Chapter 2

Sam and Jack walked into the kitchen where Glad had placed a pot of tea on the table with mugs and cookies. Margaret was munching distractedly on one. "How is he?" she asked quickly swallowing her last bite as she saw the two men.

"Asleep," Jack responded, though the expression on his face didn't give any comfort. "I just wish I knew how to help him. What caused him to react that way?"

"You're doing it," Glad answered. Jack raised an eyebrow at her words, looking offended. "Helping him, I mean. As to what caused him to react that way... I'm not sure but I think it has something to do with TMI."

"TMI? Trans-mutational integration?"

"No... too much information."

"He's been listening to gossip then?" Margaret asked.

"The Doctor listens to gossip all the time but it wouldn't affect him that way," Jack replied.

"I don't think that's what she means," Sam pointed out. "Do you mean sensory overload?"

"Yeah... something like that, I guess. Isn't that too much information?"

"It would have to be one hell of a case of TMI... too much information, not trans-mutational integration. And before you ask... don't," Jack put in. "A Time Lord's brain can hold a whole universe worth of information. Well, more than a human brain can anyway."

"So I understand," Glad stated. "But right now..." She looked as if feeling something from a distance. "There's... something... not settled. It's like we're in the middle of a storm in time."

"Oh, I hate paradoxes," Jack grumbled, realization coming to him.

"Me too," Sam stated. "Writing that papyrus from memory... even eidetic... wasn't fun."

"This is a bit more complicated than writing something you are going to read later," the ex-Time Agent informed him. "I ran across this once as a Time Agent. Nearly drove my partner insane; she was slightly time sensitive. Basically, there were so many timelines happening at exactly the same time, some of them actually causing themselves, that she went catatonic. If that were happening and the Doctor reacted like that... well, I certainly wouldn't want to be human and time sensitive right now."

"You think that this storm is overwhelming him?" Margaret asked.

"Let me put it this way. How would you feel if someone suddenly threw you in a room where there was nothing but the sounds of hundreds of songs playing and the volume was at full capacity and you had to figure out the name of one particular song?"

"I hate noise like that," the geologist groused.

"Yeah, that would be hell," Sam agreed.

"We don't know if he'll find the song," Glad pointed out. "And if he doesn't, then the Master will take over and I think that terrifies him."

"From what I've seen, he has every right to be terrified. Hell, it terrifies me," Jack sympathized. "Which means that we have to ensure that it doesn't happen." He took a slow breath. "I hate to say it but the Doctor might not be able to help us at all in his current state. We're going to have to make plans to stop the Master on our own."

"Exactly," Sam agreed.

"How do we do that?" Margaret asked. "If this Master and the Doctor are the same species, he'd be the one to know how to go about this."

"Yes, but I've spent a great deal of time with the Doctor and come from a more technologically advanced century," Jack told her. "I also know a few things about what we are up against."

Sam looked at Jack as his forehead creased. "What exactly does that mean? A more technologically advanced century? You're not from my time?"

Margaret, hearing both Jack's words and Sam's questions, turned with an inquiring expression on her face. "That's a good question. You come into my office and practically bribe me into taking you into the Never Never! And then, it turns out that you can't stay dead. What exactly are you, Captain Jack Harkness? What's a Time Agent and where are you from?"

The immortal man looked at the two adults regarding him with curiosity. Glad, in contrast, was sipping at her tea and eating a cookie, obviously completely unconcerned about the conversation, almost as if she already knew what he was going to say. Taking a deep breath, he decided that, given the circumstances, it was best to be as openly honest about himself as necessary. "I'm from a human colony in the 51st century and I joined the Time Agency to regulate and protect time."

"Is that why you took over my project?" Sam questioned. He'd accepted Jack's explanation earlier but now, with this new layer of information, he wasn't sure that he hadn't been lied to.

"I'm not a Time Agent anymore. Haven't been for years. My taking over your project has nothing to do with the Time Agency."

"Why did you leave them?"

