Torchwood_Exodus Code

by Carole E. Barrowman

‘Whisky, Captain?’

  Jack nodded.

  Leaning forward, keeping her ankles crossed, she uncorked the decanter. ‘Win’s family own a distillery in the highlands. This is one of their best single malts.’

  Jack relaxed into the chair. ‘Dr Steele, I want to apologise for getting off on the wrong foot with you.’

  ‘Olivia, I insist.’

  ‘Then it’s Jack.’

  ‘And there’s no need to apologise. It’s forgotten.’

  ‘Friends?’ asked Jack.

  ‘Friends,’ said Olivia pouring him a healthy dram.

  He tilted the glass before lifting it to his nose. He inhaled its smoky peaty warmth, and as soon as he did he heard a distinctive chime of music that sent a jolt of pleasure through him. He gasped. Recovering from the sensation quickly, he answered, ‘Wonderful. Truly.’

  ‘It is, isn’t it,’ said Olivia, sitting back on the couch. She took a sip from her glass. ‘Of course, I realised when I got in the lift what you were doing, that you incited my rant so I’d unwittingly reveal patient information. I should probably have had you removed from Ms Cooper’s visiting list.’ She smiled. ‘Although that’s moot now, isn’t it. An unforgivable error on security’s part.’ She sipped a little more. ‘Have you heard anything about where she might be?’

  Jack shook his head. ‘Not yet. Her husband is worried she may hurt herself again. Or, worse, someone else.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Olivia, ‘that’s seems to be the worst symptom of this strange illness, doesn’t it? But Ms Cooper was given her anti-psychotic medication before she escaped, so I hope she’ll be less inclined to hurt anyone and will be back in custody before she needs another dose.’

  Putting the glass to his lips, Jack took a sip, this time prepared for his body’s startling response. He held the whiskey in his mouth for a beat, then another, letting the warmth of it caress his tongue, the sweet flavours electrifying his entire mouth, every taste bud alive and tingling and then he swallowed, the liquid like velvet on his throat. He shivered.

  ‘You do look like you’re enjoying the whiskey,’ smiled Olivia. ‘Win will be pleased.’

  Not as pleased as I feel, thought Jack, shifting slightly in his seat. The intense sexual feelings were wonderful, but not entirely welcomed. Jack was aware that his body was reacting to stimuli in heightened ways recently, and given what had happened during the earthquake, the sighting of the puma, and his emotional breakdown, he was beginning to worry. He tried to focus.

  Olivia balanced her glass on the arm of the couch. ‘I believe you said you had a theory you’d like to share with me about why all these women around the world are falling prey to this so-called masochistic madness.’

  ‘We know a number of things already,’ said Jack, reluctantly setting his glass on a mahogany table next to his chair. ‘Obviously, it’s happening only to women and each one is self-mutilating in some way during her psychotic incidents. From the reports I’ve studied, the most common thing they’re doing is damaging their eyes, ears or tongues.’

  Except Gwen, he thought, who’s carved a strange symbol on her forearm.

  ‘Suggesting,’ added Olivia, ‘that their neurosis is tied to their senses in some way. Yes. I think that’s a reasonable assumption.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Jack, reaching to sip more whiskey but thinking better of it, for now anyway. What he had to say was too important. ‘I think all of these women are synaesthetes, Olivia, and whatever is affecting them has made their synaesthesia acute and extreme, overwhelming their senses.’

  And mine, too, thought Jack. He glanced at the whiskey glass, catching a whiff of its palate and experiencing another kick of desire that went right to the growing ache of pleasure in his groin.

  ‘Fascinating, Jack!’ Olivia finished her whiskey and refilled her glass. She held the decanter up to Jack who shook his head, more aggressively than he intended. ‘I wrote a paper on synaesthesia in my third year at Cambridge. My professor at the time was one of the first neuroscientists to study the phenomenon seriously, and he made some quite startling discoveries about it.’

  ‘I know,’ said Jack. ‘I read your work and his earlier this evening.’

