Chapter 21
His arms crossed, Ianto listened in stony silence to Tosh. He swore on the souls he held most dear he would never step over the threshold of any Torchwood facility again but here he was, listening with growing dread to her explanation as to what she believed had occurred.
From what she was telling him, she had been working on a spatially involved project for months. She was speaking incredibly fast as she tried to explain what she thought had happened as she saw him hold up his hand to stop her.
"So to cut a long story short you believe there is the possibility he has been pulled into an alternate reality," he summed up and saw her nod.
"And you know this how?" he asked as she now launched into another long technical dialogue; as it petered off she looked at Ianto who was looking at the Rift manipulator with distaste, then back at Tosh.
"We also have to face the possibility he could be dead," Owen said speaking for the first time since Ianto had come crashing into the Hub under an hour ago.
"And you are?" Ianto asked tilting his head towards him.
"Doctor Owen Harper," he replied.
"Gwen Cooper," Gwen spoke up and introduced herself.
"On what information do you surmise he's dead?" Ianto asked them scathingly.
"It's a possibility we have to face, that he was pulled into the Rift and was destroyed in the stream," Owen started to say but was interrupted by Gwen.
"Ianto how did you know something had happened to Jack? I mean within minutes of his disappearance you called Tosh. You didn't call Jack you called Tosh,"
"I knew something had happened to him, the same way I know he is not dead," he told them categorically. They glanced at each other not sure how to take his pronouncement.
"How?" Owen asked surprised at his surety.
"I can feel it in here," Ianto said, pointing to his chest.
"Well that's okay then, long as you can feel it in there," Owen snarked as Ianto threw him a look that made him wither a bit inside.
"I need to see your equations," Ianto declared to Tosh.
"What?" Tosh said still trying to come to terms with the events of the past hour.
"I need to see your calculations, every last equation, and then you are going to find me the blueprints for this bloody contraption" he said indicating to the Rift manipulator as he saw her hesitate.
"That's classified," Owen told him his arms folded as Ianto threw a look at fury at him.
"I've Level One security from Torchwood One and it's been never revoked," he told him as he threw another withering look that made Owen want to head for the nearest rock and crawl under.
"I need that information. Now!" he shouted at Tosh as she took a startled step backwards and scurried off.
"Bloody hell mate, calm down," Owen said trying to keep control of the situation. He had never met Ianto before but the man was formidable.
"Don't you tell me to calm down," Ianto said his eyes glaring, "I've lost two people of significant importance to Torchwood and I'll be damned if I am going to lose another. You got that understood?" Ianto told them.
"Understood?" he repeated as he saw Owen and Gwen look as startled as Tosh had a moment earlier.
"Understood," Gwen and Owen replied simultaneously.
twtwtwtwtwtwtwtwtwtw
Walking around Ianto examined the Rift manipulator in great detail as Tosh finally returned with her work books. Snatching them from her hands, Ianto asked to be shown to a room he could use. Looking around he declared the boardroom suitable, then demanded every whiteboard in the place and set to work. Tosh was standing back watching with interest making the odd comment as he studied her main calculation now spread out over several whiteboards.
A whiteboard marker in his hand, Ianto walked up and down the row of whiteboards covered with equations as Gwen entered with a tray of coffee followed by Owen. Owen had been keeping out of his way but had joined her because he was curious to find out if he had made any progress.
Taking the coffee from Gwen Ianto took a sip, choked and handed the mug to Owen.
"Take that and make sure it gets disposed under hazardous waste," he told him as he took out his wallet pulled out a twenty pound note. "One of you I don't care which, go to the coffee kiosk on the Plass and buy each one of us a decent cup of coffee. Mine's double espresso, no sugar," he told their astonished faces. "While you're there buy 500 grams of their pre-ground Colombian blend." He held out the money to Owen who took it, "And on your way past the kitchen I saw downstairs take whatever substance you have been using as coffee and throw it into the nearest bin."
