According to the official Torchwood policy on nomenclature ("On Naming Exotic Particles, Unknown Energy Waves and other Physics Peculiarities"), newly discovered phenomena were to be named after their discoverer. In the event that the identity of said discoverer was unknown, then it was acceptable to use the name of the place of discovery instead. This had, incidentally, led to the discovery of 'U-wave' radiation, so named because it was discovered in the U-Bend of the senior scientist's kitchen sink, and the 'Harkness' particle, much to Jack's chagrin.
In the early thirties, a Torchwood team sent word from their investigations in Alberta, Canada, that they seemed to have found some form of spatial disturbance. When nothing was heard from the team again for another four months, a second team was dispatched. They found an abandoned camp site, and copious notes on their research, including detailed information about a new form of exotic particle. Of the team, and thus the discoverers, there was no sign, and the name of 'Alberta' was given to the unknown particle. It would be another fourteen years before they would be observed again, and the fate of the team, that they had probably been shifted into an adjacent dimension, was uncovered.
The name even survived to Jack's time. He knew, better than anyone at Torchwood, that Alberta particles were harmless to organic life. While there were a fair few dimensional realities that were harmful to Humans, there were as many that weren't. Alberta particles were a side effect of dimensional travel, but they weren't intrinsically damaging. Something was crossing dimensions, and killing people at the same time. He knelt next to a body that was lying by the Torchwood vans that were parked outside the Asen building. Once upon a time, it had been a pretty young woman, a security officer, but now she was pale, cooling and still, and he didn't need to check her pulse to know that she was gone.
He did so anyway, out of some sort of desperate wish to be proved wrong.
He left the body, unable to do anything for her, and hurried into the building, hoping that history wouldn't be repeating itself and he wasn't about to get killed after setting foot inside. He ran up the stairs, stepping over or around bodies without care, knowing they were far beyond caring. Knowing which way to go, as he hadn't before, he was quickly in the cube room, and brought to a halt. The cube was definitely bigger than the last time he'd seen it. A lot bigger, nearly three meters along each edge.
Surrounding it were white clad corpses. It conjured an extremely unpleasant sense of deja vu.
A thought gripped him. He'd asked his contact to search the Asen database. What if...?
He pulled the phone out of his pocket. Where are you? he demanded.
He stared at the phone for several minutes, until the reply came. At Torchwood Tower. Why?
He was relieved. He looked at the death all around him. The TW staff at Asen are dead. Same as the original staff.
Jack could well imagine the verbal utterances that would accompany the reception of that. Then,
I should tell someone. Security.
And how will you explain knowing?
I don't know. But if people are dead, management needs to know. You should leave before it kills you too.
Jack gripped the phone tighter. He wished there was a number or a contact associated with the messages. It would be easier to just call this mysterious individual, speak to them, convince them, but all he had was a few lines of text at a time. On the other hand, the textual medium gave him a chance to moderate his language somewhat. If you want to do something, you're going to help me fix this problem. Torchwood London's failed twice. Help me.
Eventually, the reply came. What do you need?
Asen managed to activate the cube somehow. Torchwood was trying hack the files. Asen might have info on how to shut it down. Find it.
I don't know if I can.
You're going to do it. And if you don't, more people will die. It wasn't definite, but almost certain. Jack felt no shame in using guilt to get his mysterious contact into helping him.
I'll try. Are you in the Asen building?
Yes.
There should be a live hookup to the TW system. Make sure it's still working and redirect the feed to my console.
Jack looked around the cube's room, trying not to look too hard at the still bodies. There was a control station, a series of computers and monitors being fed by thick industrial power cabling. Two technicians were draped artlessly over the keyboards, and one was sprawled on the floor. He took a moment to gently pull them away, and drag them over to the wall, out of the way. He only realised, as he bent to pick up the woman on the floor, that the label on her white overalls read 'Swan, E.' and he realised who it was.
He sighed, sadly, and put her next to her former subordinates.
It was easy to check the consoles, and get into their functions. They'd been left unlocked, their previous users still logged in. The system was designed not to directly act as an access point for the data, but there were searching programs installed which were drilling down through the layers of security lockouts and directly on-passing the data to Torchwood London. He had no way of directly viewing or affecting the information itself, but it was a simple matter to check whether it was still working and where the data was heading to. He looked at his phone again, read the rest of the message, and found the a string of numbers denoting where in the system Jack had to route the dataflow.
It was the work of only a few moments, and then he had to sit back and wait. There, he sent back, You should have it now.
He looked at the response and laughed.
Ok, working. Btw, if I get caught and fired, you have to promise to give me a new job.
**
Ianto was actually starting to enjoy himself, in a slightly hysterical and possibly deranged sort of fashion. While he'd certainly chosen a very risky course of action in subverting Yvonne Hartman's authority, he couldn't deny the thrill of it all.
The sane and rational part of his brain, the part he was desperately trying to ignore, was reminding him that excitement would do him no good if he got caught. Hopefully that wouldn't happen. The lab was empty and abandoned, left alone to Ianto when he had volunteered to monitor the experiments that couldn't be left alone overnight. The only other people in the building were the skeleton night staff – people like himself working on late research projects or manning critical systems – and building security. He was reasonably sure that as long as he had valid authorisation to be in the lab, security wouldn't bother him with exactly what he was doing in there.
