Almost Perfect

OWEN HARPER IS STILL DEAD

Jack sat on his own in the Boardroom, just listening to the sounds of Torchwood. It was never quiet, even here, several storeys below Cardiff Bay. There was always the rumble of traffic, and the thud of the waves, the not-quite-right ticking from their unique computer system, the occasional roar of a Weevil, and the angry hum of the Rift Manipulator, the only thing keeping Cardiff from being torn out of existence. Oh, plus, sometimes, he swore he could hear the chiming of a grandfather clock, but he’d never found it, or asked Ianto where it was.

This was his time, and he loved it. In his long lives, he’d only ever felt truly at home in Torchwood – the only place and time that suited him. All the noises comforted him – in an odd way, this creepy, dark place was his only friend. It let him think.

He heard a distant footfall. Ianto, he thought. He didn’t say anything until he came into the room.

‘Oh, hi,’ said Ianto, awkwardly. He was wearing his favourite suit back from when he’d been a man. And carrying a tray of coffee. He tried out a brave smile. ‘Normal service has been resumed.’ He set down the tray with a bang and waited. His smile faded as his look at Jack became desperate.

‘Oh, Ianto,’ Jack got up and walked over to his friend, gripping him by the shoulders. ‘You look ridiculous in those clothes.’

Ianto shrugged. ‘What every girl wants to hear. I just felt like a change. Hoping it would jog my memory.’ He poured milk into Jack’s cup, stirred it and handed it to him. Jack took it, brushing his hand against Ianto’s. Ianto held it, but snatched his away when Gwen came in in a waft of pastry flakes. She put down her sausage roll on the Boardroom desk, scattering more crumbs, and grabbed a coffee from the tray. Only then did she notice Ianto. She paused. ‘Hum. OK. It’s quite Marlene. I’ll give you that.’

‘Really?’ said Jack. ‘I think she’d be quite upset.’

‘Hey!’ protested Ianto, tugging unhappily at the suddenly overlong sleeves of his jacket.

Jack pressed on.

‘Now, sit down. Ianto, drink some of your excellent coffee, and listen. I’ve got some news. News about what made you the man you are today.’

He pushed a key, and documents managed to drift onto the Boardroom computer screen. As he waved his hands in the air, various ones floated forward to fill the wall.

‘This was an active file of Owen’s. He was monitoring various news reports about revolutionary gene therapy. Apparently this was a therapy that wasn’t available on the NHS – the makers said they’d been told by various hospitals that it was too costly. But they were claiming some success with all the usual suspects – the big C, the big A, the even bigger A, and even baldness and wrinkles. So far – so normal. There are a dozen of these stories every week in the papers. Breakthrough press releases that are never heard from again, or turn out to be flawed studies. But you know how it is – everyone wants to be perfect, to be cured. And we know that a couple of these stories have turned out to be worth Torchwood’s time. And so, they’re flagged.

‘This one – there was something that grabbed Owen’s attention. It was partly the deliberately low-key nature of the reports. As though the people behind it wanted the public to know about it, but didn’t want anyone to take it seriously. Then it turns out that…’ He paused. A long document floated past in very small print. ‘… This is the report from the NHS trust that was supposed to have looked into this treatment. It’s a fake – no one has even considered using this. It’s not even been through basic testing – that’s all faked too. This treatment is a fake. Which isn’t necessarily a problem – only there are all of these testimonies to its success. And they read wrong – they’re not showing up like the fluke cures you get from placebo trials. Nor do they read like faked testimonials. No “Mrs N of Stoke-on-Trent” – these are the real things. Names, addresses, photos. All over the last two months, appearing in papers across the country, but all claiming to have received treatment in Wales. Owen thought that this was a fake cure that accidentally worked. So, we flagged it. And then, on the night you disappeared, Gwen and I were out hunting Weevils, and here you were. Alone. Cleaning the coffee filter. Same old Saturday night. And then the file noticed this, and sent you an alert.’

A small newspaper article floated to fill the screen:

HEALTHCARE ALL AT SEA FOR MIRACLE CURE

DOCTORS ARE DEMANDING to know if a miracle cure is legal, following the discovery that secret gene treatments are being offered on a Dublin to Cardiff ferry service.’

‘Oh my god!’ said Gwen. ‘The ferry!’

The headline swum slowly across the wall.

Gwen shook her head. ‘But… No one mentioned anything strange. They just seemed shocked. They literally didn’t know what hit them. Everything seemed OK.’

Jack looked at her. ‘Read on…’

Nicknamed the ‘Hope Boat’, this is an ordinary ferry service that has been offered for the last four months. Patients can join normal passengers heading to the Emerald Isle and, once the ferry is in International Waters, the apparently ‘illegal, untested’ treatment can be carried out.

‘It’s brilliant,’ said Barry Truman, 48, of Minehead. ‘We did someshopping in Cardiff, some sightseeing in Dublin, and on the way back my cancer was cured. My GP had given up on me, but apparently I’m in complete remission.’

Furious NHS officials are demanding access to the Hope Boat, but the ferry company has explained that the procedure is nothing to do with them. ‘We know it goes on,’ explained a spokesman for the company, ‘but we don’t know who carries out the treatment, or even who the patients are. All we know is that there’s a lot of miracle cures going on onboard, and who are we to stop that?’

Cancer specialist Oliver Feltrow disagrees: ‘Terminal illness care has always been prey to so-called miracle hoaxes like this. Proper palliative care can be derailed by these claims of a total cure, leading to a tragically inevitable relapse. The really sick people are those behind this scam.’

Passengers on the ferry last weekend rallied to support the Hope Boat. ‘I had no idea,’ said Mr Ross Kielty, 35, of Neath. ‘Fancy learning that the wife and I have been on a shopping trip while everyone around us has been cured of god knows what. No wonder they’re drinking the bar dry!’

There were several photographs accompanying the article. A picture of the ferry and a few shots of passengers. They started to drift into close-up on the screen as Jack continued his narrative.

‘So, the system notices this article, and flags it as being on our very doorstep. And so, as the only person in the Hub, you print out a timetable and head out. And that’s not all. Look…’

Gwen gasped. There, at the very back of a crowd of a picture from over a week ago, was a woman who looked exactly like Ianto.

‘I don’t remember, I don’t remember,’ said Ianto very quietly.