‘Is that the end of them, then – the Cult of Shining Darkness?’
Donna and the Doctor stood by the TARDIS and watched the bizarre little group, led by a jumping, squeaking Weiou (who’d clearly become so attached to his new specs that Donna suspected he’d be wearing them for ever), head off into the distance. In the valley below them was the biggest theme park she’d ever seen. From a long way off, they could hear the cheers and screams from a thousand mechanicals, all keen to find out what it was like to be a Squidgie.
‘Shouldn’t think so,’ said the Doctor. ‘It’s a state of mind more than an organisation. There’ll be millions more like them out there. Thinking the same, mean-spirited, tiny-minded thoughts. Scared of anything that’s different, that they don’t understand. And they’ll always be there, ready to blame someone else for the state of the universe.’
Donna sighed and linked her arm through his.
Donna pulled a ‘maybe’ face, gazing down into the valley.
‘You go through life, you know,’ she said. ‘Thinking you’re a good person. Well, maybe not always a good person. Sometimes just not a bad person. You get up every day, go to work or college or whatever,’ she added. ‘You watch the telly, go on holiday. All that stuff. And you just assume it’s the way it is. What your mum and dad tell you, what you see on the news, what you read in the papers. You don’t question it, unless it’s something about Posh’s latest frock, or the Royals or what-have-you. You just, y’know, take it all in, thinking that anyone who thinks different is wrong.’
‘Welllll,’ said the Doctor slowly. ‘They usually are. Especially when you’re a Ginger Goddess.’
Donna banged her head against his shoulder.
‘Nah,’ she said dismissively. ‘It’s not all that, godhood.’
She paused and breathed in the alien air of Pasquite, so full of strangeness that it almost hurt. ‘Travelling with you…’ Donna stopped. ‘Travelling with you, seeing all this stuff, risking life and limb – it scares the willies out of me, you know that.’
The Doctor raised cautionary eyebrows.
‘We can always go home, you know. Back to Chiswick, back to temping, holidays in Egypt – although I’d recommend Mexico, by the way – back to normality…’
Donna smiled and shook her head.
‘Meeting all these robots – all these machines, all these aliens…’ She paused. ‘What is “normal” anyway?’
The Doctor pointed to little group, a few hundred yards away: two machines, looking a bit like upright sunbeds, were walking along. On their shoulders were two kids – two Squidgie kids – laughing and squealing as the sunbeds leaned this way and that, pretending they were about to drop them.
‘That’s normal,’ he said. ‘Just people, being people.’
They stood in silence for a while, watching Pasquite’s yellow sun drift towards the horizon, listening to the noise, breathing in the smells of food and flowers and oil.
‘People,’ echoed Donna. ‘Just people.’