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Gwen Cooper didn't...quite remember the last time she was here. That's what retcon will do to you. And so much has happened since then, anyway...she's Torchwood now.

A secret (okay not so secret) organisation designed to hunt aliens. If it's alien, it's ours!

It's a horribly exciting life!! Can't you tell as Gwen wanders in with an armful of paperwork? Yes. SO VERY EXCITING.

She looks around for a moment, vague memories of this place flitting back. Back when she was police. Before Torchwood. They...have really good tea here.

So there's a Gwen Cooper sitting at that table over there, mulling over paperwork with a cuppa. Yay!

[ooc: fails, bbs, and has an allergy attack of doom, but is studying for exam tomorrow and should be around for a while. or dead...we'll see~]

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"Excuse me?" Gwen raises her eyebrows. O_O?!

[ooc: omg i'm sorry. i fell asleep after coffee studying and now i'm off to the zoo, i'll be back in the evening ♥]

"What?" That was when I realized I'd been talking to myself - not the first time that habit's gotten me in trouble. "Oh. Sorry. I just had...something really weird happen to me. I'm a little rattled, is all."

Gwen puts her hand up, smiling. "Oh, well no worries. I can understand that."

"I'm not sure you could understand this - not unless you deal with aliens on a regular basis. That gives a person a whole new set of standards for 'weird.'"

"So happens I just made a career change. Into dealin' with aliens." She grins.

"Huh. That'll teach me to watch my mouth around here, then." I held out a hand to the young lady. "Rick Schumann, owner and operator of the Draco Tavern - Earth's only multispecies bar. Well," I amended, considering the last bit of our conversation, "on my Earth, anyway."

"Interestin'." Gwen grins. "Gwen Cooper, Torchwood Institute in Cardiff, Wales. We deal with the alien threat to my Earth."

"Are aliens official where you come from?" I asked. "I mean, do most people know and acknowledge they exist, or are they still just theoretical?" I wasn't going to go into the murky subject of 'alien abductees.'

"No. Everyone thinks the government is puttin' things in the water or something."

I nodded. "Well, they're official where I come from. We made first contact with an alien species in 2009, when the chirpsithra decided to land and say hello. Since then we've had quite a few visitors, although by galactic standards our planet's kind of a backwater."

"Apparently there's been aliens for ages going to Earth...but I'm only just now finding out about it."

"These guys made sure they were hard to miss - not just lights in the sky, but radio and television broadcasts, public meetings with ambassadors and researchers, the works. I'm pretty sure we had out-of-town visitors before then, but every time I ask an alien about that he, she or it skirts the question."

"Well at least it sounds like the aliens you've met aren't so bad." Gwen points out. "We've got a bit of a problem with hostiles."

"They're not invade-the-Earth types, no. But 'bad' is kind of a relative term: some of our visitors have a different morality that's hard to deal with." Witness what had happened to me earlier that day. "How do you deal with hostile aliens, though? I might be wrong, but you look like you're from the early twenty-first century at the latest - you wouldn't have comparable technology, unless certain conspiracy theories are true."

"We have a lot of alien technology. We're situated on a rift in space and time. It runs right through Cardiff and our base is just on it. All sorts of things float through the rift and we make sure they end up with us."

"I can see how that would help, but isn't it dangerous sometimes? Some of your hostile aliens could fall out, and some things from your side could fall in."

"We don't control the rift...we just keep it as closed as we can. We already have an infestation of aliens that slipped through but they mostly just eat...sewage. So not too bad."

"I guess not. I know of a few species that eat worse things - some of which I have to keep in stock in the basement. Most of the problems I tend to have are with humans who don't understand what they're dealing with."

"Most humans on my Earth have no idea what's going on." Gwen smiles tightly. "It's just more of an issue of keepin' it secret."

"I imagine that a certain amount of willful disbelief helps. That's one thing humans seem to be good at."

I guess I sounded kind of bitter, but having other sentient species as a basis for comparison can do that to a person.

Gwen smiles softly. "We're just set in our ways. And when you get the shit like we do, it's better to not know, I think."

Her words echo Suzie's. But she's seen some crazy things so far and read the files on others.

"You have a point there. The aliens I've dealt with aren't hostile, but knowing certain things about them would keep a lot of people awake at night." I'd had nightmares for weeks after learning about the gligstith(click)optok's taste for cloned human meat, and I dealt with the glig and their ways all the time.

"Exactly." Gwen nods.

"The problem is, the human race has to be ready some time, or they're going to do something stupid. Some nations were really close to nuking the chirpsithra when they first made contact. I've never been able to bring myself to ask a chirp what they would've done if we'd been dumb enough to fire on them."

[OOC: Have to go! I should be back in a few hours.]

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