m_findlow

Title: A Christmas Tale
Author: m_findlow
Characters: Torchwood Team
Rating: PG
Length: 22,304 words
Prompt: Torchwood_fest Prompt #6, submitted by badly_knitted(Members of the team have to assist Santa's elves by temporarily becoming elves themselves)
Summary: Santa is in trouble, can Torchwood save the day?

To say Ianto was impressed was an understatement. Everywhere he looked were the clean lines of modern corporatism. No doubt about it, this was a well oiled machine. If he could have kept the hub in this kind of state, he'd have been a very happy individual.

Brady was giving him the tour of the packing and logistics areas, as much as it was possible given the quarantine restrictions in place. Ianto tried to imagine how different it would look with hundreds of elves bustling about though the complicated network of rooms and machinery.

Brady himself was just as Jack had pointed out earlier. He appeared to be the sort of well organised, no nonsense type. Ianto suddenly felt underdressed and under qualified in his presence.

'What's your area of expertise? Brady quizzed him, as if sensing his thoughts.

'Oh, well, nothing specific I suppose, I just sort of keep everyone organised. You know, paperwork, supplies, food and drink, dry cleaning.' When he said it out loud it really didn't sound very impressive. Torchwood's overpaid butler, he thought.

'You're an administrator. Operations manager.' Brady supplied.

'I guess you could call it that, slightly boosted by the apparent promotion.'

'Good. We'll be needing your skills.'

Ianto felt relieved to have passed muster. Brady wasn't cold or officious, he was just very focused on the task at hand. And given the circumstances, he probably had every right to be.

Despite the absence of people, and the overall appearance of the factory, the place felt unusually homely. It was like being tucked up in a warm blanket, happy and safe.

'It doesn't look at all Christmassy, but it still feels sort of,' he tried to search for the words to explain it.

'Warm and fuzzy?' Brady offered, looking up from his tablet which he'd been studying just moments before.

'Yeah.'

'It's this place. There's a shared empathy throughout the whole town. Call it Christmas spirit. Everyone is connected at a certain psychic level. It's usually much stronger, but with everyone being sick...' he fixed Ianto with a look over the top of his glasses. 'I'm surprised you could feel it all.'

'It's definitely there,' Ianto confirmed, 'but I know what you mean about it feeling weak.'

Brady scrutinised the young man for a moment.

'Maybe you're more empathic than your friends. You sense it more keenly than they do.'

'It's possible,' he conceded. The team were always joking about how he seemed to know what they wanted even before they did. Maybe that was the reason why. He didn't get a chance to ponder it further.

'Well, that's covered the basics. If we ever get the workshop up and running again,' he added glumly, staring through the large glass window that looked out over the deserted factory floor many feet below them.

'Tosh will fix it,' he said reassuringly.

Brady's mood seemed to lift a little. 'In that case we should get moving to the main control room. We don't have a full load, but Santa and Jack still have presents to deliver and they won't get far without us.'

As soon as Tosh looked at the computer code running across the screen, she knew she was in for a big job. It took her a few minutes to understand what it was she was seeing.

'Hang on, is this quantum binary? I didn't even think this was possible! It looks like you've used base eight math to run the code.'

'Oh, sorry, I forget that you use base ten math on Earth.'

'You mean you're not from Earth?'

'We're elves! Of course we're not from Earth!'

'You fell through the rift?'

'No, well, yes, we came through the rift, but you make it sound like an accident. This was a planned trip. An outpost to conduct research. Just a few hundred elves. Each group sent across the galaxy to gather information on other worlds.'

He began rummaging through a toolbox, producing a spanner.

'And how did you get into the Christmas business?'

'Now that's a story!' he exclaimed, pointing the large metal tool at her, before proceeding over to one of the machines and opening up a panel on its side at the bottom.

'A couple of elves got lost in a snowstorm, coming back from a day out researching that native fauna. Reindeer really are fascinating creatures,' he said, lying down next to the panel and unscrewing several bolts with the spanner, continuing his story.

'Anyway, they were trying to find their way back to the trail when they heard this tinkling of bells and a faint light approached them. Normally they would have shied away from any sort of contact, but given that they were lost and likely to freeze to death in the storm, they took a chance and waited to intercept. It was an old man on a rough wooden sled. He introduced himself as Nicolaus. He said he had travelled miles from his tiny hut on the edge of the tundra to deliver gifts to the village children, and that he did this every year on this particular night. Christmas Eve he called it.