He had appropriated Hassan's station, partly because he wasn't stupid enough to use his own interface, and partly because Hassan had a few extra pieces of analysis kit that Ianto didn't. Hassan's speciality was data analysis and he had a decide which Ianto and a fair few other researchers secretly coveted.
It was a small holographic plate that looked like an ordinary tablet input device if you didn't know what it was. There was an associated stylus that an operator could use to poke the hologram floating six inches above the desk in full three-dimensional glory. It was currently in its idle 'no input' mode, a sphere depicting a slowly changing spectrum of colours. When Ianto had poked it with the stylus, its surface had rippled like the disturbed water of a pond.
It had been briefly amusing to play with while he waited, an amusement cut short when Harkness suddenly redirected the dataflow from the Asen Industries building, and the visualisation leapt into a frenzy of activity, the sphere changing into polygons that Ianto had no name for, altering in size and colour. He jumped, pulling the stylus away and glancing around guiltily, as if worried he was about to get caught playing around with a multi-million piece of alien-derived technology. He sent a brief acknowledgement to Harkness, then put the stylus down and turned to the slightly more standard keyboard and monitor set-up. He wasn't familiar enough with the holographic interface to manipulate it quickly, and he was soon distracted from it.
Asen Industries, Ianto discovered, as reams of information flashed across his monitor, had managed to set up an interface with whatever was under the glittering exterior shell of the cube. How, Ianto had no clue, but from what he could see, it had neither been cheap nor easy. Between what Asen had started, and Torchwood had continued, the artefact had been on the verge of cracking open and divesting all its secrets to the outside world. It only took a few nudges from Ianto – a variable here, a line of code there – and suddenly the cube's inner workings unfurled before him like an blossoming flower.
He realised that the team on-site must have been on the verge of a breakthrough, and felt sick. Was that what had killed them? Had the cube used some sort of self-defence measure to kill anyone nearby if it felt threatened in some way?
Quickly, he sent a message. Are you ok?
A long wait, while Ianto gripped the phone and nearly forgot to breathe, and then: Yes. Why?
He breathed a sigh of relief. Just checking. I've accessed the cube.
Anything yet?
The screen was spewing alien characters a mile a minute. Ianto winced. Give me a minute. He put the phone down and called up the translation matrix. It took more than a moment or two, but the computer must have been able to find a related language in its files, as the nonsense text slowly started to resolve into more understandable English words and Roman numerals.
The problem when trying to understand alien technology was not its complexity, or its strange building materials, or even how many fingers the buttons were designed for, but simply that it was alien. It had been designed by aliens whose brains (if they had brains at all and not some distributed neural network) were not wired the same way as humans. It was created by creatures who were products of a different evolutionary system, different flora and fauna, different ways of putting things together, different stories and different ways of seeing things. According to office gossip, it was trying to translate this alien nature into some form of Human analogue that so often turned Torchwood employees into gibbering wrecks, if not completely insane. Ianto was slightly better able to cope with it than others – everyone seemed to have different levels of 'alien-ness' they could stand – but even he felt his brain aching as he tried to understand what he was reading in front of him.
The best way to start to approach the problem was to try to think of something, anything, that might approximate what the aliens were trying to do. As much as every species had different approaches to a problem, those problems were usually the same.
As Ianto had gained a lot of experience lately in cracking into databases and information systems, it didn't take very long for him to start seeing familiar patterns in the data. Information was organised into discrete packets, and they all interacted in very specific ways. The cube was definitely some sort of data storage device, but the data contained within it wasn't static, it was changing even as Ianto watched, new variables being written and additional lines spawning to fill the screen.
He leaned forward resting his head on his fist as he squinted at the screen. He scowled as he tried to isolate one particular code grouping. Some sort of data processing was happening, but what sort?
In his fierce concentration, he didn't notice that the holographic visualisation had changed.
He did hear the voice though.
"Hello?"
He jerked upright, and glanced around the lab. There was no one there. The door was still firmly shut and locked. Ianto swallowed, sternly ordering his heart to stop beating so madly. It had probably just come from a communications link someone had left open at another desk. When the person calling got no response, they'd likely give up.
He bent back towards the screen.
"I saw that. I know you can hear me."
The other explanation was, of course, that the stress of the situation had finally gotten to him and he was hearing voices. He slid off the chair, standing warily.
"Yes. You. Down here."
Ianto, against his better judgement, glanced downwards.
Standing on the hologram pad attached to Hassan's computer was a Human shape. Seven inches high, it had no features, no hair, no lips or eyes, or even fingers. It was like someone had seen a silhouette of a Human and carved a reproduction out of flickering amber light. It had arms, legs, a head, but no way of telling if it had a gender.
It waved at him.
"Hello," it said.
Ianto looked in bemusement at the hologram, and searched his memory. He was reasonably sure he'd never heard of this sort of thing happening before. He glanced between the screen and the holopad and wondered if he should turn it off and on again. Maybe that would reset whatever daft program Hassan had left running.
He started to reach towards the power cord, intent on yanking it out.
