At this point several things happened, only one of which mattered.
Janik decided the conditions were as good as they were going to get, and prepared to ignite his spark. ‘As good as they were going to get’ was a little short of the usual rigour you would expect for setting magic conditions but Janik was tired and thirsty. This was why Janik, for all his abilities, preferred petty crime. Large scale crime involved being organised and sober for large periods of time, carried high levels of risk, and was overall just a massive hassle. This job suited Janik because it had a favourable stress to reward ratio. As a student of petty crime, Janik knew it usually came with predictable levels of security. Premium crime involved navigating premium security, which had a hierarchy of efforts to deter both magical and non magical attempts at criminal activity. At the top of this hierarchy was magic. In the middle were ‘set and forget’ cameras and alarms. At the bottom, the least effective but most expensive part of a security effort, people. People standing around looking at things. People paid to stare at valuable objects to make sure there was no magic or any other kind of criminal shenanigans. This was too many layers for Janik, he preferred the type of crime where the rewards were so negligible that no one actually expected anyone to steal anything. The kind of crime that people were unlikely to predict because it was motivated by the most unpredictable of elements, emotion. In this case, spite. For this type of crime any security was always of the most half hearted kind, a few alarms and a low rent effort from a ‘security firm’ whose only qualification was that they owned a lot of cameras.
At the same time Amy and her crew were still going through their final checklist for their many cameras.
‘Protected item primary camera charged, plugged and connected?’ said Amy, who was the only person in the company who understood the importance of checklists.
‘Check,’ replied Baron.
‘Primary camera’s camera, charged, plugged and connected?’
‘Check,’ replied Baron.
‘Secondary camera charged, plugged and connected?’
‘Check,’ replied Baron.
‘Secondary camera’s camera charged, plugged and connected?’
‘Check’.
Amy looked down at two cameras in a pile at her feet. ‘What are these?’
Baron and Thomas peered down at the cameras. ‘Cameras,’ offered Baron.
‘I mean, yes they’re cameras, but why are there cameras here? Did you bring extra cameras?’
‘Um, no …’ said Baron. He took a longer look at the cameras. ‘Oh, these are the primary and secondary cameras.’
Amy took a moment to process the words Baron was making and to try and put them together in a way that avoided the stupidity they suggested. She opened her mouth and gaped a little trying to figure out how to reply. She settled on ‘what?’
‘Looks like we forgot to install the camera’s pointing at the painting. There are a lot of cameras, it’s very confusing,’ said Baron.
‘It’s your ONLY job!’ yelled Amy.
‘Actually I’m in charge of social media,’ said Baron.
‘Oh my God! You said check! I said “Protected item primary camera charged, plugged and connected” and you said check!’.
‘That’s what you’re supposed to say when someone reads something from the checklist!’
‘No you’re supposed to check, then say check, after you’ve actually checked! THAT’S WHY IT’S CALLED A CHECKLIST!’
‘There are a lot of cameras, it’s very confusing,’ Thomas observed.
‘So there are no cameras pointing at the painting?’ clarified Amy.
‘Guess not,’ Baron responded.
‘And we are all here,’ said Amy.
‘Oh yeah …’ responded Thomas.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
‘So there is no person, or camera, observing the painting,’ observed Amy.
‘Oh yeah …’ responded Thomas.
There was a beat, then Amy and Thomas spun on their heels and scrambled from the room heading towards the atrium. After a moment Amy reappeared, grabbed an armful of cameras, and resumed scrambling. Baron wandered after them.
In the carpark Janik unleashed his first spark. This set off two fairly common petty crime magical effects, one disabling the alarms, and another the door locks. It was a lazy spell and would only work on the most budget of locks and alarm systems, but in this case Janik had guessed the cheapness of the gallery correctly and the doors unlocked and the alarms went dead. Janik then turned his attention to the next stage of his plan, checking the arrangement of his fried chicken on the ground. This time he had something up his sleeve that was genuinely clever. Again, although he was a mess of a human, Janik was a somewhat effective and clever magician who, through bumbling a previous magic effect, had recently discovered a new one.