Well, he offered for the elves to accompany him on his way to the village, where they would be assured warmth, food and lodgings until the storm had passed.

The village was only small, maybe a dozen or so families, but they were so happy to see Nicolaus and the children were so excited to receive gifts, tiny little hand carved toys made from local forest wood, dolls with faces painted on them, or figurines of deer and hunters. And they sat around the fireplace in this one large hall and sang songs and shared a great meal. Well the elves were beyond amazed. They'd studied all of the flora and fauna but had never met any humans. So fascinated were they and so much did they love the celebration that took place that night, that when Nicolaus returned them to their trail in the morning, they offered for him to come back with them. They said that such a kind hearted soul should not live on his own, and that he could stay with them and make his toys, whilst he taught them all about human earth customs.

Well, one thing lead to another, and soon all of the elves were interested in helping to make toys to be given to children and so began the legend of the North Pole.'

'So Santa is human?'

'He is, but he was given the gift of long life by the elves. Elves can live for many hundreds of your Earth years. In fact, only a few dozen of the original expedition colony have passed. Most still continue to work here in the city.'

'How old are you, if you don't mind my asking'

'Two hundred and seventeen.'

'You don't look a day over twenty!'

'Thanks, it's the red hair. Everyone says I look young for my age.'

'Okay, so this program,' Tosh said, turning back to the computer monitor. 'You say it's not working?'

Fletcher stopped and sat up from what he was doing, several nuts and bolts, circuitry and odd pieces of wire now littered about the floor around him.

'It doesn't make sense. The programming hasn't changed, but for some reason the system keeps crashing every time I try to integrate it with the factory mainframe. I'm starting to wonder if it's an issue with the mainframe itself.'

'What's its purpose?'

'This system,' he said, picking up on of the bits of wire and examining it more closely, 'is responsible for instructing the mainframe on what toys to create. There's an algorithm running in the background that calculates the total number of toys required based on each child's wish list, factoring in a two percent margin for changes of mind, then it calculates the total remaining resources based on current operating capacities to determine the most efficient use of materials and manufacturing order for the machines to operate on. When new shipments of raw materials come in, the computer recalibrates manufacturing quantities and models projected material orders based on wish list quotas.'

'It sounds very impressive. The mathematics required to create it must have taken a genius.'

Fletcher blushed and shoved his hands in his large overall pockets. 'It was my older brother Syd that designed it. He's in the hospital sick.'

'You should be there with him,' Tosh said.

'I know, but Santa thinks it might be contagious. If I can't fix this, Christmas will be cancelled this year.' He ran a hand through his thick red hair and sighed. 'Syd would know how to fix this in a heartbeat. He always was the clever one.'

Tosh reached out and laid a hand on his shoulder.

'You seem pretty clever to me. What's say we make your brother proud and get this back up and running?'

The room containing Jessie was isolated from the rest. She was fortunate not to have dozens of other elves piled in with her like the other rooms, but perhaps that was only a matter of time.

She was young, and looked younger still tucked up in the hospital bed, her soft blonde hair floating about her face and on the pillow underneath.

'She's been quarantined since we started getting reports of other elves with the same condition. We didn't want to make her worse, or have her spreading it to other elves.'

Owen cast a glance at Sandy, noticing that she herself had not taken any additional quarantine measures, even though he had come armed with a face mask. Santa might not have been sick but Owen was experienced enough not to take chances.

'You should get yourself a mask.'

'I think it's a bit late for that,' she replied. 'I've been working with the sick for three days now. If I was going to get it, I'd have it already.'

Owen ran some preliminary checks, but his difficulty lay in not knowing what was normal for elf. 'Do you know much about human physiognomy? How different elves are?'

'Only what I've read from the old research logs, but it would appear that we are indeed similar in many respects.'

'If that's true, then pulse, breathing and blood pressure all appear to be within normal ranges.'

Sandy took her own measurements. 'I agree.'

'Pupils are blown,' Owen observed. 'How long has she been in a coma?'

'Since the afternoon of two days ago. We moved her here so as not to panic any of the other elves, but some of them are very sick and I'm worried that the same might happen to them.'

'Okay, let's start by running her blood work. Perhaps we should take a sample from you for comparative purposes, since you're still healthy. It'll give me something to work with.'

Sandy looked hesitant for a moment. 'I've got some samples in the lab you can use. Osman, our doctor was keeping them.'

'Okay, let's start there.'

