Fic: Technological Miracle
Title: Technological Miracle
Author: badly_knitted
Characters: Jack, Ianto, Tosh.
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Nada.
Summary: Alien tech is wonderfully advanced compared to human inventions. At least it is when it works the way it’s supposed to.
Word Count: 1500
Written For: Prompt 149 - Glitch at fandomweekly.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Torchwood, or the characters. They belong to the BBC.
Jack always got excited whenever a particularly nifty piece of alien tech fell through the Rift, something he thought might actually prove useful, or more importantly, fun. Unfortunately, from his perspective at least, nine times out of ten, whatever it was would prove to be broken beyond any hope of repair. Either it would be missing vital components, or they’d discover its power source was completely drained, with nothing compatible to be found in the archives, leaving him pouting at the unfairness of the universe. Every once in a while, though…
“Look at this, Ianto!” Jack dumped his latest acquisition in front of his lover, an excited sparkle in his eyes.
“I’m looking.” For a long moment Ianto stared at the squat, black object with the shiny copper-coloured embellishments. It didn’t look especially enthralling to him, and when it failed to do anything, he turned his attention to his lover. “Okay, what exactly is it I’m looking at?”
“A miracle of futuristic science!” Jack beamed with delight. “Roughly translated, it’s the top-of-the-line ultra-deluxe model of the Oblermeier Corporation’s Multi-Functional Clean-O-Matic. You can tell that by the colour of the fittings; the basic model has silver, the deluxe has gold. Copper is reserved for the best of the best. Forget vacuum cleaners, steam cleaners, mops, brooms, and feather dusters; this baby can do it all, and not only that! The integrated universal adaptor means we can recharge its internal power source simply by plugging it in! Once it’s fully charged, it’ll more or less power itself using dust and dirt as fuel. Plug it in maybe a couple of times a year, just to keep it fully charged.”
Ianto raised a dubious eyebrow. “The last time we plugged a piece of alien tech into the mains, the plug melted and every fuse in the Hub blew,” he reminded Jack. “It took hours to replace them all.”
“That won’t happen this time,” Jack assured him. “That thing didn’t have a universal adaptor; they didn’t even exist until the thirty-ninth century. When they were invented, it changed everything. Trust me, you’ll love this, it’ll make your life so much easier. Just turn it on and it’ll do all the cleaning for you. Give it a few weeks and the Hub will be spotless top to bottom; you won’t have to lift a finger.”
Jack painted such a tempting picture that against his better judgement, Ianto found himself picturing a pristine Hub with the dumpy little automated cleaner zipping around, keeping everywhere free of dirt.
“How is it on spills and organic matter?” he asked, thinking of the mess he’d had to clean up the previous night following one of Owen’s messy autopsies, where the subject had leaked disgusting greenish ichor all over the floor.
“Sucks them right up like they were never there,” Jack assured him. “You’ll never have to clean up after an autopsy again. Come on, let’s get it plugged in and charged. After the others leave tonight, I’ll show you what it can do.” With that, Jack manhandled the device over to the nearest socket and pulled a shapeless lump out of a recess near its base.
Ianto peered at it curiously. “What’s that?”
“The universal adaptor. It might not look like much, but watch this.” Jack took the blob, which was attached to the Clean-O-Matic by a filament no thicker than a strand of copper wire, and held it close to the socket. After a moment, it emitted a beam of yellow light which appeared to scan the socket. Then, to Ianto’s surprise, the blob seemed to squirm in Jack’s hand, changing shape to become an ordinary plug. Jack inserted it into the socket, flicked the switch, and a soft hum could be heard as a readout appeared on the top of the machine, indicating that it was charging.
“How long will it take?” Ianto asked, watching a thin blue line slowly creeping across the panel.
“It’s on about twenty percent right now, so about an hour, maybe less. It’ll unplug itself when it’s fully charged, and then wait to be turned on. That’s this switch here.” Jack pointed to a copper-coloured button. “Push it in and the Clean-O-Matic is on. Press it again, the button pops out, and that turns it off. Couldn’t be simpler; a child can operate it.”
