Beers and Theories
Title: Beers and Theories
Fandom: Torchwood/Doctor Who
Characters/Pairings: Tosh, Lacey, cameo by Owen
Summary: After a long day, Lacey and Tosh discuss Rift theories over beers.
Notes: This is set in the same setting as Human with Two hearts, what I call the Time Crash verse. Originally for a game that has since gone belly up, the back story for said game was so rich that I tweaked it a bit, only removing plot points specific to that game and turning it into my own little play ground. This is also a lead in to a longer fic that I had planned, but this idea also came to me. It's set sometime between End of Days and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.
Disclaimer: I do not own Torchwood, Doctor Who, or anything affliated with it. I do not own Tessa, she belongs to blinding_echos, I just borrow her, but Lacey is mine, and I simply ask that if you feel the need to use her in a fic, ask me first.
Tosh and Lacey returned to their flat tired, and just a bit disgruntled. “What is this? The third time this month we’ve gone out there and there’s been nothing. Absolutely nothing,” Lacey said, flopping down on the sofa with a thud, her feet going up on the coffee table.
“We were at the right spot,” Tosh said, sitting down next to her, “the coordinates shouldn’t have been more than a few meters off if that, but there was no sign of activity. Maybe nothing came through?”
“I don’t know, maybe,” the red head said with a shrug. She got up and headed into the kitchen. “Want a beer?”
“Please!” Tosh called over the sofa, before pulling out her readouts from the night’s activities and laying them before her on the coffee table, trying to find something.
Lacey walked out of the kitchen with an exasperated groan, “Tosh, Owen’s gonna be here with Pizza, or at least, he should be if he knows what’s good for him. Let’s leave work at work just one night.”
“Rich coming from you, Lace, don’t think I don’t know what you’re up to in your room most nights and those files Ianto’s been giving you.”
“The Captain has a horrendous filing system and Ianto’s been working on fixing it since he was finally hired. Since I arrived I’ve been trying to help. And now that he’s scampered off where ever Captain’s scamper off to without informing their crew, we’ve managed to get some work done on it, finally.” She looked over at the readouts. “So, what are you looking for?”
“I don’t know, honestly. There was a second…I don’t know, signal, spike, something. We were busy trying to get to whatever might have fallen through I didn’t get a chance to actually investigate, and it didn’t seem noteworthy enough.” Tosh said, “I thought to look at the readouts from the tech. This is interesting.”
“What is it?”
“What I thought was a secondary spike? It was a drop.”
“What? Let me see that.” Lacey looked over the readouts. “Huh. I wonder…”
“What?”
“Well, we call it a drop when it’s negative and a spike when it’s positive. Basic math, look at the coordinates, they’re practically on top of each other,” She looked up at her roommate, “what if some of the false alarms we get aren’t false alarms, but the Rift spike and the Rift Drop cancel each other out, like when you add a negative to an equal positive.”
Tosh sat back, thinking. “That makes sense. And why our otherwise accurate equipment would send us after something that otherwise we’d have ignored. A spike as big as the one we were chasing should have given us something unless.”
“Unless something cancelled it out before it could spit anything else.” Lacey finished. “I think we might be onto something. We should go through the Rift Monitor, check all the different times we’ve had false alarms and check for evidence of a Rift Drop and a Spike in the same place within, oh, I don’t know…”
“I’d say within five minutes of each other. Any longer and it could be classified as two separate events.” Tosh said, getting excited. She put down the beer and pulled out a piece of tech from her bag.
“I thought the Captain had strict orders about tech off grounds?”
“He does, and I have this one signed out. It’s something I’ve been working on. It’s a database of all the Rift Spikes and Drops we’ve had since Jack took over the team.” She moved closer to the red head so she could look at the numbers. “The numbers in green are spikes, the numbers in red are drops.”
“Hmmm, I can see why he let you sign this out. It’s not so much alien tech as future tech, useful thing to have. So, what we want to do is,” she started hitting a few buttons on the device, “enter our search criteria. We want Rift Drops and Spikes at the same coordinates within five minutes of each other.” The machine whirred for a few minutes, the numbers flashing by before the screen settled again. “Look at that, two in this past month, and both match times we rushed off sure we were onto something and it was a false alarm.”
