[36] An Apple a Day

Faith in the unknown was strange.

What did people actually believe in when they said they believed in God?

Is it forgiveness? Salvation? Maybe elightenment? Or perhaps, reincarnation? The promise of an afterlife?

But to make a transaction with the unknown. Is that true faith? Not transactions in a material sense; money, status, shelter, protection and influence, though these had certainly been afforded to leaders of the faithful throughout history. No. What I'm referring to, is the metaphysical; release at the end of mortal suffering, peace through restrained desire, forgiveness after confession.

No matter the religion, believers sought for them. People prayed because somewhere, somehow, they believed something of value would be returned.

That was how I, Charlotte Holmes, understood religion. Because I could not accept an answer of the unknown. We were people of science, trained to question whatever stood before us. To progress civilisation, mankind had to understand the unknown. Observe it. Measure it. Reproduce it. Disprove it if necessary. This is why I reject blind faith. Blind faith was the antithesis of that logic that built the very foundations of our world.

Even then, I could understand that humans were never fully creatures of logic. Just as I was a statistical anomaly, there existed just as big of a gap of people who allowed religion to exist.

People fear the unknown.

Beyond what mankind understood remained uncertainties that science had never completely erased. Death. Chance. Unfairness. As long as uncertainty existed, there would always be a blank space waiting for something to occupy it. A void— Something reason could approach but never completely fill, because at the bottom of that abyss, only belief could offer an answer.

Loss widened the void in people.

Prisoners. The bereaved. The sick. The displaced in society.

For some, that emptiness became intolerable. If the old self was weak, sinful, purposeless or rejected, belief offered another. A name. A community. A set of rules. Tangible goals to bind life to again. A reason to continue living.

But this void, filled by religion, could also become a weakness to be exploited.

Give pain a meaning. Give loneliness a community. Give fear an enemy. Then... grab them by the throat. Pull them with leashes. Stifle their voices by crushing their voices.

Never allow the void to close completely.

Keep them exhausted, keep them afraid. Repeat the same truths until repetition becomes habit and habit becomes identity. ...Incense. Ritual. Conditioning. Break them down and eventually, form a collective self strong enough to displace the individual beneath it, spirited away without ever leaving their own body.

This... is what a cult does.

The people in this cult had already gone remarkably far.

...I looked across the congregation.

Some watched me with uncertainty. Others stared through me with hollow eyes. A few seemed almost entranced. Some might still have been recoverable. Given the right medicine, the right treatment, perhaps something the Doctor could eventually obtain from our world to undo the conditioning.

...The possibility existed.

But... who was I to deny the faithful? 

Now they were a herd without a shepherd. Puppets with their strings still attached, waiting for another hand to take hold.

'Use them.' 'They'll be useful.' 'Keep them with us...'

A faint smile escaped me.

...Wasn't this simply another form of expansion that the Doctor envisioned?

People in this world... are resources too. 

It was easy to put the cultists to work. It took just a single day to become the voice they listened to. I created a means to direct them. Modified earpieces that repeated suggestions and instructions while they moved through the city. Once distributed, the cultists finally dispersed and expanded my reach. I began with the last area Lunallu had mentioned when speaking with the Doctor. The Lumen Stylus still retained the image I had taken of him, so I reproduced it onto film and gave copies to every group.

Find him. Observe him. Report back. Those who followed instructions were fed first and praised openly. Those who did not were fed last. Their devotion grew stronger, disregarding even their own bodies to carry out my instructions.

I also learnt how the cultists had survived outside for so long. Their baptism was little more than decomposed infected matter used to mask their scent, accompanied by clever noise diversions whenever they needed to cross denser areas.

Their equipment was worse. Most had spent too long confined inside the congregation. Malnourished, weak, and relying on stolen weapons and crude explosives taught to them by a former arsonist among their ranks. While they were disposable, handing them outside like that would only reduce the number of people available to me.

So I fed them proper food. Gave them better routes. Laid down instructions on when to run instead of fight.

Within several days, many reports began coming in. Since I'd told the cultists not to dismiss anything unusual, they reported nearly everything: strange equipment, weapons, vehicles, or anyone moving through infected territory with abnormal ease.

