Torchwood: Something Out There

 

Torchwood: Something Out There

A Tale From the Worlds of Torchwood 

Starring Clare Rushbrook 

* * *

Science Officer's Log, Supplemental. Ida Scott reporting. 

God. 

I'm afraid. 

I hope someone will eventually find this. Or somewhat more optimistically, someone will listen to this after I bring it and all of the other log recordings back alive, in perfect condition, and happily drop them on the desk of my superintendent. "Study these," I'd say, and walk off smugly. 

But no.

Someone's going to definitely find this in a pile of Wreckage. 

I wonder what I was thinking? Well, Ida. You've survived a dead planet orbiting a black hole  that happens to contain the powers of Satan, and you've reported back to tell the tale. Why don't we just go back in space again on another dangerous mission? That personally to me seems to be the smart thing to do!

I'm - I'm shaking. You'll forgive me if I stumble over my words, but I have to get this down. So someone knows what's happened out here. What we've encountered. 

Because we're all going to die.

Let me start from the top. 

I'm - I'm in a new position as head science officer of a space station on the border of, well, nothing.

Wild Space, they call it.

Undocumented, Barely probed by our little probes going about the stars. It's become recently more commercially viable for the institute running the program, Torchwood, to send people than probes. I don't understand why. Some bloke in a suit behind a desk who earns far more than I ever will decided it. 

We're the second team on the base. The previous team served two years. They've left. 

It goes like that. 

There are four of us here. For the record, their names are Commander James Bletchley, Doctor Harrison Kettle, Lieutenant Louisa Thompson, and myself. 

I shan't say anything that will reflect badly upon them.

...Although I would like to.

The Captain is a peevish man, short, and bearded with wire-frame glasses balanced on his nose. Thin hair combed. If I were to describe his features in one word it would be...beady. I'm not sure about the eyes. These days the laser corrective surgery can be done for pennies, though I suspect he likes how he looks with them a little too much for that. He's an odd fellow - not that I've not met men like him before, afraid men that you aren't really sure why they took the job. But there's a sense of pride in him. This almost inconceivable contradicting level of ego that shouldn't be there in a man that squeaks out his every other word. 

The Doctor - not that one - is lanky. Long black hair, tall, thin, his work is a distraction to him, but he likes the labcoat. His skin has a slight tinge of blue that I've been too afraid to ask about.  Polite to a fault. Irritating. We share a bunk room, which I am almost inclined to say would be a breach of privacy, were the station not so small it is impossible to sleep elsewhere. Each night he constantly informs me that he has no sexual inclinations towards me, and I should be comfortable. I am not. 

The Lieutenant is the enigma of the bunch - competent, but any interactions we've had have been cursory. She has blonde hair and a wintery complexion. That in her manner too. She keeps to herself - Neither Doctor Kettle or I have had any impression of her. I believe she's in a relationship with the Captain. He's too protective of her, constantly praising her. He says that they served together on their last long haul. That would explain it, probably. Nothing else to do between ports.

The first few days here were absolutely lovely. The documenting of stellar phenomena, the beginnings of spacial cartography, and the analyzation of ...bits of dust, I believe is the scientific term, well. It was positively euphoric.

I'm sure you don't want to hear about that, you want to hear about the big, obvious thing, but if you should care to hear me going on for quite some time on stellar iota, then view Documentation Tape 4C. I do my best to keep everything filed correctly.

The big obvious thing showed up yesterday - well, a part of it did. I was at my station at the time, really going at a bit of space dust, when everything stopped. All of the alarms blared. 

The whole station shook. Spacial Debris, the Captain announced on the intercom. No sooner had I looked out the window than I could see it was much worse than that. 

There are few ships that have been out this far, but one ship was a pioneer - the Broadsword. It was the ship that shuttled the station itself here, dropping it in two years ago, and it went on, to chart the galaxy. It had dropped out of contact a long time ago. We're the second crew to serve on this station. The others returned to their colonies. 

I don't think that, I can really do it justice or anything. 

The ship was torn. It was a corpse, floating there. Just lying there in space. Dead. The largeness of it took me back. Of course the ship had to be huge to carry the station out here - hell, we were just a station. This - this was like, forty times our size. 

Frayed wires sitting in the nothingness. Debris clung to it, the paneling was ripped off, ferocious, animalistic, but precise. Burn marks everywhere across it, around the ship's cockpit you could see the light orange remains of a cutting laser's mark. The wreckage of it was as traumatic as seeing a body. And that was before I saw the bodies in the wreckage. Oh, god, the bodies. You needed a lot for a huge ship like that. Floating out in space, some clinging to the ship only to just - hang there. Like macabre flags. The cockpit was the worst. Remember how I said the cockpit was cut open - a purposeful maneuver to be sure. That's how we knew whatever had done this was intelligent, mind you - but the people had been sucked out of the cockpit by the vacuum. Shattered glass - well, transparent alloy, was all around them, sharp and fragmented. Bloodied bits of glass sticking out of these poor souls' necks and chests. These people - they'd been gored. 