“This could save time and energy,” Tosh said, “If we could figure out when these events occur in the Hub before we leave, we can avoid wasting our time.”
“We might even be able to save lives….” She trailed, off, leaning back against the sofa, in thought. She took a swig of her beer, before fiddling with numbers in the computer. “Hmmm, interesting. Tosh, do you know how big a rift drop usually is?”
“They can get decent sized I suppose, strong enough to pull people in,” Tosh picked her beer up, giving Lacey a quizzical look.
“Exactly, people, occasional park benches, and most aren’t even that strong, they’re more like portals. You have to run through them, like Tessa did in her great escape.”
Tosh nodded. “How’s she adjusting?”
“She’d be doing a lot better if the Captain hadn’t vanished like he had. Girl’s been through hell only to arrive here and find her whole world is changed and no way to get back.” She set her beer on the table. “At least she has Ianto.”
“Well, he’s not the one who told her that her biological father was dead and she’d never see him again. It’s not a fun feeling.” She sighed. “But Ianto’s pretty good with her. You know she’s taken to calling him Tad? The look on his face the first time she did, it was absolutely priceless.”
“When was that?”
“Last week, Owen was checking her shoulder again, and she was bitching at him as per usual which got Owen going and Ianto gave him a look that was so paternal that she gave him one of those sickly sweet smiles and said thank you Tad.” She giggled. “Apparently Ianto’s reaction caused an almost five minute pause in the exam while he tried to stop laughing.”
“Where did she learn that?”
“Well, Ianto’s convinced that she should be in school, as loathe as the Captain seems to be to this idea, and since the schools here require knowing Welsh, he’s been teaching her.” Lacey shook her head. “What was I going on about before Tessa got brought up.”
“Rift Drops,” Tosh said with a chuckle.
“Right yes, Rift Drops. Ok, so one Rift drop alone is enough to be traumatic, but usually because of where you might end up, not necessarily because of the drop itself, now, let’s say two happen at the exact same location within three to five minutes of each other. That kind of negative energy colliding like that could very well create a micro black hole. Given the right conditions there could be one big enough to swallow Cardiff whole. Literally wipe the city off the face of the planet.”
Tosh sat quietly for a few minutes. “What do you know about Torchwood 4?”
“Only the lame joke the Captain tells during his orientation to Torchwood. That it’s been lost, but we’ll find it again.” She tilted her head. “What? Do you think that’s what happened to it? A multiple Rift drop?”
Tosh nodded. “There’s a minor Rift in Cleveland and that’s where Torchwood 4 was. One day it just vanished. The entire complex just gone, and no one’s been able to figure out how. But this,” she nodded at the results they were discussing, “is probably the best theory we’ve had thus far.”
“And these kind of events are rare, otherwise we wouldn’t be the first to theorize them. At least multiples of the same kind of energies, I mean, judging from the results from the last six months alone, cancellation effects are common enough.”
“Ok, so if a black hole is the result of two negative rift energies, what happens when two positive energies collide?”
Lacey shrugged. “Well, if I had to hazard a guess, I would say an explosion, possibly like the one in…where was it, Tungusta? The area in Russia?” Tosh nodded that she understood. “like the size of the Black Hole, it would it would depend on the size of the energies, but it could be an explosion big enough to level the city. What do you think Harper, you’ve been standing there for a good five minutes, have anything to add?” She looked over her shoulder with a smirk at the medic.
“Oh and here I thought you two were far too wrapped up in mad theories to even notice I’m here with food. I’d say, budge over, put the damn work up for the night, and save your theories for Ianto, who probably will have just the evidence you need to prove or disprove any of it.” He pushed the readouts out of the way, dropping the pizza boxes onto the coffee table before heading towards the fridge for a beer. “I’m telling you, when Jack shows his face around here again, I’m going to slug him one. He could not have run off at a worse time, I mean, really.”
“Oi, jump in the queue. The line’s getting long. I think even Myfawny wants a piece of him for buggering off like that.” Lacey took the opportunity to shoot Owen with a rubber band while he wasn’t looking. “Two points.”