“How does it know what to clean?”
“Mostly it’s intuitive, but you can also give it samples of what you want collected.”
“How?”
Jack pressed an area on the side of the Clean-O-Matic and a small drawer popped out. “Just put them in here and it’ll collect whatever it comes across that matches the sample. You can set it to clean floors, walls, ceilings, furniture, windows…” He pointed to a dial underneath the drawer and beamed at his lover. “That’s the selector, should be self-explanatory. Here, I’ll set it to floors.” He twisted the dial to a symbol that was nothing more than a square, the bottom line of which was blue. “That’s all there is to it. Before you know it, you’ll be wondering how you ever managed without this beauty!”
To Ianto, it sounded almost too good to be true, and yet Jack’s enthusiasm was catching. Despite some lingering doubts, he was eager to see how the new cleaner would cope with the Hub’s various surfaces, nooks, and crannies.
In retrospect, maybe he should have listened to his instincts…
Evening came, the rest of the team headed wearily homewards, and the Clean-O-Matic was still sitting where Jack and Ianto had left it earlier, only now it was unplugged, the adaptor a shapeless blob once more, tucked neatly back into its recess.
“Right!” Jack grinned enthusiastically. “Are you ready to be amazed?”
Ianto smiled back, hands in his pockets, looking forward to an evening when he didn’t have to clean up after his messy teammates. “Yep!”
“Do you want to do the honours, or should I?”
“You do it, since I’ll probably be the one using it in future.”
Jack extended a finger and pushed the coppery button in, stepping back as the cleaner purred into life. It trundled forward a few inches, a beam of blue light sweeping out as it examined its surroundings, getting the lay of the land. Then, after a few moments of chuntering quietly to itself, it went into action.
First it veered sideways and ran over Ianto’s left foot, clouting him painfully on the shin, and leaving him hopping about, clutching at his leg. Then it shot off at a tangent, colliding with Gwen’s desk and knocking a pile of carefully sorted paperwork onto the floor. As the reports scattered across the pitted concrete, the Clean-O-Matic ran back and forth over them several times, puffing out clouds of dust, and leaving behind dirty track marks, before skidding towards the medical bay. Bumping its way down the steps, it made several circuits of the tiled floor, spreading muck from Owen’s latest batch of experiments everywhere, before whizzing up the wall to the catwalk and heading for the sub-etheric resonator at frightening speed.
“It’s not supposed to do that!” Jack yelped, taking off in hot pursuit. “I’m sure it’s just a minor technical glitch,” he added as he launched himself at the cleaner in a flying tackle, pinning it in place as he fumbled for the button and switched it off. It repaid him by giving a mechanical belch and squirting out a final cloud of muck all over him before going BIP and shutting down.
All Ianto could do was stare in abject horror.
Straightening up and half-heartedly trying to dust himself off, Jack looked at the carnage that had been created and winced. “Oops. Sorry about that. Everything will be fine though; I’ll help you clean up the mess.”
Ianto scowled murderously at his lover. “You’d better!”
The following morning, Tosh examined the miracle device.
“Well, there’s your problem!” she said, pointing at a tangled mass of half-melted wiring. “You’ve got a short circuit in the navigation system, but don’t worry, it should be easy enough to fix. I’ll have it back in working order in no time.”
Ianto glared at the Clean-O-Matic as he limped past. “Why bother? That thing’s already proved more trouble than it’s worth,” he grumbled. “I ended up having to do even more cleaning than usual last night, not to mention all the reports that had to be re-done, and on top of that, I think the damned thing broke my toe!”
“Teething problems, Ianto; that’s all it is. I probably should have had Tosh check it over first before using it. You just wait; once it’s repaired, you’ll change your mind.”
“Let me know when you’re ready to test it again,” Ianto ground out between clenched teeth. “Because I plan to be somewhere else.” With that he hobbled away to have Owen check on his injured toe, leaving Jack pouting at the unfairness of it all.