  Olivia looked into her glass for a few beats. ‘You know, you may be on to something, Jack. Synaesthesia operates on a spectrum, but unlike, say, depression or many other mental disorders, synaesthesia is not a mental illness. Far from it, in fact. Many synaesthetes are artists and creative types who believe it’s not an affliction but a gift from God, an incredible heightening of their senses that allows them to experience the world from multiple places in their brain at the same time.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Jack.

  ‘Are you a synaesthete?’

  ‘I think I am,’ said Jack. ‘Or… I think I’ve become one. In the past few weeks, I’ve started perceiving days of the week and months of the year as colours and shapes, seen time in waves of coloured lines, sometimes even with music.’

  What he did not share was that in the past few days, this synaesthesia had been getting stronger, affecting all of his senses in disturbing ways.

  ‘Of course – it is the nature of your brain, but it’s not the way most people perceive the world. Yours, though, is one of the most common forms of synaesthesia – grapheme to colour.’ She stepped over to a set of tightly packed bookshelves and lifted a book from midway up. She handed it to Jack before returning to the couch.

  Jack read the title aloud: ‘Wednesday Is Indigo Blue.’ He smiled. ‘Mine’s golden brown.’

  Olivia nodded. ‘Most synaesthetes don’t know that they are special, that they are experiencing the world through multiple modes of perception. When someone like yourself, say, with a mild form, tastes or smells something he or she will experience the taste as a sound or a colour which heightens perception. Synaesthetes are experiencing all of their senses at the same time.’

  ‘Like our wires are crossed?’ asked Jack, thinking of the rush of desire he’d experienced minutes before from the trigger, the taste and smell of the whiskey.

  ‘That’s what we used to think, but scientists now believe, thanks to sophisticated brain imaging, that it’s not crossed wires, it’s more like multiple wires connecting all at once, senses cross-talking instantaneously instead of connecting one to one. I’m simplifying, of course, but in the synaesthetic brain, the connections among the senses are polymodal.’

  Jack sat forward in the chair, the smell of peat from the whiskey quickening his pulse again.

  ‘Years ago researchers had a difficult time separating true synaesthetic responses from a person’s metaphorical thinking or even separating a synaesthete’s response to a sense from a memory triggered by that sense. Olfactory senses in particular evoke memories incredibly powerfully.’

  Jack had to stand up, cool his desire, get away from his drink, the whiskey too strong a siren call to his senses. He stood in front of the fire. ‘What do you mean, “metaphorical thinking”?’

  She paused for a beat, before continuing. ‘An artist like Georgia O’Keefe, for example, painted while listening to music, transferring what she heard into her lush images. As far as we know, she was not a synaesthete. Wally Kandinsky, on the other hand, was a synaesthete, and he painted what he heard when he perceived sounds. He painted his perceptions not representations of them.’

  ‘Ah… But if my theory is correct,’ said Jack, ‘and all these women were mildly synaesthetic before the madness and now something is making it worse… that’ll be hard to prove, won’t it?’

  ‘Unfortunately, yes, but we can try, and it certainly puts us into a different area of research from what we have been pursuing. It may mean that we have to reduce their sedation in order to stimulate them when we run a brain scan, and, of course, we’ll need to talk to their families to be sure they are comfortable with the risks that that may involve. But, Jack – this is a step in the right direction towards healing. Finally.’ She finished the last of her drink. ‘Unfortunately,
for many of these women, they’ve already damaged themselves beyond repair.’

  Jack looked at the Cassatt on the wall, wondering what she had seen when she painted it. ‘Synaesthesia is hereditary, isn’t it?’ he asked, thinking of Anwen and her mismatched fruits, her association of colour with a taste.

  ‘Yes it is,’ replied Olivia. ‘In my research, I discovered that there is a chromosome marked for synaesthesia, and, although I can’t prove it yet, I’ve always believed that as human beings evolve, a person’s synaesthesia evolves too.’

  Jack laughed. ‘So those of us who are synaesthetes are more evolved than humans who aren’t?’

  Which, Jack thought, made sense, given that he was from the 51st century. As this thought flashed across his consciousness, it brought with it the face of the beautiful young woman from the mirror, floating in front of his eyes. Jack tried to keep her there for as long as he could, but Olivia was continuing and he couldn’t hold the image.