This was pretty much how all new effects were discovered. Although a lot of effort went into a systematic exploration of conditions and sparks these efforts rarely produced anything of consequence. Most new effects were discovered through mishaps, often by less experienced and competent magic users who only sometimes survived, and only sometimes were able to isolate the botched condition that caused the new magical outcome.
The particular effect Janik had discovered bent light. Once Janik figured out what was happening with his new ‘trick’ he immediately realised its potential. Janik planned to use this new effect to bend the light that would bounce off the painting before it went into the lens of the camera. As long as he could apply the effect to the light before it entered the camera view, it should work, robbing the camera of light and creating an unobserved area where Janik could do whatever magic he wanted. From there it would be trivial for him to set a condition and ignite a spark to unlock the painting's cabinet. This was a serious bit of magic for such a small potatoes crime and honestly he could have just smashed the cabinet, but he wanted to test run his new trick.
Any trick to disable cameras was a gift. These tricks generally had a short shelf life before someone figured out how to counter them, but if this worked then in that window Janik would be able to sell the secret to any number of criminals. And if it didn’t then smashing stuff would have to suffice. Janik re-checked the arrangement of his fried chicken and walked through the mall's front doors.
In the mall Thomas and Amy burst into the atrium, followed by Baron. Amy dumped the cameras she was carrying onto a pile of assorted tech and started rummaging around for a tripod.
‘What if someone sees us? We were supposed to have finished hours ago,’ Thomas said, anxiety evident in his voice.
‘Well thanks to you there’s no bloody cameras working in here is there? So I guess no one will know,’ responded Amy, pulling a tripod out of the pile of gear and setting up to face the painting.
Very suddenly, a feeling of unease started to bubble up in her gut. It took her a moment to identify what was happening to her.
‘Some asshole is trying to do magic.’
Just outside the atrium Janik released his second spark. In other circumstances the trick would have worked and light would have bent away from the cameras leaving the room exposed. Except in this case there was a room full of people standing in front of a pile of cameras looking directly at him. Janik ran into the atrium and immediately realised that he had made a massive miscalculation. The mall had paid for security, top shelf security. Somehow in the few seconds between his spark and his entrance they had managed to get into the atrium and get eyes on the painting collapsing the conditions he needed for his next step. Now they stood in a group, cameras already in hand, looking directly at him.
One of the security guards yelped. ‘This isn’t what it looks like! We’re ready! It’s all good! Look, the painting’s still there!’
This seemed odd. ‘This isn't what it looks like’ wasn’t a typical challenge from a guard. Shouldn’t he be yelping that? He needed this money but it looked like his new chicken/light trick hadn’t worked. This whole job suddenly looked a lot more complicated than he had been expecting. Janik quickly assessed the situation before him and decided that the defining feature of this scene was that it was stupid and confusing. He thought about smashing the cabinet the old fashioned way, but quickly abandoned the notion.This particular caper was a loss.
With a sinking heart he yelled ‘Gaaaaah!’, gave the Elite Magical Protection Services crew the fingers, then sprinted out the door. It never even occurred to Amy, Thomas, or Baron to give chase.
In the carpark the siblings saw Janik sprint out of the building, through his fried chicken pile, past his locked bike, and into the dark streets leading away from the mall. As he stomped over his little piles of dirt his previous spells collapsed and the alarm kicked into life emitting a high pitched wail. Correctly interpreting the nature of Jannik’s exit they also made themselves scarce.
In the Atrium the security team looked at each other in silence for a minute trying to piece together what had happened.
‘I think we just foiled a robbery!’ Thomas said.
‘Hell yeah we did!’ Baron yelled.
The sun started to peek over the trees lining the car park then spilled onto the floor of the Atrium. It was getting hot, Amy was already sweating and her generally accurate gut ached in a way that told her this wasn’t the victory the boys seemed to think it was. She looked at tech scattered across the Atrium. They hadn’t managed to finish connecting a single camera.
‘We are going to need a real solid story to explain why nothing is on any of these cameras,’ Amy said.
Much later, when Amy was reflecting on how they got into the mess that was soon to follow, she realised that this was the thing that mattered. Her immediate instinct to try and lie her way out of the situation, a strategy which had worked for her so many times in the past, would lead directly to the exponentially escalating mountain of bullshit that was about to follow.