[#149] Technological Miracle (Torchwood)

[badly_knitted]

Theme Prompt: #149 – Glitch
Title: Technological Miracle
Fandom: Torchwood
Rating/Warnings: PG
Bonus: Yes.
Word Count: 1000
Summary: Alien tech is wonderfully advanced compared to human inventions. At least it is when it works the way it’s supposed to.



Jack always got excited whenever a particularly nifty piece of alien tech fell through the Rift. Nine times out of ten, whatever it was would prove to be broken beyond any hope of repair, missing vital components, or with its power source completely drained and nothing compatible to be found in the archives, leaving him pouting at the unfairness of the universe, but once in a while…

“Look at this, Ianto!” Jack dumped his latest acquisition in front of his lover.

“I’m looking.” Ianto stared at the squat, black object with the shiny copper-coloured embellishments. “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! 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.”

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.

“That won’t happen this time,” Jack assured him. “That thing didn’t have a universal adaptor, they didn’t 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 clean.

“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. “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.

“What’s that?”

“The universal adaptor. Watch this.” Jack held 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 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 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, and that turns it off. Couldn’t be simpler.”

“How does it know what to clean?”

“Mostly it’s intuitive, but you can also give it samples of what you want collected, just pop 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…” Jack beamed at his lover. “Before you know it you’ll be wondering how you ever managed without it!”

To Ianto, it sounded too good to be true. In retrospect, maybe he should have listened to his instincts.

Evening came, the rest of the team left, and the Clean-O-Matic was still sitting where Jack and Ianto had left it earlier, only now it was unplugged, the adaptor tucked 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 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. After a few moments of chuntering to itself, it went into action.

First it ran over Ianto’s foot, then it shot off at a tangent, colliding with Gwen’s desk and knocking a pile paperwork onto the floor, scattering it across the concrete and running over it 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 speed.

“It’s not supposed to do that!” Jack yelped, taking off in pursuit. “I’m sure it’s just a minor technical glitch,” he added as he jumped on the cleaner and switched it off.

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’s fixable.”

Ianto glared at the Clean-O-Matic as he limped past. “Why bother? That’s thing’s already proved more trouble than it’s worth,” he grumbled. “I had to do even more cleaning than usual last night, and I think it broke my toe!”


The End