"Hey!" The hologram waved its arms abruptly, and the speakers popped at the sudden increase in volume. Ianto jerked his hand away out of reflex.
"That's better," it continued, "No putting the phone down on me until we've had a chance to chat, ok?"
The voice generated was strange. It had American inflections, but a neutrality to it that spoke of it being computer generated. It sounded like the text-to-speech programs that resided in the system that no one ever used.
He cautiously sat down again, and tapped the keyboard. Sure enough, said program was running, and it was hooked into...
He hesitated. It was receiving input from the Asen datastream.
"Who are you?" he asked, warily.
"I can see your lips moving," the hologram said (Ianto glanced reflexively over to the small webcam embedded in the monitor frame), "Turn on the microphone, would you?"
Warily, Ianto pressed the switch on the desk and repeated the question.
"Doesn't really matter, does it?" the hologram said. It sounded amused.
Ianto looked dubious. "It does if you're hacking the Torchwood systems."
"You're alone in a lab and you're using a spoofed ID. You're not hacking the system?"
Ianto frowned, slightly annoyed to have to concede that point to a hologram. "You're accessing the system via the Asen Industries computer system," he said, "Are you an employee?"
"No," the hologram raised an arm as if rubbing the back of its head, "You could say I was just unfortunate enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time."
"I don't understand," Ianto said, "Who are you?"
"If you're Torchwood you might have heard of me," the hologram said, "I suppose you can say that I am the recreation of one Captain Jack Harkness. Nice to meet you."
**
To say that Ianto was surprised was a small understatement. He managed to keep his wits about him long enough to blurt out a few questions about why Ianto was supposed to believe him and what was going on, and how was he hacking the datastream and what did he mean 'recreation'?
The hologram, and the voice that went with it, just seemed rather amused by the whole performance, and, when Ianto calmed down, the hologram said, gesticulating illustratively, "The cube that you found is an artefact of an alien society that destroyed themselves, and encoded themselves onto its hardware."
Ianto rather regretted that he wasn't the hard-drinking sort. At least then he would have had an explanation for the remarkably odd experience he was having. "What are you talking about?" he asked.
"There was no great impetus behind their decision," the hologram of Jack Harkness said, still lacking detail and definition, though if Ianto squinted, he thought he could make out an attempt to depict clothing. "They weren't a dying species, nor was their world under threat. They were just experimenting, trying to see if they could do it. It was a great technological experiment that went unfortunately wrong."
"The cube? An experiment gone wrong? People have a habit of dying around it," Ianto said, "I'd say that was a bit of a flaw."
"Exactly," the hologram said, "Their ability to store information had been growing exponentially for decades, and some bright spark lit upon the idea that rather than just storing books, or art, or music, they could store thoughts and memories. They could build a device that would forever keep a copy of someone's mind. It would enable people to forever remember their deceased loved ones, and the knowledge of scientists, of artists and writers would never be lost. They created technology that would scan a person's brain right down to the subatomic level, and recreate it in the core of the machine. They forgot one simple principle, however."
The hologram paused, expectantly. Ianto frowned, feeling vaguely like he was being quizzed in a classroom. He searched his thoughts for a minute, and then recalled something, something from the machinery of teleportation, something that had to be compensated for...
"It is not possible to measure both the position and momentum of a particle with precise accuracy."
The hologram nodded, though it was more like the inclination of the entire top half of its body. "Or, as you might otherwise know it, the 'Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle'. It was their biggest barrier to the technology working. They couldn't precisely measure the subatomic particles, and so could not recreate accurately. They did create a workaround, though, and activated their machine."
Ianto looked at the hologram, discomfort gnawing at his stomach. He had a feeling he knew exactly what that work around was. "What happened?"
"Their workaround compensated, all right. Instead of creating flawed copies of a person, the recreation was perfect. In the process, however, it completely annihilated the mind of the original person. When they switched on the machine for the first test, built partly outside of normal space in order to compensate for the massive amount of storage space needed, they didn't realise that the machine, self-replicating and self-altering, was drawing upon the energy from other dimensions. Its output was massive. The moment they flicked the switch, the machine scanned the minds of everyone on their world, and stored them in its memory. It killed everyone."
Ianto blinked, drew back. "The Asen staff..."
"Incorporated. Like me. I'm a copy of the original man. No less for it, I might add. I don't really miss my body, but I think that's a product of not having it at all."
"But-" Ianto stopped. But I met you, you're still alive. He'd read Jack Harkness's file. It was a useless thing to say.
"The machine - the archive of souls, I suppose you could call it - was left abandoned. Over the centuries, as the world decayed around it, it was damaged. I'm guessing, considering that it's on Earth now, that it was picked up by scavengers exploring dead worlds. Asen repaired it enough that it activated, but nowhere near as powerfully as it did before, it only stored the minds in its immediate vicinity. I think I know why it's broken. There was... something happened to space and time a long while ago. It damaged reality, cascaded throughout the dimensions, and strangled the archive's power supply. It's starting to repair itself though."
"It killed again. Wiped out the Torchwood team studying it."
"I guessed that. We've had some new..." the hologram waved its arm vaguely, "Immigrants."
"What do you need me to do?" Ianto asked, "I'm guessing you're not talking to me just to provide useful exposition."