Most of it was useless, and I spent hours sifting through the noise.

No one had seen a man matching the Doctor's photograph, but that was hardly the only sign that could lead me to him.

Knowing the Doctor and his circumstances, he was bound to draw attention somehow. I only needed to recognise it.

Still, the useless reports continued.

Hours became days, and his voice began slipping between them.

'Charlotte.'

My fingers tightened around the next report.

'Still looking for me?'

A familiar tingle ran through my body.

"...Of course I am." The woman in the mirror looked worse each time I passed it; dishevelled hair, dark circles beneath my eyes. Three days without sleep had made the memories harder to separate from my own thoughts.

The other Charlottes had become restless too.

'Find him.' 'We're close.' 'He's still here.'

Different lives, different memories, all tightening around the same feeling of impatience. Somewhere in this world remained the only Doctor any of us had left.

That night, I found myself lying beside him again. I traced idle shapes across his chest with the tip of my Stylus, smiling at something only I could hear. A small laugh escaped me.

You should sleep.

"...I'm not tired."

You've been awake for three days.

"We were awake for three days once."

That's different.

I laughed softly.

"...Of course it is."

Charlotte.

"Mm?"

Sleep.

My smile widened as I drew another circle over his chest.

"...Stay until I do."

You needy girl...

I pulled the pillow closer against my chest, nestling into the warmth that wasn't there.

"...Hehe."

My eyes slowly closed.

And somewhere between sleep and memory, I was beside him again.

I wanted to see him again so badly.

By the time morning came, I had barely registered falling asleep at all.

"Oracle, we have brought you information about the one!"

A man dropped fervently to one knee before me, raising the report above his head with both hands.

I took it from him.

An older man had been seen crossing several districts in a single day on a black motorcycle that made almost no sound. The young woman travelling with him was even harder to ignore, cutting through infected with speed and strength far beyond an ordinary survivor. Blue hair, pale complexion, slight frame, dressed like a maid—the description was unmistakable.

—Yoru. I remembered her. One of the Doctor's earliest and most loyal followers.

And, after he disappeared... ...the first of them to die.

If she's here, then that man...

Several memories stirred at once, all reaching the same conclusion before I did.

'Follow her.'

A shiver ran through me as another memory of him surfaced with it.

"...I know."

From then on, I had the cultists watch Yoru instead—where she appeared, which roads she used, and where she disappeared from sight.

The reports narrowed quickly.

The same industrial district. The same few roads. Eventually, the same stretch of warehouses.

I went there myself.

The warehouse looked no different from the others around it. Rusted fixtures, cracked concrete, dust disturbed only by signs of recent movement. Most of those signs had been cleaned. ...Deliberately. To ordinary eyes, nothing remained. Under Photon, however, faint traces still lingered across the floor where rubber had pressed into the dust before being wiped away. They led towards the rear wall, then stopped at solid concrete.

...Found it.

My breathing caught.

Found it. Found it. Found it. Found it. Found it. Found it. Found it. Found it. Found it. Found it. Found it. Found it. I found it.

My legs gave out beneath me. I dropped onto the floor, staring at the wall as my lips trembled around a smile that kept widening.

I found you, Doctor.

Short, breathless laughs kept slipping out between each hurried breath.

I pushed myself back up, legs still unsteady, and stepped towards the concrete.

Behind this wall... is most certainly... the Doctor's Stronghold.

I reached for the familiar sense of his Party and sent a request.

Nothing...? I was certain it had gone through.

My smile faltered.

A tightness crept into my chest. For one awful moment, every thought rushed towards the same possibility.

No. No, no, no.

A faint scrape cut through the silence as my fingernails pressed harder against the wall.

"...Please."

Then I remembered Yoru, and the panic eased almost at once. She had been with him, so he was likely simply occupied.

Lunallu had once described another way of reaching him. Private communication required no device, only the familiar thought of calling that screen forward. Surely it would answer me now. After everything I remembered, everything I felt for him, surely that much could reach him.

I focused on the Doctor until the familiar screen surfaced.