"Tosh?" Owen asked for her preference.
"Latte, extra hot," she replied trying to stifle a laugh as Ianto looked at her, rolled his eyes, then using a cloth wiped part of an equation off the board and replaced it with another, then stood back.
"We'll be back soon," Owen said leading Gwen away, who was still standing holding the tray and gulping like a fish.
"Did he just insult my coffee?" she was heard to say loudly as she recovered.
"Yeah, but he's making up for it by shouting us the good stuff," Owen told her looking back at the room in appreciation. The man had a tongue so sharp a snide remark could cut you dead at 100 paces and Owen had the marks to prove it. He might take umbrage at being ordered around by Jack's partner who had totally taken charge from the moment he had stepped through the door, but he had to admire anyone who could cause Gwen to speechlessness.
Returning half an hour later Ianto took the offered coffee without comment took a sip and almost sighed in ecstasy. Wiping off another of the long equations he replaced it with another long string of digits and symbols.
Standing back he pulled out his mobile and looked at Tosh. "Do you have any kind of dampening field around the Hub or can I use my mobile to call out without any problems?" Ianto asked, as Tosh nodded.
"So which is it, you have a dampening field or I can just call out?" he asked for clarification.
"You can just call out," Owen replied intrigued at who Ianto was going to call late on a Sunday afternoon about several whiteboards full of incomprehensible numbers and equations.
"Dora," Ianto said speaking into his mobile, "sorry to bother you. Yeah I know it's Sunday afternoon. You know that project you're working on, 'potential alternate reality theory'? Well I 've had a thought and come up with a hypothesis you might find interesting and I wanted to run it by you…"
Owen sat back as Ianto now spoke in some kind of math language which he swore sounded like theoretical physics.
Several minutes passed when Ianto halted and stopped to listen. "That's what I thought, thanks. Yeah see you at the symposium," he said finally and snapped his phone shut. Moving forward and he now wrote several more strings of equations on another whiteboard.
"Okay all indications point to Jack being pulled into an alternate reality," he circled a set of equations. "The problem is which one," he said as he moved down to the boards at the far end nearest the door.
"Tosh, according to your original workings, they indicated that all the dimensions were linked to the Rift one after the other. The problem is they are also like this," he drew a circle and began filling it with dots. "For argument's sake I have a drawn circle which represents the multi- verse and each dot represents a reality, but they are stacked in every possible combination in every possible configuration."
"So which model is right?" Owen asked.
"They both are," Ianto replied.
"They can't both be right," Gwen pointed out.
"Like light can't be a particle and a wave?" Ianto snapped back as Gwen sat back and took a sip of coffee, looking sheepish.
"The only way for Jack to get back is for someone in the reality he is currently in, to reconfigure their Rift manipulator and send him back to this reality," he said thinking out loud.
"If your model is right then how will they know which one to send him back to?" Tosh asked.
"That was my question," Ianto told her as he walked up the whiteboard with the circle diagram," The problem is we are all reality zero."
"What does that mean?" Owen asked.
"I am not sure I can explain it outside of an equation, but I'll try," he said tapping the bottom of the whiteboard pen he was holding against his lips as he thought. "What it means is this reality-the one we are all in here right now- is the core reality. However if you step into another reality then that becomes the core reality," Ianto explained.
"I get it each one is zero," Tosh said as Owen and Gwen looked confused.
"Each reality equals zero or the core reality. It doesn't matter which core reality you place in the centre, it is already there in the middle because we are all the core reality." Ianto expounded as he tapped the middle of his diagram.
"I'm confused," Gwen told them.
"Good," Ianto told her as he saw her wince at his comment.
"Gwen, your comment is excellent. The zero reality issue is a red herring and means we have been looking at this from the wrong perspective. Or I should say, I have," he told her and saw her smile back.
"The good news is, Tosh your time distortion equation works, so Jack is in the vicinity and has been pulled into a reality that is similar in its makeup and time to ours and I predict it's within the variance you worked out."