The hologram laughed, the sound poorly rendered through the desk speakers. "All the minds in this thing they... well... they formed a sort of gestalt consciousness over the millennia. I'm not sure what to call it. It doesn't really call itself anything. The Archivist, maybe. Or the Librarian." There was a pause. "I like that. Librarian. Brings to mind pencil skirts, and scholarly little pairs of glasses. The Librarian didn't really have any awareness of the outside world, not until Asen and then Torchwood set up the datalink with the outside world. It knows what's going on, and it doesn't want to kill everyone on Earth like it did its own homeworld. It sent me to talk to you for a reason."
The hologram assumed a gesture that Ianto could almost describe as smug. "You see, it has a plan."
**
The cube says it's lost. It needs to be pushed back into its outside dimensions but doesn't know the way. Any ideas?
Jack stared in disbelief at the screen of his phone. Aside from a magic wand? he typed, then sighed, and deleted it.
He looked up at the cube's façade. It was pulsing in neon shades underneath its surface, and yet somehow managed to seem malevolent. Maybe that was just the influence of the pile of corpses that tended to appear around it.
On the other hand, the cube didn't screech a war cry, didn't snap razor sharp teeth or threaten to tear flesh with poisoned tipped claws. Its menace was more subtle, the slow creep of mysterious death, rather than the risk of being torn limb from limb. Its victims hadn't suffered, Jack knew, they had just died. If it was malevolent, then that was tempered by the fact that it was at least merciful in its killing.
It didn't seem like your typical doomsday weapon, and in his tenure with Torchwood, Jack had seen his fair share of those. None of them were as gaudy, or as large as the cube was. If someone designed a weapon seriously intended to kill someone, then they went for functional, nondescript. There was no point creating something that had colours and light running underneath the surface when there was no intention of anyone ever surviving to get a good look at it. If he were pushed, he would almost be inclined to say that this was a work of art, an alien work of art of course, but art nonetheless.
Now there was a sickening thought. Death as performance art.
There were some things in the Universe that Jack was occasionally glad not to have been witness to. There was a cold kernel of dread in his stomach as he wondered if that was what the cube was. He shook his head. His contact said that the cube was lost. That implied two things: that whatever was inside the cube was intelligent, and that it was passing through dimensions unintentionally.
Official Torchwood policy regarding wandering aliens was capture or kill. It was one of the many reasons why Jack had severed contact with the main branch upon his 'promotion' to the head of Torchwood Cardiff. He had better ways to deal with the lost.
He stared deeply into the depths of the cube, so intent was he upon making his decision that he heard the footsteps before he saw them. Six black clad figures, all with a familiar stylised T as the only decoration on their uniforms, snugly placed over the right breast, burst through the doorway, spreading out, each carrying a rifle which they raised an aimed unerringly towards Jack.
"Sir!" one of them called out, standing by the pile of bodies.
There was no way of distinguishing the leader, until he nodded sharply, tightening his grip on his gun and narrowing his eyes at Jack. Jack raised his hands and smirked at them.
"Didn't anyone ever tell you it's not nice to go around shooting superior officers?"
There was a bare instant of hesitation, and Jack knew instantly that he would be able to control the situation. If they'd been smart, they would have shot first and asked questions later. Finally their leader spoke up.
"Who are you?" he demanded, "What happened to the Torchwood staff?"
"Captain Jack Harkness, Torchwood Three," Jack said, and moved one hand slowly, pointing in the direction of the bodies that he'd carefully moved to the side and covered in a tarpaulin he'd found in an adjoining area. "And the staff were already dead when I got here."
The men didn't move. "Identification," the leader snapped.
Jack reeled off his official ID number, which really wasn't good for much as far as Yvonne Hartman was concerned, but it would at least confirm his identity. He could always provoke them into shooting him, and make good his escape after waking up, but he didn't trust them to solve this problem, didn't trust them to finish the job of getting rid of the cube, of sending it on its way. They might destroy it, of course, but whatever was inside would die along with the cube. He would bet good money on London thinking that a few dozen deaths were acceptable losses if the reward was advanced alien technology. "I'm taking over this operation," he said, putting every inch of authority he could manage into his voice, "You can either help me, or you can get lost now and know you helped kill an awful lot of people when this thing finishes crossing over dimensions."
The leader shifted from one foot to another, glancing at one of his team. That one nodded, presumably confirming the ID's authenticity, and then the leader said, tentatively, "We'll need authorisation from-"
Jack made a cutting motion with his hand, striding forward. The action startled the assault team, clearly not expecting someone they were holding at gunpoint to risk moving. "I'm in charge here, and I've got the authority. Either you help me, or you get the hell out of here."
It was a gamble. They were armed, and while Jack was as well, he wouldn't last for long against half a dozen rifle-bearing grunts with paramilitary training. If they chose to take issue with his instructions, there wasn't much Jack could do about it. But Jack had learnt, long ago and in the days before his life became an endless cycle of dying and waking up afterwards, that confidence was everything.
The leader wavered a moment, his fingers twitching as if thinking about going for the radio. Then he nodded, and lowered his rifle. The team followed suit. "Officer Bowen, sir."
"Officer's your first name, is it?"
Bowen looked nonplussed. "Anthony," he said.
