Now Pay Attention, Children... (Torchwood)
Title: Now Pay Attention, Children...
Author: Jewels
Fandom: Torchwood
Disclaimer: BBC's. !mine.
Summary: A little short kinda thing that was originally supposed to be the opening to another fic. A school trip, maybe, thousands of years from now...
Now Pay Attention, Children...
When the man who would later go by the name of Jack Harkness first heard the name Torchwood, he was four years old, and still sulking over the fact that Jane had finished her n-space puzzle in less time than he had, and she wouldn't tell him the solution.
“It's perfectly simple,” Jane held the completed hard-holograph shape up to him, but he didn't bother reaching out to take it, since she would just yank her hand back and laugh at him for being gullible. “You just need to figure out how to realign the vectors along the m-axis, stupid.”
Jack folded his arms sullenly and stared out of the transport window at the ocean that was whipping away rapidly below them. If anyone had told him at that moment in time that Jane would be the first girl he'd ever have sex with, and that the two of them would find the situation rather mutually enjoyable, he would have tried to climb out of the window, screaming.
“Now children, pay attention, please.” The Creche Mother stood at the front of the transport, her pale sage-green clothing making her blend into the soft colours of the passenger compartment. She smiled gently at her ten charges as heads swivelled towards her, except for Jack, who was still staring at the ocean, idly counting the number of flotation habitats that he could see before they moved out of sight.
“The Torchwood Institute has very kindly offered the Crèche this opportunity to visit their museum, so I want you all to be on your very best behaviour. We're to get a talk from one of their staff personally, so please pay attention. We'll be doing a project based on temporal pre-history later in the year.”
A chubby hand stuck into the air, and Mother turned her eternally gentle and kind face, enforced upon her by genetic programming by the Crèche, to the boy who own it. “Yes, Michael?”
Michael nervously pushed his glasses further up his nose. Jack had always thought they were a little weird. Mother had told them Michael was allergic to retinox and was too young for corrective surgery, which was why he had returned to the Crèche dorm after a medical exam a couple of years earlier with the lenses.
“I...” All heads turned to face him, and Michael's words stumbled, causing him to stammer. “I... uh... um...”
“He needs the loo.” Miranda, Michael's genetic twin, the two of them being the only such blood relations in the Crèche, looked rather disgruntled as she translated her brother's stammering.
Mother smiled at Miranda and looked at Michael. “Is that right, Michael?”
Michael, too embarrassed to say anything, just nodded. Mother held out her hand to him and Jack proceeded to ignore the rest of the journey as that seemed to be the end of Mother's lecture for now. They were fast coming up on the Seat, the Capital of Earth. Jack thought it was stupid that such a tiny island was so important, nothing like the wide open stretch of desert in which the Crèche was situated. From what he could glimpse out of the window, it was nothing but tall crowded buildings, with public flitters crowding the airways. He supposed that might be kinda interesting.
But what was more interesting was that the transport suddenly banked, engines whining at the manoeuvre and moved away from the public transport zones towards a clearer section of land. Jack succumbed to temptation, ignoring Jane's mockery about not being able to sit still for two minutes, and went to the front of the transport, climbing on the seats there to be able to look ahead of them.
They were heading towards a gleaming chrome arrangement of towers, six of them, all of different heights, ranged around a central triangular-based pyramid. For miles around them was open space, filled with trees, small lakes, and wide open lawns. It bore so little resemblance to the urban density around it, it might as well have been on a different planet. In fact, it looked rather like Shariza II, where the Crèche had gone the year before on a trip to learn about dependant ecology. The edge of the cleared area stretched all the way to the edge of the sea, where it continued on an artificial extension of the landmass.
“Child,” Mother was standing behind him, having returned with Michael.
“What's that pyramid for?” Jack poked the window in the general direction of the buildings they were approaching.
“Containment,” Mother said, obscurely, “Or so I'm told. You'll find out about it when we get there. Now come along and take your seat again, dear.”