"How do you know he's in vicinity?" Gwen asked feeling a little more confident.
"Another excellent question," Ianto told her "I haven't got my head around this completely yet but, remember I said both models apply here, and there is a restriction factor. The surge was a tiny variance. Had it been bigger he may have gone further into the stream."
""That's good?" Gwen checked out.
"Yes," Ianto replied taking a sip of coffee. "Simply put, it's basic displacement. Which means the reality he is in will have a Hub and one of those," he pointed to the blueprint of the Rift manipulator.
"How does this help?" Owen asked
"It means they have the tool required to send him back," Ianto told them.
"But if all realities are zero how does this work? " Tosh asked looking confused.
"What they need is the key," Ianto told her.
"Key?" Gwen queried.
"This realities signature key. I've been trying to figure this out since I first started mapping out Tosh's equations. But I kept coming back to the zero reality issue. If every reality is zero how do you find the one you need to identify? Then I realised as much as each reality is zero each will have a tiny variation based on this equation." He ringed the one he had scrawled up. "This is the key for our reality." He wrote out a huge equation. "That's what I called Dora about, she's been working along similar lines and I recalled she had worked out a potential key for our reality based on quantum mechanics," he told them.
"So how do they figure this out?" Tosh asked wondering if they had someone like Ianto there.
"They don't have to because I just did it for them. All we have to do is figure a way to send them a message," Ianto explained. "Our part in all this is to send the equation with our key signature, along with the correct settings for the manipulator,"
"I see a problem. If there are an infinite number of zero realities, won't there be an infinite number of other realities, all trying to send a message at the same time?" Owen asked.
"Hold on to that thought," Ianto told him as he looked at Tosh. "Tosh I've had a look at the blueprints and I can reconfigure the manipulator to send a message. What I need to know is how much information can we send?" Ianto asked.
"I think we should work on the assumption that we can only send so much and make sure we send only what we need rather than make it too complicated."
"Agreed. It's going to be complicated anyway but should be essential info only," he replied then looked at Owen.
"Owen, I think your question was: if there are an infinite number of zero realties sending messages, how will they know which one belongs to which because there will be an infinite number of messages making it an impossible to check each one to find the one you need?" he reflected back what he understood Owen's question to be as he saw Owen nod.
"Okay, have you heard of Chaos Theory?" he asked them. "Because this is a perfect example…" As Ianto went on to explain that Chaos Theory boiled down to deterministic chaos which meant nothing was truly predictable; that said it meant that actions were fully determined by initial conditions… Several minutes passed as Tosh looked fascinated , Owens kept rubbing his forehead as if he was in pain and Gwen's eyes started to cloud over.
"I get you're a clever bastard," Owen interrupted him as Ianto took a breath. "But this is doing my head in. Could you please put this into plain English?" he asked.
'What it means is we send the signal and it gets to the right place. There will no doubt be a large number of messages being sent but they will head in the right direction because they have something to guide them to the reality we need to send the message to. This is because that reality has something there which is a representative of this reality," he told them.
"Jack," Gwen replied understanding.
"Our Jack has imbued within him the key signature for this reality. I predict that there will still be a multitude of messages received but not an impossible number," he told them.
"How will they know it's from us?" Owen asked.
"Because we don't just send the equation and the settings, we send a word or phrase only my Jack would know," Ianto said tuning bright red.
"You mean something personal, like a name of some kind only he and you would know?" Gwen asked raising her eyebrows.
"Yeah something like that," Ianto told them as he looked down at his feet.
"And you have one in mind?" Owen asked him, amused that the unstoppable force they had come to know as Ianto Jones was now looking decidedly embarrassed.
"Several," Ianto mumbled as he stood up.
"I'll make more coffee," Gwen told him as she stood up, stretched, and headed for the door.
"I'll supervise," Ianto offered following her out of the room.