Fandom: Torchwood/Doctor Who
Characters/Pairings: Tosh, Lacey, cameo by Owen
Summary: After a long day, Lacey and Tosh discuss Rift theories over beers.
Notes: This is set in the same setting as Human with Two hearts, what I call the Time Crash verse. Originally for a game that has since gone belly up, the back story for said game was so rich that I tweaked it a bit, only removing plot points specific to that game and turning it into my own little play ground. This is also a lead in to a longer fic that I had planned, but this idea also came to me. It's set sometime between End of Days and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.
Disclaimer: I do not own Torchwood, Doctor Who, or anything affliated with it. I do not own Tessa, she belongs to blinding_echos, I just borrow her, but Lacey is mine, and I simply ask that if you feel the need to use her in a fic, ask me first.
Tosh and Lacey returned to their flat tired, and just a bit disgruntled. “What is this? The third time this month we’ve gone out there and there’s been nothing. Absolutely nothing,” Lacey said, flopping down on the sofa with a thud, her feet going up on the coffee table.
“We were at the right spot,” Tosh said, sitting down next to her, “the coordinates shouldn’t have been more than a few meters off if that, but there was no sign of activity. Maybe nothing came through?”
“I don’t know, maybe,” the red head said with a shrug. She got up and headed into the kitchen. “Want a beer?”
“Please!” Tosh called over the sofa, before pulling out her readouts from the night’s activities and laying them before her on the coffee table, trying to find something.
Lacey walked out of the kitchen with an exasperated groan, “Tosh, Owen’s gonna be here with Pizza, or at least, he should be if he knows what’s good for him. Let’s leave work at work just one night.”
“Rich coming from you, Lace, don’t think I don’t know what you’re up to in your room most nights and those files Ianto’s been giving you.”
“The Captain has a horrendous filing system and Ianto’s been working on fixing it since he was finally hired. Since I arrived I’ve been trying to help. And now that he’s scampered off where ever Captain’s scamper off to without informing their crew, we’ve managed to get some work done on it, finally.” She looked over at the readouts. “So, what are you looking for?”
“I don’t know, honestly. There was a second…I don’t know, signal, spike, something. We were busy trying to get to whatever might have fallen through I didn’t get a chance to actually investigate, and it didn’t seem noteworthy enough.” Tosh said, “I thought to look at the readouts from the tech. This is interesting.”
“What is it?”
“What I thought was a secondary spike? It was a drop.”
“What? Let me see that.” Lacey looked over the readouts. “Huh. I wonder…”
“What?”
“Well, we call it a drop when it’s negative and a spike when it’s positive. Basic math, look at the coordinates, they’re practically on top of each other,” She looked up at her roommate, “what if some of the false alarms we get aren’t false alarms, but the Rift spike and the Rift Drop cancel each other out, like when you add a negative to an equal positive.”
Tosh sat back, thinking. “That makes sense. And why our otherwise accurate equipment would send us after something that otherwise we’d have ignored. A spike as big as the one we were chasing should have given us something unless.”
“Unless something cancelled it out before it could spit anything else.” Lacey finished. “I think we might be onto something. We should go through the Rift Monitor, check all the different times we’ve had false alarms and check for evidence of a Rift Drop and a Spike in the same place within, oh, I don’t know…”
“I’d say within five minutes of each other. Any longer and it could be classified as two separate events.” Tosh said, getting excited. She put down the beer and pulled out a piece of tech from her bag.
“I thought the Captain had strict orders about tech off grounds?”
“He does, and I have this one signed out. It’s something I’ve been working on. It’s a database of all the Rift Spikes and Drops we’ve had since Jack took over the team.” She moved closer to the red head so she could look at the numbers. “The numbers in green are spikes, the numbers in red are drops.”
“Hmmm, I can see why he let you sign this out. It’s not so much alien tech as future tech, useful thing to have. So, what we want to do is,” she started hitting a few buttons on the device, “enter our search criteria. We want Rift Drops and Spikes at the same coordinates within five minutes of each other.” The machine whirred for a few minutes, the numbers flashing by before the screen settled again. “Look at that, two in this past month, and both match times we rushed off sure we were onto something and it was a false alarm.”
