Last Words (audio story)

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Last Words was the first story of The Death and Life of River Song audio series, and formed the first anthology of the series. It was written by Robert Valentine and featured Alex Kingston as River Song.

Publisher's summary[[edit] | [edit source]]

Wrenched from her digital afterlife in the Library, River Song finds herself on sixty-first century Earth, resurrected in a clone body. Billionaire tech mogul Garrison Clay has a mystery to solve, and he's selected River as the person to solve it.

Armed with only her sonic screwdriver and a fake ID, River heads out into a world soon to be ravaged by solar flares... where danger stalks her at every turn.

Book 1 - Apokalypsis
Book 2 - Fate & Fatality
Book 3 - The Black Hours
Book 4 - Book of the Dead

Plot[[edit] | [edit source]]

Apokalypsis (1)[[edit] | [edit source]]

In a compound beneath the Australian desert in 6087, the new owner of the Library, Garrison Clay, has Dastur Tausend extract River's data form from the Data Core and download her into a clone body, one with only six weeks to live. Clay explains that society on Earth will soon fall apart ahead of a apocalyptic solar flare and that he has brought back River, somebody whose genome is not registered in the global database, to find Dr Erno Balthazar before then. He gives her her diary, a data sphere on Belthazar, a fission gun (which she rejects in favour of her sonic screwdriver), a variable ID and an unlimited charge card and transmats her to the surface with Major Streit, his head of security, to start their search at Shangri-La.

Streits, enslaved by a neural inhibitor in exchange for protection from the solar flares, flies River to Shangri-La International Airport in a sub-orbital cruiser and, going by the name "Aoede Tigris", she has a taxi with the AI personality Peevy take her to the city's most expensive hotel. There, she learns from the data sphere of Balthazar's dismissal from the University of Shangri-La for criticising the World Executive after they labelled his predictions of solar flares as not credible. The data sphere malfunctions and River gets the AI assistant Harmony to repair it, after which it tells her to go the university which she proceeds to break into. In Balthazar's office, she learns from a cleanerbot that his mail has been redirected to Professor Jordsand since his disappearance and uses the bot to get Jordsand's address from the university server.

Jordsand claims that she is sure that Balthazar is dead, but directs River to Padma Observatory, from which he vanished, outside the protection of Shangri-La's polymer Parasol. In River's absence, Jordsand is murdered by a follower of the Wilkinsian Covenant when she refuses to give up any information on Balthazar. River accesses Balthazar's systems at the observatory and briefly meets a man who flees after her login alerts a hostile group to their presence. She manages to escape back to the city thanks to Peevy and is almost captured upon her arrival, but a sniper kills her would-be captors and Clay takes the interest in River as proof of Balthazar's survival. Wanting to get away, River gives Harmony the choice of where she should head; Harmony glitches and repeatedly says "Chaseborough".

Fate & Fatality (2)[[edit] | [edit source]]

Inside a virtual sandbox in the form of a village named Chaseborough, astronomer and recent arrival to the village Mr Bartholomew finds a copy of The Blood of the Unicorns whilst sorting Lady Wembridge's library and hides from what he believes to be sprites. River, going by "Mrs Limerick", becomes a tenant of Lady Wembridge's Farm Cottage and is introduced to Mr Bartholomew by her landlady after a sermon by Reverend Horlock, one which Mr Bartholomew realises is from the Apocryphon of John. She follows Mr Bartholomew when he returns to St Justina's, where Reverend Horlock is consulting with the sprites, and returns him home on horseback, revealing that she knows him to be Balthazar. He denies this, however, and River wonders whether he is deep undercover and if others have come looking for him.

River learns from Lady Wembridge of Mr Bartholomew's interest in the church and a legend of a holy relic hidden there. At midnight, she heads back there with the burly Sam Spendlove and follows the gaze of a unicorn depicted in the stained glass window to find a secret room behind the choir screen. They are caught by Reverend Horlock, who knows River's name and causes a system error which takes her offline until she demands that the Lotophage computer sends her back into the game. Mr Bartholomew admits that he is Balthazar, shows River to the observatory he has been hiding in and explains that the World Executive wanted his help in deciding who would survive the destruction of Earth whilst the unwanted spend their final days in the Lotophage simulations. He surmises that Clay, a rival of his, is after the knowledge he has hidden inside of a unicorn statue at the church.

