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fandomweekly2025-06-09 11:07 am
m_findlow) wrote in fandomweekly2025-06-09 11:07 am
Entry tags:
[#261] SOMETHING IN THE WATER (TORCHWOOD)
Theme Prompt: #261 - Schemes
Title: Something in the water
Fandom: Torchwood
Rating/Warnings: PG
Bonus: Yes
Word Count: 1,000 words
Summary: Jack is having a hard time convincing the team of his plan to keep Cardiff’s alien problems under wraps.
‘We'll have to put retcon in the city's drinking water,’ Jack declared as they all sat around the boardroom table, debriefing from a long day and an even longer night dealing with their latest crisis, only now able to pause for coffee, which was much needed.
Suzie raised an eyebrow at him. ‘You want to retcon every single person in Cardiff?’
‘We should have enough supply of the necessary chemicals to formulate a highly soluble, low grade dose capable of wiping a few hours worth of memories.’ He turned to the practical aspects. ‘Ianto, you'll need to double check supplies and let me know right away if we're short on anything. Whatever we need, you have my permission to order it for delivery ASAP, whatever the cost.’ The young man nodded and scribbled something on his notepad to that effect. ‘And check how the local council are getting on with the clean up efforts whilst you’re at it.’ He inwardly sighed with relief. At least they were off the hook for that part. Residents with mops and buckets and hoses would do the heavy lifting and the council’s streetsweepers would handle the rest. What was left now was inert and safe enough to sweep back out into the sewerage system.
‘Are you sure that'll work?’ Tosh asked. ‘I mean, the whole city? I admit even though we’ve got our systems redacting every possible report or image from social media we’re going to miss a few, but…’ She let the sentence hang. People would still have their own memories and those could only be erased one way.
‘Course he's not,’ Owen replied. ‘It's mental.’
Jack looked at each of them in turn. He could tell he'd lost the room from their silent body language. No one thought that this was a good idea, or even that it was going to work. Unlike him however, none of them had a better plan, and also unlike him, weren't ultimately responsible for how Torchwood dealt with this. The buck stopped with him and he could hardly have a city full of people believing they'd seen a legion of electric pink blob creatures coming up through their kitchen sinks, bathtubs and the U-bend in their toilets.
Of course the invasion hadn't gotten very far beyond that. No sooner were they up through the pipes then the amount of nitrogen in the air caused their molecular structure to slowly destabilise. Most hadn't crawled much further than down the stairs and out through the front door before they snapped, crackled and popped their way into a sludge that soaked into lawns, spattered the English rose privets and oozed out into the roads.
Jack had only heard rumours of their species before today, and had been worried about what would happen once they surfaced and had a chance to coalesce into a single hive blob. Fortunately it hadn't come to that, more through good luck than good planning. They might have even been able to cover it up as a chemical incident from the local nuclear power station having leaked substances into the local waterways except for the fact that the blob creatures had verbalised an eerie mantra on their way up through the plumbing, warning who they were and that they would not be stopped. They'd consumed the odd curious dog or cat along the way, but hadn't gotten much further. Points for trying, though. No sense starting an invasion and being half-cocked about it. Go hard or go home.
Ianto quietly cleared his throat. ‘Back when I worked at Torchwood London–’
‘Nobody cares what you did back there,’ Owen snarked, cutting him off rather rudely.
Ianto blushed at the chastisement, reminded of his junior status within the group and his limited right to participate in these kinds of debates. ‘Only we had a subliminal message generator that would transmit signals across the entire city,’ he quietly added, determined not to be completely cowed.
Jack was hardly surprised by the admission. Torchwood One had delighted in adapting alien technology for their own furtherance – tinkering with things they shouldn’t have more often than not – and something like that would have gotten plenty of use. Torchwood One had done a bang up job of covering up a multitude of major incidents, from the living homicidal mannequins to the Sycorax encounter and the giant starship hovering over the Thames on Christmas Eve. It was just a pity that they weren't nearly as good at dealing with those things in the first instance. If it weren't for The Doctor intervening, God knew where they'd have ended up.
‘Unfortunately we weren't able to salvage that technology,’ Jack said, replying to Ianto’s suggestion. God knows it would have made his job infinitely easier right now, no matter how much he'd despised their methods.
‘Face it, Jack,’ Owen said, ‘no one's going to go near their tap for a drink. God knows I wouldn’t. Not after this.’
Jack held firm against Owen’s reluctance. ‘They won't have to. We flood the system with retcon for a week. Every time they take a shower they'll inhale it as steam and it'll seep into the skin’s pores. Every time they take a dip at the local pool, every time they buy a coffee, every time they boil their peas and carrots, they'll be taking in small doses of it. Over time it'll build up enough to do what it needs to do.’
He looked around the room again, still seeing a lack of belief etched in their faces. ‘It'll work, I promise. What could possibly go wrong?’ He regretted saying it the moment the words left his mouth.
‘Yeah,’ Owen smirked, ‘cause nothing we've ever done before has gone completely tits up. Alright,’ he said, forcing the rest of them to agree by association. ‘Don’t s’pose we've got any other options, but can we at least stock up on beer and bottled water first, not to mention tank water? I'm not showering in anything you've cooked up.’
