Day 188 - Repeat Offenders - Chapter 2.2 - (1511 words)

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REPEAT OFFENDERS

By Wayne Webb

CHAPTER 2.2

The loud hailer police person, whomever it was, repeated themselves and the noise reverberated around the small room they were in. The door was open but beyond that, out of sight and around a corner there was the metal barred gate that secured access to the safety deposit room and the locked vault room where they were now. The sound reflected around the corners of the room but the armed officers, who were surely there by now were not in line of sight, and unlike the previous encounter all three men were now in the vault and not in any laser sight range through the high windows of the bank area.


“There's no other way out of the vault, there's no need for any one else to get hurt.”


Ivan responded by firing three rounds randomly towards the doorway, not expecting to hit anything or anyone, but to just buy them some time before someone tried to put their head around the corner.


There was no more from the megaphone, at least not in that moment after the shots were fired, the police took the hint and Ivan came back to the table.


“Look, there's no point now, why don't we just...?” A crushing blow to the side of the head knocked Jerry sideways, falling and reacting to the blow simultaneously. The loud crack of the butt of the gun, breaking the plate of bone on the skull illustrated just how hard Jerry had struck the man and the distance that he travelled, semi-conscious but still standing was a case for newtons second law as Brian watched the violence explode in front of him.


“Ivan?” He asked the unspoken question with just the name proffered, but the implication was clear.


“He should have just opened the box. What about you then?” Ivan pointed the gun at Harold who raised his hands a little higher but still remained calm and collected. He lowered them to open the box with his key, then he pointed at Jerry who's body was twitching madly on the floor like a dog having a dream.


“He has the other key.” Harold waited for assent to be given, a nod from Michael before he kneeled down and took the other key from the man's pockets. Jerry was in a bad way, his jerky movements looked like a kind of seizure, an epilepsy but with some degree of control. His hands pawed feebly at Harold's as he took away the ring of keys from his pants pocket. Mr White batted the gesture aside and took the keys, standing again and opening the box on the desk in front of them.


“There.” he said and stepped back, he pulled gently on Barbara's arm and guided her back along with him. She complied slowly, not resisting the direction but delayed from the shock of the way the events had unfolded.


“Perfect.” Michael tapped Brian on the arm and he looked over, curious to see what two million dollars looked like, in physical terms it was not that large an amount. He could have held the entire cache in two hands, though with some of the smaller stones it would have been like trying to hold water from slipping between his fingers.


“Untraceable?” Brian picked up one of the larger stones, a 2 carat diamond according to his guess, and the bulk of this haul was in this range, and worth about ten thousand dollars according to estimates. Not one of the was a jeweller of course and they would have to sell below cost, but for what they wanted and what they needed it would cover them. This two million dollar haul would be on sold as a bulk lot for half it's value or even less. They could get full price for it but that was a lot of work for something that was low on their scale of needs.


They could pass this lot on and make the robbery again in short order, doubling or tripling the amount of gems they could pull in. Brian shook his head and went back to working out things in the other world his eyes darted off to when the physical pulled back to reveal the mysteries of the universe. He had a theoretical whiteboard in his mind, this was where he thought things out and how he ordered his thoughts.


The physical reality of what was happening around him was ephemeral, the equations in his mind lasted much much longer. He could sleep, eat, dream and move on through many days but the board stayed the same, when something was written on it, even if in a split second of fleeting inspiration, it was written indelibly. He could, he did, return to it at will to sort his thoughts and work out the things that he needed to. Sometimes it was physics, a lot of the time it was more esoteric but balanced in the framework that only he could understand.


Ivan's question sat with him, he had a lot of theories, and a lot of experimentation to work through ti make the science rock solid. He could not claim the discovery, get the kudos and the recognition he deserved for the machine. How could he? If it were known, it would be abused like they were abusing it now.


They, they were abusing it's power and potential. Brian was abusing them and using their greed and more ephemeral needs against them. Not against them, but aligning them to his needs.


The diamonds were black market diamonds and they belonged to a criminal organisation, one that were using them to launder money. It was untraceable because they were not serialised, they were blooded in Africa and passed around like currency, destined to never shine above the cleavage of a starlet, to never cap the engagement surprise of a desperately comfortable bachelor. They were a good fit for time anomaly duplication, they had no identifying marks, and stones were cut to look alike so physical similarities were of no consequence. Money had serial numbers and would eventually trigger an alarm somewhere, when at some future state a treasury agent held two identical bills, identical serial numbers and could not be able to tell which was the fake.


There was no fake, they would both be real.


The anomaly field would allow for the duplication, the extra matter in the universe was just added in, like the gaps in between matter in an ever expanding universe, there was no energy exchange to complicate matters, there was just a small amount of extra matter.


“Where are the bullets?” Brian said it out loud and Michael ignored him, instead filling his pockets with the diamonds before zipping the large pocket shut, the bulge showing the presence but not giving away the value of two million dollars in approximate resale pricing.


Ivan was crouching, while Brian had been ruminating and while Michael had been focussing on the loot, Ivan was staring transfixed at Jerry flopping about, the fish out of water in the small room. Jerry was unable to look straight at anything, and his vision danced around the little room, but no matter where it went to there was Ivan watching him closely, like a bug under glass, alive and pinned, unable to escape the pain or the prison.


“Time to go gentlemen.” Michael patted his pocket but the other two ignored him.


Brian was writing on his board, his body a distraction he could ignore as he conducted thought experiments and computed permutations over and over, writing, erasing and rewriting potential and possibilities. Ivan was conducting experiments too, on a level that intersected the potential plane of theory and the actual reality of consequence less brutality and the effect on the human being.


“Gentlemen!” Michael raised the tone an volume and Barbara jumped at that staccato barking of the word.


Ivan stood up first, and he dusted his hands in irritation at not being allowed to finish this thoughts. Brian had a similar reaction, but hid his response behind a fake, plastic grin that went along with the conversations where he needed something from someone.


All hands came to the middle and clasped each other as Brian went for his wrist band control mechanism. Brian looked at the other three occupants of the room and indicated to his partners that they should back up a few feet to be sure of the anomaly field, they ended up just inside the vault door way.


CLANG>CLANG. There was a double clack of metal on metal, followed rolling whir of what suddenly turned the corner and into sight, a metal cylinder that started spewing smoke at a disturbing rate towards them.


“Shit. Now!” Michael yelled and it threw off the aim of Brian, who was fiddling with the device the stress of the impending tear gas cannister before he finally reset the anomaly counter and sent them back to the origin point in space and time.