Consequences (short story)

Consequences was a short story published in Consequences. It was written by Joseph Lidster.

Plot
The author tells a publisher that she wasn’t sure how to start her story. She considered a snappy opening, followed by a quick cut to the main character, from whose perspective the story is told. The story then begins, and we read it as the author wrote it down.

The woman’s name is Nina Rogers, and she’s standing in Cardiff Airport. Nina has intrusive fantasies which only last a few seconds, but can’t easily be distinguished from reality. She imagines a man one running towards her, trying to reach her through some hospital doors. Suddenly Nina comes to her senses, realising that she has been imagining the man and the hospital, and is still standing in a calm and peaceful airport. She sees two kids with their grandmother, and for a moment believes they are being absorbed by an alien blob. A woman asks Nina if she’s alright, and Nina snaps out of the fantasy to find she’s standing in the rain. She believes she is the centre of the universe. Then she sees Captain Jack walking past, who is talking to Ianto and Gwen via a headset. Nina recognises him, calling him Captain Cheese. Before he steps into the SUV, Jack turns to Nina and says “We’ve got to stop meeting like this”. At this, Nina runs away.

We cut back to the author, who is revealed to be the Nina Rogers from the story. Nina is pitching her story to a publisher, who seems dubious about her self-insert character. Nina becomes flustered, and the publisher reassures her that she liked the mysterious opening to the book. Nina then says “I have to tell my story”, and we cut back to the story as Nina the author wrote it.

Nina is lying on the kitchen floor, singing to herself, when her housemate Rianne comes in and puts the kettle on. She confronts Nina about her drinking, saying she’s passed out drunk every night since she moved in. When Rianne asks where Nina was last night, Nina struggles to remember. Nina then agrees to take it easy and not have any alcohol that night. Rianne goes to leave for work, but before she does a plane flies over the house, making Nina jump and spill her tea all down Rianne’s uniform. Rianne asks if Nina’s okay, but mentally Rianne has drifted back to Cardiff Airport. She says some things aloud, but isn’t sure what they are. Rianne storms out, and when the front door slams Nina comes back to her senses.

Later that day, Nina and Jessica are getting coffee at the Millennium Centre. Nina looks out at the water feature in Roald Dahl Plass, the silver tower which descends into the Torchwood Hub, and wonders where the water goes. After several minutes, Jess convinces Nina to come on another night out. She then pours some whisky from a hip flask into their coffees. Just then, Nina spots Jack standing by the water tower. He waves at her. Ignoring her friend, Nina gets up and goes to him.

Back in the publishing office, the publisher asks Nina if she ever found out Captain Cheese’s real name. She says that she did eventually, but she’s trying to tell the story in order. She recalls being on a bus with Jess and seeing a man outside. He was holding a sign advertising horoscope readings. Jess tells Nina that she’s been stood up by a boy named Rhodri Lloyd.

Back in the story, Jess and Nina are studying in Cardiff University Library. Nina sees Ianto nearby and checks him out. Then she asks Jess about Rhodri Lloyd, only for Jess to say she’s never heard of him. Nina insists that Jess had been talking about Rhodri Lloyd earlier that day, and slowly loses her grip on reality. When Jess asks Nina if she’s losing it Nina begins to cry. Ianto then offers Nina a handkerchief, introducing himself and saying he’s here to help.

Nina, Ianto and Jess sit on the floor at the back of the library. Nina tells Ianto how she keeps slipping out of reality and ending up in places where she can see Jack. She has also been losing her memory, and believes Jess has too. Nina finds a picture of Rhodri Lloyd on her phone and shows it to Jess, and Jess says she has no memory of him. Ianto then takes out a device which begins scanning something, but gets shushed by a librarian before he can explain what he’s doing. When the librarian leaves, Ianto says he needs to contact the rest of the Torchwood team. Suddenly a fire alarm begins to sound, and Nina sees that Jess’ cigarette has set it off.

We suddenly jump to Jess’ POV. With the lights out and the library alarm blaring, she pulls Ianto between two sets of shelves, pressing up against him. She shushes him as a security guard walks past. Then, abruptly, we cut back to the publisher’s office, where the publisher asks Nina the author why the story’s perspective has changed. Nina tells the publisher it’s because of "the book", but does not elaborate.

Back in the library, from Nina’s POV again, we find that the fire alarm is no longer going off. Ianto takes a book from one of the shelves, saying it’s mostly safe. Inside he finds a passage about Jess, the passage we have just seen from Jess’ POV. Jess is freaked out, but Ianto reads on. When he gets to a section where Jess says she finds sober Nina to be boring, Jess snatches the book from him. After a pause, Ianto explains that this book has stolen Jess’ memories and transformed them into stories. Nina then asks why she keeps seeing aliens and meeting Torchwood. Before Ianto can answer, the book begins to glow. Nina remembers suddenly that the book always does this. A beam of light shoots from the book, pinning Jess to the wall. As Nina rushes to free her friend Ianto radios Jack for backup. Eventually the beam of light disappears and Jess falls to the floor. After a moment Jess laughs, asking Nina what they’re doing at the library. She can’t remember anything since they met at the Millennium Centre that morning. Three firemen then arrive, asking Ianto, Nina and Jess why they didn’t evacuate when the fire alarms went off.

