Magnas gratias ago a NikkieSheepie, thedeejay, milady dragon, L.A.H.H., Marian Locksley, FanGirl Moment xD, gernumblies, specialfrancine, et NewMind09. And that was my Latin revision for the evening.

This is possibly the most confusing topic on my syllabus, and I'm not sure I've explained it all that well (on the basis that I'm not even sure I fully understand it myself) , so please don't start headbanging if you get completely lost. It's possibly a good idea to take a breather every line or so.

The title (which is a quote, this time) is from a song, but I can't remember which one. Obviously, I do not own the lyrics to said song. If I did I would probably be able to remember the rest of them. And the title.

For ever and ever

Owen leaned back in his chair and yawned. "I still don't get it." he announced.

Gwen shook her head too. "Me neither."

Ianto gave Tosh a small, apologetic smile.

That was the point where Tosh gave up. She had been a fool in the first place for trying. The others were good, but even she could barely get her head round this new time theory she had worked out. It did explain the Rift, and time travel and… well, and everything, she was sure it did, but trying to explain the whole thing to a group of people who normally only thought of time in the context of 'lunchtime' was like trying to teach Myfanwy table manners. Everyone just ended up frustrated and angry – the only difference was that this time they weren't all covered in barbecue sauce.

"Did you get any of it?"

"That bit about eternity was quite good. Very poetic."

"Science isn't about poetry, Gwen."

Gwen shrugged. "You and Owen keep trying to impose science on religion: why can't I impose poetry on science? Besides, it makes about as much sense."

Tosh sighed in despair. "Are there any questions?"

"Yeah." That was Owen, of course. No one else could manage to make a simple agreement so full of apathy. "What time's lunch?"

"I've got one." Ianto announced, ignoring Owen's remark, and determined to prove that at least one of them had understood something of Tosh's talk. "You're saying everything's subject to time – is God subject to time?"

Tosh blinked. Why were they bringing religion into everything lately? "Well, no, I guess you'd say He isn't. After all, if He created everything He created time too, so it wouldn't make sense for Him to be controlled by something He created."

"I'd be a bit like creating a new defence system and then locking yourself in with it." Owen remarked snidely. Tosh ignored him, blushing slightly at the mention of last week's… incident.

"And of course, God isn't meant to change either, and if you're in time you're subject to change."

"Unless you're Jack." Owen pointed out.

"Jack changes." Gwen said briefly, as though there was no argument about the fact.

Which there wasn't, when you thought about it.

"But if God can't change…" Ianto stopped to think. "Then He wouldn't be able to do anything, would He? Because that would mean He had to change. And that means no miracles or anything."

"And He couldn't answer prayers!" Gwen burst in. "And if He can't respond to people at all it doesn't really count as being loving, does it?"

"Who said He had to be loving?" Owen countered. "And I thought He was supposed to keep everything in the world working from outside, or some other nonsense, which is meant to count as being loving." The word 'loving' was served with a large portion of sarcasm.

"That's not the same." Gwen said stiffly. "Maybe… maybe…"

"Maybe?"

"Ok. Maybe God isn't eternal in that sense – being outside of time, or whatever - maybe He's in time but without an end or a beginning." She looked around to see if anyone else understood.

"Yeah, I kind of get it." Tosh admitted. "But I'm not sure it makes that much sense. So time passes for Him - so He can act in it - but He's still eternal."

"Does that include knowing the future? God's meant to know everything." Owen asked nastily, determined to do his best to shred Gwen's argument into tiny pieces.

"The future doesn't exist yet." Ianto pointed out. "It hasn't happened until you get there. So you can't know it."

"Alright." Owen demanded. "Gwen - what was God doing before He created the universe if He's just been hanging round forever? Not that I'm saying He created it." he added quickly and watched with delight as Gwen's face twisted into a frown.

"I don't know. But we can't know really, because it's God. Maybe He had another universe."

"I knew it!" Owen crowed. "The old fallback! 'We can't possibly understand God.' So why do you keep trying?"

Gwen opened her mouth to shoot back a reply, but seeing that the two of them were about to begin another of their now-famous shouting matches, Ianto stepped in with another question. "If God was outside time, like Tosh first said, how would He see it? Would everything happen at once?"

"Yeah…" Tosh mused. "I guess it'd be a bit like seeing the whole of a film in the same moment rather than watching all the scenes normally."

"It'd be a bit boring." Gwen had calmed back down. "You'd know the ending right from the start. Only you wouldn't because there wouldn't really be an ending or a start. Which is confusing."

"That doesn't work though." Ianto tried to think of a film he could use to explain it, but failed to think of one Tosh and Gwen would have watched which Owen would admit to having seen. He settled for a real life example instead. "That's like saying that at exactly the same time as we're sat here now we're all at home asleep yesterday evening. And eating lunch." Owens stomach rumbled. "And we haven't even been born yet. And that kind of stuff only happens in a time loop or with time travel. It doesn't make sense."

"Jack…" Gwen wondered aloud. "How do you explain him? He definitely doesn't work with the in-time thing – because if you travel back in time your past is in the future, and God wouldn't know it, but He should know it, because in a sense it's already happened…" She buried her head in her arms on the desk.

On cue, Jack appeared, lounging against a doorframe. "Ever heard about wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff?"

Owen slumped forwards onto the table. Through all the arguments and counter arguments and counter counter arguments he kept grasping one key fact in his head. It was nearly teatime. And they hadn't yet had lunch.

Argh! Time makes my head spin far more than alien contraceptives! People have tried to explain it to me, but to be honest I still have problems making head or tail of it, especially all this eternity stuff.

Also, a little aside from Gwen, who would like to point out that she did not deliberately take alien contraceptives, but that she thought they were human ones, on the basis that no-one had written 'ALIEN' on the label. Hopefully she'll stop whinging about that now.