Day 210 - Repeat Offenders - Chapter 6.1 - (1129 words)

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REPEAT OFFENDERS

By Wayne Webb

CHAPTER 6.1

The fifth man, Harold White, was trying to process what he was being told. Harold did not believe that his head could spin any further or faster than it had been with the instant and impossible relocation he had been through. Then this man, this person who he had seen as an inexperienced hold up man, started talking to him. The language was simple, the concept was easy enough to understand. He had seen enough science fiction in movies and TV to grasp the basic idea. The elements, the ingredients and even the symptoms he saw made perfect sense when you heard the story.


The idea of alien life, it is an easy concept to grasp but the reality of it is another thing entirely. It was easy to watch the X-Files and endless movies about alien invasions, but if a real god's honest flying saucer really landed in a modern city, there would be stunned silence and a level of shock barely manageable by the human brain. Harold was staring at his own hands and trying to process the information and also check his sanity, and the sanity of the people around him.


Of course this could be an elaborate ruse, but to what end would it be to try and convince him that they were time travellers? They already had the goods, the next best thing they could have would be a clean getaway, they have that too. They were no longer in the bank and they were away with the jewels, which by all accounts should be untraceable. His clients would be after them, they made no effort to hide themselves at all. There was no hiding behind the claim that they were time travellers with the people who owned the jewels. Even if they believed the story, they would still want their property back, and the time travel device as well. In fact the device, if it were real and there was no evidence that it was yet, would be of infinitely more value to them than the property. In their hands the basic concept of repeating the offence of theft over and over again would be exponentially more profitable.


So if the idea that it was some kind of ruse, made no kind of sense to Harold White, unless one of the other options was also true. That either they were not in full control of their mental faculties, or Harold himself was suffering some kind of break with reality and this entire ordeal was a delusion. It would be odd that all three of these men would be mad, insanely sharing the same hallucinations. It would be odder still that three completely insane people would be able to instantly transport him to a new location, or potentially drug him and move him here with no black out time. Which took him back to two options, either a) they were telling the truth or b) he was having a psychotic break.


“This can't be real.” He finally said to himself, not looking up to see what the other men made of it. It were real then his disbelief was of no use, if it were not real then what they thought was not relevant anyway.


“I can prove it to you.” Ivan was on his feet again and while he moved slowly and deliberately to avoid keeling over he was recovering from his earlier blow to the head. He had listened carefully while Brian and Mike had explained in brief the concept of time travel they were utilising, and the way they had used it to steal and get away from the vault. That time had been useful for Ivan to think about what had happened, what he thought occurred and what he could piece together from Mike's account of the robbery where Harold had somehow piggy backed on the anomaly field and arrived here, and potentially he had been left behind. He would come to that later, when he had time to recover fully, when his head stopped swimming and his heart stopped pounding in his ears.


“Here.” Ivan pulled up his sleeve and showed Harold the watch that he had taken from him earlier in Ivan's day, he took it off his own wrist and turned it over to show the personalised inscription on it to the stunned bank manager.


“How did you?” Harold checked his own hand and found the watch still there, taking it off as quickly as he could despite nervous lack of skill. He held the two watches side-by-side and flicked his eyes across them both, back and forth, back and forth until he knew he would not be satisfied. No physical evidence would disprove a break from reality. He sighed and then went to hand one of the watches back to Ivan, forgetting which was the one he started with and he began again to try to tell them apart.


“They are the same.” Ivan said.


“They look the same. Apart from the time on them, this one is six or seven hours too fast.” Harold held one up.


“That's mine.” The watch thief crowed and snatched it back.


“They are the same watch, but they are two time resets apart so the one that shows the time that you expect, that is the point I am trying to make, we have two copies of the watch here in this time, which is the present for you.” Brian stopped and smiled, correcting himself. “Actually it's the past for you, by a couple of hours, for Ivan it's three times that. For us it's the past several more hours beyond Ivan's past. Yes, that's it I think. It can be a lot to take in.”


“Two watches. Because it came back in the field? Yes?”


“Yes.” Michael nodded along with Brian, while Ivan shrugged and threw his hands up as if he was talking to a child.


“So that's still my watch? Really. You stole it from me, but it's still my watch?” Harold asked.


“Yes, that's right.” Brian confirmed.


“And the jewels, the jewels you have a few copies of, they exist 'now' and you have extras, so you have a few million dollars worth just lying around?”


“Yes, for fuck's sake White, get with the program.” Ivan was getting his attitude back, the take no prisoners and no consequences approach that landed him in trouble in the first instance.


“Then if you have all that money, tied up in the jewels. Just waiting to be fenced, sold or whatever you do with it... you don't need to steal my watch then do you?” Harold held out his hand to Ivan expectantly.