"They took two years of my memory. Seemed too high a price to keep working for them. It was a couple of years after that when I met the Doctor."

Margaret tilted her head. "You think we're ding-bats or something? You really expect us to believe that you were born... 3,000 years in the future? That's daft!"

"Margaret, you are currently standing beside a man who traded places in time with a twenty year old woman and a girl who has psychic abilities inside a space time ship that is dimensionally transcendental and owned by an alien from a distant planet and you think my being born 3,000 years from now is daft?"

"I'm not just psychic. I was born about 1500 years in the past," Glad pointed out. "I'm from Camelot, you know."

Margaret shook her head. "Okay... Okay... now I get why the Doctor's going flipping batty. This is way too much information." She ran a hand over her eyes. "I want to go home!"

"What a great idea!" Sam stated. "If I understood correctly, you teach at the University in Melbourne. The Prometheus Institute is in Melbourne. If we use your house as a base..."

"That's not what I meant..." Margaret said weakly.

"Perfect!" Jack exclaimed, grabbing Sam's shoulders with gusto. "Sam, you're a genius!"

"Thanks," Sam answered, "but it was Margaret's idea."

"I didn't say..."

"Do you have a big dining room table?" Jack questioned. "We could easily draw up some plans on there, using whatever information we can gather about the Prometheus Institute building. Preferably get some blueprints for it. The Doctor mentioned something about someone called Lothos, that he was basically the yang to your ying," he stated to Sam. "I'm thinking that means he probably has a project as extensive as yours in which case he would need a very large secret base of operation. If my guess is right, that would be the PI building."

"Right!" Sam agreed. His face fell. "But we're in the middle of the Outback and the Doctor's out of it for now. How do we get there?"

"Don't worry about that," Glad said standing up and heading for the door. "Got it covered. Maggie, what street do you live on?"

"On Bouverie Street, just south of Pelham," she replied, a stunned expression on her face. "But I really didn't..."

"Be back in five minutes," Glad called as she left, running towards the console room.

"Thing is..." Jack continued as if no one had said anything. "That building the Prometheus Institute is in... When I landed in Melbourne, I did a little research before finding Maggie there..."

"It's Margaret!" she protested.

"... and it's been there for about forty years. Before being bought by the Prometheus Institute it was owned by Wrotodoch Laboratories."

"Never heard of them." Sam answered. "But then again, I really never worked much with Australian companies."

"Neither have I and that's really saying something considering how long I've been around," Jack replied. "But it's not the laboratories that interest me as much as the name. Wrotodoch Laboratories? Really? Sounds like some kind of drink in a bad sci fi show. But if I rearrange the letters, I get the name of an organization I'm extremely familiar with. And so are you."

"Torchwood?" Sam asked. Jack snapped his fingers and pointed to him in confirmation.

"Torchwood?" Margaret questioned, her confusion apparent. "What's Torchwood? What are you two nutters on about now?"

"When you think about it, it's a pretty stupid way to try to mask your existence, taking your name and changing it into an anagram," the head of the Cardiff branch stated.

"What the hell is Torchwood?!"

"It's the organization he's in charge of in Cardiff," Sam explained.

"Well, I never heard of it," Margaret grumbled.

"Of course not," Jack responded. "It's a semi-secret organization - well, semi-secret now - whose original intent was to bring back and protect the British Empire from extraterrestrials and other phantasmagoria." Feeling Sam and Maggie looking at him with raised eyebrows, he told them, "Hey, their choice of words, not mine. Besides, I changed that." Even as he spoke, the room shook slightly. His eyes widened slightly. "We've landed."

"Better driving than the Doctor, in my opinion," Sam commented. "I didn't even know we were underway."

"Landed? What do you mean, we've landed?" Margaret demanded.

"Well, we'd better see what we have to work with," the immortal man continued to ignore the professor. "If our location isn't viable, we may need to scout out a different center of operation." With that, he exited the kitchen, Sam following behind.

Margaret growled in frustration. "Am I invisible or something?" she exclaimed, hurrying to catch up with them.

