package it and sell it. Six hundred channels all coming out of Satellite Five, broadcasting everywhere."

The Protector crossed her arms. "And how do you get the information up here?" She tilted her head slightly. "Or are there people on the ground doing the real journalism?"

The woman in the blazer shook her head. "Follow us and we'll show you."

An alarm blared and the Doctor looked to where Rose and Adam were still sitting on benches. "Oi! Mutt and Jeff!" He called. "Over here!"

×××

"Now, everybody behave." Cathica, the dark-skinned woman said, after the Time Lords, Rose and Adam followed her and Suki into a newsroom. "We have a management inspection." She looked at the Time Lords. "How do you want it, by the book?"

The Doctor nodded. "Right from scratch, thanks."

"Okay. So, ladies, gentlemen, multi-sex, undecided or robot,- my name is Cathica Santini Khadeni." She smiled at the Doctor. "That's Cathica with a C, in case you want to write to Floor five hundred praising me, and please do. Now, please feel free to ask any questions. The process of news gathering must be open, honest, and beyond bias. That's company policy."

"Actually, it's the law." Suki corrected.

Cathica gritted her teeth slightly as she spoke through them. "Yes, thank you, Suki." She walked up to the chair in the centre of the octagonal desk, seven people sat down in front of the sides of the desks. There were hand-shaped moulds on each side of the desk. "Okay, keep it calm. Don't show off for the guests. Here we go." She released into the chair. "And engage safety." The seven people all held their hands over the prints on the table in front of them and lights turned on around the room.

The Protector's eyebrows rose as Cathica clicked her fingers and her forehead suddenly opened up a tiny door in the middle of it. "That's... different."

"And three, two, and spike."

A beam of light shone down from the ceiling and into the door to her brain.

"Compressed information, streaming into her." The Doctor explained as he stared. "Reports from every city, every country, every planet, and they all get packaged inside her head. She becomes part of the software. Her brain is the computer."

"If it all goes through her, she must be a genius."

The Protector tore her eyes away from Cathica to shake her head at Rose. "There's too much information for her to remember, if she did her head would quite literally explode. Her brain is like a processor, as soon as her head closes, she forgets it all."

Rose frowned. "So, what about all these people round the edge?"

"They've all got tiny little chips in their head, connecting them to her and they transmit six hundred channels." The Doctor explained. "Every single fact in the Empire beams out of this place. Now that's what I call power."

The Protector crossed her arms. "It may be power but it's wrong."

The Doctor nodded in agreement.

Rose turned to Adam who shifted slightly. "Do you want to get out?"

"No." He shook his head. "No, this technology, it's amazing."

"It's wrong." The Protector frowned. "It's like candy, amazing but so wrong."

Rose looked at the Time Lords. ""Trouble?"

The Doctor grinned. "Oh, yeah."

The Protector watched closely as the light continued to shine into Cathicas head as Suki gasped and pulled her hands away. The other six people around the desk all removed their hands a moment later and the beam stopped and the door in Cathica's head closed.

"Come off it, Suki." Cathica huffed. "I wasn't even halfway. What was that for?"

"Sorry. It must've been a glitch."

"Promotion." A voice on a tannoy announced as a wall lit up with the word and then flashing images of people who worked for Satellite Five.

"Come on. This is it. Come on." Cathica whispered as the faces continued to flash on the wall. "Oh God, make it me. Come on, say my name, say my name, say my name..."

The faces on the wall stopped shuffling and stopped on an image of Suki. "Promotion for Suki Macrae Cantrell. Please proceed to Floor five hundred." The Tannoy announced.

Suki's eyes widened. "I don't believe it. Floor five hundred."

"How the hell did you manage that?" Cathica stared at her. "I'm above you."

Suki shrugged. "I don't know. I just applied on the off chance and they've said yes."

Cathica huffed in annoyance. "That's so not fair. I've been applying to Floor Five Hundred for three years."

Rose frowned. "What's Floor five hundred?"

"The walls are made of gold." The Doctor explained.

The Proctor shook her head and rolled her eyes as they followed Suki out of the newsroom and down a corridor. "Humans..." She said to the Doctor. "What's the bet they haven't even been up there and seen 'the walls of gold'." She scoffed slightly "It's like believing in Santa Claus."

The Doctor didn't reply and only shook his head at the Time Lady as Suki walked towards a lift. "Cathica, I'm going to miss you." She looked at the woman who just rolled her eyes back at her. "Floor five hundred," she grinned and then hugged the Doctor. "Thank you."

The Doctor frowned slightly. "I didn't do anything."

"Well, you're my lucky charm."

"All right." He shrugged with a grin and hugged the woman back. "I'll hug anyone who isn't the Protector."

The Time Lady rolled her eyes. "I should have seen that one coming."

"Come on, it's not that bad," Rose told Adam who looked slightly green.

"What, with the head thing?" He grimaced.

"Yeah, well, she's closed it now!"

"Yeah, but. It's everything. It freaks me out. And I just need to. If I could just cool down. Sort of acclimatise."

