She is Black

" Well, I suppose you all know the old story about The Astronaut who went far out into Space, and was asked on his return if he had been to Heaven and seen God. 

And he said 

“Yes.”

So they said 

“Well, What About God?”  

And he said, 

“She is Black.”

 
Our Lady : 
I've told you about the Solitract, right?

The Damsel :
 Literally never heard the word before. Solitract?

Our Lady :
Solitract! It's a theory, a myth, a bedtime story my gran used to tell me.
 
The Damsel :
You had a grandmother?

Our Lady :
I had seven, but Granny Five, my favourite, used to tell me about the Solitract. 
Cos in the beginning - pre-Time, pre-everything - all the laws and elements and nuts and bolts of the universe were there. 

Light, matter, maths, and so on. 

But they couldn't fit together properly, because the Solitract was there.
 
The Damsel :
So what is the Solitract?

Our Lady :
A consciousness, an energy. Our reality cannot work with Solitract energy present. The most basic ideas of the universe just get ruined. Think of it like a kid with chicken pox - nuclear chicken pox - who wants to join in but always ends up infecting everyone else. Our universe cannot work with the Solitract in it.
 
The Damsel :
Your gran told you this as a bedtime story?

Our Lady :
 Only when I had trouble sleeping. 
So, what did our universe do? 
It managed to exile the Solitract to a separate, unreachable existence. The Solitract plane. 
And suddenly, everything makes sense. The universe could finally work because the Solitract had been removed.

The Damsel :
Hang on. Are you saying we're now on the Solitract plane?

Our Lady :
I wish I wasn't but I think I am. I'm scared. 
Are you scared? I'm genuinely terrified!
 
The Damsel : 
This is a separate exiled universe that is also a consciousness.

Our Lady :
That's what Granny Five said. A conscious universe. She also said that Granny Two was a secret agent for the Zygons, but she seems bang on with this one. 

But why? 
Why has the Solitract copied your world, including Grace and Trine, and built a doorway to our universe?
 
The Damsel :
When you put it like that, it sounds like a trap. 









— WHITEOUT —


Our Lady : 
Er, why is there a frog in here?
(A frog sitting on a simple wooden chair with a three spindle back and splayed legs.)

SOLITRACT: 

You said I could stop being Trine.

Our Lady : 

The Solitract is a frog? 

Who talks like Grace?

SOLITRACT: 

My own form is endless, but this frog is a form that delights me, as it once delighted Grace.

Our Lady : 

Ah, and there's me thinking the day had no more surprises left.

SOLITRACT: 

Now, please, tell me of your universe.

Our Lady : 

You think words can do it justice? 

It's really big... and incredibly beautiful. 

And, apparently, I've just said goodbye to it. But the thing I'm going to miss the most is the people. 

My friends.

SOLITRACT: 

I will be that. 

We will be that. 

Friends!

Our Lady : 

Right, me and a conscious universe masquerading as a frog, BFFs.

(The Doctor's hands start to flicker.)

Our Lady : 

Whoa! Did you just see that? 

Cos I wouldn't be much of a friend to you if I didn't point out you're not in control of this.

SOLITRACT: 
You're wrong. This is my plane. I control everything here.

DOCTOR: 
So you can see that it's still destabilising? 

Me being here is going to kill us both. 

You may want us to be together, but it's not working. It can never work.

SOLITRACT: 
You're lying to me because you want to leave.

Our Lady : 

No. I'm your friend. 

But friends help each other face up to their problems, not avoid them. 

This is... You are the maddest, most beautiful thing I've ever experienced, and I haven't even scratched the surface. 

I wish I could stay. But if either of us are going to survive, you're going to have to let me go and keep on being brilliant by yourself.

SOLITRACT: 
I miss you. 
I miss it all so much.

Our Lady : 

I know. But if you do this, I promise, you and I will be friends forever. 

You have to let me go.

SOLITRACT: 
I will dream of you out there without me.

(The Doctor backs away and blows a kiss.)

Our Lady : 

Goodbye.


(The frog raises a front foot and the Doctor is thrown backwards.)