She returned him to his seat, where Jane had already pulled apart her n-space puzzle, and was in the middle of repeating it just, he was sure, to annoy him.
When the transport set down on the Institute's public landing pad, Jack was unpleasantly surprised to find it was raining. And not even proper torrents like they had in the desert, but a light misty dribble that managed to get the entire Crèche soaked as a smiling man in a blue and grey uniform escorted them double-file to the lowest of the six towers, where they had to endure being blasted with warm air vents to dry them off. The man took them to what was clearly a display room of some sort, more like several rooms all joined together, which were filled with interactive displays and interesting devices to play with.
Mother let them all explore the rooms by themselves while they waited for their talk to start. Jane immediately made for the small spatial holograms, and prevented anyone else from trying to play with them. Jack gave up trying after a while, and wandered through the rooms, staring at the displays which bored him immensely. Most of them seemed to be record pictures of the Institute's history, but they were all flat 2d ones that didn't even move, and so it was that Jack didn't have anything to distract him when he stumbled across Mother and another woman and was privy to a conversation that he would never understand as long as he remembered it.
“I'm afraid I'm still quite puzzled,” Mother was saying, hands clasped loosely in front of her, though her fingers rubbed together as if she were nervous.
The woman she was with, with black hair and a face that looked nothing like Mother's genetically perfect 'maternal warmth' features, but nonetheless was kind and seemed to be frequently smiling, said, “Torchwood frequently offers notable Crèches the opportunity to come and view our museum and get a brief talk on our history.”
“That's what confuses me,” Mother stared at the woman. “Our Crèche is not, as far as I know, notable in anyway. We're just a normal WestLands Crèche. None of my children are abnormal or have done anything special.”
“Relax, Mother,” The woman reached out to rest a hand on Mother's arm. “We don't just chose the best and the brightest. It's important to us that everyone knows about the Institute and its history, not just the privileged.”
“But when I was informed that you'd asked for us specifically-”
“We have nothing sinister in mind, I promise,” The woman smiled brightly. “We just like taking an interest in inspiring young minds. Like this young man's here.”
Jack squeaked as the woman turned to look at him, and tried to hide behind a half-scale model of a Pteranodon.
“Silly child!” Mother chided, “What have I told you about eavesdropping?”
“Ididn'tmeanto.”
Mother beckoned imperiously, and Jack slouched over, not looking up. “Say you're sorry.”
“VerysorryMiss.”
“That's quite alright, my love,” The woman said, with another smile, and Mother was ushering him away before he could embarrass himself (or, presumably, the Crèche) any further. She stuck him with Jane, with strict instructions not to wander, and Jane took perverse pleasure in teasing him for the remainder of their free time.
It was almost a relief when Mother gathered them together and sat them down for their talk. Jack sullenly took a seat next to Michael, who pushed his glasses up his nose and gave Jack a wavering smile that was ignored. Michael would, incidentally, later become the first boy that Jack ever had sex with.
“Children, this is Gwendolyn,” Mother gestured to the dark haired woman she'd been talking to before. “She's an officer at the Torchwood Institute and has very kindly given up her time to talk to you today, so pay attention, as we'll be going over all of this once we get back to the Crèche.”
“Hello, children,” Gwendolyn said, and her voice, with its lyrical vowel sounds caught Jack's attention immediately, and he forgot some of his embarrassment over his earlier eavesdropping. “First thing's first. The Torchwood Institute was founded in CE1879. Can anyone tell me how many years ago that was?”
Immediately every hand shot up. Gwendolyn pointed to Miranda. “Yes?”
“Three thousand, one hundred and forty five years,” Miranda rattled off the numbers, sounding bored.
“Very good, and in that time, Torchwood has been involved in almost all major world-changing events, including the Great Expansion which saw the King of England becoming Emperor of all Earth.” Gwendolyn held up a finger. “Now how many of you know exactly what sort of work Torchwood does?”
