Day 236 - Repeat Offenders - Chapter 10.3 - (1228 words)

©Wayne Webb and constantwriting.blogspot.com, 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Wayne Webb and constantwriting.blogspot.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

REPEAT OFFENDERS

By Wayne Webb

CHAPTER 10.3

“I could come with you, you want me to come with you, but if I do I may never get back? What kind of deal is that?” George was speaking to the unfrozen Brian and looking at the nearly catatonic Ivan. He had barely moved in the last ten minutes, it had taken them an hour to calm him down after the suicide attempt and time was running out, the bullet and glass still hung in the air outside the window, sunlight refracted through casting a shattered rainbow on the floor now far from where they stood. Time was frozen outside of their bubble but light was unaffected by the machine, Brian explained why that was, but it was more technical an explanation than George wanted or could ever hope to absorb.


Brian had invited George to come with them and find the other 'team' the one that was moving forward through the use of the machine, to find them and stop them, tell them what they were doing. Brian assumed the innocence of his counterpart, but he could not fully accept that as true, he had to have know that this was a possibility, as he himself had done before the 'other' version of himself turned up and convinced him to go into the machine, for his own sake. He wondered what that meant for him in the other dimensions, the other versions and time lines set up with every trip.


He had believed himself when presented with his own doppelgänger and a credible story about the machine he knew to work, and knew to be capable of much more than freezing localised bubbles of time. He had, or they both had, he was unsure which was more correct, designed the anomaly field with multiple uses, purposes in mind. Localised stasis bubbles were the first experiment, they had set the bubble as the first 'anomaly' and everything stemmed from that first session. Brian Prime, he felt he could call himself that, was the first person in the chain of events that lead the other versions of himself to take bigger steps, bolder ones in search of quantum entanglement, time travel and time dispersement. With enough time and money he could, they could, read the past and the future with remote sensory software, the vast array of human history and future would open up to them.


For now they were tied to three hours, the half life of the element they were using to control the age of the anomaly field. It could have been longer or shorter, but all the elements he had looked at carried a price, either in money or in danger, this was the right isotope in the sweet spot for this kind of experience. They could move up but what kind of exposure would that bring with it? A fatal one in his summation, and then all the time travel in whole of human history would not help anyone, they'd just appear to die faster as people outside the anomaly saw them deteriorate faster.


George would have been good to have along, he was trying to appeal to his sense of justice and equanimity. They had to catch up with the others and convince them to stop, destroying the machines as they went, the research and the components had to all go, the theory and the parts could have won him the Nobel Prize, but the littered trail of bodies his ' partners' had left behind just illustrated what he already thought. This was like giving a loaded gun to a baby.


If he and Ivan went alone, then the chances of them being able to affect change was lessened, but if they had this detective's assistance, his forcefully present personality would be a swaying influence. Ivan was teetering on the edge of a total nervous collapse, and if he went back to any of the places where he was the murderous person that …


“Shit.” Brian swore and went white, sitting with his head in his hands the same as Ivan had done, was still trying to recover from.


“How many people have you murdered then?” George asked, with a 'what now?' look on his face.


“It's not that. I've just realised my place.” Brian said quietly.


“You created a time machine that allowed criminals to romp through all sorts of craziness, killing and stealing and doing whatever they want without consequence. Except there are consequences aren't there?” George added smugly “This? What you're feeling? It's called a guilty conscience, you should go with that.”


“I didn't see it before. I should have. It's obvious when you think about it.”


“I can see it. You are an accessory before and after the fact, even if you did not pull the trigger yourself.”


“I did not. It was not me, it was never me.” Brian was talking but George got the sudden realisation that he was not replying to him at all, he was talking to himself.


“What? What are you saying?” He pried gently, knowing he was on the edge of losing them both now.


“It was never me.”


“What was never you?”


Brian looked up at George with tears in his eyes, but a laughing smile and a small chuckle, the sadness of the tragic news he had amusing as well as shocking him. “I am not the first. I can't be.”


“Isn't the first the one who left Ivan behind? Isn't that the point?” George was confused.


“Funny how you of all people understand the simplicity of thinking in a straight line.”


“Is that an insult?”


“Yes. No. I'm not sure, but you instinctively know about the nature of my reality, but I … could not see it.” Brian looked at Ivan, his empathy for the feelings had increased, the loss he felt when he knew that he was not who he thought he was, and there were however many behind him, that was a deep cut to endure.


“See what exactly? I don't see...”


“Yes, you do see, you see what I did not. Saw. You saw what I did not. Ivan had to move forward to get to here, that's all he knew, he's reset a few times already, which means I am not the Prime at all. I am one of many, the Prime is before me, probably before Ivan here since he did not know about it. I am a copy of the Prime, I am a copy of the first copy really, because the one who is a few jumps ahead of this point, the one who left the trail of bodies and the trail of ...” Brian looked to the room where the stasis pod was, “... us behind him, that is the Prime, what ever happened to him, only happened to him, he made sure of that, and all of us copies, we are lying in wait for .. I don't know what.”


“That sucks dude.” Ivan finally spoke, looking at Ivan and reaching out an arm to take his in a clasp and pulling the two of them together. They embraced and stood in the centre of the space for about a minute before George cleared his throat.



“Are we going? Or not?”