"Right! Anthony it is then," he grinned, showing mostly teeth, and slung an arm around Bowen's shoulders, turning him towards the cube. "That, Anthony, is an unknown device of alien origin which is partly embedded in dimensions other than the ones we inhabit. For all we know, it's the size of Poland, and it's slowly exiting into our reality. Every time it edges out further, it kills whoever happens to be around it. I generally consider this to be a bad thing, how about you?"
Officer Anthony Bowen looked like he wasn't sure if this was a test or not. "Er..." He glanced at his squad, who all looked back blankly. "I... agree, sir?"
"Absolutely right of you, Anthony. So, we need to force it back into the dimensions whence it came, and to do that, we're going to need a power source with at least a two gigawatt output. Don't suppose you have one of those handy?"
One of the assault team cleared her throat. "Uh, sir..." She glanced around, giving the cube a nervous look. "We, uh... do. Cold fusion cell in the van. Just in case, you know?"
Jack grinned and clapped Anthony Bowen on the back. "God bless the Torchwood emergency response unit. More prepared than your average boy scout troop. Right then!" He pointed three of the six grunts. "You lot. Got and set up a roadblock. I don't want anyone coming within a hundred yards of this place."
They'd lost all thought of treating him as a threat now. They straightened and barked, "Yes, sir!" before hustling out of the door. Jack turned to Bowen, and the two remaining soldiers, including the sole female member of the team, who he would later find out was called Allison. "You two, go fetch the fusion cell and quickly."
And shortly after that, Jack was alone in the room, with only the cube for company. "Right then," he told it, "Dimensional transit." He unfastened his wrist-strap. "Fortunately for you, that's a bit of a speciality of mine."
**
"What's it like in there?"
The holographic representation of a man who Ianto knew was currently in a building several miles away had been standing idly for a while now, and now it suddenly flickered, acquiring animation. He rather got the impression that the mind behind the puppet hadn't been paying attention to its actions. "In the machine?" it asked in return.
Ianto nodded. "Yes."
They were waiting to hear back from the hologram's real counterpart, although Ianto hadn't mentioned who exactly he was in contact with, merely saying it was a 'friend'.
The simulation seemed to think about that for a moment. "Would you believe me if I told you that it wasn't the strangest feeling I've ever had in my existence?"
Ianto smiled slightly. "Very probably."
"Well, it's true." The hologram paused another moment, and just when Ianto thought that it had said all it was going to, it continued, the artificial recreation removing any trace of Humanity that might have been behind it. "I thought I should be more upset about losing my body, but that's not really the case. Perhaps it's the lack of hormones. Without nerves and chemicals and biological responses, there's just thought. There's a purity to it, I suppose, but it's not very colourful."
Ianto frowned. "Then you're not... happy... in there?"
"No, but then I'm not sad either. I don't feel much either way. I just am, though there is perhaps a vague sense of nostalgia." The hologram waved an arm. "It could be worse. I could be on my own. But there's the Librarian, and all the Asen and Torchwood minds that were incorporated into the machine. If I have to spend the rest of my existence in here, then I suppose it's not so bad. I just wish..."
The hologram trailed off, and after a moment, Ianto prompted, "You wish...?"
A pop of static, the equivalent of a gusty sigh, came over the speakers. "There's someone who was... very special to me. I wish I could have seen him one last time."
Ianto leaned forward, and rested his chin on his hand. "Tell me about him," he said.
The simulacrum wavered slightly as the mind behind it contemplated the answer. "Brave, amazing, deeply wounded, with big ears and an ego to match."
"That doesn't tell me much," Ianto said, with a faint smile.
"It tells you everything you need to know," the hologram told him. "Anything more than that is just extraneous."
The phone beeped. Ianto glanced down at it.
Alright, so I think I have an idea.
**
The Torchwood Goons, as Jack had affectionately taken to calling the rifle-bearing troops that London euphemistically called 'External Security', were nothing if not quick. In no time at all, it seemed, they were re-entering the room with the cube, fusion cell held between them. Officer Anthony Bowen glanced between the cell and the cube, his expression dubious, and said, "I don't exactly see a three pin socket on that thing."
Jack looked up from fiddling with his wriststrap. His phone was lying, dissected, on the computer console, the SIM card extracted. "You're thinking too contemporaneously," he said, chidingly, in the same tone of voice one might use to a child who had just stuffed a crayon up their nose. "Once upon a time, the idea of being able to talk down a phone that didn't have any wires connected to it was pure fantasy. Once upon a time, you couldn't transmit moving pictures to a glass screen in the corner of the living room."
Bowen looked slightly chagrined, and faintly annoyed. "Sufficiently advanced technology, I get it."
"Nice to see you've been keeping up with your classics. Now let's see how you are on dimensional topography." He laid the SIM card on top of the wriststrap, and began pressing buttons, reconfiguring the system to transfer data. "What do you know about moving transdimensionally?"
"Uh..." Officer Bowen glanced at his team, but they didn't look at all eager to step up and answer any questions. "You... can't? It's..." Vague memories of Torchwood lectures came back to him, and he blurted, "It's like pages in a book. You can't jump from one to another."