“What does it take to impress people around here?”
The End
Author: badly_knitted
Characters: Jack, Ianto, Tosh.
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Nada.
Summary: Alien tech is wonderfully advanced compared to human inventions. At least it is when it works the way it’s supposed to.
Word Count: 1500
Written For: Prompt 149 - Glitch at fandomweekly.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Torchwood, or the characters. They belong to the BBC.
Jack always got excited whenever a particularly nifty piece of alien tech fell through the Rift, something he thought might actually prove useful, or more importantly, fun. Unfortunately, from his perspective at least, nine times out of ten, whatever it was would prove to be broken beyond any hope of repair. Either it would be missing vital components, or they’d discover its power source was completely drained, with nothing compatible to be found in the archives, leaving him pouting at the unfairness of the universe. Every once in a while, though…
“Look at this, Ianto!” Jack dumped his latest acquisition in front of his lover, an excited sparkle in his eyes.
“I’m looking.” For a long moment Ianto stared at the squat, black object with the shiny copper-coloured embellishments. It didn’t look especially enthralling to him, and when it failed to do anything, he turned his attention to his lover. “Okay, what exactly is it I’m looking at?”
“A miracle of futuristic science!” Jack beamed with delight. “Roughly translated, it’s the top-of-the-line ultra-deluxe model of the Oblermeier Corporation’s Multi-Functional Clean-O-Matic. You can tell that by the colour of the fittings; the basic model has silver, the deluxe has gold. Copper is reserved for the best of the best. Forget vacuum cleaners, steam cleaners, mops, brooms, and feather dusters; this baby can do it all, and not only that! The integrated universal adaptor means we can recharge its internal power source simply by plugging it in! Once it’s fully charged, it’ll more or less power itself using dust and dirt as fuel. Plug it in maybe a couple of times a year, just to keep it fully charged.”
Ianto raised a dubious eyebrow. “The last time we plugged a piece of alien tech into the mains, the plug melted and every fuse in the Hub blew,” he reminded Jack. “It took hours to replace them all.”
“That won’t happen this time,” Jack assured him. “That thing didn’t have a universal adaptor; they didn’t even exist until the thirty-ninth century. When they were invented, it changed everything. Trust me, you’ll love this, it’ll make your life so much easier. Just turn it on and it’ll do all the cleaning for you. Give it a few weeks and the Hub will be spotless top to bottom; you won’t have to lift a finger.”
Jack painted such a tempting picture that against his better judgement, Ianto found himself picturing a pristine Hub with the dumpy little automated cleaner zipping around, keeping everywhere free of dirt.
“How is it on spills and organic matter?” he asked, thinking of the mess he’d had to clean up the previous night following one of Owen’s messy autopsies, where the subject had leaked disgusting greenish ichor all over the floor.
“Sucks them right up like they were never there,” Jack assured him. “You’ll never have to clean up after an autopsy again. Come on, let’s get it plugged in and charged. After the others leave tonight, I’ll show you what it can do.” With that, Jack manhandled the device over to the nearest socket and pulled a shapeless lump out of a recess near its base.
Ianto peered at it curiously. “What’s that?”
“The universal adaptor. It might not look like much, but watch this.” Jack took the blob, which was attached to the Clean-O-Matic by a filament no thicker than a strand of copper wire, and held it close to the socket. After a moment, it emitted a beam of yellow light which appeared to scan the socket. Then, to Ianto’s surprise, the blob seemed to squirm in Jack’s hand, changing shape to become an ordinary plug. Jack inserted it into the socket, flicked the switch, and a soft hum could be heard as a readout appeared on the top of the machine, indicating that it was charging.
“How long will it take?” Ianto asked, watching a thin blue line slowly creeping across the panel.
“It’s on about twenty percent right now, so about an hour, maybe less. It’ll unplug itself when it’s fully charged, and then wait to be turned on. That’s this switch here.” Jack pointed to a copper-coloured button. “Push it in and the Clean-O-Matic is on. Press it again, the button pops out, and that turns it off. Couldn’t be simpler; a child can operate it.”
