"Hello and welcome to Watching-People-House! Today, Tuesday, was the second day spent in the house by the housemates. In tonight's half hour installment we bring you highlights from the house. Please note that this broadcast may contain strong language."



"Watching-People-House, this is the Watcher. Christine, you have ten seconds to prepare yourself to attack your dummy!"

"Ah!!" squeaked Christine as the voice echoed through the dark house, waking her and all the other housemates who were asleep at one o'clock in the morning.

"Quick!" Cheery instructed, "Just run!"

Christine was still in her night gown as she ran into the garden. Vimes, Otto and the Librarian had been still awake and sitting on the sofa, discussing how wise the decision had been to bet seventy-five percent of next week's shopping bill on the outcome of the task. Christine streaked past them and Otto fell off his chair. Vimes gave him a funny look as he writhed on the floor. "Now what?" he muttered. The klaxon blared and Christine stood somewhat transfixed in front of her dummy, as if confused about what to do.

"Just hit it!" shouted Dibbler, emerging from the bedroom..

"Um!!"

"Come on!"

"Times nearly up!" shouted Cheery.

"Um!!" she repeated.

"Oook!" advised the Librarian as she slapped the dummy, quite hard. There was a beep.

"What the hell's the matter with him?" asked Dibbler, pointing to Otto.

"He's had an episode," Vimes said moodily, retrieving an apple from the fruit bowl and stuffing it into the vampire's mouth. "The sight of a young lady in a night dress was apparently too much for him, reminded him too much of his vampire heritage."

"Ffank Oo," said Otto from behind the sofa.

"Christine!" yelled Cheery, seized suddenly by a brilliant idea. "Sing!!"

Christine thankfully responded quickly to the voice of authority. She opened her mouth and began to wail.

Vimes felt all the hairs on the back of his neck and arms stand up as he clapped his hands over his ears. "What is that?!"

"Op'ra!" Detritus replied, who having spent quite a lot of time in the Opera House on guard considered himself quite an expert on the subject now. "It cult'ral."

The dummy shivered and cracks began to appear, the beeps rising in tone and frequency like a Geiger-Muller tube pointing towards plutonium. The klaxon blared again and Christine paused for breath.

"That's enough!"

"Stop!"

"STOP!"

"OOK!"

Christine thankfully stopped. "Do you think that was alright?!" she twittered.

The other housemates tried not to look at each other. "Yeah," said Cheery as Christine looked as if she was about to cry again.

"Oh good!!"

"Come on," said Cheery, "I'm going back to bed. See you all in the morning."

*

The housemates were late to rise the next morning and missed the hour of hot water provided by the Watcher. It was Vimes's turn to cook breakfast. Vimes wasn't a particularly good cook, but after Dibbler's explosive sausages /anything/ could taste appetising, so his crunchy bacon and deep fried bread went down well.

The housemates had all settled down on the sofas for a talk when the Watcher spoke again.

"Watching-People-House, this is the Watcher! The Librarian has ten seconds to prepare himself to attack his dummy!"

The Librarian knuckled into the garden at high speed, ooking excitedly. The klaxon blared and with a final eek of excitement he launched himself onto his dummy and twisted its head off, by its ears. There was not so much a series of beeps but a continual squeal. He rounded off by smashing the pathetic remnants on the floor, before the klaxon blared again and called his destructive rampage to a halt.

The other housemates looked at the splinters that remained. "Impressive," said Dibbler.

*

Vimes poked his head around the Diary Room door, the last of the housemates to be called in for an interview with the Watcher. He sat down on the large chair, swinging his legs in uncharacteristic nervousness.

"Hello, Watcher."

"Hello Sam. How are you finding life in the house so far?"

"Well," said Vimes, his expression somewhat guarded, "...Okay I suppose."

"Can you elaborate? What's the hardest thing about life in the house?"

"Being away from my family," he replied quickly.

"Is there anything you'd like to say to them in particular?" prompted the Watcher.

Vimes gave an embarrassed little wave to the camera. "Hello Sam. Behave for your mother please. See you soon."

"What do you like about the house?"

Vimes thought about it. "The bathroom's nice..." he suggested, "And it is relaxing not having to run around as much. The garden's good too."

*

The afternoon was passed mostly in or around the swimming pool. Vimes and Dibbler were playing quite vicious water-polo, the ball smacking into the water and occasionally off the heads and arms of the players, making them wince and throw the ball even harder in retaliation. Detritus was scoring, wearing his clockwork cooling helmet whilst Christine and Cheery sunbathed well away from the pool area.

Vimes, having eventually lost to Dibbler, swam over to the side of the pool. He wasn't the best of swimmers not having ever found much time to practise, and there were few places for a boy growing up in the Shades to learn. "Wonder what's happening out there?" he said, pointing with his thumb over the wall.

"We're not allowed to know, are we?" said Dibbler.

"I know that," said Vimes, splashing his face with water, "I just /wonder/.

"Watching-People-House, this is the Watcher. Detritus, you have ten seconds to prepare yourself to begin the task!

"Okay," replied the troll, lumbering up to his dummy. The klaxon blared and Detritus regarded it for a moment before smashing it over the head with his fist. There was a strangled beep. The klaxon shrilled again. Vimes allowed himself a thin smile.

The film stopped rolling. "Did you see that?" said Lady Sybil to her son, who was gurgling on her lap, "Your Daddy was on the screen!"

