©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 11.2
Ivan and George were looking
around the warehouse carefully, neither one of them really wanted to
go outside the four walls until they knew what was going on. The
rules had changed as far as Ivan was concerned and he was a thousand
times more cautious than the had been previously.
“
Leave nothing behind but
footprints.” he mumbled to himself like a mantra, repeatedly
reminding himself that there were consequences to any action they
took, regardless of what he had bee told and how he had acted in the
past, this was a different reality now. Things were not as he had
been lead to believe, and certainly not how he wanted to believe. He
had done things in the last few days, even though the time was
shorter where they were now, the idea of time for Ivan was much
longer. Technically when he thought about it, though he was trying
not to, he was now ageing faster than those outside any of the
anomalies they created. Ageing at a rate a few hours older than the
splinter universe they had created by 'travelling back in time'.
Their job was too look about for
clues while Brian reconfigured the machine for a trip forward. A
preliminary search of the warehouse told them a few things, firstly
that no one else was her and had not been for a couple of days.
Coupling that with the evidence that Brian could get from the
machine, the time device, he could see that a trip was made forward
to the same starting point as before, though offset by a few seconds.
It was unsurprising as the plan
all along according to Ivan, was to hit the safe deposit box in the
bank after the delivery, several times or until the had enough, got
tired of it or something went horribly wrong, which ever came first.
Of course things had gone horribly wrong already and he had
inadvertently been left to face life in an alternate branch of
reality where only a couple of parameters were different, but he was
still branded a criminal and wanted by the police, the bank and
assumably the owners of the content of the safe deposit box.
“
Guys!” George's voice rose
significantly despite the distance he was away from the others, his
inflection giving the sense that it was important and that they
needed to pay attention. “You'll want to see this!”
Ivan stopped looking through the
desk papers in the small office next to the stasis room. They had
already found yet another version of Brian entombed there but the
three of them agreed that it did not make sense to introduce another
version of Brian into the mix. As it was there was at least two
Brians and two Ivans, who know how many more duplicates there were in
play across the dimensions. Adding to the list of people who knew
about and could traverse the dimensions of reality was simply more
complications they did not need. So they decided as a group to leave
him frozen, to leave them all that way until they caught up with the
future set, including Brian Prime who set this entire thing in
motion.
The three men converged on the
point where George was, the small fridge and freezer unit in the tiny
kitchen attached to the back office, the one where they had thrown
the tear gas grenade what seemed like months ago. George was looking
inside a small container which was covered in icicles and had been
wedged inside the freezer unit.
“
What are we supposed to see,
exactly?” Brian was peering inside.
“
Who do they belong to?”
Asked Ivan, recognising what Brains had not.
“
What are they?” He said
again and went to put his hand in the container, George moved it away
quickly and Ivan look appalled.
“
You don't wanna...” Ivan
said in a low voice.
“
What? What is it?”
“
These are fingers. Fingers
that have been...” George tipped the fingers which were a bluey
white colour and looked fake in their frigidity, on to the stainless
steel bench top of the kitchen and then peered at them intently. “See
that? That fine working on the … what … incision? Amputation?”
Brian did not recoil at the
information, instead he leaned in and examined the cut marks at the
edge of the flesh. “That's precise. And looking at the length of
the amputated flesh it was taken...” he started arranging the
frozen digits like a weird jigsaw puzzle made of flesh and bone,
lining them up into the configuration of how they were taken from the
hand they came from. “.. quickly, and the hand was outstretched
like this...” Brian held his own hand out and moved his fingers and
thumb into the same contortion that the original hand had been when
the fingertips were taken.
“
Can we assume that these might
just belong to one of us?” George was asking.
“
Easily proved or disproved.
Here.” Brian laid his hand next to the pattern of flesh on the
counter, his own fingers much thinner and longer than the ones on
display, the hand look nothing like his own. George was next and he
too double verified his own hand and fingers against the ones lying
there. He could think of no reason to be there, as the isolation and
capture of Ivan in the dimension they came from was what lead him to
the warehouse and no other clues had been forthcoming.
Ivan was last and dreading the
comparison. He knew that he was the most likely candidate because any
future or alternate versions of himself would have the same base
personality that he had and still be operating under the assumptions
that he had been, that he was free to act and do as he so desired
with no lasting effects. That power and range was a heading mix that
made him drunk with possibility and then his actions flowed from
there. Nothing to stop him from acting the same way again, unless
they other team had come up with a way to check Ivan in check?
Something like slicing his
fingers off with an industrial strength laser?
He laid his hand next to the
decoupled digits and could not look at the results. Instead George
leaned in and made a few painfully ambivalent um's and ahh;s before
saying “You're good.”
©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 11.1
“
What is it about people that
have nothing left to lose?” Brian from the future was asking
himself.
“
I don't follow?” Brian from
the present was confused by the question, but he did not know what he
would know in the next three months.
Future Brian was talking to Brian
Prime, he was the first of them to travel backwards through time to
discover himself waiting there to be let in on the plan. It was not
like the future trips which were tightly controlled and regulated
with short bursts. This first trip backwards was three months into
the past, using a radioactive marker that expired years into the
future, Brian had access which he would not share with any of his
future associates At any point he could programme the machine to
come here, but this was the very first trip he had made after months
of experimenting and big changes in his life and outlook.
