The Devil's Copper by Jamie Crothall (ink ebook reader .txt) 📕

What do they call that now?  Data mining?  People will tell you a lot more than they normally would if they think you know them.  It’s just a matter of going back several times to draw out more details.”

“How long did that take?”

He shrugged.  “Hard to say.  Twenty minutes?  Plus at least another twenty minutes to guess Jack’s password.  He doesn’t use the same one at work as he does at home, the bastard.  Then, a lot of trial and error avoiding the men coming down the hall.  It was a long day for me yesterday.”

“How can it be a long day if you go back ten seconds to the original time?”

“Oh, my body had a normal twenty four hour day.  But my brain was on duty for about thirty six hours.  That’s why I knew things before you told me.  You already told me.  I just kept going back for more detail.  I like to cut through the fluff and get to the core of the issue.  People just take too damn long for my liking.”

I looked at him blankly for a few moments, then found other things to look at while I absorbed this information.

“Okay then,” I said, “if this is true…”

“You believe me.”

“No I don’t.”

“You want to.”

“If I believed you,” I continued, “then answer me one question.  How?”

He could have responded in a lot of ways and I would have been skeptical, but instead he gave me an answer I wasn’t expecting.  He simply shrugged.

“No idea.”

“You don’t know?”

“Nope.”

“Have you always been like this?”

“As long as I can remember.”

“And you’ve never questioned it?”

“Nope.”

“You’re a control freak who doesn’t like unanswered questions, and you’re telling me you’ve never tried to figure it out?”

“It is what it is.”

“What if you had an unhealthy dose of radiation at some point?  Oh god, am I in danger just by being near you?”

He laughed.  “Now I know you were a tomboy.  Read a lot of comics as a child, I assume?”

“Did I tell you that?  Ten seconds ago?”

He shook his head.  “Just a lucky guess.”

“What if this is a gift from God?”  To this, he simply rolled his eyes.  “You could have been given a gift to change the world for the better!”

“In ten second intervals?”

“Well, I understand how you pulled a winning Nevada ticket your first try.”

“Oh my god! That took over an hour,” he gasped, vexed by the reminder.  “The average box around here has about one thousand tickets.  Each box has about ten $100 winners, and a few others with lower prizes.  It’s a matter of going in again and again, until you find a winner worth keeping.”

“So you have a one-in-one hundred chance of pulling a winner?”

“Slimmer odds than that, because you often end up picking the same one over and over again by accident.  Depending on how lucky I am, I might go for more.  Sometimes I get so fed up, I settle for a five dollar prize.  Of course, this is all dependent on the lotto booth being honest when they tell you how many winners are left in the box.  And let me tell you; they’re not always honest.  I tried to call a few owners out on that, but it's hard when you can’t prove it.  Plus, if you win too many times, they get suspicious.  So you have to go elsewhere.  That’s when I find other ways to make money.”

“So, when you got accused of cheating at cards…”

“Exactly.  I had to learn to keep my winning streaks to a minimum.  It’s easy to get carried away when you can just get up, lean over someone’s shoulder and look at their cards.  As long as you go back ten seconds before they punch you.  Or shoot you.  You see, I helped Jack get back on his feet by taking him down south and hitting a few casinos.  I kept our winning streaks as low-key as possible, and when we started getting noticed we’d find another one to go to.”

“So Jack knew?  About your…ability?”

“I revealed myself unto him, yes.  In one weekend, Jacky boy made enough money from his share to get back on his feet, put himself through school, and get the career he wanted.  He used his money to better himself.”

“And what did you spend your money on?”

Walter shrugged.  “I bought a purebred.”

I wouldn’t have thought of him as a dog-person.  “When was this?  Hold old is it now?”

He shook his head.  “I don’t want to talk about Shep, thank you very much.”

I didn’t know how to reply to that, so I didn’t.  I didn’t know how to reply to a lot of it.  I still wasn’t sure what to believe.  But the part of me buying Walter’s story was feeling paranoid.  If any of it was true, how did I know how many conversations he and I had that I don’t recall?  How much information have I disclosed without knowing I did?  It was like having my autonomy wrestled away from me.  I didn’t like it.  At all.

“You don’t have any food,” he said.  Was that a statement or an assumption?  Had he already checked without my knowing?  “There’s a pizza joint around the corner, isn’t there?”  I nodded.  “Let’s go, I’ll buy.”

I threw up my hands, figuring ‘why not’?  I followed him out the door and down the steps as we made our way down the street and around the corner.

“So, I know what you’re wondering,” he said.

“No I really think you don’t,” I replied.  I hesitated.  “Or maybe you do.  How many times have we had this conversation already?”

“Aw, see you’re getting paranoid now.  This is one of the reasons I don’t tell people.  Anyway no, we’ve not had this conversation, but you’re probably wondering if this