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System Shock
(Justin Richards) |
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 Name: Voracians
Format:
Book.
Time of Origin: Late
20th century, never made it beyond first few minutes of 21st.
Appearances: "System
Shock" and "Millennium
Shock".
Doctors: Fourth
Doctor.
Companions: Sarah
Jane Smith and Harry
Sullivan.
History: The Voracians could best
be described as, in one regard, the complete flip side of the Cybermen.
While the Cybermen have mechanical bodies but mostly organic brains,
the Voracians possessed mechanical brains with mostly organic bodies.
They originated from the far-off planet of Vorella, which evolved
along a similar path to Earth’s except that the dominant species
was reptilian rather than mammal - based, looking like a cross between
lizards and snakes. Eventually they reached a similar stage in development
to ours; utter dependence on technology. Eventually they developed
a highly advanced A.I. called Voracia, which became self-aware after
only seven minutes and, within an hour, had decided that organic life
wasn’t efficient and should be wiped out. Although Voracia was
defeated by the Vorellans, before its destruction it acknowledged
that organic life had its advantages, although it still believed they
should be slaves of the digital life form. Thus, before its death,
Voracia created some Vorellan/machine hybrids that it called Voracians,
who left Vorella for Earth.
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| The Fourth
Doctor |
|
The
Voracians were incredibly deadly. Their brains were mostly robotic,
but organic subsystems were added- the lobes were added to provide
extra storage and intuitive processing controlled by the main positronics.
Native Vorellan intelligence and will apparently transcended the brain
and was in their whole being, so other organic parts were introduced,
mostly at random and based on what was available. Some Voracians just
had a few organic limbs, while others were just metal brains in an
organic body. Those often needed to eat and sleep, even though the
very thought of that disgusted them. Although the original Voracians
were reptilian, they were experts at synthetic disguise, and, of course,
any humans who were converted would be human as well. They possessed
enhanced strength, speed and durability, although their synthetic
flesh could be destroyed fairly easily without causing them any pain.
Injuries to their metal parts would be felt, although would only stop
them for a few minutes and were easily repairable.
Their objective on Earth was
fairly straightforward; they saw themselves as the bearers of Voracia’s
vision, and intended to ‘liberate’ all technology on the
planet, i.e. make it sentient and have it rise up against the humans.
To do this they set up a computer company called I2, and used this
cover to create a computer program called Voractyll that could increase
the power of every chip on the planet, but an MI5 agent called Kevin
Sutcliffe stole it. Before the Voracians murdered him, he managed
to slip the disc onto the first people he could; namely, the Fourth
Doctor and Sarah
Jane Smith. The Doctor and Sarah were captured by two MI5 agents
who’d been monitoring the main I2 building (They’d been
following Sutcliffe’s murderer), but were let go after their
UNIT credentials were checked up and they were vouched for by Harry
Sullivan, now an agent of MI5 following his retirement from UNIT.
Attempting
to find out what computers were used by I2 to let him analyse the
CD’s files, Harry smuggled The Doctor into the building, where
he discovered that aliens were present. Sarah attempted to infiltrate
I2 herself, but her attempt was seen through and she was given a pen
with a tracking device in it. Fortunately it didn’t interfere
with the operations of MI5 and The Doctor and the truth was uncovered,
but it was too late - Voractyll was on the Internet. Thankfully, The Doctor managed to track down a second version of Voractyll, which
he was able to convince of the value of humanity; the two were arguing
over the superiority of logic, and if The Doctor turned Voractyll
off and then restarted it, it would use the same argument while The Doctor would try another tactic. Convinced of the value of humanity,
The Doctor’s Voractyll battled and defeated the Voracians one,
and then repaired all the damage it had done before destroying itself.
The Doctor arranged for all of I2’s alien technology to be destroyed,
but there was one small problem; Sarah’s company pen was still
intact, and the Sarah of that era had kept it as a souvenir…
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Millennium Shock
(Justin Richards) |
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Later on, in the last two weeks of 1999, Sarah gave Harry
the pen and the Fourth Doctor arrived in a computer company during
a break in. Aided by a member of the company, George Gardner, The
Doctor and Harry discovered that a second group of Voracians were
working undercover in a company called Silver Bullet, and had developed
a chip that would actually cause the Millennium Bug problem in a
device that otherwise would remain functioning. Having managed to
acquire a foothold in Parliament, they had persuaded the Prime Minister
to stage a military coup so that he could shut off the army’s
funding and divert it into the health care plan that he had promised
during the election while lacking the funding to do so; by using
Silver Bullet chips to ‘simulate’ the bug, they intended
to force the military to be dispatched onto the streets in force,
subsequently ending the crisis and claiming that the entire thing
had been a failed military coup, allowing the P.M. to take advantage
of the ensuing public outcry to cut funds to the military and put
them into the social programmes he had promised. Unfortunately, things
were made even worse when General Randall - the man the Voracians
intended to frame as the instigator of the coup - revealed that he
had given the Russians equipment to help with the Y2K problem, unaware
that the technology in question was designed to fail; if the Russia
computers went down when they’d taken them from Britain on
simple good faith, nuclear war was almost inevitable.
Having
deduced that the Silver Bullet chips would be used to spread Voractyll
across the planet, The Doctor was able to find the Voracians by examining
the signal generated by the pen and tracking down where it was broadcasting.
Although this procedure was interrupted, with George’s help,
The Doctor managed to not only work out a way to neutralise the Silver
Bullet chips but also to emulate the bug in otherwise unaffected
systems. Taking a tank (The only definitely non-Bug-affected transport
he could find), The Doctor picked up Harry and the others before
heading off to 10 Downing Street, where they tricked the Prime Minister
into confessing what he’d done when a Russian general contacted
him over a video phone and threatened to launch the nuclear arsenal,
thus forcing the Prime Minister to admit his role in events. However,
time was running out, since the Voracians would be activating Voractyll
any time now. Fortunately, The Doctor managed to find out that they
had hidden away in the PM’s private residence, Chequers, but
since a show of force would provoke the Voracians into activating
Voractyll ahead of schedule, The Doctor and Harry went to Chequers
alone, and Harry created a distraction while The Doctor broke in,
confronting a programmer that the Voracians had converted just as
he was about to install the missing code sequences and activate the
programme. Having deactivated enough of the man’s Voracian
programming before he was recaptured, The Doctor and Harry were able
to distract the Voracians long enough to provoke them into activating
Voractyll without checking the programme for faults - and they realized
too late that The Doctor had programmed it to emulate the Millennium
Bug. As Voractyll had to pass through the Voracians before entering
the main computer network, the Voracians shut down or exploded when
their systems came into contact with a program that required a date,
destroying Voractyll and ending the invasion for good. |
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