Torchwood Advent Challenge - 13th December

[m_findlow]

Title: In the money
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Ianto, Jack, Owen
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 3,727 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for prompt "Counterfeit"
Summary: Owen mishandles a piece of technology he shouldn't

'Oh, baby,' Jack chuckled, grinning like mad as he plucked out the object from under the rose bush.

'What is it?' Owen asked

'Only a Selesian Duplicator.'

'And what does one of them do?'

'Just what it says on the box. It duplicates stuff. Ianto, we're stopping by that little French patisserie on the way home to pick up a box of those cupcakes with the butterscotch cream icing on top. It may be the last time we ever go there, so make sure you pick out something you like. We're gonna be flush in cupcakes for the next three millenia.'

Ianto rolled his eyes. 'And do you remember what happened the last time you played with one of these?'

'That was different. It was a tad broken. Still worked though.'

'What was the problem?' Owen asked, wondering if he'd come to regret asking.

'Okay, so it was a little bit random in where it left the duplicated items.'

'I found moulding red velvet cupcakes in the glove box, my shower locker and even one in my spare pair of shoes,' Ianto replied, pulling a face as if remembering it vividly.

'It'll be different this time, I promise.'

'All the same,' Ianto said, taking it out of Jack's hands, 'I think it should be better put away in secure archives, don't you?'

'Spoilsport,' Jack moped.

 

He moped even more when they were back in Jack's office, watching Ianto tuck it safely inside one of their standard issue lockable units, and then into the wall safe.

'Just a couple, please?' Jack begged.

'You of all people should know the dangers of replicating technology,' Ianto lectured.

'Well, what if I replicated you? One to do all your work, whilst you and I spend some quality time together.'

'Tempting, but no. And I mean that strictly in the sense of having a second person to help get through my growing to do list. Not to entertain your sexual fantasies.'

'What about two of me, then?'

'I couldn't think of anything worse,' he replied. 'Then I'd need four of me just to tidy up after you.'

'Chocolate, then. We can always use more chocolate, and it doesn't go off.'

'It's called Tescos, Jack. There's one every four miles. Besides, you eat too much chocolate as it is.'

'I was merely considering Myfanwy's requirements,' he protested.

'Sure you were.'

Owen watched with equal amounts of despondency as Ianto locked it away. Jack's ideas were all small fry stuff. He was missing the big picture. A device that could replicate stuff was beyond worth.

 

All afternoon it nagged at him. They were Torchwood for God's sake. They were meant to be using the stuff they found to arm themselves against the future, not shoving it in a box and forgetting about it.

'This is bollocks, Jack,' he complained when he had to drop something off in his office. 'We could be using that thing to fix things. We could replicate rare antibodies or vaccines. I could run some tests with it; create stem cell tissue samples that could speed up the healing process, replicate the genetic material that prolongs life.'

'Owen, I know you mean well, but I can't authorise that. Ianto, though I hate to admit it, is right. The device could be damaged, or it might have been tampered with. We don't know what we could be replicating if we start using it at the cellular level. We could accidentally create a virus that learns how to self replicate well beyond what the device itself could do. It's too risky. For a few cupcakes I'd be willing to risk it, but not for what you're suggesting.'

The whole conversation left Owen feeling angry and bitter. What the hell was the point of this job if he couldn't fix the things that were broken in the world? He was still stewing on those thoughts, and what he intended doing about it, when Jack sauntered past his desk.

'Go home, Owen.'

'Nah, got some stuff to catch up on. Why don't you and Teaboy take the night off? I can do rift duty since I'm gonna be here anyway.'

'You're sure?'

'Yeah. I'm feeling generous. Doesn't happen very often.'

'You can say that again. Hey, Ianto!' Jack yelled out. 'We've got a free pass tonight. What's say we try that new Malaysian place? I'll even let you pick the movie.'

Ianto slowly walked up and met the two of them, just as Jack was leaving to fetch his coat.

'He only says that when he knows we won't get as far as the movie.'

'Too much information,' Owen muttered, sticking his fingers in his ears.

 

When finally he managed to coax them both out of the hub, he sat back down at his desk. The first thing he did was switch off the CCTV and set it on a feedback loop. Then he walked across the hub to Jack's office.

He stood in front of the old Victorian safe and began turning the combination lock. He'd seen Ianto open it enough times to know the numbers by heart. Twenty, thirty-four, eight. The tumblers in the locks clunked with each turn, until he could haul open the heavy door. He pressed the button and pulled up the lever, hearing the far more modern safe inside hiss open. The box that appeared was the last one that had been put in, and he slid it out, carrying it over to Jack's desk. He flipped open the top drawer and pulled out the keys, undoing the padlock. Rubbish security, he decided, seeing how easy it was.

