Dark Universe Series: Prison Break.

Chapter 4.

Gordon was reading out loud from one of his favorite books. "Deep in Marvin's thorax gears ground. 'Funny' he intoned funereally, 'how just when you think life can't possibly get any worse it suddenly does'."

Braman leaned forward just a little as if listening intently. Gordon had noticed that he seemed particularly taken with the character of Marvin.

There was a shuffling noise at the door. Brains stood there. He looked nervously over his shoulder. "Braman! There you a-a-are at last. Where have you been these past few days?"

Gordon shut the book with a clap. "Brains. Just entertaining your robot thingy."

"Er - that's very ah-ah-kind of you, Gordon…I think." He peered closely at Braman's feet. "I-i-is that rust? I think we'd better ah-ah-get you down to the laboratory." He glanced around quickly. "Have you ah-ah seen Scott?"

"Think he's in the pool. Do you want me to tell him you were looking for him?"

"No!" Brains said quickly.

He held out his hand to Braman. The robot stood and hit its head slowly three times against the wall. It began to move wearily towards the door.

…

Jeff wandered into the kitchen. He looked around rather helplessly. He was pretty sure that there should be food here somewhere, but there wasn't much in evidence. He opened up a cupboard or two, with no success.

"Hey, Dad."

Jeff eyed up his eldest son as he crossed to something Jeff had assumed was a wall, slid his hand into something Jeff had assumed to be a crack in the wall, and opened up a walk-in larder.

"Want a sandwich?" Scott asked.

"Sure," Jeff said, trying not to sound too eager.

"Bread's in the cool box."

"Bread?"

Scott looked at him. "You'll recognize it when you see it."

"We need a cook."

"You want me to hire one?" Scott piled a plate full of cold chicken.

"Please. Someone who'll keep her mouth shut."

"I think they come in both sexes."

"Sorry?"

"I'll find someone. Don't worry."

"I need to talk to…beard….anti-social…"

Scott blinked. "Beard?"

"You know. One of your brothers…"

"Brothers?"

"Yes. You know. Beard. Paints."

Scott frowned. "No-one with a beard on the island, Dad.".

"Sure there is." Jeff gesticulated in irritation. "You know the one."

Scott shook his head. He picked up a couple of bottles of beer and stuck them under his arms so he had a hand free to grab some fruit. "Don't know who you mean, Dad." He retreated in the direction of the pool.

"For Pete's sake," Jeff muttered. Inspiration struck. "Virgil!" he yelled after the swinging door. "Virgil!"

Alan, entering, glanced over his shoulder at the retreating back of his eldest brother, and shook his head. "When will you get this down, Dad? That was Scott. Scott."

"Mind your own damned business, John," Jeff snarled on his way out.

…

Virgil managed to get himself arrested at the fourth attempt.

He'd felt that his attempts had been improving on a daily basis. Overall, he figured he'd pretty well broken even. The first attempt had taught him that real guns were not the way to go. The second effort had made up the $500 he'd lost on the first attempt and had gotten him laid (no small thing for a man who'd spent nearly eighteen months on a deserted island). The third had been going really well up to the point when the neighborhood junkie had come flying through the door and disrupted his own far more subtle attempts with twitchy yelling and a double-barreled shotgun. To avoid bloodshed, Virgil had been forced to take the law into his own hands and disarm the junkie. The police had come, sure, but they simply wouldn't believe that he was anything but a have-a-go hero.

His attempts to explain all of this to his elder brother had, however, been somewhat less than successful. Scott was clearly getting jittery, and if there was one thing he'd learned about his eldest brother, it was that you didn't let him get to the jittery stage.

So this time, Virgil hadn't bothered waiting for closing time. He simply walked up to the counter and pulled out the replica gun.

The sales assistant, a spotty youth, put his hands nervously in the air. Behind him, the proprietor moved subtly towards the panic button. Virgil pretended not to have noticed. The police were very slow to respond, so Virgil robbed the store very, very slowly. There never was a slower robbery.

Eventually there'd been a blue light and a siren, and a loudspeaker telling him to exit the store slowly with his hands showing. Virgil had placed the replica pistol on the counter and rolled his eyes. "About bloody time," he'd said to an astonished audience, before walking out to give himself up.

...

Author's note: Gordon is, as I'm sure you've spotted, reading from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams.