Day 225 - Repeat Offenders - Chapter 9 - (1131 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 9

Ivan was worried getting out of the car, and all of a sudden he knew how exposed he was, cover was not an option when he was being watched so closely by this many police officers. Each step he took felt like it was weighted by lead, dragging a chain that didn't exist but slowed him down to a target's pace. His eyes darted everywhere, searching and searching for a hint, a reflection or maybe the red dotted mark of a sniper's fate.


The wait for the team to check the alleyway behind the warehouse back entrance was painfully long, Ivan could feel his pulse racing and his chest thumping along with his own fear and panic. He kept an eye on the cop that had given him a 'warning' but he was off checking the perimeter and relaying the south side wall status to the team captain.


There was no dot on his chest, and from the skewed reflection he could see in the van's window there was no red on his head or anywhere else, his back to the building with no room for a rifle shot there. What felt like an hour was probably only a minute but he was given the go ahead to open the door, holding his hands up to be uncuffed, being refused and shown the fingerprint lock on the door anyway.


“You can reach.” Came the gruff explanation and so Ivan pressed his thumb to the reader and waited for the three beeps to signify that the door was unlocked. No one moved and then a single long beep relocked the door again, Ivan rolling his eyes and then smirking at the cops.


No one was in the mood and so they manhandled the suspect onto the lock reader, forcing his thumb there again, all the while his lawyer objecting to the 'brutality' of their actions and threatened cases of legal action hung in the air, until the lock beeped thrice again, this time the door being opened by a body armoured officer, slowly covering his entry with a torch, peering through the darkened doorway.


“There's no traps, just get in there!” Ivan wanted to get out of the alley way and into the relative safety of the warehouse. He was not one hundred percent sure what he could do when inside and what they would make of the machinery they would find there. It would all be an evidence of the nature of his shared delusion, add some credence to his insanity defence. No one would believe for a second that his tale of time travel was real, it was impossible to prove, likely impossible to disprove as well yet wholly unbelievable. However the trick was not to make them believe, it was to make them think that he believed it. That was the insane part, that someone could think it were not only true but possible in Ivan's mind.


The more complete the delusion appeared, the science fiction looking apparatus, the copious notes and charts that Brian layered the walls with all added to the depth of the story. It all added up to Ivan being completely taken by the fantastic element of time travel, painted as a patsy for the real criminals whose disappearance proves that someone smarter than Ivan was at work.


The lights were found and switched on, revealing the lab space, the machine and the beginnings of doubt in the mind of the cops. Even Ivan's lawyer stood back in silence not really expecting to see anything to back up the wild stories and insane ideas that Ivan had been throwing around. Here in this warehouse space was reasonable doubt though, it was more than enough to get a wedge in on the prosecution to change the sentence, plead diminished capacity, maybe get him committed and out of the prison system at least. The case was an odd one and it was obvious that the cops were targeting the only person they had despite all the evidence that pointed to Ivan being duped, falling for an elaborate and well thought our ruse.


“What does it do?” Ivan's lawyer was asking him, staying near, trying to watch everything going on as the officers milled around, photographers from the unit filming the equipment, taking snapshots of various items, scanning the papers, getting digital copies of everything before moving, displacing or dislodging a thing.


“I don't know. Not really. It makes you, it made me and the others anomalous.”


“Anomalous? What do you mean? Do we need to have this conversation in private?” the lawyer held him by the elbow, wanting to draw him away, getting an evil stare from the cop assigned to watch his every move. The lawyer stared him down, this was not his first time at this game and no hard look was every going to be anything other than a signal to try harder to push the cops back.


“No, it's fine. I mean I want people to hear this, to know what they have here!” Ivan raised his voice and then pointed at the machine. “It's a way of marking people using quantum, something with a half life of three ...”


“Body!” A shout came from the next room, a locked door that Ivan had never seen behind, one he had no interest in, it appeared to be a locked storage closet from a glance at the door when it was shut, but now it was open, it lead to an actual room.


“Half life?” The lawyer ignored the shout and pressed Ivan for more detail. “You mean like radioactive half life? Are we exposed? Should we even be...” The leader of the team came over and half dragged Ivan to the room, and took him through the door.


“Hey!” The lawyer shouted. “Hey, we could be in real...” he stopped what he was saying as the contents of the room became apparent, following the men inside and seeing the giant glass coffin up against the wall.


“Jesus, Brian?” Ivan was staring at the techno-sarcophagus against the far wall, connected to a computer and a bank of instruments, and the icy crust formed around the edges. “What the fuck?” He was now as stunned and sutrprised to see this as the cops and his lawyer were, this was wholly unexplainable.


“I saw him go back, I mean how the hell can he be here now? None of this ever happened. I don't understand!” Ivan was struggling with the concept, nothing added up and nothing made sense the way that Brian had made sense of things.



What was Brian doing in the glass coffin?

Day 224 - Repeat Offenders - Chapter 8.5 - (1394 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 8.5

Harold Prime walked in through the front door of his own house, knowing it was his and wasn't really as well. He laid claim to it but given only a few short hours the whole thing would be a question for philosophical minds much more suited to the task than his. For now he was not the dispossessed and the homeless man that his future promised. Within hours he would be a quantum widower, left alone by the cruel twist of proximal fate.