He pulled out the small mushroom shaped object. Maybe he couldn't use it to save the world, but he could certainly make his little slice of it a whole lot more comfortable. Who knew? If he could get it to work on basic stuff, maybe he'd start working in some of those more technical things he'd suggested to Jack earlier.

He pulled out his wallet, tugging a ragged twenty pound note from its fold and flattened it out on top of a file on Jack's desk.

'Goodbye, car payments. Hello, brand new Porsche,' he said, activating the device and targeting the bank note. Nothing appeared to be happening, but then he recalled Ianto mentioning something about there being a time delay to allow for. Satisfied that the device had done its job, he slipped the note back into his wallet, and tidied away the device. If it didn't work quite as well as he hoped, he could always come back for it again later. If it did work as well as he hoped, he expected he wouldn't be coming in to work tomorrow.

 

When Jack climbed up the ladder to his office the next morning, the sight that confronted him was not to his liking.

'Ianto!' he yelled out, trying to curb his displeasure. 'I know you said I was falling behind with my paperwork, but you didn't have to make it worse.'

Ianto came into the office, tray of coffee and breakfast in hand, spotting the thing Jack had issue with. On his desk was a stack of files three feet high.

'Please tell me this was a practical joke,' Jack said.

Ianto frowned. 'I didn't put them there.'

'Well, someone did.'

'Must've been Owen,' he replied. 'Though I can't say I noticed them last night when we came back.'

Jack wasn't surprised. He'd kept Ianto very distracted with his tongue the whole way home. It was half a wonder if he'd even noticed Jack had brought him back to the hub at all.

Ianto moved over to the desk and picked up the top file, examining the contents. He put it down and picked up the second, then the third.

'Jack, these are all the same.'

'Tell me about it,' he groaned. They all seemed to meld into one another whenever he had to face up to finally getting rid of them.

'No, I mean they're identical. Exactly the same file, over and over again.'

Jack grabbed one, perusing the contents. Ah, yes. The file from UNIT he was supposed to report back on. They'd borrowed some artifacts for research purposes and had provided their summary report for his review. It was part of a strict program. UNIT didn't get to borrow anything long term unless their preliminary report was glowing. He'd been putting it off for weeks now, knowing they would have made sure they dotted their i's and crossed their t's.

'You don't suppose we accidentally activated that duplicator yesterday when we were boxing it up?' Ianto suggested.

'I was careful,' Jack assured him. 'Besides, if we had set it off, there'd be a lot more files than this.'

That was true, Ianto supposed. Calling it a duplicator was a bit of a misnomer. It never just duplicated anything, rather making dozens of copies. No one had quite figured out how to tweak the settings to reduce the number it could produce. More often than not, you just ended up with more.

'I don't get it,' Jack said, scratching his head, then frowning. 'We should check it out. If it's been damaged, I don't like the idea of it being locked away with other dangerous items.'

Jack strode across the narrow space and deftly spun the lock, opening the safe. He was in the process of pulling out the crate to bring it across to his desk when Ianto cleared his throat. He turned and saw him consulting his phone.

'What is it?'

'We're needed. And I think it will explain the surplus files on your desk.'

 

When Owen crawled out of bed at the sound of the alarm, he'd almost forgotten last night. He'd heard Jack and Ianto roll into the hub around eleven, avoiding looking at what state they were in. They often conveniently, or intentionally, forgot he was there on night duty when they returned. He'd seen far too many tongues shoved down throats and shirts being tugged off. Last night had been no exception. A muffled "we'll take it from here" from Jack in between kisses, and a "see you" from Ianto, was his queue to leave. He certainly wasn't hanging around.

The scrunch of paper under his bare foot as he stepped out of bed was the first sign that something was amiss. He cracked open a bleary eye and saw the pile of banknotes all over the floor. Not just one pile, but several. His wallet had dropped off the bedside table and burst its seam as the bank note he'd zapped the night before began its crazed replication. Now they were everywhere.

'Happy birthday to me,' he muttered, taking in the scene of so much money. It had worked beyond his wildest imagination. Ignoring thoughts of showering and going to work, he began gathering up the notes and arranging them into stacks. There must've been at least twenty thousand quid here, he thought. And that was just the start. If he could use the device again, he'd be rolling in it. He texted to say he was having a lie in, be in later. He wanted to take the whole day off, but an excuse for another late night would give him access to the safe again.

Owen Harper, you are a genius, he thought, bundling the stacks into his backpack. Time to go put this somewhere safe.

 

The bank was quiet for a Wednesday morning as he strode inside. Just the usual queue of disenchanted people waiting to cash cheques and exchange Euros for proper British currency.

