“You know,” the Doctor says thoughtfully, “I’m not convinced that the West process is actually sound.”
“What,” Igora says blankly.
The Doctor has been working on her Magnum Opus for nearly fifteen years, at this point; her thesis-in-the-flesh that, dating be damned, there’s one way to find the perfect woman, and it lies on the cutting edge of deranged scientific fabrication. The Magnum Opus — Mo, as Igora took, long ago, to privately referring to it — has lain on the slab, physically finished, for almost twelve of those years, as the Doctor has investigated avenue after avenue for actually animating it, making it a she.
By Igora’s reckoning, the Doctor could have been finished six times over by now, but every time they get near to completing the theoretical work the Doctor has a fit of alleged perfectionism and throws it all out.
Igora, very quietly, thinks that perhaps the Doctor needs to discuss a fear of eventual success with a therapist.
“The West process has been used to animate several high-profile creations—” Igora begins, already knowing it’s futile; that by this time next week the wall-filling blackboard will be blank once more, the piles of journals and out-of-print, banned, and forbidden books relegated to storage; that the Doctor will have selected a new and even more challenging theoretical mountain to climb, one which will take years more.
“Oh, I dare say it works,” the Doctor says airily. “But I doubt its soundness. I am, after all, creating the perfect woman; the process much be unimpeachable in all particulars.”
Igora looks down at the pile of inter-library loans she’s just entered the lab with, glances sideways at Mo’s forever inert body, and suppresses a sigh.
“Yes, Doctor,” she says dutifully.
Igora remembers that her umbrella is still at the lab, about five minutes out of the door that evening. She eyes the glowering sky, sighs, and goes back for it.
The murmur of the Doctor’s voice is unremarkable — she spends all hours talking to herself. Igora quietly retrieves the umbrella from the break room, then pauses in the corridor.
She could almost swear there’s somebody else replying to the Doctor.
It is, of course, none of her business if that’s the case; it’s just odd, that’s all. The Doctor is vehemently introverted, and hates discussing any of her work with her peers, or “thieving charlatan scoundrels” as she collectively refers to them.
Igora hesitates; she should mind her own business. The Doctor’s clearly in no distress; no raised voices or agitation. Perhaps, unlikely as it seems, she’s made a friend.
And then she swears she hears her own name, which is terribly startling, because she wouldn’t have said with any confidence that the Doctor knows she has a first name. It’s enough to freeze her in place, and with her stillness and newly attuned attention, she hears the next thing pretty clearly.
“Oh, that’s what you always say,” the Doctor complains.
“If it’s ever untrue, I’ll stop,” her visitor replies. A low and melodious voice, nobody Igora knows. She flushes with shame at listening in, and begins to inch back towards the exit; but she has to pass the lab door to get there, the conversation only getting more audible as she nears.
“I’ll simply say, Oh, Corinne,” the Doctor says sarcastically, “I’ve wasted a decade of your life, nothing to show for it for either of us, I’m a fraud and a wretch, sorry about that—”
“You could tell her truth,” the stranger says.
The lab door is ajar; no wonder she can hear them. She makes her steps as unobtrusive as possible, creeps, cringing.
“Oh, the truth,” the Doctor says, with the withering air of someone well-used to this particular argument, and unconvinced.
“People have been known to be swayed by it!”
If she turns her head, she can probably get a glimpse through the door, the narrowest slice, panning across the lab as she passes. It would be awful. It would be more of an invasion than her presence already clearly is.
She doesn’t mean to. She means not to, truly.
Across the chessboard from one another, which the Doctor has offhandedly said (…lied…) for years is a perpetual game-by-correspondence with some fellow scientist or other, heads bent: the Doctor, scowling in concentration, hands rubbing over each other in agitation at the topic of conversation.
And the Magnum Opus.
“You always say that,” the Doctor says. “And you have that smug look on your face that means you’re about to say mate in three or some such—”
Mo makes an elegant gesture with a long-fingered hand. “Two, actually,” she says unapologetically.
The Doctor gnaws furiously on her thumb, staring at the board. “Rats!” she says.
Igora continues her silent walk to the exit, lets herself out, and walks to the bus stop. The rain starts halfway there; she scarcely notices, never mind remembers the umbrella clutched in her fist. All she can hear is the hiss of white noise in her ears from her own blood’s motion, all she can feel is the endless clutch of the muscles in her chest that drive it.
Wasted a decade.
Wasted a decade.
The Magnum Opus has been enlivened long enough to master chess, apparently.
