Zero Sum

Heist

"Everyone face down on the fucking ground, hands where I can see them! NOW!"

The loud robber waved his automatic weapon around the bank lobby, at the same time allowing a second savvy robber to take out the cameras firing shots from an electromagnetic pulse gun.

The moment of silent and comfortable boredom of the crowd was shattered. From being only meagerly exciting, it was thrown into disarray and panic. 

A mother scoops up her toddler into her arms, a banker collapses under her desk, a businessman pushes some elderly couple onto the floor as he flees haphazardly. The rest of the banks previously genteel crowds are thrown into total confusion as they come to a realization.

 They are no longer just running an errand, they have now suddenly become part of a statistic. 

"We are here for the bank's money, not your money, so just cooperate and this will all be over quickly", said the loud robber. "Empty your pockets, phones, wallets, keys, purses, your damn loose change. Take it and toss it in front of you nice and slowly."

"Gimme your other hand, now!" said a third robber as he used zip ties to bind the arms of the customers behind their backs. Now they have been turned into hostages, with their faces buried into the floor. At the same time the zip tie robber is kicking the discarded items into a pile in the middle of the lobby.

"Your money is all insured by the feds so nobody needs to try and be a dead fucking hero," said the loud robber as he stood up on one of the bank counters and doubled as a lookout.

The savvy robber headed towards the back, made his way behind the tellers desks, rustled up the bank manager, and then headed out of sight presumably to empty the vault.

Some of the bolder, or perhaps less intelligent of the hostages started glancing around and begun to be aware of a fourth presence. This fourth member was wearing a long black trench coat, Matrix style. Underneath he wore body armor. Most strikingly of all however was that he  was the only masked member of the group. A traditional Japanese Kabuki mask. It seemed to have a life of its own. Eyes pitch black, as it stared back at you. It stole the courage out of anyone who dared glance at it straight on. With bloody red streaks shooting out of the middle of that white doll-like face as if they were battle scars.

The zip-tie robber put the wallets, purse contents and other valuables into a black sack that slowly bulged with each new item. But he used the electromagnetic pulse device on the phones before shoving them into the bag. He continued collecting and made his way around the lobby.

"Hands behind your back, now!" said the loud robber to one of the less cooperative hostages.

"That's not how you rob a bank," barked back the hostage.

"What the hell are you talking about?!" responded the surprised robber.

"That kind of shit only happens in the movies!" replied the uncooperative hostage as he looked right into the eyes of the criminal. 

Looking around at a couple of other hostages who also stared defiantly back at him. "Well how the hell would you know how it happened?"

The bank background dissipates and we are not in the middle of a bank robbery, but around a water cooler, with a collection of office workers swapping stories.

The criminal mastermind, taking off his mask for moment, breaks character, and under the mask is a simple office worker, relating his version of an interesting story he found on his feed. 

His defiant hostages, also breaking character, are some of his co workers listening intently, at least up until now, to his story. They stand in a circle talking not at a bank that is being robbed, but in an office building of a faceless company, after hours by the looks of its emptied hallways.

The second co-worker continued, "If they go all 'Heat' on the bank like that they'll end up dead like De Niro! They don't do it like that anymore," he responded to his storytelling co-worker, "in real life that isn't how banks are robbed. Outside of Hollywood that is."

"That's right," chimed in a third co-worker. "Now they do it all slick like in Ocean's Eleven. They dress up all fancy, sneak in pretending to be FBI or whatever, then get whatever is in the vault and leave with the loot in briefcases. When they go outside they trade off the briefcases with their accomplice's, that way they create several decoy briefcases and can just slip away into the crowd."

"You idiot," barked back the second co-worker, "that's the same Hollywood crap I am talking about. Real robbers aren't stupid enough to copy what happens in the movies."

"So now you some sort of criminal mastermind? Like The Joker or something?" said the first storyteller.

"No you jerk, but I read an article..."

"Oh you read an article, of course," the storyteller rolled his eyes, "so now you are an expert".

"...I read an article..." the second co-worker replied more emphatically, "about this chick in Las Vegas. She had a gambling addiction, and she supported it by robbing banks. But she stole millions all on her own without even getting caught for years. All she did was slip a note to the teller that said, 'I have a bomb, give me all the money, or we all die' and it worked! She left like a regular customer going out the front doors. With thousands of dollars."

"Are we still allowed to call them chicks? Didn't they tell us..." interrupted a fourth co-worker.

"What am I your sensitivity trainer? I wasn't paying attention to that training. No I was too busy thinking about this dime I got with the other night, she has an ass like an onion it makes you want to cry...." droned on the second co-worker as his gaze drifted out of sight.

"Does anyone want to let me finish my story?!" returned the frustrated storytelling co-worker.

"My point is," interjected the second co-worker, "that criminals are slick now, they don't take unnecessary risks. If they go in like Bonnie and Clyde, someone trips the silent alarm. Then you have the cops or the capes come down on you hard."

"Fine you assholes, I'll just skip the robbery part and tell you about the getaway because that is where things actually get interesting."