'I'd like to make a deposit,' he said when he walked up to the teller.

'Cash or cheque?' the bored clerk asked him.

'Cash,' he said, pulling out the first stack of notes. As he began piling them up on the counter, the teller's eyebrows went higher.

'Crazy aunty,' he said. 'Have to go look after her again next week,' he added, already planting the seeds for the excuse he'd use when he came back with even more money. Long term he'd have to come up with a better plan. Multiple banks, maybe?

'Would you like to do this somewhere more private?' the teller offered.

'Sure.' Didn't hurt to be a bit more discreet. You never knew who might be waiting to mug you. That'd be just his luck, wouldn't it?

He followed the young female teller into a private consulting room. 'Just a bit of additional paperwork for a deposit this size,' she said. 'Won't be a mo.'

Owen took a seat at the small table and leant back while he waited. After ten minutes, he got bored of waiting, and after twenty he was getting thoroughly annoyed. Had she forgotten he was here? She'd taken the cash with her so it wasn't like he could just leave now.

Finally, he heard the door click open, but when he turned around to give the teller a piece of his mind, it was two broad shouldered police men that greeted him instead.

'Mr Harper?'

'Yeah.'

'You're being charged with attempted money laundering and counterfeiting.' The second officer came over and instructed him on where to place his hands whilst they cuffed him and read him his rights.

He wanted to say there'd been a mistake and that he didn't know the money was counterfeit, but it didn't look good and he doubted they'd believe him. Shit, he thought, as they discreetly lead him out the back of the bank and into their police car.

 

'What an idiot,' Jack said as he threw the SUV into an unnecessarily sharp turn at the corner.

'It's Owen,' Ianto replied. 'He's an expert on such matters.'

'I still can't believe he'd steal it.'

'That, I can believe,' Ianto said. 'It's the next part that was incredibly stupid.'

Owen hadn't exercised his right to one phone call yet, though Ianto still was waiting for it. No way would he call Jack. He'd call the one person who might help him out, and somehow keep it under wraps. Fat chance of that when their computer system had already alerted him to the arrest. It wasn't an original feature. It was something Tosh had added after Jack had spent an entire weekend in lockup. The team had just assumed he'd gone AWOL, when in actual fact all he'd done was piss off the arresting officer sufficiently that he'd been denied his one phone call. Alerts for public indecency arrests had become par for the course where Jack was involved. Ianto even had bail money set aside in their annual budget for it these days.

'How are we going to get him off?' Ianto asked.

'I'll think of something.'

'Good. You can think up a brilliant way that stops him from going to prison for the next ten years and I'll sort out the bail paperwork. That should give you at least an hour.'

Jack smiled at him with no small amount of mirth. 'Deal.'

 

Owen had forgotten just how uncomfortable metropolitan police holding cells were. When was the last time he'd had to spend the night in one to dry out? All the same, he stretched out along the concrete platform to wait out the hours whilst he figured out how well and truly screwed he was.

It didn't take long before the short metal flap in the centre of the door was pulled down with a sharp rap. An elbow in a long grey coat leaned on the narrow ledge left behind by the flap before half a face appeared sideways through the gap. Christ, could things get any worse?

'I should fire your arse,' Jack said.

'You'd like that, wouldn't you?' Owen griped, hating that annoyed, yet self-satisfied tone.

The eye disappeared from the hole. There was the muffled sound of Jack's voice saying, "come on, guys", before the door was unlocked fully, letting Jack inside before it clanged shut behind him.

Jack leaned against the door and folded his arms. 'You really thought you could replicate money and that would work?'

'Worth a try.'

Jack smirked. 'Don't I pay you enough?'

Owen grumbled and turned over so that he didn't have to face Jack.

'These devices are specifically designed to put flaws in any duplicated items that are classed as either currency or a weapon,' Jack said. 'There's no way the Unified Conglomerate would have allowed them to sell the device otherwise. Their use is still banned on over seventeen hundred worlds.'

'Looked real enough to me,' Owen muttered.

'Until the bank ran its usual checks for large deposits, scanning it for discrepancies and forgeries.'

Owen huffed and turned back over and scowled.

'What were you planning on doing with it, anyway?'

'Doesn't matter now.'

Jack adjusted his position against at the wall. 'You're mad at me because I wouldn't let you use it for what you wanted?'

'Something like that.'

'You need a lot more money than that if you planned on skipping out on me. Or was that part of the plan, too? Twenty grand here? Fifty grand there? Build up a little nest egg?'

Owen sat up, tired of Jack's speculation over his motives. 'Maybe I'm just pissed off that we're not doing a bloody thing. All this sodding technology and we're just locking it away and forgetting about it.'