Later on, Ianto takes Nina and the book into the Torchwood Hub. When they step off the elevator Jack appears and gives Ianto a kiss. He then reads Nina’s file aloud to her. He tells Nina that Torchwood are recruiting, but Nina says she doesn’t want to see any more aliens or people killed. She tells Jack that the book has ruined her life, made everything so confusing, and she just wants to be normal again.

We briefly cut back to the publisher, who asks Nina why she has written the story if she wanted to put it all behind her. Nina the author looks around the publisher’s office, and it doesn’t feel real. Back in the story, Nina suggests burning the book. Jack asks her if she wants to know what it is, and even though a voice in her head keeps saying “no” Nina manages to say “yes” out loud. Jack then says it looks like the real Nina is still somewhere in her mind. Jack then puts on a pair of gloves before opening the book.

At first, the book narrates as itself, saying it wants stories. It recounts Nina finding it in the library and looking at its blank pages, and it decides to take stories from her. Jack then reads some stories taken from other Cardiff residents before coming across another one of Nina’s stolen memories. After Nina once saw Torchwood in a bar, the book decided to keep taking memories from her, wanting to make its story as exciting as possible. It decided to make her meet Torchwood again and again.

Jack then stops reading when a piece of paper falls out of the book. He reads it aloud. It is addressed to Emily Holroyd of the 19th Century Torchwood Three team, and asks her to place the book in Cardiff University Library without telling anyone. The note is signed “Jack”, is in Captain Jack’s handwriting, and is dated as being sent from 2009 to 1899. Jack then realises he must have sent the book back in time, but he isn’t sure why. He considers doing so again to avoid changing history, but then has a sudden change of heart and decides to burn the book.

Back in the publisher’s office, Nina recalls that the book wouldn’t burn on a bonfire, and couldn’t be fed to a man-eating plant in the Torchwood hothouse or a giant fish in the basement aquarium. She says Torchwood then took the book to the shooting range and attempted to destroy it there, but none of the bullets made a mark. The book was indestructible.

Back in Nina’s story, we see Jack decide to send the book back into 1899. If it can’t be destroyed it can it at least be trapped in a time-loop, effectively freeing Nina from this point onwards. Nina asks what will happen to her, and Jack suggests that she will go back to normal, but that a lot of her past memories will feel more like dreams. Suddenly, Ianto notices some Rift activity at Cardiff’s SkyPoint apartment block.

Nina, Jack and Ianto visit the building and go inside, walking carefully up its broken stairs. In an abandoned upper-floor apartment they find a floating orange glow, which Jack tells Nina not to get too close to. When Ianto says the Rift energy is starting to fade Nina prepares to throw the book into it, but Jack suddenly stops her. He realises that if he doesn’t write the note to Emily now then the note would not exist to have travelled back to him in the first place, creating a paradox. He quickly jots an identical note to the one that fell out of the book in the Hub and tucks it under the book’s cover. Nina then took the book from Jack before throwing it into the Rift.

The collision of the indestructible book and the immense Rift energy starts to shake the already-damaged building. Jack, Ianto and Nina hurry down the stairs as walls begin to crumble and bits of ceiling masonry fall from above. As they get outside, they turn to see the building crumble and collapse

From the book’s POV, we see it being washed clean by waves of time as it travels through the vortex to 1899. It loses all memory of Nina. It is then found on the floor by Emily Holroyd of Torchwood, and becomes fascinated with her. It decides to learn everything it can about Torchwood.

Back in the story from Nina’s POV, her, Jack and Ianto are walking away from SkyPoint. Jack offers her a Retcon, but Nina declines. She feels relieved not to have the book stealing her memories, and decides to check in on Rianne and Jess. Here, Nina’s story concludes.

Back in the publisher’s, the publisher asks Nina if that was really the end of the story. Nina then reveals that she’s recognised the publisher as Gwen Cooper, having seen her some time before. Gwen tells Nina that, during this meeting, she has slipped Nina a Retcon and needed her to tell the story again to help excise the memories from her brain. When Nina passes out, Gwen, Jack and Ianto lift her up and place her on the street. She later wakes up with no memories at all of Torchwood or the book, and decides that she must have passed out drunk. She then gets up and begins walking home, when a man in a suit passes her. Nina recognises him and turns to look. When she turns, the man is looking back at her. He waves.

Characters

 * Captain Jack Harkness
 * Gwen Cooper
 * Ianto Jones
 * Nina Rogers
 * Jessica Montague

Continuity

 * Events that occurred in TV: Exit Wounds, TV: The Stolen Earth / Journey's End, TV: Secrets of the Stars, AUDIO: Lost Souls and Golden Age and PROSE: SkyPoint, Into the Silence and Bay of the Dead are mentioned.
 * Ianto tells Nina that he had a girlfriend once. (TV: Cyberwoman)