Jack was just helping load the final few gifts into the sleigh. It was their very first delivery of the night and he was more than a little excited at the prospect. Though as far as the packing was concerned, he'd be glad for Rhys taking over this task soon. Packing and checking things off against lists was not his forte. It required a level of care and attention that he wasn't built for. It wasn't to say he couldn't do it, it just wasn't his cup of tea. Gung ho and seat of your pants was much more his style. Tonight though, even though he was leader of Torchwood, Santa was the boss and he was calling the shots. That left Jack with just one burning question.

'So, do I get a suit like yours?'

'What for?'

Jack was taken aback slightly. 'I just thought, you know, since as I'm delivering gifts, won't it look a bit odd being dressed as me?'

'I don't see why. Everyone's asleep remember. You could be wearing anything.'

'Or nothing,' Jack joked. Santa fixed him with a worried look.

'Kidding!' Jack quickly covered. 'Ianto is really rather more suited to red, anyway. And you're sure they'll all be asleep?'

'The sleigh gives off delta wave radiation. Keeps people nice and sleepy. It's not foolproof, but it does the job ninety nine percent of the time.'

'And I won't fall asleep at the wheel?'

'No,' Santa chuckled.

'More of the Christmas magic?' Jack asked.

'A man's got to be able to keep a few secrets,' he replied.

Gwen was getting tired eyes from staring at the screen. It was like being back on the police force running checks on suspects criminal history, and equally as colourful in some cases. In fact, the system was almost identical to their own database, showing photos, age, location and prior behaviour.

'Andy would love this,' she commented. 'He used to get a kick out of reading how many times you could arrest someone before they actually got locked up proper.'

'Andy needs to get a life,' Rhys replied.

'This boy, honest to God, has done more naughty things in the last year than half the teenagers in Cardiff put together.'

'Naughty list then?'

'Definitely. Although it still seems a bit cruel don't you think, not to get any presents?'

'I'm sure his parents will still buy him something, though.'

'I suppose,' she mused.

'Give us a look,' said Rhys.

Rhys read down the file. 'Hey, he only lives a few doors down from us, Gwennie.'

Rhys read further, 'yanked his sister's pigtails every day for two weeks, left chewing gum under the teachers desk, talked back to his mum, and sprayed shaving cream on a neighbours car. Wait hang on, that was my car! That sneaky little bugger put shaving cream on my car!'

Watching Rhys get flustered was almost always amusing and Gwen couldn't help but giggle at yet another mini tirade from her husband while he espoused all of the things he'd do when he got his hands on him.

'It's not funny, Gwen!' Rhys turned to her seriously. 'Two hundred quid it cost to get the paintwork fixed. And it was practically new! That's was our deposit for the holiday to Spain.'

'So no gifts for Gavin, then?'

'He'll be getting a bloody gift from me when we get back, I can tell you!'

'So once we get this working, then what happens?' Tosh asked.

'Once the program delivers instructions to the mainframe, it can build the toys. All the designs and material quantities are contained in the main system databanks. In other words, we can make toys, if only we know which ones. Without the main program up and running, we're stuck. Then there's the machinery problems themselves. As you saw earlier, when I ran a test, something was going haywire with the mechanics. The designs are correct, but the machine is using the wrong materials.'

'Like a misfeed?'

'In simple terms. It's a bit more complicated than that.'

'Okay, so first things first. Let's try and get the programming here working.'

She began tapping away at the keys on the keyboard like she'd known the system all her life. In fact, this was one of the most comprehensively unusual systems she'd ever seen, but at the end of the day, she reasoned that a line of command should execute itself the same way every time.

Fletcher watched her with fascination. He'd watched his brother wearing the same expression hundreds of times, as if they were talking a language he didn't understand. That wasn't true of course, he knew computers very well, but he'd never had the passion for it the way his brother did, and the way Toshiko did. To him, it was just something that he could make work and nothing more. There was nothing exciting about bits and bytes, it was the end result that Fletcher was proud of, watching endless waves of toys issuing off the factory floor into large crates, each perfect and identical to the last.

'What are you doing?' he asked.

'I'm setting up a program that should replicate the mainframe functionality. That way we can test the commands to see if we can get them working, without having to first fix the mechanical issues with the equipment. If we can isolate the integration problems, we can figure out a workaround for it.'

Fletcher had to admire the simplicity of the concept.

'Are you sure you're not an elf?' he asked.

Contnues at part four... http://m-findlow.livejournal.com/80328.html