'And this is you getting back at me?' Jack fixed his arms and looked at his young teammate. 'You think I don't wanna do something about it? I wish every single day that we could do more, but we don't have the resources and we don't have the right technology. Not all progress is good progress. Look at the atom bomb. A bunch of scientists who had to build one just to prove that they could. This whole planet sits on a knife edge now because nobody stopped to consider the moral and ethical implications of inventing a weapon that could wipe out millions of people in the blink of an eye. Now every developed nation on the planet has nuclear weapons.'

Jack let out a long sigh. 'Everyone promises not to use them, but it will only take one bomb to start a chain reaction. Just one person to set in motion of a chain of events that will destroy the whole world. We can't undo inventing the bomb, no matter what. We're stuck with it. Now we have to learn how to function as a society capable of wiping itself out. And that's technology from the forties. Imagine what we'd be capable of creating with alien technology from millenia into the future.'

Jack came and sat down beside him. 'The world just isn't ready for it. I know. This planet has to evolve at its own pace. They won't figure out a cure for AIDS for another four hundred years. Cancer has to wait until the thirty-third century. Life expectancy won't increase by more than twenty years in the next thousand, because fatal diseases will still remain uncured. And that's not even accounting for epidemics along the way that will decimate populations.'

'Cheery,' Owen muttered. 'You really know how to rally the troops.'

'My point is, we can't just fly headlong into things. I'm not saying it just for fun. If I try to hold you back, it's for a reason.'

'Fat lot of good that does me, now.'

'Yeah,' Jack said slowly. 'You certainly know how to get yourself into a mess.'

There was a rapping on the door, and the flap slid open again. 'Ah, there you are,' Ianto said, spotting Jack through the hole.

'Come to bail me out?' Jack teased.

'Not this time. For once it's not you in trouble. Makes for a refreshing change,' he added. He stepped back from the door and there was the sound of keys rattling in the lock, before an officer informed them they could leave.

'They've dropped the charges,' Ianto reported, just as soon as the officer was out of earshot.

'How'd you manage that?' Jack asked.

Ianto grinned. 'Inspiration struck whilst I was going mad filling out the forms.'

Owen's expression darkened as he watched the gleeful grin spread over Ianto's face. 'What the hell did you tell them?'

Ianto smiled again. 'Escaped asylum patient. Been on the run for weeks, convinced that the aliens were after him and that he needed to print fake money to escape to Majorca. Under the Mental Health Act, a committed person can't be held liable for crimes committed whilst under the care of an institution.'

Jack burst out laughing. 'He does look like a mental patient.'

'He certainly meets the criteria. It didn't take long at all to amend Owen's medical records and add several stints at various institutions. Ambulance is on its way to take you back you your nice padded cell at the hub,' Ianto said, smiling at Owen.

'Go fuck you both,' he said.

'Hmm,' Jack pondered. 'You, me and Owen in a padded cell. Sounds kinky, don't you think, Ianto?'

'No, thanks. And there is still the matter of breaking into the secure archives.'

'Yes,' Jack agreed. 'That won't be going unpunished.'

'Might I suggest a month of decaf and cleaning out the weevil cells?'

Owen groaned. Janet might be semi house-trained, but most of them liked to smear certain things on the walls and doors just for fun. Or perhaps it was revenge for being locked up in the first place.

'Okay,' Jack said. 'Getting off lightly, perhaps, but if you think that's fair for a breach of archive policy...'

'Better than sex in a padded cell with you,' Ianto replied.

'Matter of opinion,' Jack replied. 'Maybe we should give Owen the option?'

'Weevil cells!' Owen quickly replied. 'I'll do decaf for two months.'

Jack pretended to look disappointed. 'Offer still stands for you, Ianto,' he added, leering at his lover.

Ianto rolled his eyes. 'It'd be more comfortable than the supplies closet, at least. Getting intimate with a mop is not something I thought I'd ever do.'

'Overshare,' Owen grumbled. 'Thank Christ there's only one of you lot. The world couldn't cope.'

'More's the pity,' Jack sighed. 'But now we know that device isn't broken, do you think maybe we could?'

'No,' Ianto said.

'I was only talking about the cupcakes, I swear.'

Comments

[jo02]

Haha - Owen's a mental patient and now I have a mental image of Ianto getting intimate with a mop (handle) :)

[bk_forever]

Owen is such an idiot! Every note would have the same serial number, the same marks and creases... And now he's out of pocket £20.

Jack understands at least the dangers of certain replications. It's one thing replicating cupcakes, or Ianto's suits so he doesn't have to keep replacing them when they get damaged, but anything more advanced is a bad idea.