Jack shook his head and made a disappointed tutting noise. "You're thinking of transuniversal travel. It takes more energy than anyone can generate to step across the void between the pages, but it's possible, though I've never heard of it happening personally. You're halfway there, but the part where you start to go wrong is where you start thinking of dimensions as separate entities. You don't separate out length, breadth and depth when you examine a cube," he jerked his head towards the largest example of the shape in the room, "So why try to distinguish more than that? All dimensions are intrinsically connected; they're all facets of the Universe. It's how the Universal Timecode works. You find enough common factors across enough dimensions and you can compensate for relativistic effects and keep time perfectly in sync with anyone, anywhere."
The wriststrap beeped, and began its data transfer. Bowen was starting to look cross-eyed as he struggled to follow what Jack was saying. "Now keep up," he said, "There'll be a test on this later.
"You can move voluntarily in three dimensions because you know how to. You can move linearly in time because you don't know any other way. It's no different with travelling through and around other dimensions. You just need to know where you are, and where you're going." The wriststrap chirruped a confirmation that it had finished its job.
He reassembled the phone with barely a glance, and then only to make sure the battery was being inserted the right way. "Anything that exists across more than one dimension must be capable of dimensional mapping. Otherwise it would be like having your head in France, but not knowing if your feet were in Luxembourg or Belgium, and you're trying to get to Venezuela, but you're not sure which way that is. It's been damaged by a lack of power, but, my sources say, it has self-repair functions. And once it's working again, it needs to know where to go."
He flicked the power switch, and watched the phone boot up. There was a whole new operating system layered on top of the original programming. It wouldn't increase your free minutes per month, or enable galactic roaming, but it would allow the phone to send very large amounts of data in a highly compressed burst. Especially useful if you wanted to dump a large amount of data to a receiving handset. "So," Jack said, "I'm going to draw it a road map."
**
Ianto had hooked the phone up to the computer at the insistence of the Captain Harkness that was real and not incorporated into some alien library. The hologram had changed from that of a generic humanoid figure to a flickering display of lines and curvatures that made Ianto's head hurt to look at it.
"Yes," the computer murmured, making Ianto jump, "This is good. This is exactly what we need. This is... very familiar."
Ianto stiffened. Irrationally, he felt like backing away from the computer. "Oh?"
"Yes. I used to have a copy of exactly these sort of maps. In fact..." The scrolling lines froze, then zipped by at such speed that Ianto could tell something specific was being searched for. Finally it froze on a tiny line of dots with a flourish at the end. It meant nothing to Ianto, but to the simulacrum of Jack Harkness, it was clearly of great importance.
"Ah," the computer voice said, "You didn't tell me you knew my counterpart."
Ianto thought about trotting out some lame cliché like "you didn't ask", but felt that it was wiser to keep quiet.
"I suppose it doesn't matter. In your place I'd do exactly the same thing. Though..." The voice sounded uneasy. "Did you... know? About the fact that if I was incorporated, I must have died, and if you know me and I don't know you, you must have met me after I... got better?"
Ianto swallowed against a dry throat. "I knew," he said, hoarsely, "Mostly because I don't know when to let something go. My girlfriend says it's going to get me killed one of these days."
"That Torchwood London sneakiness, I might have known. I'm not angry, Ianto Jones. I'm not capable of anger any more. There is perhaps a certain amount of disappointment at your lack of willingness to share the truth."
Ianto stared at the phone's screen. Data Transfer 78% Complete was on the screen. The information, maps that spanned 47 dimensions, he was told, was still downloading. "I..." He sighed, "I've never actually met you. I just read your file."
"But you're talking to me. Him. I can see your message history – ah. You portray yourself as a mysterious informant. How James Bond of you. And how very foolish. You must know what will happen if you get caught."
"I know." It didn't matter, Ianto told himself. This was important. He had to do it, especially now he knew exactly what the cube was capable of doing to the world.
"He will not thank you. He might be amused. He might be disgusted at your foolhardiness. I don't know. It's becoming harder to think like a Human. Is that a bad thing?"
Ianto desperately wished for the pseudo-Human interaction the hologram had allowed him. "If you're about to spend eternity in an alien data storage device, probably not."
Data Transfer 96% Complete
"I suppose that's true. Perhaps you're smart, as well as foolish. Why did you do this?"
"Because..." Ianto thought for a long moment. For all his justifications, his curiosity, there probably was only one real reason behind it all. "Because I can."
The simulacrum laughed, just a little. "How Human of you. I shouldn't criticise. Humanity went to the stars for less reason."
The phone beeped, just as Ianto opened his mouth to ask what exactly it meant by that. Data Transfer 100% Complete, it read.
"That's all the Librarian needs." Even as Ianto watched, the massive download disappeared into the direct link between Torchwood and the Cube. "It's grateful, I think."
"Thank you... I think," Ianto said, with a slight smile.
"Goodbye, Ianto Jones," the recreation of Jack Harkness said, "Hopefully you and I will meet in the flesh again soon. For his sake, I hope very soon."
Ianto started to laugh, but then the screen cleared, and the datastream snapped off without ceremony. The lab suddenly seemed quieter. He looked thoughtfully at the hologram pad and smiled faintly. It was worth it. The lies and sneaking, and he'd helped save the world. Not that anyone would know, but it had definitely been worth it.
