On the matter of trust

Trust is hard.

I should’ve learned it long, long time ago. My previous job wasn’t exactly trust-rich and I had a suspiction, that it was one of the factors of my failure. In depths of my heart I wanted to believe, I want it other way this time.

Impossible.

I am what I am, what had I expected?

They are, what they are.

And, above all, we are (ta-dah!) Torchwood. There is no trust, no honesty among as. There can’t be. You need to put it back to your pocket, Becca. Trust is like God: a glorius idea, nothing more.

Ok, I was also the one, who broke Erik’s trust. He in return broke our. Shame.

We have a girl that is dead/never existed. That is painful, but won’t cost us our lives. Jenny didn’t make it. Jenny perished. That could be our fault, although we tried so hard: that could also be just an unfortunate coincidence. Time is tricky bastard. Would be, if it were a person...

(I must admit, I would rather enjoyed the stay in ’44. If not Jenny...)

We have a woman imprisoned. We could have avoided it, but, no, no, no, she was to dangerous to let her go! Seriously! Her suspicious employers, who will seek her now weren’t spying on Naomi, no, really... and they wouldn’t notice disappearance of their boss’ (If he is a boss here... I rather doubt it. I suspect the woman...) secretary. No, really. Yeah, that’s the trust thing.

I confess, I did a little this time. I should have. It could have been other way. Well, maybe we didn’t fuck everything up yet...

I learned about the myth behind Institute’s origin and I really wondered: why do both Torchwood and UNIT believe there are the acts of THE SAME BEING behind almost everything?

The perfect crime

There's no body, no proofs and no suspicions either, so I guess that's what we did. Nobody is going to accuse us (not of Jenny's death, at least), because the victim never existed. Yeah, we've wiped her out of the timeline. But - back to the beginning. Narratives, unlike time, tend to have beginnings and ends (even if loose). We've sneaked into the RAF party. Well, not exactly sneaked - Eric had stolen an army jeep and we've entered the base officially: him as the soldier, Becca as the Intelligence officer (somehow in the meantime she became a worker of the War Office from Edinburgh), Naomi and Jenny as cute girls, and me as a cryptanalyst. It was quite helpful: we could speak to basically all social circles that were attending (and the mathematicians and code breakers were quite hilarious tbh). The party was a rather miserable one - or it would have been if not for Naomi (and your humble undersigned). Well, at least we had enough time and possibilities to try to figure out what the hell was going on. Rebecca talked to the officers and, thanks to her War Office cover she could ask all sorts of questions. So did Eric (I don't get his idea with changing the uniforms, though). Naomi convinced one of the pilots to take her to his plane and later managed to get to the right hangar, which required knocking one of Britannia's proud defenders unconscious, among other stuff. I talked the nerds into getting back to work (yay workaholism!). And discovered they have a goddamn space rocket engine that they treated as a source of extra parts. Well, of course there was no way they could discover the time anomaly even though it was glaringly obvious for me, but still, honestly, I couldn't believe my eyes. No wonder their efforts resulted in such shit. (The thing that sucks is that we've left this engine behind. I mean, srsly, there's no way of putting five people AND a rocket engine in a RAF plane. I still wonder what did they use it for before it ended up in the dump also known as TW2 hub.) Well, someone certainly had to take these fucked up planes out of the base before someone else would fly them. Which meant we were about to fly them. Home. Hoping they'll take us to 2006 and not to, let's say, 300 B.C. At first we were certain we'd take only one plane (Q&A of the day: how do you put 5 people in a plane like this? By one FUCKING IDIOT willingly staying behind for REASONS). I got to pilot it! And thankfully my boss is not as dumb as he sometimes seems to be and at last he got to the other one (I have to admire his dramatic timing, though). It wasn't the most comfortable flight for sure, but at least we got back home. Apart from one traveller disappearing in the meantime. I wonder whether she was aware of what was going to happen. I won't say I was, 'cause I was only suspecting it might be like that. Still, it was plain awful. Okay, she was born due to the anomaly, so erasing the anomaly must have implied her nonexistence. I guess we've done the right thing, if there's such a thing as "right". But it's awful nonetheless. She was real. She existed, even if memories of her already blur. It's so unfair that no one except us remembers her. There's even no one to mourn her. And it's only Jenny we're talking about - take the butterfly effect into account and guess how many people we might have wiped out without even knowing? As usual, there are more questions than answers and more guilt trips than reasons to celebrate. And, for instance, we still don't know who was so kind to inform us about the accident at the base (the one we caused, after all). I've got some ideas - but you wouldn't expect me to give easily everything I know, would you?