...It worked. It finally worked this time.

A rush of happiness went through me so suddenly that I had to stop myself from laughing again. After all this time, after all those memories, there was finally something connecting me to him directly.

...Then another problem appeared.

What should I say?

I wanted to ask if he remembered me. If he knew what I had seen. Why he had lied. How much he truly remembered. ...Was he really the Doctor? I thought back to every interaction we had shared since meeting in Eden. His face. His voice. The way he looked at me. The way he didn't. Could I really look at that man and see the Doctor from my memories?

I didn't know yet. Too many questions. Too many answers I wasn't ready to hear.

...Better to keep it simple.

So I settled for the simplest thing I needed from him.

Accept it.

I waited. The silence stretched long enough for me to start biting at my nails without realising it.

'Send it again.' 'What if he doesn't want—'

—Shut up...! ...The Doctor... he'll accept it. He'll accept me. He must accept me... He will... right?

My hand tightened against the wall as the voices began piling over one another.

He saw it. Why isn't he answering? Doctor, answer me... answer me!

I was about to send another message when the familiar connection suddenly settled into place.

"H-Hehe... hehehe... Doctor... Doctor..." I clutched my chest tightly.

He had accepted me into his Party.

I knew it. I trusted him.

Still, the relief was almost dizzying.

Then his reply appeared.

Tell me when you're done.

My eyes slowly returned to the wall.

A chill ran through me.

...Did he know?

That I was here? That I had found this place? Had he somehow understood what I wanted without me saying it?

Does he know about us? ...The memories?

I read his message again. He hadn't asked what I was doing. He hadn't asked where I was. He had simply told me to let him know when I was finished. My lips slowly curled upwards.

...Permission. I was given permission.

I placed my hand against the concrete again. This time, the wall answered. Thin lines of white light appeared beneath my palm. They spread through the concrete in patterns I already knew, joining into the outline of a doorway before the wall began to separate without moving inward or outward.

Black corridors waited beyond.

Soft light along the floor and ceiling, exactly as I remembered.

For a moment, I couldn't move. The memories surged again, and warmth spread through every part of me until my eyes blurred.

Welcome back.

My lips trembled.

"...I'm back."

I stepped through before the entrance could close, one hand trailing along the smooth black wall as if I needed to prove it was real.

The Stronghold recognised me.

I looked down the corridor. If the Doctor wasn't here now, then this was still where he returned to.

What had the Doctor been doing all this time? I found myself strangely entranced by the thought.

For the first time in days, my steps slowed. The Stronghold was quiet. I wandered without urgency, taking in the rooms he had chosen to use, the things he had collected, the small traces of a life being built here. Some belonged unmistakably to Yoru. Others could only have been his.

I lingered over those. A chair pulled away from a table. Equipment left where it had last been used. Supplies organised with a logic I could almost follow. ...Little pieces of the Doctor as he was now.

And with each one, the man I remembered began to overlap with the man I had met in Eden.

The bedroom stopped me. ...There was only one bed.

I stared at it for a moment before crossing the room and dropping onto it face-first.

"Doctor... haah... Doctor..."

...His scent was still there.

Faint, mixed into the sheets and pillow, but unmistakable enough that warmth rushed through me before I could stop it. Memories surfaced with it—quiet mornings, moans mixed with pleasure as our bare bodies intertwined, and entire days we had once surrendered to nothing but pleasure. I relived those happy days as I pressed my face deeper into the pillow.

...Then I noticed another scent. Female.

I got up immediately. A long blue strand of hair lay caught beside the pillow.

I stared at it longer than I meant to. Something unpleasant twisted in my chest. Of course she stayed here. Of course they shared... the only bed.

"...Why..."

My fingers tightened around the strand.

If this was how he lived now, then I wanted to know what else had changed.

I left the bedroom and continued through the Stronghold. If I wanted to know what the Doctor was hiding, then I needed to find where he kept the things he valued most.

The answer surfaced from the others before I could think it through myself.

'There.' 'He always keeps them there.' 'Check beneath the shelf.'

...I knew where to look.

I followed the memory deeper inside and stopped before a locked storage compartment. A metal lock held it shut.