  She was laughing at his assertion. ‘That’s one way to describe it.’ Without warning, she clapped her hands excitedly, jumping up from the couch. ‘That’s it!’

  ‘That’s what?’

  ‘No two people experience synaesthesia in the same way,’ said Olivia, excitement charging her pitch, ‘but some studies have shown that it is experienced more by women than men, present company excepted.’

  The clock on the sideboard chimed. A dog barked somewhere deep in the house.

  ‘I’m sorry… Could you say that again?’

  ‘Are you OK, Captain… Jack? You’ve gone a bit pale.’

  ‘Sorry. I’m fine. Just trying to put some of this together.’

  ‘I was saying that the studies have shown that more women than men experience synaesthesia.’ Olivia walked smartly across the room. ‘I realise that their gender alone doesn’t explain why these particular women are suffering.’ The excitement had drained from her voice. ‘Especially given that not all women everywhere who are synaesthetes are experiencing a heightening of their senses. And this knowledge certainly doesn’t help us explain any possible triggers.’

  ‘Ah, but it’s a start,’ said Jack. ‘It’s a start.’

  Olivia opened the sitting room door and called for Win to get Jack’s coat. While they waited in the foyer, Olivia added, ‘At its most extreme, synaesthesia can mean having shapes in your field of vision at all times. It can scramble the senses in terribly debilitating and, as we’ve witnessed, dangerous ways. Think about how you’d feel if you had an extreme form of auditory synaesthesia which resulted in your ability to taste every single sound that you hear. Loud thunder is rotten chicken, a baby crying is curdled milk. Imagine what Piccadilly Circus would be like for you on a Saturday night, never mind a simple dinner at home with the children.’

  ‘Vomit-inducing,’ said Jack. ‘Worse.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  43

  JACK STOOD WITH his back to the television, looking out of the living room windows, staring at his own reflection in the darkness, his blue shirt cuffed at his elbows, braces loose at his hips. Hair needs a cut, he thought, running his fingers through it. Maybe a closer shave too.

  It was after 10 p.m., and he knew he was leaving Wales the next day. Once he’d returned to the Coopers’ house, he’d spent a couple of hours thinking about the narrative he’d created that day from all the data he’d absorbed from his and Andy’s research. Add that to the information Olivia had given him, and the hypothesis that had been forming in his mind since he’d seen the image tattooed on Gwen’s forearm was all but confirmed.

  He knew he needed more information and a different approach from the one he’d been taking, one that needed more than someone, him, who was emotionally connected to the key victim and being influenced just as strongly as she was by some psychic force. Jack wasn’t thinking about passing the buck, but spreading the responsibility would help.

  Jack was a loner, but he was not anti-social.

  With the Hub destroyed, Jack had only one place where he could go to find some of the answers, to have the equipment and the intellectual power he needed if the worst of what he was thinking was true. So he sent a message.

  Jack could feel in his bones that time was running out. He just didn’t know whose.

  Behind him, the television newscasters were babbling about the cancelled WHO press conference and how the lack of information coming from the government about this strange mental illness was becoming as startling as the disease itself. Every news and social media outlet was circulating Dr Ormond’s press release.

  Jack turned, aimed the remote at the television as if it were his Webley and silenced the news.

  ‘Hey! I was listening to that,’ said Rhys, sitting with his computer at the dining room table, lager in hand.

  ‘It’s not helpful,’ said Jack, slouching onto the couch, landing on a squeaky toy caught in the cushions. ‘Now every Tom and Dick is going to sedate their wives with whatever they can get their hands on as soon as she asks them to play with the kids instead of going round to the pub. There’s going to be a run on tranquillisers.’ He tossed the toy into the playpen on the other side of the room. ‘This whole thing is going to give a new meaning to domestic violence.’

  Rhys sipped from his can. ‘You have a very dim view of your fellow man.’

  ‘I’ve a very dim view of all kinds of creatures,’ said Jack.

  ‘At least some folks are trying to figure out what’s going on. You haven’t come up with any brilliant answers, Captain Jack. My Gwen’s been mad for a week and now she’s out there somewhere doing God knows what.’