Withdraw!

Party hard in '44

Well, yeah. The title says it all. But this time I got very strict orders to keep at least some of my opinions to myself and focus on facts (can't really tell the difference between these two things).

There you go.

1) The ultimate spy
Our landlady, that is. We couldn't complain too much about a flat, so we kind of agreed on the first one we've found. And now we're stuck with that crazy old lady who's way too interested in other people's lives. If I worked at MI6 headquarters, I'd hire exactly this kind of women. My bets are on that she'll cause us more trouble than this goddamned flat is worth.

2) Morale heading towards Mariana Trench
That's the only possible explanation for my (dearest and most co-operative, like, ever) team to get angry at me with no reason. Okay, I haven't told them everything I knew, I have been a bit useless and sarcastic lately, but that's not a crime. Not that telling me off has gotten us somewhere.

3) Mirror, mirror
Becca and Naomi went for a walk to check a few things with the device from Cardiff. As far as I know, some things and places look different when you look at them through it. As if you could see what is important. What stands out in time. Or distorts it.
(No wonder you can see Eric through this shit, but me? Eh?)
Somewhere around this point someone came up with a great idea of throwing a party at the RAF base (nooo, this totally wouldn't evoke any suspicions, not at all, with the four of us as masterminds behind this clever and cunning plan) and we were stupid enough to seriously consider it. At last, the party decided to throw itself. We're invited. Or Naomi is, to be precise, but I'll talk about it later.

4) Meanwhile, on Earth's orbit
A certain satellite is being hacked. Yay 21th century mobiles. Yay me. Yay shitloads of data. Crypted RAF announcements make great bedtime stories.
Also, I tried to call Jenny. Her cellphone is on, so she couldn't have arrived here long ago. She can't be very far away, either. She could answer the call, though. SHIT I COULD'VE SENT HER A MESSAGE.

5) Close enough to coffee
We actually made something that resembled coffee, using ingredients available in 1944 and a few that won't be available even in 2006.
We're so resourceful and creative that the Third Reich would surrender the moment they learned we're here.

6) Espionage. You're doing it right
Can't even comment on this one properly -
OMFG Naomi is embodied brilliance and charm and the purest essence of being a clever bitch. Thank God I'm not interested in humans.

Blackout 2.0

The weirdest thing? I actually started to like them. Despite the fact, they’re so annoying. Why? I’m not sure. Maybe because they are exact the opposite to what I’m used too, and maybe because they don’t ask too many questions. Or maybe because I was alone for so long and started getting mad out of isolation.

Nethertheless, I work for Torchwood Institute now. Glaswegian section. With an Australian mechanic as our boss, with, a hacker and a doctor without a diploma as my co-workers. And quickly after I started to work with them I landed in 1944. Well, we planed to do it, but we fucked up…

We had to wait for the hardware sent to us from Cardiff. In the meantime we informed Naomi of what we are going to do. She decided, that she had to discuss it with that boyfriend of hers. So Nine and I started to continue our research. Nine found a photo from ’44, on which we all are sitting in on of Glaswegian churches, at somebody’s funeral. It also turned out, that there had been a “miracle” in this church… in 1944. So Nine went to investigate the church and I thought about an experiment, which, as I hoped, could’ve help us to learn something more about the nature of the anomalies concerning pilot’s belonging. So I decided, that we should take the watch to the Circle, and look at the readings. And then it happened…

Of course, none of us did personally go to the circle. We just sat by the screens and watch the device going down: sensors they sent us from Cardiff placed on a cart with dead (?) pilot’s watch.

The readings went crazy first: the Circle behaved not like it was overly active, but just the opposite. Maybe not like the Circle opened, but like it was trying to close?

And then everything went dark.

We fucked it up.

I woke up on the shore. It was a bit cold, and wet – like usual in the hub, but we weren’t in the hub anymore. It seemed, that we had been on the shore of Clyde. And in the past, of course (no Squinty Bridge anymore!). So we made it to 1944: without Naomi, and with precious device from Cardiff gone down Clyde… Luckily, we saved the watch, but nethertheless, we definitely needed to find rest of the stuff, before anyone else does. Not that I particulary am afraid of chronoclasms – come on, all our science is based on them anyway!