I knew where the key was too. The answer came with the same unnerving certainty, borrowed from too many versions of myself that had watched him hide it before. My hand slipped beneath the nearby shelf and found the small recess hidden underneath.

The key was there. I held it between my fingers for a moment.

The same habit. The same hiding place. Another coincidence became harder to believe. Perhaps I hadn't been mistaken about him at all. ...Perhaps I had simply been fooled.

I inserted it into the lock and turned it. A quiet click followed. Inside were several things he had deliberately kept away from Yoru.

...And among them, a notebook.

It was thick and worn at the edges, its pages swollen slightly from use. Coloured tabs stuck out from different sections, with notes crammed into the margins in several inks. It reminded me of one I had found in a deserted tuition centre.

I recognised his handwriting before I even opened it.

My pulse quickened again.

The first pages were ordinary enough. Supplies. Routes. Names. Places he had visited. Some were detailed entries, others little more than bubbles and lines branching into one another across the page. ...Yet even his uncertainties were written strangely. They weren't posed as possibilities, but more like eventualities.

(BASE)(WEAPONS)(DAILIES)(AREAS)(COLLECTION)(TIME SENSITIVE)

I continued flipping through the pages, faster each time, gripped by something I couldn't quite name. With every page, the anaemic copy of the Doctor I had thought him to be began to take on more of the man I remembered.

Eventually, the entries flipped to the section titled (Operators)

"...What... is this..."

The notebook nearly slipped from my hands.

The next several pages were no longer simple records.

They recreated the mindscapes of the individuals documented here. Patterns, personality, terms written in shorthand... and multiple scenarios... no... futures.

(MIRA)(LUNALLU)(YORU)(...)

When I saw my own name recorded alongside these familiar names, my breathing hitched.

Charlotte Holmes. Intellectual. Disclose information only if necessary.

More followed beneath those words marked with bold red underlines.

"This is all... about me."

I read it again. And again. There were things written there I had never told him. Things I had never told anyone.

"...The Mystery of Hanta River... the Darkside Butcher... these are all..."

The other Charlottes knew them with perfect clarity. They were stories only known to them.

My breaths came shorter as my eyes jumped from one note to the next, trying to fit each fragment against the lives inside my head. Even there, some of them had no place. And finally, in an entry where it reads... 'likes and interests'...

"...Chocolate. ...Ha... hahaha... ha..."

The Doctor lost his memories? Have I really... been fooled? Me? Charlotte Holmes?

The floor met me before I realised my legs had given way.

How? The question multiplied faster than I could follow it. How long had he known? Where had he learnt this? Had I told him in another life? Had he remembered something I hadn't? Why were there details about me that even I couldn't find among those memories?

Beneath my entry were more names. Transporter. Major Cael. Nyra Adjest. Riven Arclight. Percy Valemont. Aurelia Caelestis. Evelyn. Cinthia White. Hector. Nunally Eidaheart... More followed. Tens of them. Hundreds. Each entry dense with the same shorthand, detailing almost everything about each person, including those that had yet to arrive in this world. The women, I noticed, often had considerably more written beneath their names.

My fingers trembled against the page.

He couldn't simply know them. He remembered them.

The Doctor remembered all of us from the start.

My thoughts scattered.

Then why lie? Why pretend not to know me? Why speak as though our world was foreign to him? Why insist he had lived here for twenty-seven years? Twenty-seven years... 

I looked around the Stronghold again. This world. Its technology. Its history. Ancient. 

My pulse began climbing. 

He knew people who had not appeared yet. Histories that had never happened here. Things about me that even my own memories could not explain. Possible timelines? Possible futures? ...And somehow, the Doctor had been born here decades before any of us arrived.

"...No."

Not born. He'd never said so.

...My eyes widened.

I had only believed that because he had led me to that conclusion myself.

The thought arrived so suddenly that everything else seemed to fall into place around it.

"There's no way... Doctor, it can't be... ...You came back?"

The words barely left me before my vision blurred.

"Ugh... Doctor... Doctor...!"

Tears slipped down onto the open pages.