Imagine you're on a lifeboat in rocky waters, and you're clinging on... and straight ahead of you you see an aircraft carrier begin to sink. 

I - I'm sorry. all - all that detail was probably unnecessary. 

Facts. Yes, facts. I'll - I'll try to stick to the facts.

Alright. Here are your facts. 

We're alone. And something's out there. 

* * *

I never much liked the idea of the unknown, which is odd, since the unknown comprises pretty much the entirety of my chosen career. It's the Fifty First Century, and although we know so much, there's so much out there that science can't measure - so much out there in my job that I can't explain. We're supposed to document the unexplainable, working for the Institute. So future people will understand. But you can't do that, really. That's in the nature of the unexplainable. 

Since my time on Krop Tor, I've been less focused on those ideas. It scares me there are some things that the human race will never know, never reach. I know there are some things I can't get to. So it's my job to quash the more known unknown within my grasp and make it into something a little more malleable. That's the job of a scientist. It may sound like unmeasurable jargon when we discuss our photometric readings and Acheron relays, but ultimately it's all a manner of rationalization.

Us poor small people looking out into the INFINITE dark of space and trying to quantify it in our minds. Astronomical Units, Light Years, Parsecs. All fancy words for referring to big, large sections of nothing but black.

If I die out here, well. It will be in darkness so large that if my body floats for ten thousand years, it won't touch a star. It's called wild space, but the most wild thing about it is the enormity of these swathes of midnight, streaking out towards forever. 

Hem. Forgive me. I sound insufferably poetic. 

I keep thinking of the dead ship. We've recovered logs from it, you know. Detailed logs about everything they've discovered. It's meticulous. Like the log you're listening to now. 

Except there's absolutely nothing of relevance on them before they all died. The scanners didn't pick up anything. There wasn't a macrocosm of radiation that sucked all the people dry. There wasn't a spacial distortion detected by the ship's computers before the people were turned inside out. Nor an alien ship. 

It's... not death of any particular origin detectable. Death just descended on them. And we have to hope that it doesn't to us. 

* * *

The Captain has a theory. Or a nervous breakdown, one of the two. He's locked himself in his quarters, and even his paramour the Lieutenant is denied entry. He screams. 

He screams that it's all closing in. That the people who died, torn apart like that on the ship out there, well, they died because they deserved it. That the Gods of the universe decided that man mustn't have too much knowledge, and cursed them for their hubris. 

That they just went out too far. 

"No, No, you can't go out too far," He says. "You can't go out too far, no you can't, you simply can't, you mustn't. It's the end, it all stops. You can't go that far. You you you can't no no you can't no you can't, don't you see it? We're all sitting on the edge of the universe, and if we just push and let go, we'll never come back, so we must hold on, mustn't we! We have to hold on!" 

The Man is raving. 

And, well, I must be crazy too, because He's starting to make sense.

Just because you can understand why someone went mad, does that make you mad too?

Probably not. I think. 

If you've read this message, turn back now. Accept there are things we will never know. Save Yourself. 

In the distance, I look at the stars. One of them has stopped. That's what's happened. Scientifically, my brain tells me that the stars stop all the time. We don't even know for quite some time because of the fact that light takes quite some time to travel.

Space and Time Travel, the Doctor fellow said, about his little box thing. I asked if I could come with him before I left. 

"Nah," he had said. "You're already out there, Ida Scott," and he'd smirk, like saying my name in his funny little high pitched voice was an intellectual achievement - "The further out you look, the further you travel, the more you're already with me. Because of the light, Ida. You know what they say, um, I forget who said it exactly, um, But it's true. The more humanity looks out into space, out into the stars out there with all of their hopes and dreams, the more they look back in time. You're already a time traveler, Ida Scott. You're doing incredible things. Savor it." 

I wish I hadn't. I wish he had taken me and I never came out here. Never came out into this accursed dark.

I'm so afraid. 

They're coming for us. 

That star in the distance, that I'm talking about. Well, stars stop all the time, like I said. It's not something out there. Not something so dark it blots out it all, one star at a time. It's just the sky.

I'm, I'm fine. There probably aren't aliens out there. The Midnight isn't coming closer every minute, waiting to gobble us up. I'll be fine. We'll...We'll just have to wait. Yes, that's right. We just have to wait. If it's really something out there, it will come for us soon. We Just have to wait to find out. 

[PERSONAL LOG ENDS.]

This Story (Hypothetically) Starred

Clare Rushbrook as Ida Scott