The way Brian had explained it there was a three hour window where he could relive the time necessary to pull off the robbery, and they would need to wait at least an hour after bank's closing to be sure that all chances of being interrupted were minimised. That meant that even at full extension he would have less than two hours to enjoy the company of Maude for potentially the last time. Like Brian he had no stomach for the killing of the other versions of people, especially himself. Having met himself already once he knew how he would feel, how he would react and what it would all mean in the moment of understanding. He wished that instant on no one, he did not wish to feel it uneducated, he did not wish it on a version of himself that was essentially the same person that he was but a few hours short of memory and knowledge.


“Honey?” His voice cracked a little, unexpectedly he felt an overwhelming emotion that came from seemingly nowhere. He had been through a lot today and had many, many more trips to make tonight.


“Harold? Is that you?” Maude's voice came from the kitchen, querying his surprise visit home in the middle of the day. “Are you ok? What's wrong? Why are you here?”


Harold smiled at the concern in her voice and he could see in his mind the furrowing above her eyes, that wearing of an emotion plain and unfettered access to all near enough to see and feel what she wanted. This was why they were so good together, she was good for him and good to him, he appreciated her for that, the way they fit together. It was not passion that drove them, they had their moments as all people did when they had been together for that long, it was compatibility that kept them entwined.


“I'm fine, I was feeling a bit under the weather and I just decided to come home and have a nap.” Harold put his wallet and keys on the occasional table in the hallway and came to his wife who came to see him, to check he was truly OK.


“Are you hot? You feel normal.” Maude was using the back of her hand on his forehead, looking for a temperature that was not there.


“I'm fine I am really, I just... I'm tired and I thought a sleep might do me some good. I think I'm just going to go to bed.” He paused and put an arm around his wife, though he would be quantum cuckolded by closing time at the bank he supposed. “You could come to bed with me.”


“Harold White, you dirty old man!” Her outrage was mocking and loud, it carried no more authenticity than the poetic approach Harold took in trying to accept his new paradigm. “Did you think you could just swan off from work, come home for some afternoon delight with your wife?” She slapped him playfully, flattered but not really interested either, she had things to do.


“No, I really just want a sleep, to be honest I would like the company.” Harold was exhausted, shocked and deeply affected by the day. Now that the spectre of some afternoon sexual dalliance was in the offing his body processed the idea and let him know that it could all be on at a moments notice, but his mind was thinking about sleep. He knew that he would be saying goodbye, at least in this life and in this version of reality and time, there was no easy way to solve this extra Harold issue, he needed to find a solution eventually, but now sleep, rest and recharging were his priorities.


“Harold White? Did you just turn down sex? You really are sick!” Maude was frowning again, switching moods with each new nugget of information about the state of her husband.


“If you are offering? It would be … ungentlemanly to turn it down.”


“And you are nothing if not the perfect gentleman.” Maude said slyly, still wondering where this came from, were it was going to go.


“Well maybe after we have had a wee nap, I just need to get a couple of … “ Harold looked at his watch and stared at it trying to figure out how long he should sleep before leaving the house again, before sneaking out and making his way to the bank, he wanted to cross over with Maude heading to her book club night so that there would be no raising the alarm until they spoke again, much, much later and after the reset or the next day.


Except that there would not be a next day for Maude, it would be this day again before she knew it. She would never know it according to the others, and this whole process left the footprints of people's existence nowhere except in the recollections of fellow anomalies. The violence, the time shifting, the science, the concept and the oddity of meeting himself was all pressing in on him as he looked at his watch, considering time.


He wavered a little on his feet, dizzy with the import of what he had to comprehend, what he had to do and what he had seen. Maude moved to shore him up, getting arm arm under him, not supporting his weight, but steadying him and guiding him to the stairs even before the words were forming in her lips.


“Harold, you are not well, you need to lie down, look at yourself, you're white.” She paused him by the hall mirror and there he saw himself reassuringly backwards in the reflection. “Look”


“Darling I'm always White, that's my name!” It was an old joke, and he had not played it with her for years, the duality of the meaning was extended beyond diagnosis and aptly described that he was who he was. An issue and a question of identity.


“Let's get you to bed.” Maude fussed him up the stairs and into their bed, he pulled her in to bed with him and she did not resist.


Harold set his phone alarm to wake him again in an hour, and then closed his eyes.


Bzzzt. Bzzt. Bzzt.


Harold opened his eyes to see his phone moving on the night stand. He picked it up to turn the alarm off only to see that it was not an alarm, it was a phone call from an unknown number.


“Hello?” he croaked into the reciever.


“Where the fuck are you Harold? You better not be backing out of the deal.” It was Ivan berating him.


“What? We... have plenty of time it's only...” Harold looked at his watch and it was showing 8 pm. Then he realised, it was dark and he had slept through his alarm.


“Is someone there?” Harold Two's voice echoed in the house.


“Shit, I'm here with me!” Harold whispered into the phone. “Stay ready, I'll be there soon, we still have time, I overslept.”



“Hello? If there's someone there, I'm calling the police!” The sound of heavy footsteps came thumping up the stairs, and Harold Prime froze not wanting to make a sound as his other self came to investigate the noise in his own house.