So anyway, we decided to send a message to Naomi and find someplace to rest, because it was getting dark. On the post office we found some advertisements and addresses, and the boss decided to separate for a while. So Nine wrote this anouncement for Naomi to find us (Hilarious!), and we went to the hostel. Notice: some people really don’t understand, when you say to them that they don’t want any trouble. Well, I’ve got a knife…

Notice two: clothes here are surprisingly comfortable. Man’s clothes, of course. And the quality of bread – outstanding. We must take some while going back.

Next morning Nine and I went to see the site, where they will place the plane: we found some stones there (Pieces of another circle! Just a coincidence?) and a message from Naomi. She made it and was waiting for at the inn on the city outskirts.

And so there we are (had been): 1944, no hardware and just a little clue.

Blackout

You certainly know this feeling when you suddenly miss a step on the stairs and for a split second your bowels are in 0g. Well, unpredicted time travel is kinda like that. If you multiply this annoying sensation by 1000.
We had the stuff ready - documents, money, first aid, all the shit that might have come useful in '44. Also, we got a clever device from Cardiff (I can't see it being sent back to Wales. It wants to stay in Glasgow with us, totally. It's gonna miss us terribly). And we decided to try it and see how would the Circle react to Richard's watch. The idea itself was brilliant (all credits go to Becca!). The effect, however, not so much.
The last thing I've noticed was negative Circle activity. Then everything went black - and shitty, dirty modern Glasgow turned into Glasgow in 1944, less dirty but equally shitty. No, wait: shitty isn't quite the word. This Glasgow is freakishly poor and miserable. These people have no clue the war will be over in a year. But, to be honest, neither do we. We don't know how time travel works. All I figured out was that circles matter - the plane statue was placed where once another stone circle has been. I think the plane itself doesn't play any important role, the pilot's belongings are enough, if they're close to a circle. This at least gives some idea on coming back. When we find Jenny. If we find Jenny.
We've found the local post office, a shelter, great bread, a local gang and Naomi so far. Nobody has found us, or so we hope. We might spend some time here - back in modern Glasgow Naomi had spotted us on a newspaper photo from 1944, during a funeral. And there are miracles to be done yet.
But ssh. Spoilers!

Deterministic shit

Guess what. We're going to war. Yay. World War Two, to be precise. Seriously, YAY. Don't get me started on all the awesome possibilities. As if time travel wasn't cool enough, it's a time travel to 1944!
But - let's go back to the beginning. Remember this weird time shit we had to deal with not so long ago? We had loads of theories on how it might have happened, whereas the matter is way more simple. Jenny, the victim - or the extremely clever girl, as I prefer to think of her - did some brilliant research on her stepfather's company and found out that there was something quite wrong in the very beginning: like, a military plane that took off from Glasgow in 1944 and landed some time earlier, probably due to a time distortion that somehow got transferred to the pilot's personal belongings (such as his watch, dog tags and the plane itself). And that's what Jenny investigated - she managed to collect his stuff and, boom, it worked. She found herself in 1944. She got stuck. But, as I've mentioned, she's damn clever and left some notes - a scribbled word HELP on the plane and a whole letter hidden in an old typing machine. The letter claimed she's not dead, but I'm not sure whether we should be so optimistic about it. We'll see. Hopefully.
Because it's kind of stated - we are going to have been there (oh, imagine all the fun we're going to have with tenses!). Eric found our fingerprints on the plane before we even thought about, well, going back in time. It's been kind of creepy, facing something inevitable. Everything from this moment on was, more or less, approaching the point in which we were going back in time. And who knows how many timelines have been overwritten in the (pardon weak pun) meantime? How many times have we died in the past, turned back, decided to ignore the death of one girl? And what did Jenny do?
(As you see, I sometimes express a critical attitude. But someone has to take care of our morale! Brooding doesn't help much! Unless you want to get stomach ulcers.)
Also, Jenny's stepdad got engaged in the whole story. It seems he knew about her research, but never believed it's gonna work. The only advantage is that guilt-tripped people are eager to help in order to relieve guilt. Or he's such a damn good actor that even the whole Glaswegian TW couldn't get past his lies. But even in this worst case scenario, I've got enough data to trace his little court's personal details and descendance back to the Norman Invasion.
Apparently, there are so many worst case scenarios that it could make my brain explode. But there's nothing I want to do about it - I mean, fuck determinism, even if it was my spontaneous idea, I'd still want to go there. Bring it on!