Challenge 864 - Stranded
May. 11th, 2025 04:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
m_findlowTitle: Stranded
Character: Owen, Jack
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 200 words
Length: 200 words
Content notes: None
Author notes: Written for Challenge 864 - Measure at ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
torchwood100
torchwood100Summary: Their latest guest has travelled an awful long way. A double drabble.
‘It’s from the Gamma Orcanis constellation,’ Jack explained, prodding the sticky yellow goo in the petri dish with a surgical tool. ‘Low level sentience, and I mean low.’
‘So low that you poking it like that isn’t going to piss it off?’ Owen asked.
‘We could probably run it over with a truck and it wouldn’t notice,’ he replied, dropping the tool and folding his arms.
‘Right. And how many light years away is this Gamma Orca nebula?’ Just so that Owen could put it on his list of utterly boring places in the universe not worth visiting.
‘Gamma Orcanis,’ Jack corrected him. ‘And we don’t measure it in light years. Light years are for science fiction novels and morning breakfast television. We use gigaparsecs, which equate to 3.26 billion light years each. It’d be like measuring the distance between Cardiff and Shanghai in inches. This place is about 2.3 trillion gigaparsecs from Earth.’
Owen smirked. ‘The intergalactic taxi fare back home is going to be murder.’
Jack smiled back. ‘Without the rift, it wouldn’t live long enough to make it that far back.’
Owen groaned sympathetically. ‘Stuck on the M4 at Reading. A fate worse than death.’
‘It’s from the Gamma Orcanis constellation,’ Jack explained, prodding the sticky yellow goo in the petri dish with a surgical tool. ‘Low level sentience, and I mean low.’
‘So low that you poking it like that isn’t going to piss it off?’ Owen asked.
‘We could probably run it over with a truck and it wouldn’t notice,’ he replied, dropping the tool and folding his arms.
‘Right. And how many light years away is this Gamma Orca nebula?’ Just so that Owen could put it on his list of utterly boring places in the universe not worth visiting.
‘Gamma Orcanis,’ Jack corrected him. ‘And we don’t measure it in light years. Light years are for science fiction novels and morning breakfast television. We use gigaparsecs, which equate to 3.26 billion light years each. It’d be like measuring the distance between Cardiff and Shanghai in inches. This place is about 2.3 trillion gigaparsecs from Earth.’
Owen smirked. ‘The intergalactic taxi fare back home is going to be murder.’
Jack smiled back. ‘Without the rift, it wouldn’t live long enough to make it that far back.’
Owen groaned sympathetically. ‘Stuck on the M4 at Reading. A fate worse than death.’
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Date: 2025-05-11 09:16 am (UTC)