This time, fewer hands went up, and this time it was Michaels, “Um... all sorts?” that received the beaming smile from Gwendolyn.
“Exactly. Torchwood was founded to protect what was called Great Britain from alien threats, and then, when the Empire took control of the world, its duty became to protect all of Earth. Including the Timeline.”
Jack put his hand up, and, when Gwendolyn gestured at him to respond, said “What's the big pyramid for?”
“Contaiment,” said Gwendolyn, repeating Mother's early statement, and before Jack could ask her to explain, a hologram flickered into life, rotating lazily in the air. “For this. Colloquially, this is known as 'The Rift', but it's really-”
“A tetra class tempero-spatial sundering,” Jack interrupted without thinking. He missed the faint gleam of satisfaction in Gwendolyn's eyes, and Mother's suddenly glancing back and forth between her charge and the Torchwood officer with deep suspicion. “But it doesn't look right.”
“Go on,” Gwendolyn encouraged.
“It's not right. It's been affected.”
“Quite correct, very good. You're a natural at this sort of thing.”
“He got a gold star in Basic Time,” Mother said, smiling nervously.
Jane punched him meanly in the shoulder and glowered at him. Jack responded by pulling one of her plaits while Mother wasn't looking.
“The Rift has, throughout the course of its history, been subject to domestic and alien influence, even, at one point, having a perception filter welded onto its peripheral horizon fields.” Gwendolyn glanced about at the children. “It's why we have this facility here. Officially this is the Temporal Maintenance department of Torchwood, although some people have nicknamed us the Time Agency. The Rift is a very important part of Torchwood's history, and I'll tell you a little story as to why. Now, remember this, because it'll be very important later on.”
Gwendolyn fixed her eyes on Jack, and he had the uncomfortable feeling that she was staring right through him, right down to the smallest molecules of his being. He couldn't help himself but stare as she smiled, again, this time with genuine warmth.
“The twenty first century is when it all begins...”
- End
Author: Jewels
Fandom: Torchwood
Disclaimer: BBC's. !mine.
Summary: A little short kinda thing that was originally supposed to be the opening to another fic. A school trip, maybe, thousands of years from now...
Now Pay Attention, Children...
When the man who would later go by the name of Jack Harkness first heard the name Torchwood, he was four years old, and still sulking over the fact that Jane had finished her n-space puzzle in less time than he had, and she wouldn't tell him the solution.
“It's perfectly simple,” Jane held the completed hard-holograph shape up to him, but he didn't bother reaching out to take it, since she would just yank her hand back and laugh at him for being gullible. “You just need to figure out how to realign the vectors along the m-axis, stupid.”
Jack folded his arms sullenly and stared out of the transport window at the ocean that was whipping away rapidly below them. If anyone had told him at that moment in time that Jane would be the first girl he'd ever have sex with, and that the two of them would find the situation rather mutually enjoyable, he would have tried to climb out of the window, screaming.
“Now children, pay attention, please.” The Creche Mother stood at the front of the transport, her pale sage-green clothing making her blend into the soft colours of the passenger compartment. She smiled gently at her ten charges as heads swivelled towards her, except for Jack, who was still staring at the ocean, idly counting the number of flotation habitats that he could see before they moved out of sight.
“The Torchwood Institute has very kindly offered the Crèche this opportunity to visit their museum, so I want you all to be on your very best behaviour. We're to get a talk from one of their staff personally, so please pay attention. We'll be doing a project based on temporal pre-history later in the year.”
A chubby hand stuck into the air, and Mother turned her eternally gentle and kind face, enforced upon her by genetic programming by the Crèche, to the boy who own it. “Yes, Michael?”
Michael nervously pushed his glasses further up his nose. Jack had always thought they were a little weird. Mother had told them Michael was allergic to retinox and was too young for corrective surgery, which was why he had returned to the Crèche dorm after a medical exam a couple of years earlier with the lenses.
