Trace Memory

As he stepped into the room, he saw the same figure that he had seen on Toshiko's monitor, a man hunched over on the floor, still holding his knees to his chest.

'Hello?' said Jack.

There was something about the man's clothes that was familiar to him. They didn't belong in Cardiff in 2008, that was for sure. He'd seen clothes like that many years before, the kind of utility clothes that everyone had after the war; drab and grey and lacking in any kind of ostentation.

'Are you OK?' said Jack. 'I'm not going to hurt you.'

He thought he could hear sobbing.

The man on the floor looked up with eyes bloodshot from tears and an expression of absolute terror, and Jack gasped. He dropped his gun to the ground, and fell back against the wall of the vault.

'Michael…' he said.

TWO

'Jack?'

He'd been sitting alone in his office for ten minutes, while Owen and Gwen were taking Michael from Basement D-4 to the Boardroom; ten minutes in which he had done nothing but think, and yet those thoughts were still so clouded. How could he have allowed himself to be blindsided like this? How could he not have known this was going to happen?

Decades spent knowing the future had, he supposed, left him with a kind of complacency; a resignation to the future and the concept of destiny. There was no point in fighting the future, or destiny, and so very little surprised him these days. Why had this hit him so hard?

'Jack?'

He looked over at the door. Gwen was standing in the entrance to his office, leaning against the doorframe, smiling softly.

'You OK, Jack?'

He shook off his mood, at least on the outside, and smiled back.

'Yeah. I'm fine,' he said. 'I'm just glad our guest doesn't have six arms and a penchant for human flesh.'

Gwen laughed.

'You sure you're OK? I was watching the monitor, when you were down there. You looked like you'd seen a ghost.'

'Yeah.' He paused, and then, with greater certainty, said 'Yeah. I'm fine. How is he?'

'Michael?'

Jack took a deep breath. 'Yeah. Michael.'

'He's fine. A little shaken up. A little disorientated. But he's OK now. Owen's giving him his usual, sensitive bedside manner. You know how Owen is.'

'By sensitive bedside manner I take it you mean the third degree?'

'Something like that.' Gwen smiled, but the smile faded quickly. 'We've established that his name is Michael Bellini and that he's twenty-four. He said you knew his name.'

'What's that?'

'Michael. He said you knew his name. He said you called him 'Michael'.'

'He must have been confused.'

'Are you sure?' asked Gwen.

'Yes.'

'Oh. Because… I thought I recognised him. I don't know where from, but it's like deja vu or something. Or like when you see somebody you recognise off the telly.'

'I don't know him.'

Gwen nodded, biting her lip. What was Jack hiding? He'd been so secretive about so many things, and every time it put her on edge. She trusted him, they all trusted him, but sometimes it was as if they didn't know him at all.

'So are you coming down?' she asked.

Jack shook his head. 'No,' he said. 'Not yet. I've got a few things need doing here. You go on down. I'll join you as soon as I'm finished.'

Gwen left Jack's office and walked down to the Boardroom. Michael was sat in a chair at one end of the conference table, while Owen took his blood pressure. Ianto and Toshiko stood in the far corners of the room.

As Gwen entered the Boardroom, Michael looked at her, wide-eyed and lost, and then at the others.

'Here, Gwen…' said Owen, 'listen to this.' He turned to Michael. 'Who's the Prime Minister of Great Britain?'

'W-Winston Churchill,' said Michael, his voice barely louder than a whisper.

'OK… And who's at number one in the charts?'

'Frankie Lane.'

Owen turned to Gwen, his arms open as if he were the ringmaster of a circus presenting the next act.

'Owen, quit it,' said Gwen. She looked at Michael. The young man looked so scared, it didn't seem fair turning him into a freak show.

'He's from 1953,' said Owen. 'Or, to be exact, November the twentieth 1953. Churchill is Prime Minister, and Frankie Lane is at number one with… Hang on. Michael, what was that song called?'

''Answer Me',' Michael replied, timidly.

'Owen, I said quit it. This isn't some kind of game show.' Gwen turned to Michael. 'Do you know how you got here?'

Michael shook his head.

'Do you remember where you're from?'

Michael nodded. 'Cardiff,' he said. 'Butetown. I live on Fitzhamon Terrace. Where am I?'

Gwen looked at the others. 'You didn't tell him?'

The others shrugged.

Gwen sighed and leaned back against the wall. She looked to the ceiling for an easy way to say this. How could you tell someone they were so far away from home? She'd sometimes felt as lost and as scared as he did now, especially in the early days. What could she say to him? 'You're still in Cardiff,' she said at last. 'But it's not 1953. That was more than fifty years ago.'

Michael's eyes filled with tears once more, and he let out a shuddering, helpless sob.

'But… But that means I'm almost eighty.

'No,' said Gwen, smiling gently, trying to put him at ease. 'You're not eighty. You're still you. You're just here.'

'But the future?' Michael shook his head. 'How can I be here? How can any of this be happening?'

'Wait,' said Gwen, turning to Toshiko. '1953? We've had visitors from 1953 before. Do you think this could be connected to that?'

Owen looked up suddenly, his expression a curious mixture of shock and hope.

'I don't think so,' said Toshiko. 'They flew through the Rift in the Sky Gypsy.

It wasn't the Rift that brought Michael here. It's clearly got something to do with the pulse that I was picking up earlier. The curious thing is, since we brought Michael here, I'm now picking up two definable sources for it.'

'Two?'

Toshiko nodded. 'Yes. Michael and Basement D-4.'

'What does all this mean?' said Michael, growing angrier. 'You're all talking rubbish. None of this makes sense. It's a nightmare, isn't it? It's a bad dream? It's got to be a bad dream. I've been watching too many of those stupid bloody films at the pictures. All those films about flying saucers and spaceships…'

'You're not dreaming,' said Gwen. 'What's the last thing you remember, before you were here?'

Michael looked down at the ground, and his shoulders shook with another barely suppressed sob.