What is life?

More specifically, what is living?

Is it breathing? Walking around? Eating a meal? Is living the ability to carry out the most basic of tasks? Or is it bending down to smell a flower? The feeling you get when you hear a young child giggling their little head off? Is it savouring the flavours of every aspect of that meal? The feel of the wind in your hair or your lover's kiss? The pain of a broken leg? The broken heart from an equally broken relationship?. The devastation of a close relative's death?

Whether good or bad, living isn't simply standing in one spot. It's standing there and being touched by the world around you, physically and emotionally. It's touching that world.

You would still, would you not, require a point of reference? Something inside to experience the outside. You'd need you.

For Ryan, there was no him. Did that mean he was, then, dead?

He was having to reassess his point of view of the world. For one thing, he needed to accept he had one in the first place. He could continue to voice his disapproval at the procedures carried out on him, or he could put them behind him. Whether his current attitude was based on who he'd been before was irrelevant. Now was now. Then was gone.

He felt that, at one time, he would have said being dead on the inside meant you were effectively dead, fully, in all the ways it mattered. Breathing and having a beating heart were incidental side effects of your body not wearing out completely, or not being consumed by a ravaging disease, or not having a car race around a blind corner and break all your bones. Or having a gun fired at your head.

He looked over at the dead Dr Bradley. The blood from her bullet wound had slowed. Her eyes stared upwards, and he had to force himself not to follow her gaze. How could she be there, lifeless, yet beside him and unquestionably alive?

Where there should have been a defined line between the opposing sides of the mortal coin, there was now not. They were merging with each other, enabling the crossing of boundaries that should never be traversed.

Bradley and her father were a Frankensteinian combination that Mary Shelley could never have imagined.

"You're wondering how, aren't you?"

Ryan jumped, startled.

"Yes. Sort of."

"Sort of?"

"Not just how. How the fuck. I mean, just how is like asking how dark do you like your toast. It isn't how come you're there with a bullet through your brain, put there by you, and you're here speaking to me? It doesn't make sense."

"I assure you it does, if you know the details."

"Which I don't."

"Which, true, you do not."

"Look," he said, sighing. "Just stick me back in my cage and prod me through the bars. Throw me scraps of meat and I'll perform all you want."

Bradley laughed and slapped Ryan's knee.

"I do love a sense of humour!" she said. "Look. You're not a performing animal. You're not a test subject. You're doing so much good, you can't comprehend. I promise you."

"But you're promises don't mean shit. I'll still be stuffed back in the cell at your whim. I'm still a... a lost soul in a sea of darkness."

"Very poetic. I like that. Would you like some light in that darkness?"

Well, duh!

"Yes, please."

"I'm afraid I can't give you literal light. That's against the rules. None of you can see or speak to each other. It's part of the process. But I can, and will, give you information. Perhaps that will ease your mind."

"Make me more amenable to your experiments, you mean?"

"Well, that may well be a bonus, I'll admit," she said. "That's not what I mean, though. It's about trust."

"Does dear old Daddy trust you?"

Bradley stared at him, her eyes wide. She hadn't expected that, and Ryan enjoyed the taste of the minor victory. Her reaction confirmed his theory. This was a family affair, with him in charge and the Doctor doing the general running about.

Excellent.

"Well done. You continue to surprise me. Yes, in answer to your question, my father does trust me. And I him. He's a genius, and I'm honoured to be working with him on... this."

"And what is this?"

"The future of Humanity, Ryan. Nothing less."

Ryan stifled a snigger. It was a bold statement, delivered dramatically. There were no theatrics, but he could imagine a spotlight on her with a crescendo of resonating music surrounding them. Perhaps he should have felt a swell of pride at being involved in something so grandiose. He didn't. There wasn't even a swell of contempt for the woman and her father. Pity for them? Yes, there was something akin to that. Whatever they thought they were doing. He doubted anyone would benefit, let alone everyone.

He imagined Bradley's patriarch to be wild haired and wilder eyed. He'd be in a white coat and be saying 'Great Scott' at every opportunity.