Twenty-seven years in this world. Possessing memories of people who had not arrived yet.

My hand rose to my mouth as another broken laugh escaped me.

"...You really..."

The Doctor hadn't forgotten us. He had remembered everything. Even before we came. My shoulders shook as I looked back down at the entries, tears spotting the ink between names I recognised.

He had been waiting. Preparing. For all of us.

The thought made something inside me give way.

I clutched the notebook tighter as more tears fell.

This world was older. Primitive. The same thought had followed me ever since I began comparing Eden to depictions of our world's Antediluvian past. It had always felt less like another world and more like something buried beneath my own. And yet the Doctor was here first, carrying knowledge of people and histories that belonged to a future that had not happened yet.

There was only one explanation that fit.

The Doctor had gone backwards. Not reincarnated. Not reborn.

...The Doctor had returned to the past. Not merely years. An age so distant that our own history remembered it only through fragments and records. And somehow, he had already spent twenty-seven years living here.

In the same world we lived in. Cyverse.

My mind raced through everything he had told me before. Every careful answer. Every omission. Every moment I had mistaken hesitation for ignorance. He hadn't forgotten. He had been hiding it.

"...Why?"

The question hurt, but another thought arrived before I could dwell on it.

"...Because he knew what was coming."

My gaze dropped back to the pages. The Stronghold. The routes. The supplies. The names. Us.

A sob caught somewhere between my chest and throat.

"...You came back for us."

The thought settled so perfectly that I stopped questioning it.

...Another memory surfaced. A close companion to the Doctor, lost to Void. Not long after, his attention had turned towards a megacorporation experimenting with warps, temporal distortions and other technologies they barely understood. He had pursued them more aggressively than usual. Back then, I had thought it was anger. Revenge, perhaps.

...Now, another possibility seemed obvious.

He had wanted their research.

My hands began to shake.

"...You actually did it."

He hadn't returned simply because he knew what was coming.

He had come back for the people he couldn't save. For us.

The Doctor had probably never expected me to remember this much—to recognise his habits well enough to find what he had hidden.

My gaze fell to the notebook again. Something I was never supposed to understand had been left within reach only because he thought I couldn't. That thought reminded me of the fruit of Genesis. Forbidden knowledge, given a shape.

I looked down at the book in my hands.

Perhaps Eve had reached for the fruit for the same reason I had opened this book.

Strangely, the voices began to quiet.

For the first time since the memories returned, all those different lives seemed to settle around the same conclusion. ...The Doctor wanted another chance. A second life with people who no longer remembered loving him. Starting again as strangers, acquaintances. Perhaps even the naivety that the sole fact that we were still alive was enough for him.

I almost laughed. How very like him, and terribly unfair.

...Because it wasn't working.

Ten years was enough to see the cracks. The heavy emotions that we'd all shared. If that very darkness is pulled back from the very abyss he had left us in... that unknown that had broken us down to empty shells...

"...How far... will we sink together?"

The mere words of the Doctor. His presence. His touch. Bit by bit. Memories would return.

"...Anamnesis."

A concept of philosophy, defining the crossing of the soul's memory, through time and space.

An unknown that I would not have accepted. An unknown that only the broken would hold on to.

But all the same... if I could love the Doctor in this time again... then I would preach it.

I would embrace religion.

The Doctor would be my salvation.

Ah... as I surrendered the vestiges of my reason to my heart, the murky feelings had cleared. My eyes saw light again. My body, released.

As I basked in this revelation, I slowly left the Stronghold.

Perhaps... my mind had finally found new stimulation. The future became clearer to me.

If the awakening of memories were going to be an eventuality, why should we wait?

If the Doctor intended to draw those memories out little by little, just enough to guide us back towards him on his terms, then perhaps I could spoil that part of his plan... just a little. The others deserved a bite too. To stand on the same ground as him. To remember what had once belonged to them, rather than being left confused by feelings they couldn't understand.

The Doctor could not be monopolised, no matter how much any of us wished for it.

...We needed to keep each other in check.

"This way... hehehe... even I..."

But this should be done without the Doctor's knowledge.

For the Doctor to choose any one of us out of pity or guilt... would be the worst outcome.