He remembered being here and his
first steps with the machine, knowing what was coming next it was
hard to not want to stop it all and prevent any of this from coming
to pass, but that was possibly impossible.
Possibly impossible, the phrase
sounded hollow in his head, everything seemed possible to him now. A
few months ago before the time when he was just starting out on this
time experiment, he thought that stasis bubbles were his greatest
breakthrough and yet a scant three months later, here he was
traversing time to re-sculpt the future, at least in some form.
There was some things he had to
be wary of when travelling through time, science fiction was if
nothing else a very good primer for the theory if not practical
elements of actual time travel. Future Brian did not know for certain
if he would or even could alter the past in any significant way. He
had worked on the anomaly field for over ninety days since this time
when the afternoon had lasted forever and the sun could be focussed
on and enjoyed over and over again. Past Brian, whom he had been once
in what seemed like a lifetime ago, would go on to relive this moment
until he eventually fell asleep in the frozen sunlight, with no
breeze or moving cloud cover the burn on his skin would ache for
days. It seemed like a great place to start, get in before the pink
twinges on his skin started, see if that one detail could be changed
and see what happens after that.
He needed Past Brian, or Brian
Beta he was thinking of him as, to listen to everything that Brian
Alpha from the future would tell him, and take the advice from the
extra experience he had in the field, experience that may not need to
happen.
“
Brian. You know that I am you
right?”
“
It seems that way, eliminating
any psychotic breaks, hallucinations or deceptions, then yes you
appear to be me.”
Future Brian wondered if everyone
thought he was as much hard work as he now found himself. It was an
unpleasant reality that dealing with himself in the third person
sense was much harder and much more insulting to his own perceptions
than he anticipated, the logic of what he was saying to himself was
impeccable. He would not just trust anyone who claimed what he
claimed, he would demand proof, but there simply was none that would
adequately convince.
Maybe that was the answer. “I
can't prove it to you.”
“
How convenient. For you.”
Past Brian was a bit of a dick
thought Future Brian, and 'am I really like this?”
He carried on his train of
thought. “There is no evidence that can adequately convince you
that you are not hallucinating. After all the nature of
hallucinations is that they are convincing and they overlay reality.
So any evidence I offer you is as real as the hallucination is, if
that is what is going on. How can any evidence I offer be of any use
to your logically when you cannot even prove that the underlying
assumption is incorrect.”
“
That the entire thing is an
illusion, you reasoning is sound but also convenient, you could offer
evidence that would prove that what you say is true if we agree to
the assumption that reality is real.” Past Brian was negotiating
with his Future self.
“
We treat reality as a zero sum
equation, in the absence of proof or disproof we accept that the
reality is what it says it is and attempt to provide evidence of what
I am saying within the parameters of this reality. Regardless of the
validity of the nature of the reality, any real evidence whether real
or imagined should still fit within the norms of acceptable evidence
within the framework of this existence.” Future Brian nodded his
agreement as he worked his way through what he was saying, thinking
that it made sense, to attack the problem logically,
programmatically.
Past Brian was ready to begin.
“What number am I thinking of?”
“
Excuse me? I believe you
wanted proof, evidence backed by facts... not a …. parlour trick.”
Future Brian's voice dripped with contempt as he said it and it
twisted the face of his counterpart from the past, he too now seeing
himself, recognising his attitude and mannerisms, seeing them for the
first time and not liking them.
At that point there would be more
to say but the tipping point had been reached when he triggered self
loathing in his mirror image.
“
I was thinking about lines of
causality and that you have been here before, but I can see that you
are me, I am you.” Past Brian said with a quiet tone and his future
self understood the underlining that his words had, disappointment
with himself and who he was.
“
I don't remember this
happening, and I'm not sure it works like this, this is a new time
line for me, and the pas that I had is now starting again. We'd have
to figure out a way to make this work, otherwise every time I travel
backwards, or you travel backwards there will be another me, another
you and another catch up. It would be easier if you did not exist, if
we could find a way to not duplicate ourselves.”
“
We don't have that luxury and
you can't take too much back into the past with you, knowledge wise,
because that would alter your existence.” Before he finished that
sentence he arrived at the opposite conclusion, the same as his
Future Self was alluding to.
“
Except that...”
“
We know that it does not. At
least with information. What about more.. physical changes?”
“
An experiment?”
“
Try not to act like it's my
idea alone.” Again the sarcasm, but this time Past Brian said it
and heard in his own voice, reinforcing his self loathing but also
the evidence that he was dealing with himself, or a complete
psychotic break. Any delusion this complete though, was a doozy and
for all intents and purposes was reality from here on in. Even if he
woke up one day to discover himself scratching on the walls with
crayons, this point in time may as well be enjoyed.
“
It's not, no. And I have
something. We need to get into the shade before it's too late
though.”
The two men moved into the Barn
and to the original machine, the prototype was much smaller and had
some extraneous that the Future Brian would remove in his efforts to
refine and improve the device, he looked at it fondly.
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