Restricted Items Archive Entries 031-049 (audio story)

 was the sixty-third story in the Torchwood - Monthly Range by Big Finish Productions. It was written by Maddie Wilson.

Publisher's summary
The Restricted Items Archive is where all the items too dangerous for Torchwood are stored. Ianto Jones carefully catalogues each and every one. And he always works down there alone.

Only, something's not quite right. There's a secret in the Restricted Items Archive that won't be ignored any longer.

Plot
Ianto catalogues dangerous artefacts in Torchwood's Restricted Items Archive, which is unusually cold compared to the rest of the Hub despite the functional piping and seems to have a number of mice in the walls. With a dictaphone, he identifies items including seeds he found after the team overlooked them, a corrosive cream that Owen tested on his finger and a device which started making objects disappear a week after Tosh started using it as a coffee coaster, as well as a music box which briefly took Gwen's voice and a book which records what those who have been under the music box's influence have attempted to say.

The Hub is shaken by Rift flares that bring alien rodents, resembling a cross between a spider and a squirrel, which Ianto has to remove from the tourist office. He stores away a sample of their superglue-like residue, a sword from Andromeda which bonded itself to Owen, a malevolent armchair and a vampiric vacuum cleaner which goes missing along with mission reports from the mid-1990s awaiting digitisation and several of Ianto's pens. When he is given a thermometer which Jack tells him predicts how many years one has to live, he does not use it on himself and puts it away.

Ianto catalogues a shapeshifting object he found in the form of a gun in the medical bay, a time machine which can only transport the user five seconds into the past or future, a mirror which can show the past and a portrait of Mary Dwyford. After days of the lights failing, Ianto's torches run out of battery and he has to use an Andromeda torch and the mirror to see, but the mirror is smashed by a large, human-shaped creature which speaks using his dictaphone and wants to build a body using his skin. Ianto uses the superglue-like residue to trap it and the coffee coaster to draw a Rift flare which he escapes using the time machine, revealing that he knew of the creature's presence and theft of artefacts.

Ianto consigns to the archive the items stolen by the Drifter, the latest of several to emerge through the Rift. He carries on his work, cataloguing some overenthusiastic memory foam which he planned to make into stress balls before it tried to suffocate Owen.

Cast

 * Ianto Jones - Gareth David-Lloyd

Worldbuilding

 * Owen tested the corrosive cream on his finger and felt euphoric.
 * Many of the items that Ianto comes across, including the painting, the music box and the book, all originate from the supposedly haunted Dwyford House.
 * Ianto notes that when a person listens to the music box, they temporarily lose the ability to speak. He later notes that the music box is somehow linked to the book, in which everyone who has ever lost their voice due to the box has their stolen words written in a neat handwriting.
 * Amongst the collection is a broken time machine that only allows a person that to travel in the same space only five seconds ago. Upon meddling with the item, Ianto temporarily enters a time loop.
 * A mirror has been sent down to the collection after Toshiko Sato noticed items appearing in the background that didn't exist in real life. In her case, they were subtle changes at first, such as books from her flat on the bookshelf behind her. The team had soon become aware that the more you look into the mirror, the more it showed you of your past and the more you could wander around your memories.
 * Ianto finds a nest of infinite Russian dolls that somehow were the same size as one another.
 * Also in the collection is a piece of memory foam, that Ianto was originally intending to turn into the perfect stress balls. It became apparent to Ianto that it was, in fact, an alien sponge.

Continuity

 * Ianto Jones notices Gwen Cooper and Owen Harper are spending time in the stationery cupboard but don't seem to leave with stationery. After the attack of the Cyberwoman, Gwen and Owen begain their secret affair. (TV: Cyberwoman et al)
 * Ianto is no longer invited to missions or nights out with the team. He claims that he has "gotten used to it". (TV: Cyberwoman)
 * Ianto had previously found it very lonely being shunned by his team members after his betrayal. (AUDIO: The Great Sontaran War, Coffee) His loneliness was felt by Toshiko Sato when she used the telepathy pendant. It allowed her to understand the pain he still felt towards Lisa Hallett and the hurt he had caused the team. (TV: Greeks Bearing Gifts)
 * Jack Harkness instructed Ianto to safely store the Divination Thermometer, or "Life Thermometer" as Ianto called it, in the basement. Jack confided in Ianto that the thermometer measured how much life a person has left rather than temperature. He assured Ianto that it was made up nonsense but instructed him never to use it. The thermometer showed Owen and Tosh to have roughly one year left of life. (TV: Dead Man Walking, Exit Wounds)
 * The "Life Thermometer", whilst not rhyming, fits in with Ianto's tendency to give a nickname to objects to simplify and ground their meanings. He had previously dubbed Suzie Costello's murder weapon the "Life Knife", and also nicknamed the resurrection gauntlet the "Risen Mitten". (TV: Everything Changes)