“I...” All heads turned to face him, and Michael's words stumbled, causing him to stammer. “I... uh... um...”
“He needs the loo.” Miranda, Michael's genetic twin, the two of them being the only such blood relations in the Crèche, looked rather disgruntled as she translated her brother's stammering.
Mother smiled at Miranda and looked at Michael. “Is that right, Michael?”
Michael, too embarrassed to say anything, just nodded. Mother held out her hand to him and Jack proceeded to ignore the rest of the journey as that seemed to be the end of Mother's lecture for now. They were fast coming up on the Seat, the Capital of Earth. Jack thought it was stupid that such a tiny island was so important, nothing like the wide open stretch of desert in which the Crèche was situated. From what he could glimpse out of the window, it was nothing but tall crowded buildings, with public flitters crowding the airways. He supposed that might be kinda interesting.
But what was more interesting was that the transport suddenly banked, engines whining at the manoeuvre and moved away from the public transport zones towards a clearer section of land. Jack succumbed to temptation, ignoring Jane's mockery about not being able to sit still for two minutes, and went to the front of the transport, climbing on the seats there to be able to look ahead of them.
They were heading towards a gleaming chrome arrangement of towers, six of them, all of different heights, ranged around a central triangular-based pyramid. For miles around them was open space, filled with trees, small lakes, and wide open lawns. It bore so little resemblance to the urban density around it, it might as well have been on a different planet. In fact, it looked rather like Shariza II, where the Crèche had gone the year before on a trip to learn about dependant ecology. The edge of the cleared area stretched all the way to the edge of the sea, where it continued on an artificial extension of the landmass.
“Child,” Mother was standing behind him, having returned with Michael.
“What's that pyramid for?” Jack poked the window in the general direction of the buildings they were approaching.
“Containment,” Mother said, obscurely, “Or so I'm told. You'll find out about it when we get there. Now come along and take your seat again, dear.”
She returned him to his seat, where Jane had already pulled apart her n-space puzzle, and was in the middle of repeating it just, he was sure, to annoy him.
When the transport set down on the Institute's public landing pad, Jack was unpleasantly surprised to find it was raining. And not even proper torrents like they had in the desert, but a light misty dribble that managed to get the entire Crèche soaked as a smiling man in a blue and grey uniform escorted them double-file to the lowest of the six towers, where they had to endure being blasted with warm air vents to dry them off. The man took them to what was clearly a display room of some sort, more like several rooms all joined together, which were filled with interactive displays and interesting devices to play with.
Mother let them all explore the rooms by themselves while they waited for their talk to start. Jane immediately made for the small spatial holograms, and prevented anyone else from trying to play with them. Jack gave up trying after a while, and wandered through the rooms, staring at the displays which bored him immensely. Most of them seemed to be record pictures of the Institute's history, but they were all flat 2d ones that didn't even move, and so it was that Jack didn't have anything to distract him when he stumbled across Mother and another woman and was privy to a conversation that he would never understand as long as he remembered it.
“I'm afraid I'm still quite puzzled,” Mother was saying, hands clasped loosely in front of her, though her fingers rubbed together as if she were nervous.
The woman she was with, with black hair and a face that looked nothing like Mother's genetically perfect 'maternal warmth' features, but nonetheless was kind and seemed to be frequently smiling, said, “Torchwood frequently offers notable Crèches the opportunity to come and view our museum and get a brief talk on our history.”
“That's what confuses me,” Mother stared at the woman. “Our Crèche is not, as far as I know, notable in anyway. We're just a normal WestLands Crèche. None of my children are abnormal or have done anything special.”
“Relax, Mother,” The woman reached out to rest a hand on Mother's arm. “We don't just chose the best and the brightest. It's important to us that everyone knows about the Institute and its history, not just the privileged.”