The Protector raised a brow but didn't say a word as she listened in to Rose and Adam's conversation.

"How do you mean?" Rose asked.

The young man shrugged slightly. "Maybe I could just go and sit on the observation deck. Would that be all right?" He questioned. "Soak it in, you know. Pretend I'm a citizen of the year two hundred thousand."

"Do you want me to come with you?"

"No, no, you stick with the Doctor. You'd rather be with him. It's going to take a better man than me to get between you two."

The Protector frowned at his words. "Anyway, I'll be on the deck."

"Here you go," Rose said, taking the TARDIS key from her pocket before she handed it over to him. "Take the TARDIS key. You know, just in case it gets a bit too much."

The Protector's frown deepened further. "Yeah, like it's not weird in there," Adam muttered.

The Time Lady slowly shook her head but didn't look at the humans as a Tannoy made an announcement:

"All staff are reminded that the sixteen forty break session has been shortened by ten minutes. Thank you."

Suki's eyes widened as she stepped into the lift. "Oh, my God, I've got to go. I can't keep them waiting. I'm sorry." She apologised, carrying her bag in one arm while waving and grinning at the four. "Say goodbye to Steve for me." She told them as the lift doors began to close. "Bye!" She added just before the doors shut.

"Good riddance." Cathica muttered.

The Protector raised a brow as the Doctor looked at the woman. "You're talking like you'll never see her again. She's only going upstairs."

Cathica shrugged. "We won't. Once you go to Floor five hundred you never come back."

"I wonder why..." The Protector hummed to the Doctor.

The Time Lord glanced at her for a moment as he followed Cathica back through the cafeteria. "Have you ever been up there?"

She shook her head. "I can't. You need a key for the lift, and you only get a key with promotion. No one gets to five hundred except for the chosen few."

"Called it." The Protector sang into the Doctor's mind.

The Time Lord grumbled back at her.

The Protector crossed her arms as she thought carefully about her next question while the Doctor began to ask everything under the sun. Cathica huffed as they got back to the newsroom. "Look, they only give us twenty minutes maintenance. Can't you give it a rest?"

"But you've never been to another floor? Not even one floor down?" He asked, making himself comfy in the broadcast chair in the middle of the room.

"I went to floor sixteen when I first arrived. That's medical. That's when I got my head done, and then I came straight here. Satellite Five, you work, eat and sleep on the same floor. That's it, that's all." She looked between the Time Lords and Rose. "You're not management, are you."

"At last." The Doctor looked at the Time Lady. "She's clever."

The Protector rolled her eyes. "She wouldn't have known if you kept your mouth shut."

"Yeah, well, whatever it is, don't involve me." Cathica cut in as the Doctor opened his mouth to shoot a remark at the Time Lady. "I don't know anything."

The Protector raised a brow. "You're a journalist and you don't ask about the other floors?" She frowned. "Something is very wrong here."

"And why's all the crew human?" The Doctor added.

"What's that got to do with anything?" Cathica frowned.

"There's no aliens on board. Why?"

"I don't know. No real reason. They're not banned or anything."

"Then where are they?"

"I suppose immigration's tightened up. It's had to, what with all the threats."

"Threats?" The Protector cut in, looking at Cathica with narrowed eyes. "What kind of threats?"

Cathica shrugged at the Time Lady. "I don't know all of them. Usual stuff. And the price of space warp doubled so that kept the visitors away. Oh, and the government on Chavic Five's collapsed, so that lot stopped coming, you see. Just lots of little reasons, that's all."

"I don't like little reasons." The Protector remarked as she began to walk around the room, her arms still crossed against her chest.

"Adding up to one great big fact," the Doctor hummed, "and you didn't even notice."

"Doctor, Protector," Cathica sighed as she looked between them. "I think if there was any kind of conspiracy, Satellite Five would have seen it. We see everything."

"Only what they want you to see though." The Protector corrected.

"And we can see better. This society's the wrong shape, even the technology."

The woman huffed. "It's cutting edge."

"It's backwards." The Doctor corrected. "There's a great big door in your head. You should've chucked this out years ago."

"So, what do you think's going on?" Rose spoke up, looking between both the Time Lords.

"It's not just this space station, it's the whole attitude." The Doctor explained. "It's the way people think. The great and bountiful Human Empire's stunted. Something's holding it back."

"And how would you know?"

"Trust me, humanity's been set back about ninety years. When did Satellite Five start broadcasting?"

"Ninety-one years ago."

"Funny little coincidence that." The Protector raised a brow. "I think it's time to start poking around a bit more Doctor." The Time Lady suggested, glancing up at the ceiling for a moment. "Something is hurting the evolution of the Earth which means I have no choice but to get involved now."

The Doctor nodded and jumped out of the seat, the Protector, Rose and Cathica followed him. "Let's go find out who's in charge shall we?" He remarked as he made his way up to the mainframe. A locked grated door separating them from it.

─── ｡ﾟ☆･*.☽ .* ☆ﾟ. ───