The door crashed open with such force that it tore one of the hinges free. Ianto had leapt out of his chair at the first crash of plywood, but froze when he realised that those who had caused the doors destruction were armed, angry looking, and had their rifles pointed in his direction. He felt dizzy, and clutched the edge of the table with his fingertips.
"Ianto Jones."
Yvonne Hartman was standing just inside the doorway, behind her two security guards. Miriam Bell stood out in the corridor, hands in her lab coat pockets and smiling vaguely.
Yvonne's own smile was tight and mirthless. "I think we need to have a little chat, don't you?"
**
Jack had re-secured his wriststrap, and ordered the Goons to deactivate the safeties preventing the fusion cell from suffering a catastrophic overload.
"If you think I'm going to allow you to blow up this building," Anthony Bowen started to splutter, his fingers automatically starting to reach for the rifle he still had slung over his shoulder.
Jack shook his head, gesturing dismissively. "Nothing of the sort. Trust me, dying is no fun at all and I have no intention of doing that again today."
"But..." Allison bit her lip and spoke up. Clearly, she was the technical specialist of the group. Jack was willing to bet that if she was wearing her in-house uniform, she'd have rank bars saying exactly that on her arm. "Removing the safeties will cause a catastrophic build-up. The energy doesn't have anywhere to go."
"Yes it does," Jack corrected, and jerked a thumb at the looming neon cube. "Into that thing. The weak trickle this thing gives off by design isn't enough to push it into other dimensions. But, all of the energy in one jolt might just do it."
"And if it doesn't?" Bowen asked, frowning.
Jack shoved his hands into his coat pockets and grinned. "Hope you weren't planning on finishing any long books."
Anthony Bowen stared at him. Jack stared back.
Bowen, as Jack would have predicted, was the first one to break. He grunted, and gestured sharply to his team. "Do it," he ordered, brusquely.
Allison and the other man, a fellow with a neck as thick as his thigh and a buzz cut, bent over the bomb and with quick, skilful motions, tapped keys, tugged out wires, and removed bits of circuitry until Allison glanced up and nodded quickly, "It's ready, sir."
"Do it, then drop it less then a meter from the cube and get clear." Jack ordered.
Allison looked towards Bowen for confirmation, and he nodded. She pressed her lips together tightly, and removed the last component. Then, in one smooth motion, she and her gorilla colleague picked up the fusion cell between them and rushed it over to the cube, setting it gingerly into place before fleeing even more rapidly back towards the door.
For a moment, nothing happened.
And then everything happened at once.
A hum was growing inside the fusion cell, and as the moments passed, the Goons were becoming increasingly nervous, exchanging glances and fingering their weapons. Jack stood firm, projecting confidence. If he wavered now, they'd probably shoot him before anything had a chance to work. Then the cube started making a sound. It was almost a hum, but half a screech, and sounded in counterpoint to the humming of the power cell. There was a spark, little more than a small snap of light that one could easily dismiss as being the product of imagination.
Then it was a larger spark, a bolt of lightning that leapt away from the fusion cell to slap at the cube's surface. Then the energy started flowing in great arcs of light that leapt the distance between the cell and the cube. Something was shrieking discordantly, forcing Jack to clap his hands over his ears even as he squinted against the glare of the light. It might have been the cube that made the noise, but all he knew was that it set every nerve on edge, and the smell of ozone made him want to sneeze.
The fusion cell was dumping its energy freely now. Jack briefly wondered what he would be like to be caught in a fusion cell explosion. He'd managed to walk away from several other sorts of explosions over the years, and in his darker moments he thought about making up bingo cards.
Then the cube just folded in on itself. Beyond the intensity of the energy arcs, he could see it becoming distorted, twisting sideways and crumpling. Then it was gone. The fusion cell, depleted, went dark. All Jack could see for several moments was the lurid after-images of the cube burned onto his retinas. He blinked rapidly, until he could see enough to know that the cube was gone and the cavernous room was, indeed, empty.
He looked at the vacant space with satisfaction. "I love it when things work out for the best."
From behind him came the sound of six rifles being simultaneously cocked. He froze and, ever so slowly, raised his hands in surrender, turning as he did so. The Goons had all taken up their arms once again, barrels aimed unswervingly at his chest. The three that he had sent out to secure the road had clearly done no such thing. He imagined that they had simply lingered in the corridors outside the cube room until the time was right.
He looked between them. "Well, now, that's just unfriendly, Anthony."
Bowen didn't look very amused.
"I'm surprised you bothered helping me."
Bowen didn't shrug. It would have thrown off his aim. The sound of it was, however, thick in his voice. "You were the only one with the technical expertise to solve our problem here. Director Hartman ordered us to assist you in any way possible. She also asked us to give you a message, once we were done."
"I'm probably going to regret asking this," Jack said, "But what message might that be?"
The last thought he had before the rifle fire knocked him to the floor, killing him almost instantly, was that he really should have known better than to ask.