Sam laughed and clapped his hands together once in mirth as the Hall began to empty, the clunk of coins landing in the voting boxes sounding quite loud over the shuffling of feet, chairs and the chatter of voices.

Outside was a crowd of people in the street selling all sorts of merchandise. There were shirts with Christine's face on, badges that displayed Dibbler's broad grin; placards and various other pieces of cheap tat, purveyed by men with trays, smoking small cigarettes and speaking out of the corner of their mouths while glancing furtively about. There were no real copyright laws in Ankh-Morpork, but Watching-People-House was a charity fundraising enterprise after all, and the Watch were watching from the sidelines rather uneasily; unsure as to whether or not they should move the men on. Sybil paused for a moment to inspect a large sugary lollipop with 'Vimes to Win' written on it in sticky icing.

Wednesday dawned bright and blue, the sky unusually clear. Vimes was the first housemate awake, his bodyclock still set to 'baby-time' : he frequently woke up in the middle of the night imagining he could hear crying and by six o'clock in the morning he could stay in bed no longer. He'd already showered by the time anyone else was awake and was cleaning the kitchen. The Watcher had strict rules about cleaning and following them rather grudgingly Vimes was therefore wearing a large apron and pink rubber gloves. He could imagine the sniggers in the Great Hall already.

Detritus was the next to emerge, followed by Cheery. There was something about being in the Watch that disturbed the sleeping pattern of an officer, Vimes knew. He wasn't surprised to see the slump over the dining table. He poured out some coffee and took them a cup each. Cheery took it, struggling to regain her mental balance at the role-reversal: the Commander bringing his officers coffee. Detritus downed the scalding gunk.

"This is the Watcher. Dibbler, you have ten seconds to prepare yourself to begin the task!"

Dibbler staggered from the bedroom and into the kitchen, grabbing the bottle of Wow-Wow sauce off the table.

"What the..?" said Cheery, confused as the klaxon echoed from the garden.

Dibbler stood well back from the dummy and squeezed the bottle hard. The sauce hit the dummy in the head. Nothing happened for a moment... and then smoke began to rise and the dummy burst into flames. By the time the klaxon signalled the end of Dibbler's thirty seconds there was nothing left but a pile of ash.

"Very good!" said Otto, emerging from the bedroom in his shades.

*

"Sam, this is the Watcher. You have tens seconds to prepare yourself to undertake your task."

Vimes leapt out of the swimming pool with a yelp, water streaming down his legs as he dashed across the lawn to face his dummy.

The klaxon signalled the beginning of his turn and the others turned to watch. Cheery and Detritus had seen the Commander fight before, but even they were impressed. Vimes didn't have Detritus's brute strength, or muscles like the Librarian but he did have an amazing ability to rain a variety of painful looking blows on his opponent. A particularly powerful kick knocked the head flying from the body, and the klaxon sounded to signal the end of his bout.

"Only Otto left now," remarked Cheery as Vimes plunged into the pool again, wondering whether it would be an unforgivable extravagance to have one installed at home; he was rather enjoying swimming.

*

It was nearly eleven o'clock on Thursday when Otto was called to end the week's task. The vampire ran into the dark garden just in time. The dummy didn't stand up very long under the strength of his somewhat hesitant punches and the housemates went to bed feeling quietly confident about their task.

Friday morning they were woken at nine o'clock by the Watcher. Vimes and Cheery had been already awake, talking on the sofas. Cheery still found it slightly unnerving, treating her boss as an equal but had been in deep, expansive explanation of dwarf literature (Vimes had been listening with a suitably glazed expression).

The others emerged groggily from the bedrooms. "Just think!" said Christine to Dibbler, "This is the last day in the house for one of us!!"

"Housemates, this is the Watcher. Can you please assemble on the sofas."

They all sat.

"The results of this week's challenge will be announced shortly," said the Watcher, "Please remain seated for the time being."

They waited.

"The stipulation for this week's challenge was that every member of the house must score at least fifty points in thirty seconds. All housemates managed to score over fifty points of damage to their dummy."

They exchanged glances, hardly daring to believe...

"However. One housemate did not score those fifty points within the allotted time. Therefore you have failed this week's task. Your shopping budget for next week with therefore be thirty dollars."

Complete silence reigned for a few moments broken by Christine's sob. "It was me!! Oh, I failed it for all of us!!"

"You don't know that Christine," Cheery reassured her quickly, "It could have been me. Would you like a tissue?" she added gingerly as Christine continued to cry.

"That means we only have five dollars each for the whole week," said Dibbler, who could be quite quick when it came to monetary arithmetic

"I've managed on less," said Vimes, who was nevertheless looking even more disgruntled than usual.

"Yes... but a packet of Pantweeds costs a dollar, doesn't it?" said Cheery tentatively.

"Yes," Vimes said darkly, realisation already having dawned on him that, as the only smoker in the house, his desire for cigars was likely to be overruled by the need of the others for bare necessities like bread and toilet paper. He didn't have a great many left.

"Remember the Watcher provides us with staples... rice, potatoes," said Otto as a busy silence descended on the room.

"We could survive on a loaf of bread a day," said Dibbler, looking throughly mournful at the prospect, almost beginning to hope that he would be evicted that evening so he would still be able to enjoy three square meals a day.



+++++++++++

Thanks for the reviews people. If any of you have some ideas for surprises to spring on the housemates, email 'em to me. I can only go by what I've watched on the English Big Brother... I have a few things up my sleeve, though... Hehehe!