Quantum transducer


 * For the Torchwood episode, see Ghost Machine (Torchwood story).

The Ghost Machine allowed Humans a form of mental time travel.

History

 * The Ghost Machine came to 21st century by unknown means, presumbably via the Cardiff Rift.

Ed Morgan acquired the machine (perhaps by finding it, perhaps by obtaining it off somebody else) and then Sean "Bernie" Harries, a small-time fence in gray market alien artefacts filched it out of a biscuit tin in Morgan's flat.

Torchwood 3 acquired the machine by tracing alien energy signals from the device while still in Harries' possession. After a chase that led her to train station, Gwen Cooper ended up with Harries' hoody, which contained in its pocket the machine. There she mentally time-slipped back in time and saw the ghost from World War II, not a phantom in the conventional sense, but a quantum echo of the long-ago emotional state of a living person, Thomas Flanagan.

The other half of the machine, also at Bernie's, snapped in neatly with the first and picked up allowed visions of the future. Though not physically itself, exerted a powerful psychological hold and showed traumatic visions from both the past and times to come. Jack said it caused Humans to try to change destiny.

The Ghost Machine eventually got put away with other dangerous alien artefacts in Torchwood 3. (TW: Ghost Machine)



Technology
The Ghost Machine used nanotechnology. The machine contained a transducer that the converted the quantum traces of emotional events, both past and future, and transduced them so that Humans could mentally experience them. (TW: Ghost Machine). Jack believed that it worked as a navigational device for travelers across the dimensions who would use quantum traces to orient the flight of their craft. (torchwood.org.uk)


 * According to Jack, the machine only showed possible futures that might nor might not come to pass. In practice the visions the machine relayed all did come true.