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REPEAT OFFENDERS
By Wayne Webb
CHAPTER 12.1
“They're here somewhere, there's no next entry in the logs.” Brian calmly stated from the panel of the machine to the other two who were searching the warehouse for what was now over a dozen trips forward. They had settled into a routine in each destination, checking the local time against their own body times, which of course were different for all three of them, but they used the dimension where George was from as the baseline anyway. They would check on the status of the Brian that was frozen in suspended animation, and then check the freezer for fingers or a sign of the person or persons missing the digits. While they were checking the variations on those themes in each splinter universe, Brian would go to the machine and check the information available to them in the memory logs for the forward and backwards events.
Each machine held in it's local memory the details of the splinter before the current one and the destination programming for the next trip. Now they finally got to the splinter where they had caught up with the team that Ivan had broken away from, from the Brian that convinced his other self to go into suspended animation. There was no forward programming, so the set of instructions that Brian had left when 'calibrating' the bracelets had not yet been activated.
“How long have we got?” Ivan asked George who had been making notes about average times in between the splinters, figuring out how long they were spending in each one and evening it out until the pattern was plainly obvious was not hard work, they did not need to spend the same amount of time in each splinter to figure it out, they just needed long enough to figure out the next move and look for anything that would lead them to understand the future team's actions any clearer. Most of what they found was evidence of order and discipline, the other team had settled into a rhythm different from the plan that Ivan had been involved with, and that was most likely due to the involvement of Bank Manager Harold who had joined the team.
In each splinter now it appeared that there was a duplicate version of Mr White at each location, so the team of three was now a raft of frozen Brians, that Mike, Harold and Future Ivan knew nothing the original Brian and of course there was also an unwitting version of Harold who was continuing his job at the bank unaware that his genetic duplicate was getting into the vault with his passwords and fingerprints after hours.
It was a mess and the more they thought about the after effects for the people left behind in each dimension, the worse the effects seemed. They had no knowledge of the police investigation, if there was one in each splinter universe. It was entirely likely that each crime was undetected until the criminal organisation that owned the vault in each case went to claim the contents. Then of course they were hardly likely to contact the police, so only the cases where the police had been called in the first few, more violent and uncontrolled encounters involved Detective George. He was a peripheral character in the dozen or so extra trips they had made to track down the advance team. George was working other cases and blissfully unaware of the mess that his other self was trying to help clean up. In the original splinter where George was once trying to figure out how this weird group of people suddenly vanished with no apparent loot and leaving behind an unhinged man babbling about time travel and mad scientists, and a missing Bank Manager too.
“They should be just over an hour from making the next jump, maybe less, depending on ...” George started but he was interrupted by Brian who spoke softly but firmly, cutting across the detective's voice.
“They will know we are here by now. Or he will.” Brian looked up to see the question on their faces, “I will, the Future Me, I will know that we are here.” He pointed to the machine and a series of blinking lights that indicated something to him. “There's an alarm going off when we arrived, it is set to replicate on the bracelet I am wearing.” Brian made an adjustment to the personal device that he was wearing and it started emitting a high pitched beeping noise. “I just changed the calibrating sensor to the same relative time as Brian, the Future me, and that's the alarm he can hear.”
“It's not subtle.” Said Ivan, raising an eyebrow.
“No, and it can be turned ….” Brian adjusted It back to the setting it had been at before he set the alarm off and the noise ceased immediately. “... off. Though he may not realise that straight away, since he's not been dimension hopping with the frequency that we have. But certainly he will know we are here.”
“What should be done then?” Ivan asked but he had an idea before he could even finish the sentence he had started.
“If I were him, and let's face it I am.” Brian smiled at himself and paused at his own twisted humour before continuing. “I would come back here to see what triggered the alarm. It could only be a couple of potentially dangerous outcomes.”
“So he would be threatened by the alarm?” Ivan asked.
“Well yes, the alarm would alarm him, that is what alarms do, they alarm. They are alarming.” Brian said condescendingly.
“So what kind of danger are we in?” George asked, and reached for his gun, checking the safety was off and that the barrel was clear.
“Danger? From me? Almost certainly none I can assure you!” Brian sounded offended but Ivan looked dubiously at him, prompting a more aggressive tone from him at not being believed. “What? What am I going to do? Honestly!”
Ivan laid his case out in blunt terms, “You don't really know what future you is up to though do you? You know what I have seen him do, you know what he knows about the device and how he lied to us... to me about it and that he has killed at least one person. So how much of a threat are you? In these circumstances?”
Brian said nothing in response, the points Ivan had made had resonated with him and the real detail that frightened him, the one that he had not shared with the men who accompanied him was the one that would really shine the spotlight on what his Future Self was capable of. What he actually had one, and what he would do to get whatever it was done that he obviously needed to do so desperately.
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