Doc Brown. The name came to him in a flood of recognition. A movie with a car and a teenager and lightning and Doc Brown! Time travel too... Oh, what the fuck was it?

Back to the Future!

He remembered! He knew that he loved the film and its sequels. It had sequels! He couldn't recall the number, but more than one. Mickey? No. Marty! Marty McFuckingFly!

Great fucking Scott, indeed, Daddykins!

"Are you alright?"

Bradley was looking at him intently. Had he shown, outwardly, his rush of memory? No, he couldn't allow her to know.

"I'm fine," he said, pleased he sounded it. "It's... it's just a lot to take in. It sounds fantastical. Farcical, to some extent."

"Well, I don't know about that, but I suppose I can see why you'd think that."

"I can't think anything else," apart from the song Johnny Be Good running through my head, "if I don't know anything else."

"True. Right. Can I trust you, Ryan? Really?"

"Of course you can," he said. He meant it, too. If she was going to open up, he would keep any information to himself. It would save any punishment – and yes, he was thinking of the corpse on the floor – and would hopefully mean there'd be more to come. Who could he tell, anyway?

"Good. I thought so, but I needed to ask. I'm going to tell you a few things. You will not say anything about them to anyone, not even me. We never had this conversation and, if you do spout off anything I tell you, you'll find a little hole in your forehead too. Understand?"

She didn't need to be so brutal. He could imagine the consequences already. He nodded.

"You seem to be a special case, Ryan. That's very exciting for me. For all of us."

"Why?"

"That doesn't matter. We've been searching for you. That's all you need to know."

"But couldn't you just get my number? Google me, or something?"

"That's not what I meant, and don't interrupt. Not you specifically, but someone like you."

"What, someone with hazel eyes?"

"I said, don't in..." Bradley paused and straightened. "How do you know you have hazel eyes?"

Erm... he didn't know. He just blurted it out.

"I don't. It was just, like, a feeling. You mean I have?"

"Interesting," she said, not confirming his question. "See what I mean? A special case."

"I don't see anything!"

"No, because you're not looking. You know more than you know you know. You know?"

"What the fuck?"

Bradley laughed, something Ryan was growing tired of. None of this was in any way humorous.

"Ryan, dear, how can I be there, dead, and here, alive?"

"She can't be you. Or you're not really her. One of you is fake. An actress. Or a... robot or something."

"She is very much me, and I her. No actresses or robots. If only robots were so advanced. This isn't science fiction. It's reality. A whole new, extraordinary reality."

"So, how then?"

"Cycling, that's how."

"Easy as that? Riding a bike?"

"Not even slightly easy, and not even slightly that, but I suppose."

"So, 'cycling' is?"

"Do you really want to know?"

"Yes, of course!"

Bradley looked at her watch and tapped the back of her hand thoughtfully.

"I'll tell you, but then I'm going to have to send you back to your room, OK?"

"My room? You mean my cage?"

"If you insist, yes. Your cell. We'll talk again soon, but the treatment must continue. I'm sure you understand."

"No, I don't. Of course, I don't."

"No, but you soon will, I hope."

"So? Cycling?"

He was eager for her to open up. He didn't mind that he would be back in his cell momentarily, as it would give him time to contemplate the nugget she was about to gift him with. It might be useful and it might be unbelievable. Either way, it would be of use.

"Cycling. There being two of me. So..." She held her breath, as if doing so would give the words within her the time needed to figure out their correct order. "How long do you think you've been here, Ryan?"

"Erm..." A question wasn't information, and it wasn't pertinent, anyway. "I don't know. It's hard to keep track. A few weeks? I can't put a figure on it."

"How would you feel if I told you it was longer than that?"

"What? Months? Well, so what? I could sleep for days in there, I guess. It's permanent night."

"True, true. But no, not months. How many times have we met?"

"What?" Ryan repeated. "Why?"

"You'll see. Answer, please."

"A few. Maybe four or five?"

"Thank you. So. We've actually met seven hundred and eighty-three times."

Ryan gasped. That wasn't possible!

"Don't talk bollocks," he said. "No way can I have."

"You absolutely can," she said. "After all,you've been here for a touch over four years. Versions of you, anyway."