River and Balthazar are confronted by the supposed sprites, which Balthazar believes to be malware, and Reverend Horlock, an emissary of the Destroying Angel who deems Chaseborough sacrilegious and takes on a demonic form. They bar themselves in the church as Lady Wembridge holds Reverend Horlock back and Balthazar uses anti-virus protection to keep the hostiles out for a time. His memories are returned and he orders River to leave, although she refuses to do so until an angel tells her to and she is then removed from the game by Sam, who reveals that he is not an NPC. In the real world, River recognises Samael Avner as the man she met in Padma Observatory and flees the Lotophage Hub with him whilst Balthazar deactivates his own immersion pod's life support. River tells Sam the two words that Balthazar told her - Nerva Beacon - and they drive away.

The Black Hours (3)[[edit] | [edit source]]

Riding a bike, Dastur, the sniper who saved River's life previously, takes out the government agents chasing River and Sam and allows the two of them to head safely to Sam's base of operations: a condemned building which was once home to the Earth High Minister. Sam removes a tracker chip planted in River's diary by Clay and shows her the news, proving that Clay has been clearing up after her by killing Jordsand and two people at Lotophage. He also explains that he knew of Balthazar through Vira, a partner who supposedly died in an accident, and that he now knows that Balthazar's project was based on the Republic of Hy-Brasil's Nerva Beacon. Despite adverse weather, they head to Hy-Brasil by aeroplane, followed by Dastur, and infiltrate a base to locate the Nerva Beacon.

River and Sam discover a loading bay where food, supplies and biocryonic coolant are being transmatted to the beacon, confirming that the space station is an ark, and spy on a meeting between Commander Noah and the Governor, who supplies the former with messages from the High Minister. Sam recognises Noah as Lazar, a former colleague who got him dismissed and who he now believes killed Vira. He closes a barrier on River and confronts Noah, but Vira arrives and reveals that she faked her death so that she might be pair-bonded with Noah. River gets herself arrested and brought before Noah, whom she attempts to warn of the danger that Clay poses to the operation. However, she is tranquillised.

Book of the Dead (4)[[edit] | [edit source]]

River, her clone body dying, and Sam, suffering from the confiscation of the inhaler he uses to manage his Lucarotti's Syndrome, are imprisoned and interrogated whilst Noah and Vira listen. Vira visits them in secret to return River's diary and Sam's inhaler and, after apologising to Sam for faking her death to ensure the security of the ark project, she agrees to pass on River's warning to Noah. River manages to break herself and Sam out of the cell as solar activity increases and find Noah themselves, shortly after Sato and Donnelly were murdered by Dastur, but they are led back to their cell. On the way, the base is attacked and River and Sam escape, heading to the energy protection rig to prevent it being sabotaged and ensure that Nerva is able to get away from the solar flares.

Noah runs into River and Sam and joins them in their mission, but Sam closes a barrier on him to ensure that he boards Nerva with Vira. At the secondary generator, Dastur incapacitates River and Sam and puts the former in contact with Clay, who has Dastur activate a catalogue return portal to return her to the Library. However, River refuses to go and Sam stops Dastur from killing her. They activate the generator and direct its power to the projector beam to allow Nerva to depart as the terminal phase of the solar flares begins. The projector beam kills Dastur, who has shot Sam, and River uses his comms unit to inform Clay of his failure and that the neural inhibitors inside of Streit and his security team will soon fail. When they do, Streit ignores Clay's orders and shoots him.

River offers to give Sam a simulation of his perfect day, one he spent in London with Vira, but he is content to know that she has survived. Harmony reminds River about the catalogue return portal and confirms that she has been assisting her all this time, having been sent by her family inside the Library to keep her safe. Thinking about what the Doctor would do, River remembers her sonic screwdriver and sends out a message to humanity to connect to the Lotophage Platform and be uploaded to the Library. Harmony struggles to upload River and Sam in time, but she manages to do so along with billions of humans.

Cast[[edit] | [edit source]]

Uncredited cast[[edit] | [edit source]]

References[[edit] | [edit source]]

Notes[[edit] | [edit source]]

Textless cover

Continuity[[edit] | [edit source]]

to be added

External links[[edit] | [edit source]]

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The Death and Life of River Song audio series
Last Words
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