“But when I was informed that you'd asked for us specifically-”
“We have nothing sinister in mind, I promise,” The woman smiled brightly. “We just like taking an interest in inspiring young minds. Like this young man's here.”
Jack squeaked as the woman turned to look at him, and tried to hide behind a half-scale model of a Pteranodon.
“Silly child!” Mother chided, “What have I told you about eavesdropping?”
“Ididn'tmeanto.”
Mother beckoned imperiously, and Jack slouched over, not looking up. “Say you're sorry.”
“VerysorryMiss.”
“That's quite alright, my love,” The woman said, with another smile, and Mother was ushering him away before he could embarrass himself (or, presumably, the Crèche) any further. She stuck him with Jane, with strict instructions not to wander, and Jane took perverse pleasure in teasing him for the remainder of their free time.
It was almost a relief when Mother gathered them together and sat them down for their talk. Jack sullenly took a seat next to Michael, who pushed his glasses up his nose and gave Jack a wavering smile that was ignored. Michael would, incidentally, later become the first boy that Jack ever had sex with.
“Children, this is Gwendolyn,” Mother gestured to the dark haired woman she'd been talking to before. “She's an officer at the Torchwood Institute and has very kindly given up her time to talk to you today, so pay attention, as we'll be going over all of this once we get back to the Crèche.”
“Hello, children,” Gwendolyn said, and her voice, with its lyrical vowel sounds caught Jack's attention immediately, and he forgot some of his embarrassment over his earlier eavesdropping. “First thing's first. The Torchwood Institute was founded in CE1879. Can anyone tell me how many years ago that was?”
Immediately every hand shot up. Gwendolyn pointed to Miranda. “Yes?”
“Three thousand, one hundred and forty five years,” Miranda rattled off the numbers, sounding bored.
“Very good, and in that time, Torchwood has been involved in almost all major world-changing events, including the Great Expansion which saw the King of England becoming Emperor of all Earth.” Gwendolyn held up a finger. “Now how many of you know exactly what sort of work Torchwood does?”
This time, fewer hands went up, and this time it was Michaels, “Um... all sorts?” that received the beaming smile from Gwendolyn.
“Exactly. Torchwood was founded to protect what was called Great Britain from alien threats, and then, when the Empire took control of the world, its duty became to protect all of Earth. Including the Timeline.”
Jack put his hand up, and, when Gwendolyn gestured at him to respond, said “What's the big pyramid for?”
“Contaiment,” said Gwendolyn, repeating Mother's early statement, and before Jack could ask her to explain, a hologram flickered into life, rotating lazily in the air. “For this. Colloquially, this is known as 'The Rift', but it's really-”
“A tetra class tempero-spatial sundering,” Jack interrupted without thinking. He missed the faint gleam of satisfaction in Gwendolyn's eyes, and Mother's suddenly glancing back and forth between her charge and the Torchwood officer with deep suspicion. “But it doesn't look right.”
“Go on,” Gwendolyn encouraged.
“It's not right. It's been affected.”
“Quite correct, very good. You're a natural at this sort of thing.”
“He got a gold star in Basic Time,” Mother said, smiling nervously.
Jane punched him meanly in the shoulder and glowered at him. Jack responded by pulling one of her plaits while Mother wasn't looking.
“The Rift has, throughout the course of its history, been subject to domestic and alien influence, even, at one point, having a perception filter welded onto its peripheral horizon fields.” Gwendolyn glanced about at the children. “It's why we have this facility here. Officially this is the Temporal Maintenance department of Torchwood, although some people have nicknamed us the Time Agency. The Rift is a very important part of Torchwood's history, and I'll tell you a little story as to why. Now, remember this, because it'll be very important later on.”
Gwendolyn fixed her eyes on Jack, and he had the uncomfortable feeling that she was staring right through him, right down to the smallest molecules of his being. He couldn't help himself but stare as she smiled, again, this time with genuine warmth.
“The twenty first century is when it all begins...”
- End