We could remember, while letting the Doctor approach us with the same care and hesitation as though everything were new. To quietly enjoy those small beginnings again, while carrying everything that had once come after.

Fairness must exist, for us to stay above darkness.

The thought made me smile.

In this world where survival remained the Doctor's primary goal, we would also be more useful to him. If those memories were going to return anyway, I saw little reason not to hurry them along.

All the way.

...But before all of that, there was one last thing I needed to know. Whether he truly possessed the one trait I could never mistake in the Doctor.

I flipped back to the section marked TIME SENSITIVE, my eyes settling on the information about the settlement.

One final test.

By the next afternoon, the two of us stood overlooking the settlement as several buildings burned in the distance.

Further in was the Doctor, limping away from a pile of dead bodies belonging to the cultists.

...Lunallu's hand pressed against my throat while her chains wound tightly around the rest of me.

"And this is your form of test?! To bring me here, to put the Doctor's life at risk?!"

Nearby, one of my modified relay devices—the one I had given Lunallu—lay crushed, sparks still crackling from its remains.

"He was... never in any real danger."

Her grip tightened.

"One mistake would have killed him."

"I accounted for that."

There had been contingencies. Routes kept open. People positioned where I needed them. Even infection itself, from what little I understood of the Doctor's notes, might not have been completely irreversible.

But the test had answered what I needed to know.

...That uncanny desire to save others. Even at the risk of his own life. The stubborn refusal to accept a loss simply because everyone else considered it reasonable.

It may have seemed trivial, but I could never mistake that part of him.

And I had confirmed it with my own eyes.

"Charlotte Holmes." I could feel the woman before me tremble in fury.

Another lover of the Doctor.

Lunallu pulled the chain tighter until the links bit deeper into me.

"...Are you an enemy of the Doctor?"

I smiled.

"Are you?"

"Why are you doing this?! For someone as smart as you, to gamble the Doctor's life like this?! There must have been other ways! What were you trying to prove?!"

"Hehe... If I had been wrong, I would have followed him."

Her expression changed.

"You crazy bitch...! Charlotte... You've really crossed the line!"

"...Do you think you're special, Warden?"

Her eyes narrowed.

I let the chains hold me. There was little reason to struggle.

"Do you really believe those memories belong only to you?"

That stopped her. The chains slackened with her hesitation. 

"What do you...  No, don't tell me... Charlotte, you... too...?"

Ah... I knew that expression. I had worn it too. But too bad. The Truth is far deeper than you can imagine.

"The Doctor has always been stubborn. He enters situations he shouldn't. Takes risks he doesn't need to. Refuses to abandon people when every reasonable calculation tells him otherwise."

I knew that now more clearly than ever.

That was how we had been saved.

Again.

And again.

And again.

My smile faded.

"But if this truly is another chance..."

I looked towards the settlement below.

"...then perhaps we shouldn't keep waiting for him to save us."

"Speaking in riddles again... detective!"

"Relax. I'll show you."

"Charlotte, what are you trying to do..."

"Don't worry. I don't intend to hurt you."

For the first time, I began to channel my other ability.

"W-What... this is... impossible...!"

"...I just want you to have a taste."

It was never meant to be used like this.

"See the Doctor. ...And the Truth that I'd reached."

[XX]

I only intended to loosen a fragment.

Enough to point her towards the same answer. To stir whatever her own memories had buried.

Nothing more.

I touched her with a solidified projection of the Lumen Stylus.

"Now... take a bite too."

Lunallu crumpled to the ground, both hands clutching her head as her pupils widened.

"C-Ch...arlotte... the Doc...tor... what is this... what is happening to me...?!"

I had only meant to open it a little. Instead, something inside her gave way.

"Ugh... t-this is... me... it's all... me..."

Lunallu opened the door to her memories.

...Our memories.

Something inside me swelled as I watched her below me, trembling beneath the weight of everything rushing back.

My smile widened.

We'll start with us.

We'll build the foundation, and realise the Doctor's ideal world.

A world for all our loves to bear fruit.

"Let's turn this world into a Garden of Eden."