  Jack understood why Rhys was so upset, but he couldn’t tell him what he was working out. He owed it to Gwen not to drag Anwen’s only parent further into this.

  ‘I’m thinking about it. Ruminating over the situation. Gathering data.’

  ‘Oh, that’s what thinking looks like, is it?’ said Rhys.

  ‘No, this is.’ Jack put his foot up on the arm of the couch, posing like Rodin’s statue. Rhys laughed, snorting lager across the keyboard.

  They were both stopped in their laughter when Anwen’s cries burst through the baby monitor.

  ‘I’ll go up this time,’ said Jack. ‘You keep searching for something on that image.’

  ‘You know this would go a lot faster if we could run your Torchwood software.’

  Jack stopped at the living room door. ‘I told you, Rhys. That’s not an option right now. We’re on our own.’

  *

  Later that night, Jack was stretched out on the couch, unable to sleep. He was still dressed in his shirt and trousers. He had always been able to sleep in the tightest confines, believing the reasons he couldn’t sleep in the massive beds that everyone in this century owned – no matter how tiny their bedroom – was as much to do with being buried alive as it was that too much open space made him feel disconnected, like he was drifting from his moorings. It was a feeling he’d thought he’d overcome; however, in the aftermath of his recent experiences, Jack had once again found himself drawn to tight spaces.

  Jack heard the front door closing quietly. Quickly tugging on his boots, he ran through the hall, into the kitchen. In the middle of the table was Gwen’s wedding ring and, propped against the sugar bowl, a handwritten note:

  When she’s old enough, give this to Anwen.

  Tell her I’m sorry and I love her.

  G x

  Jack charged through the door, pausing in the empty street. There wasn’t a sign of Gwen. Not even the distant echo of footsteps. But then, Jack had an idea. These last few days, his senses had been turned up to eleven. Why not use that to his advantage? He took a deep breath and held it, savouring it until he could just catch the tiniest, familiar smell of Gwen – expensive shampoo, old-fashioned soap, masked with a recent layer of hospital disinfectant and industrial laundry. Feeling a little like a bloodhound, Jack sprinted off on Gwen’s trail.

  *

  The pier had been closed for renovations
. Renovations that kept being put back and put back, as though the council were waiting for the rusting Victorian structure to have the decency to give up and fall into the sea of its own free will.

  Jack trod across the boards, feeling them creak and shift more than he’d hoped. He made his way gently towards the figure at the end of the pier, silhouetted against the low moon. She must know he was there. He just prayed she wouldn’t jump now. Because that’s all people really came to the pier to do these days – jump off it.

  Jack crept forward, wondering when he dared call out her name. If he startled her, maybe she’d turn and fight – which would win him time. But if she jumped into the sea… Jack started to calculate how long it would take him to reach the end of the pier, to dive in after her, to find her in the cold, choppy waters. He wanted to call to her, try to reason with her, to let her know he was going to find out what was happening, that he was going to save her, but he didn’t dare risk it, not yet.

  Jack edged forward, plank by plank, feeling them shift and buckle under his weight. Was it his imagination, or was the entire structure twisting slightly in the waves? Had the recent tremors done the ironwork damage? At each step, Jack caught his breath, to see if there was any reaction. Maybe, just maybe, he’d be able to reach out, to grab her, to stop her…

  ‘I know you’re there.’ Her voice was soft.

  ‘Gwen, stop! Please.’

  She turned, recognising Jack’s voice but not yet seeing him. ‘Jack? Jack?’

  It sounded like the old Gwen. Jack moved faster. ‘Gwen, let’s stop for a minute. I can help you. You know I can.’

  ‘Jack, please, leave me alone,’ she yelled. ‘I can’t be near them – I’m so afraid I’ll hurt them. At the moment, my head is clear. I know what to do.’

  ‘No, Gwen,’ Jack pleaded, ‘It’s not. You’re not thinking right – your brain chemistry’s been scrambled, you’ve been pumped so full of drugs…’

  Gwen smiled, and it was an odd smile that froze Jack to the spot. ‘Jack, I’m just doing what I can to protect them.’

  She’s going to jump, thought Jack, edging another step closer.