Title: Something in the water
Fandom: Torchwood
Rating/Warnings: PG
Bonus: Yes
Word Count: 1,000 words
Summary: Jack is having a hard time convincing the team of his plan to keep Cardiff’s alien problems under wraps.
‘We'll have to put retcon in the city's drinking water,’ Jack declared as they all sat around the boardroom table, debriefing from a long day and an even longer night dealing with their latest crisis, only now able to pause for coffee, which was much needed.
Suzie raised an eyebrow at him. ‘You want to retcon every single person in Cardiff?’
‘We should have enough supply of the necessary chemicals to formulate a highly soluble, low grade dose capable of wiping a few hours worth of memories.’ He turned to the practical aspects. ‘Ianto, you'll need to double check supplies and let me know right away if we're short on anything. Whatever we need, you have my permission to order it for delivery ASAP, whatever the cost.’ The young man nodded and scribbled something on his notepad to that effect. ‘And check how the local council are getting on with the clean up efforts whilst you’re at it.’ He inwardly sighed with relief. At least they were off the hook for that part. Residents with mops and buckets and hoses would do the heavy lifting and the council’s streetsweepers would handle the rest. What was left now was inert and safe enough to sweep back out into the sewerage system.
‘Are you sure that'll work?’ Tosh asked. ‘I mean, the whole city? I admit even though we’ve got our systems redacting every possible report or image from social media we’re going to miss a few, but…’ She let the sentence hang. People would still have their own memories and those could only be erased one way.
‘Course he's not,’ Owen replied. ‘It's mental.’
Jack looked at each of them in turn. He could tell he'd lost the room from their silent body language. No one thought that this was a good idea, or even that it was going to work. Unlike him however, none of them had a better plan, and also unlike him, weren't ultimately responsible for how Torchwood dealt with this. The buck stopped with him and he could hardly have a city full of people believing they'd seen a legion of electric pink blob creatures coming up through their kitchen sinks, bathtubs and the U-bend in their toilets.
Of course the invasion hadn't gotten very far beyond that. No sooner were they up through the pipes then the amount of nitrogen in the air caused their molecular structure to slowly destabilise. Most hadn't crawled much further than down the stairs and out through the front door before they snapped, crackled and popped their way into a sludge that soaked into lawns, spattered the English rose privets and oozed out into the roads.
Jack had only heard rumours of their species before today, and had been worried about what would happen once they surfaced and had a chance to coalesce into a single hive blob. Fortunately it hadn't come to that, more through good luck than good planning. They might have even been able to cover it up as a chemical incident from the local nuclear power station having leaked substances into the local waterways except for the fact that the blob creatures had verbalised an eerie mantra on their way up through the plumbing, warning who they were and that they would not be stopped. They'd consumed the odd curious dog or cat along the way, but hadn't gotten much further. Points for trying, though. No sense starting an invasion and being half-cocked about it. Go hard or go home.
Ianto quietly cleared his throat. ‘Back when I worked at Torchwood London–’
‘Nobody cares what you did back there,’ Owen snarked, cutting him off rather rudely.
Ianto blushed at the chastisement, reminded of his junior status within the group and his limited right to participate in these kinds of debates. ‘Only we had a subliminal message generator that would transmit signals across the entire city,’ he quietly added, determined not to be completely cowed.
Jack was hardly surprised by the admission. Torchwood One had delighted in adapting alien technology for their own furtherance – tinkering with things they shouldn’t have more often than not – and something like that would have gotten plenty of use. Torchwood One had done a bang up job of covering up a multitude of major incidents, from the living homicidal mannequins to the Sycorax encounter and the giant starship hovering over the Thames on Christmas Eve. It was just a pity that they weren't nearly as good at dealing with those things in the first instance. If it weren't for The Doctor intervening, God knew where they'd have ended up.
‘Unfortunately we weren't able to salvage that technology,’ Jack said, replying to Ianto’s suggestion. God knows it would have made his job infinitely easier right now, no matter how much he'd despised their methods.
‘Face it, Jack,’ Owen said, ‘no one's going to go near their tap for a drink. God knows I wouldn’t. Not after this.’
Jack held firm against Owen’s reluctance. ‘They won't have to. We flood the system with retcon for a week. Every time they take a shower they'll inhale it as steam and it'll seep into the skin’s pores. Every time they take a dip at the local pool, every time they buy a coffee, every time they boil their peas and carrots, they'll be taking in small doses of it. Over time it'll build up enough to do what it needs to do.’
He looked around the room again, still seeing a lack of belief etched in their faces. ‘It'll work, I promise. What could possibly go wrong?’ He regretted saying it the moment the words left his mouth.
‘Yeah,’ Owen smirked, ‘cause nothing we've ever done before has gone completely tits up. Alright,’ he said, forcing the rest of them to agree by association. ‘Don’t s’pose we've got any other options, but can we at least stock up on beer and bottled water first, not to mention tank water? I'm not showering in anything you've cooked up.’