“This could save time and energy,” Tosh said, “If we could figure out when these events occur in the Hub before we leave, we can avoid wasting our time.”
“We might even be able to save lives….” She trailed, off, leaning back against the sofa, in thought. She took a swig of her beer, before fiddling with numbers in the computer. “Hmmm, interesting. Tosh, do you know how big a rift drop usually is?”
“They can get decent sized I suppose, strong enough to pull people in,” Tosh picked her beer up, giving Lacey a quizzical look.
“Exactly, people, occasional park benches, and most aren’t even that strong, they’re more like portals. You have to run through them, like Tessa did in her great escape.”
Tosh nodded. “How’s she adjusting?”
“She’d be doing a lot better if the Captain hadn’t vanished like he had. Girl’s been through hell only to arrive here and find her whole world is changed and no way to get back.” She set her beer on the table. “At least she has Ianto.”
“Well, he’s not the one who told her that her biological father was dead and she’d never see him again. It’s not a fun feeling.” She sighed. “But Ianto’s pretty good with her. You know she’s taken to calling him Tad? The look on his face the first time she did, it was absolutely priceless.”
“When was that?”
“Last week, Owen was checking her shoulder again, and she was bitching at him as per usual which got Owen going and Ianto gave him a look that was so paternal that she gave him one of those sickly sweet smiles and said thank you Tad.” She giggled. “Apparently Ianto’s reaction caused an almost five minute pause in the exam while he tried to stop laughing.”
“Where did she learn that?”
“Well, Ianto’s convinced that she should be in school, as loathe as the Captain seems to be to this idea, and since the schools here require knowing Welsh, he’s been teaching her.” Lacey shook her head. “What was I going on about before Tessa got brought up.”
“Rift Drops,” Tosh said with a chuckle.
“Right yes, Rift Drops. Ok, so one Rift drop alone is enough to be traumatic, but usually because of where you might end up, not necessarily because of the drop itself, now, let’s say two happen at the exact same location within three to five minutes of each other. That kind of negative energy colliding like that could very well create a micro black hole. Given the right conditions there could be one big enough to swallow Cardiff whole. Literally wipe the city off the face of the planet.”
Tosh sat quietly for a few minutes. “What do you know about Torchwood 4?”
“Only the lame joke the Captain tells during his orientation to Torchwood. That it’s been lost, but we’ll find it again.” She tilted her head. “What? Do you think that’s what happened to it? A multiple Rift drop?”
Tosh nodded. “There’s a minor Rift in Cleveland and that’s where Torchwood 4 was. One day it just vanished. The entire complex just gone, and no one’s been able to figure out how. But this,” she nodded at the results they were discussing, “is probably the best theory we’ve had thus far.”
“And these kind of events are rare, otherwise we wouldn’t be the first to theorize them. At least multiples of the same kind of energies, I mean, judging from the results from the last six months alone, cancellation effects are common enough.”
“Ok, so if a black hole is the result of two negative rift energies, what happens when two positive energies collide?”
Lacey shrugged. “Well, if I had to hazard a guess, I would say an explosion, possibly like the one in…where was it, Tungusta? The area in Russia?” Tosh nodded that she understood. “like the size of the Black Hole, it would it would depend on the size of the energies, but it could be an explosion big enough to level the city. What do you think Harper, you’ve been standing there for a good five minutes, have anything to add?” She looked over her shoulder with a smirk at the medic.
“Oh and here I thought you two were far too wrapped up in mad theories to even notice I’m here with food. I’d say, budge over, put the damn work up for the night, and save your theories for Ianto, who probably will have just the evidence you need to prove or disprove any of it.” He pushed the readouts out of the way, dropping the pizza boxes onto the coffee table before heading towards the fridge for a beer. “I’m telling you, when Jack shows his face around here again, I’m going to slug him one. He could not have run off at a worse time, I mean, really.”
“Oi, jump in the queue. The line’s getting long. I think even Myfawny wants a piece of him for buggering off like that.” Lacey took the opportunity to shoot Owen with a rubber band while he wasn’t looking. “Two points.”