**
Torchwood's interrogation suites were cold, sterile, white, and far too bright for comfort. Ianto had seen them many times, behind the fake wall, watching and listening and taking notes. He wondered who was looking at him now, wondered if they knew him. They had taken away his clothes, had him stripped by security staff whose faces he didn't recognise, and whose uniforms marked them as the little seen and much dreaded Internal Security division. They had scanned him, forced him into thin and inadequate scrubs before bringing him here, and putting him in a chair so like the one that Ianto had seen Jack Harkness in not too long ago.
The difference with this chair was the restraints at the wrists and ankles. There was, Ianto had just had time to see before they had sat him down, another clasp for a collar about the neck. He was ridiculously thankful that they hadn't seen the need to use it. His thoughts were already scrambled with fear, rumours and whispers about what happened to people caught betraying the Institute running through his mind over and over again. If they had wrapped something around his throat, forced him to stare at that strange off-white stain on the wall opposite, he might have started crying.
As it was, he could barely restrain the impulse to sob.
He wasn't sure how long he was kept there, waiting in the cold. He lost all track of time and then, suddenly, the door swung up, and Yvonne Hartman strode in. Dressed smartly in her usual suits, he would have thought she was on her way to a business meeting. Instead, with a bright smile on her face that showed her teeth to excellent effect, she sat down opposite him, and dropped the items she had been holding onto the table.
It was the phone he'd been using to contact Captain Harkness, the needler probe he'd used to get into the secure storage area, and the memory card with the record of Yvonne's 'private' interrogation on it.
Ianto briefly wondered what they would tell Lisa, when they explained that her boyfriend wasn't coming back.
"You've been quite the busy little bee," Yvonne said, leaning forward and smiling conspiratorially. "When you put your mind to something, you certainly don't hold back, do you?"
Ianto would have liked to pretend that his lack of a response was due to some deep well of fortitude that allowed him to resist her questioning. In truth, he was too terrified to make a sound.
"The question is," Yvonne said, leaning back, crossing her legs and folding her hands neatly in her lap, "What exactly are we going to do with you, Ianto Jones?"
Ianto looked down at the restraints encasing his wrists, and his vision swam with unshed tears.
**
Yvonne had apparently decided not to punctuate her message by having Jack's body thrown in the Thames. When he came to in the middle of council tip, however, he wasn't sure that he wouldn't have preferred the river. He clambered to his feet, shaking himself free of several objects that he had no wish to identify, and ruefully examined the tattered remains of his waistcoat. The Goons had very obligingly put all their rounds nearly directly into his heart, and only a few had gone straight through his chest to tear the back of his coat. He could feel a grinding sensation in his chest and had the distinct impression that he'd be coughing up bits of bullet for a while, if they didn't shred an artery in the meantime and kill him again.
He fumbled through his pockets and found nothing but a one-way train ticket to Cardiff. He still had his gun, but the ammunition was missing. He picked his way through a pile of used and discarded nappies, stumbled past several shocked council workers, and found a payphone. He called the Hub, and reversed the charges.
"Did you find out who was sending those messages?" he asked, after he had fended off Suzie's panicked questions about what had been going on and where was he and why had he completely fallen off their radar and...? "Stop fussing, Suze. What did Tosh find out?"
"Um..." Tosh spoke up, her voice soft, as it always was when she was unsure of herself, "I'm sorry, Jack. I was very close to unscrambling the signal, then it completely vanished off the grid. I couldn't find it again."
Jack fought the urge to sigh audibly. It wasn't the answer he'd been looking for. Either his informant had been the one to set Yvonne's dogs on him, or he'd been caught in the act of helping Jack. For the sake of whoever it was, Jack rather hoped they were the former rather than the latter.
"It's okay, Toshiko," he assured her, "You tried. And I know you. If you can't find out the info, no one can."
She said nothing, but he imagined her blushing at the praise and smiled to himself.
"Apparently," he told them, "I have a ticket for the next train out of Paddington to Cardiff Central. I should be back in about three or four hours." The ticket might as well have been stamped 'now piss off, or next time we won't just shoot you'. Jack, in spite of what ex-lovers had frequently said, was perfectly willing to take a hint.
"Did you get things sorted in London?" Owen asked, "Did you find out what was happening to those people?"
Jack frowned, stared towards the city centre. He couldn't see the Asen Industries building. The view was blocked. "No," he said, "I know what caused it, but I don't know why. Not sure we ever will find out. But it's not going to happen again."
"That's the important thing, right?" Suzie asked, "That people are safe? That's all that matters, isn't it?"
"Of course it is," Jack told her. "Nothing else matters."
He hung up, stuck his hands in his pockets, and started the long walk to the train station.
Several miles away, a demolitions crew moved in, bearing orders signed by council officials and with a company name that no one had ever heard of before, and began demolishing the Asen Industries building floor by floor. By the time the sun set at the end of the day, there was nothing left.
- End -
Author's Notes: I was originally intending this to be a shorter fic, so I could get into the habit of finishing stuff faster. I think, with hindsight, we can all look back and laugh. This story is the result of a challenge set to myself by me, namely, to write a fic in which Jack and Ianto saved the day, before they officially "met", and without breaking currently established canon. So yes, I intend this all to fit within what we currently know of canon without causing any problems. Whether this will remain so in the future is another matter. I'm waiting for the episode where it all gets utterly Jossed and I can sulk in the corner over the unfairness of existence.