“How does it know what to clean?”
“Mostly it’s intuitive, but you can also give it samples of what you want collected.”
“How?”
Jack pressed an area on the side of the Clean-O-Matic and a small drawer popped out. “Just put them in here and it’ll collect whatever it comes across that matches the sample. You can set it to clean floors, walls, ceilings, furniture, windows…” He pointed to a dial underneath the drawer and beamed at his lover. “That’s the selector, should be self-explanatory. Here, I’ll set it to floors.” He twisted the dial to a symbol that was nothing more than a square, the bottom line of which was blue. “That’s all there is to it. Before you know it, you’ll be wondering how you ever managed without this beauty!”
To Ianto, it sounded almost too good to be true, and yet Jack’s enthusiasm was catching. Despite some lingering doubts, he was eager to see how the new cleaner would cope with the Hub’s various surfaces, nooks, and crannies.
In retrospect, maybe he should have listened to his instincts…
Evening came, the rest of the team headed wearily homewards, and the Clean-O-Matic was still sitting where Jack and Ianto had left it earlier, only now it was unplugged, the adaptor a shapeless blob once more, tucked neatly back into its recess.
“Right!” Jack grinned enthusiastically. “Are you ready to be amazed?”
Ianto smiled back, hands in his pockets, looking forward to an evening when he didn’t have to clean up after his messy teammates. “Yep!”
“Do you want to do the honours, or should I?”
“You do it, since I’ll probably be the one using it in future.”
Jack extended a finger and pushed the coppery button in, stepping back as the cleaner purred into life. It trundled forward a few inches, a beam of blue light sweeping out as it examined its surroundings, getting the lay of the land. Then, after a few moments of chuntering quietly to itself, it went into action.
First it veered sideways and ran over Ianto’s left foot, clouting him painfully on the shin, and leaving him hopping about, clutching at his leg. Then it shot off at a tangent, colliding with Gwen’s desk and knocking a pile of carefully sorted paperwork onto the floor. As the reports scattered across the pitted concrete, the Clean-O-Matic ran back and forth over them several times, puffing out clouds of dust, and leaving behind dirty track marks, before skidding towards the medical bay. Bumping its way down the steps, it made several circuits of the tiled floor, spreading muck from Owen’s latest batch of experiments everywhere, before whizzing up the wall to the catwalk and heading for the sub-etheric resonator at frightening speed.
“It’s not supposed to do that!” Jack yelped, taking off in hot pursuit. “I’m sure it’s just a minor technical glitch,” he added as he launched himself at the cleaner in a flying tackle, pinning it in place as he fumbled for the button and switched it off. It repaid him by giving a mechanical belch and squirting out a final cloud of muck all over him before going BIP and shutting down.
All Ianto could do was stare in abject horror.
Straightening up and half-heartedly trying to dust himself off, Jack looked at the carnage that had been created and winced. “Oops. Sorry about that. Everything will be fine though; I’ll help you clean up the mess.”
Ianto scowled murderously at his lover. “You’d better!”
The following morning, Tosh examined the miracle device.
“Well, there’s your problem!” she said, pointing at a tangled mass of half-melted wiring. “You’ve got a short circuit in the navigation system, but don’t worry, it should be easy enough to fix. I’ll have it back in working order in no time.”
Ianto glared at the Clean-O-Matic as he limped past. “Why bother? That thing’s already proved more trouble than it’s worth,” he grumbled. “I ended up having to do even more cleaning than usual last night, not to mention all the reports that had to be re-done, and on top of that, I think the damned thing broke my toe!”
“Teething problems, Ianto; that’s all it is. I probably should have had Tosh check it over first before using it. You just wait; once it’s repaired, you’ll change your mind.”
“Let me know when you’re ready to test it again,” Ianto ground out between clenched teeth. “Because I plan to be somewhere else.” With that he hobbled away to have Owen check on his injured toe, leaving Jack pouting at the unfairness of it all.
“What does it take to impress people around here?”
The End