WfW ~ The Artisan's Loft Continues...

I am writing with Words for Wednesday, which can be found here.

The goal of WfW is to take given prompts, be they words, phrases, photos, colors, or music and create a story from them.  This week's words and color are in bold italics.  If you visit the Elephant's Child blog where the words can be found, you can also read and cheer on the other writers who participate in this weekly fun.

This is a continuing WfW story that started here on April 5th.

I left off on the 14th with the revelation from Jack that the coins from the future were authentic.

Image Source: Bing.com

  "What?  I'm sorry, Jack.  Do you mean to say that the coins are actually from the future?  Isn't that the archetype for all paranoid conspiracy theories?  How could that be determined from just photos? And who told you that information?"

  "Slow down, Simon.  One thing at a time.  Okay, so you know who da Vinci is, right?  Right.  One of his sketches was for a cam hammer, which wasn't made while he was alive, but it was used during the Industrial Revolution for steam engines, and manufacturing during WW1.

  "The concept behind his design has also been used to make a drop hammer coin mint which uses gravity to stike metal between two dies with about 40 tons of force to create what appears to be an authentically minted coin."

  "You said 'appears to be.'  So these aren't really from the future?"

  "Not necessarily.  They aren't from 'our' future."

  "Now you really have your head in the clouds, Simon!  If they aren't from our future, whose future are they from?  Are you talking in riddles or just trying to make me feel like an idiot because I don't really have the patience for it tonight."

  "The man I was talking to back at the coin exhange shop said that he took over the business from his father, who got it from his father before him, and go back about five generations before you get to the first in his family who started the business.  He was more or less a pawn shop because back in the late-1700s early-1800s there weren't a lot of diamond jewels or antique coins floating around for people to sell.  One day a man came in with a copy of da Vinci's cam hammer, and was talking about how it could be used to make counterfit coins to make them both rich.  Trouble was, the guy didn't have the metal or the skills to make it happen, so he was willing to bring in this guy's 4x great granddad for a share of the profit if he could help him make it happen.

  "So great-great-great-great granddad rummages around in all of the farm tools and shovels he has taken in exchange for money or other goods, and they come up with enough to make a small drop hammer with the help of a clueless blacksmith."

  I shook my head weakly.  "So all this time, we've been chasing around coins that were actually minted in our past?  Not 'our' future?  What happened with that get-rich-quick scheme?"

  Jack sighed, "Sort of.  That plan backfired on both of them when they got caught and were hanged as thieves.  The drop-hammer was hidden away for a generation until by the grace and stupidity of a blot in this guy's family tree, he had a great-great-great-uncle who worked for some sort of traveling carnival as a psychic medium to con money out of people.  The drop hammer was passed down to him, and he got the idea of making coins that were supposedly from the future. He had a trained jackdaw that would on cue take one of these fake coins and fly over his seance table and drop the coin in front of the 'mark' after they shelled out more money to find out when they were going to die in the future."

  "Holy crow.  What happened to him?"

  "He got caught making the coins in one of the towns they were in, and was literally run out of town on a rail, tarred and feathered ... with the some of the feathers from his jackdaw no less.  The drop hammer was then tucked away in an attic for a generation until a legume farmer who inherited the property found it and was told the family history of it and the coins.  He used it to create counterfeit coins, got caught, put in jail and died there of tuberculosis."

  "It's starting to sound like this drop hammer is cursed or something.  What happened to it next?"

  "Now it shows up with the great uncle, who again is with a traveling carnival.  Only this guy uses it to create love tokens with a line from a famous poet on one side and 'Will You B Mine?' on the other.  He lives to a ripe old age with no problem, and it gets passed down to the guy's direct uncle."

  "Who I suppose was up to no good with it?"

  "Of course.  He creates counterfeit coins to match ones from this century, just with a date and mint stamp from the distant future.  Practically indistinguishable from the current minted coins unless you are paying close attention to the date and letter on them.  One morning he wakes up and his entire body has turned a shade of turquoise blue."

  "From the silver!  Of course!"

  "Unfortunately for him though, he already had kidney issues, and while they aren't sure that the argyria was a contributing cause or not, he died not long after."

  "So where is it now?  The drop hammer coin mint thing?  And where does that leave our government men in black in this story?"