Chapter 4 – Saboteur
On Saturday, Lady Myria LeJean finally returned to the clockmaker's, and was surprised to see how close to completion the clock was. She immediately offered to help with the work, in order to finish as quickly as possible. Of course she wanted to finish. To get out of this form as quickly as possible.
And she knew it was a lie again. What she wanted, more than anything, was to go back and sample the baker's latest creations. And deep down inside, the lizard brain knew that when the clock was finished and time stopped forever, the waferbread would be too.
So she sabotaged the clock. Day after day, in little ways, they suffered setbacks.
At the same time, she began to actually anticipate the baker's late afternoon visits. There was a… a pleasure to spending an hour or two, sipping plain water like the finest wine and eating lightly flavored wafers. After the cakke episode, he steered away from food talk, and instead made what he called 'small talk' about the city and its culture and his business.
Lady LeJean discovered that 'small talk' was exactly what the words implied. The talk was about simple things. Things that didn't require her full attention but were still, well, enjoyable. And this was good, because at least half of her attention was always on the next taste explosion. Strangely, she felt she was not just enjoying the food, but also the things that went with it. The experience that wrapped around the food.
Unfortunately, during the following three days, things started to become...complicated. Lady LeJean found herself, day-by-day, swinging between highs and lows, from immense enjoyment to horror and dread. And her face started leaking. And her hair was having problems and refused to comply. And we don't even want to begin to discuss the horror of her first visit to the privy...
Then the Auditors demanded a consultation.
She was in serious trouble.
The "consultation" did not go well. The Auditors reviewed all the human touches she had surrounded herself with and reached a conclusion. She had obviously been corrupted beyond reliability. The clock was taking far too long to complete. The only saving grace was that they chalked it up to insanity instead of open betrayal. Lady LeJean suspected it was both.
It was bad enough to be—questioned! But the Auditors compounded the horror by choosing six additional of their number to become corporate! To supervise her. She shuddered as she watched them form, both because the process was disturbing and out of fear of the result.
They were like she had been, but the fact that there were six insulated them. They could consult with each other, resist the human influences. They would not allow the bodies to make demands on them. They would be strong, they told themselves.
We are the most stupid creatures in the universe, she thought.
By the time they arrived at the clockmaker's shop on Baker Street, the Auditors were tired and confused by the reactions of the humans they had passed [1]. Lady LeJean was bouncing between numb with fear and more than a little smug at their distress, but the smugness fled when she saw that the clock was finished. Finished!
She introduced the Auditors automatically, speaking the required words while part of her mind raced to find some way to put off the inevitable. If she could only get the newly christened "Mr. White" to eat something, or find some way to damage the clock! But all her meager attempts to interfere failed. Instead, she could only watch in frozen horror as energy crackled through the mechanisms, wondering what it would feel like when she died.
1 Had the Auditors been more willing to accept Myria's fashion advice, and had she been more interested in actually helping, there would probably have been no issue. But the sight of the six Auditors all wearing shades of gray and drifting along behind Myria like oversized ducklings following their mother brought more than a few stares and jeers. Morporkians do love their street theater.
[A/N BEFORE YOU REVIEW if you are unfamiliar with Thief of Time, please note that the events in this chapter are a retelling from Myria's POV of those that occurred in that novel. I likewise can not take credit for Myria's thought about the stupidity of Auditors, which was only included to ensure story continuity. All of the interactions with the baker are wholly my own creation.]