As they walked into the console room, Sam complimented Glad. "That was the best trip I've experienced since I started traveling with the Doctor."

"Thank you. I learned from the best, you know," she responded with a grin. "But don't blame the Doctor for the other rough landings. The TARDIS likes to make things fun. Plus I think with the Doctor being so sick she wants to make sure that nothing wakes him unnecessarily."

Jack was already at the door, peeking out. "Beautiful! How long have you been flying her again?"

"Well, the Doctor never really let me fly her but I paid close attention whenever I could to how he did it," Glad admitted.

"Impressive! You're a natural!" Jack complimented her before stepping through the door. "Yeah, this will do nicely. Even has a big table."

Sam looked over to Margaret. "We really appreciate your offer."

"What offer?" she questioned with suspicion as Sam and Glad followed Jack out of the TARDIS. Stepping out of the time ship itself, she physically deflated. "You have got to be kidding me."

"What?" Glad asked. "Was there a joke or something I missed?"

The professor walked past the rest of the group and slumped into her couch. "Why? Why did I go back to my office yesterday? I could have gone for an iced chai latte and a lemon cake. Or a walk through the park. But no. I had to go back to my office and thus meet Captain Jack Harkness, sending me down the rabbit hole."

"Actually that was a few days ago. It just feels like yesterday. And you gotta admit. You've never had a better ride," Jack stated back as he looked around the living room of the house that Margaret owned. "Right. Research. Where's your computer?"

Margaret sighed. "I don't have a computer."

"You don't have a computer? How can that be? Everyone has a computer of some type."

"Not me. Don't believe in them."

"I think the Doctor has a few laptops we can use. I saw them in a cabinet in the library," Sam pointed out.

"If you're thinking about trying to get on the internet, forget it," Margaret told them bluntly.

"Why? Isn't there wifi..." Jack started. "Wait...wifi would just be Pifi now. Good point."

"That isn't what I meant," she corrected him. "It would be literally impossible to connect to the internet in this house. No cable, no telephone, no wifi."

"What's the internet and wifi?" Glad questioned with curiosity.

Sam looked to her. "You know how the TARDIS contains a great deal of knowledge... sort of a library. Well, Earth doesn't have technology like the TARDIS and thus they had to create something that would contain all that information and allow for data manipulation and such. That's sort of what the internet is. Wifi is just a soft connection to that system."

"Like the Doctor talking to the TARDIS without speaking," Glad translated. A broad grin graced her face. "Cool!"

"If we don't have internet, then we're going to have to find some other way of getting the information we need to plan our attack," Jack put in, bringing them back on the subject at hand while looking at Margaret for a response.

She sighed. "The University has a computer lab we could use."

Sam shook his head. "Pifi. Remember?" He paused. "Would the TARDIS be able to scan the net? I don't think she'd be susceptible."

"And we could connect through her to Torchwood in Cardiff," Jack continued on the same line of thought. "I'm sure Tosh would be able to analyze any data. She can also use Ziggy in this timeframe. Won't give us any historical advantage, but the computing power will be useful."

"Well, let's do it then," the leaper stated with confidence. "We can hopefully find the blueprints for the Prometheus Institute building and create a plan of attack based on any information that we can get about P.I." He sighed in frustration. "If only we could contact Ziggy in the future, we could get some odds for these scenarios, possibly even a look at what's going to happen." He sighed. "Only thing I know about the future, though, is I've asked Al to protect Ziggy by running a program that will continue until Al turns it off and hopefully that won't happen." He looked down. "I hope Al's okay."

"Knowing Calavicci, he's probably set up a mini-party as a morale booster and is sweeping Beth off her feet right at this moment, fretting all the while about how he can't come back and help," Jack commented. "There's no point in doing the same on our end about them. We have a job to do. Care to join me, Dr. Beckett?" He gestured towards the TARDIS in invitation.

At the request, the leaper's attitude shifted into one of determination as he led the way back into the time ship to fulfill the task ahead of them.