Julian Vance carried the green cutting mat and the box of brass type dies out to Register One.
The electric clock above the cigarette shelves hummed, its black hand clicking onto 5:15 PM. Outside Store #04, the grey haze of Mill District 9 was bruising into twilight.
“Set the droppers on the stainless steel tray,” Julian said. “If solvent gets on the keypad, it dissolves the contacts.”
“The solvent is ninety-nine percent isopropyl alcohol,” Elena said, setting down three amber bottles and a pipette. “It evaporates in forty seconds. It won’t leave a greasy ring on the cotton paper.”
“Good,” Julian said. “We can’t afford any grease on the feed rollers.”
Mac walked up from the center aisle, wiping his steel left forearm. “You two look like spies in a pharmacy basement. We really going to trick a sixty-year-old school time-clock with some blue paper?”
“It isn’t ordinary paper, Mac,” Julian said, lifting a blue card with tweezers. “This is one-hundred-pound municipal bond stock from 1996. Seventy percent cotton rag, thirty percent wood pulp.”
Julian laid the blue sheet flat on the green mat and loosened his brass calipers.
