The Irish Tales

Extraordinary Meeting : 2nd March


Month presiding : March


Yearling presiding : 2010 (Absent, due to illness)


Present : The Month Masters, The Days of the Week, The Calendarist.


I looked around the crowded table and couldn’t help but grin. The Months looked grim, the Calendarist looked grimmer and the Days looked perplexed – all but Friday, who was as pale as paper and fidgeted nervously with his timepiece, a very old, very cheap Timex.
My heart-clock raced as I relished the angst to come ! The absence of the Yearling was noticed by all and commented on by nobody; the issue was serious enough without having to contend with that simpleton.
The Calendarist broke with all tradition by omitting the usual chants and coming bluntly to the point.
“Gentleman, we are here to discuss a Discrepancy. To be exact : we will run out of Fridays after November 5th.”
Here he paused and looked straight at Friday
“What say you, sir ?”
Friday said nothing, possibly because he was trembling too much. I noticed also that his watch had stopped.
The other Days of the Week looked equally shocked and demanded proof of such a charge, which was duly provided.
When the buzz died down, the Calendarist again looked coldly at Friday.
“Well ?”
He coughed and staring at the table, muttered, “I don’t understand. I…I just don’t understand.”
March started to say something, then stopped. Then they all started speaking at once.
Thursday spoke.
“I don’t see what the problem is, to be honest. Why don’t we simply sleep through Friday until it’s Saturday ? Hmm?”
Saturday spoke, through clenched teeth. “Idiot!”
Monday, always a troublesome little oik, spoke : “It’s clearly Friday’s fault – let’s bring him up before the Decadent.”
(Everybody hates Mondays, you know. And now you know why.)
The Calendarist interrupted crisply. “The Decadent is barely awake. We will not disturb him until the facts are known.”
Sunday crossed himself and began reciting his Rosary, the creep.
As always when trouble occurred, the Church was hopeless.
Wednesday spoke. “As regards the Decadent,” he began, diffidently, “There is some dispute as to when his term actually be – “
January cut him short. “Shut up, idiot.”
It was Tuesday, as ever, who asked the killer question.
“Has anyone looked at the second hand market lately?”
Silence fell. Friday went even paler, if possible.
Now, a little explanation is called for.
Although real time is as strictly regulated as possible, as I have so far demonstrated, in real life every commodity is for sale and time is a commodity like any other.
And so, naturally, there is a black market for it.
The rewards for dabbling in said market are very great and very tempting, but the punishment if a member of the regulatory body is caught is terrifying : Nothing less than extinction.
I wonder if you can imagine what that means to a particle of Time ?
Complete and utter extinction, with no exception. To a Sloppy Second or a Minute Man, it would matter not one jot, but to an Hour Hand or a Day of The Week....well.
You see, this is how Time works.
The Sloppy Seconds, The Minute Men, The Hour Hands, The Days of The Week, The Month Masters, The Yearling, The Decadent, The Centurion, The Millenium Lord and The Time Lord.
These are the particles, the overseers, the perrenials and the absolutes who command and regulate Time.
To each according to his need and from each according to his ability, as some daft old sod once said.
The Sloppy Seconds we may compare to the blades of grass on a lawn or the grains of sand in a desert; too many to count or care about.
And yet, they too serve a purpose.
The Minute Men are simply solidified Seconds, with barely any sentience at all and no permanency. They may be compared to a sheepdog, in that they exist to herd and corall the Seconds, though this may be an insult to sheepdogs.
The Hour Hands offer the the first sign of responsibility, being a repeated numerical constant of 12, or 24, if you insist.You know the little Hitlers who issue a parking ticket when you're 30 seconds over your stay ? There's your Hour Hands.
The Days speak for themselves, or not in the case of Sunday. Perennial, but a pain in the arse. Think of your old school headmaster, if you indeed went to school.
Then come ourselves, The Month Masters, who bear the brunt of regulating along with the Calendarist. I would say that we are as old as Time itself, but it wouldn't be true, thanks to some screw up about during the Gregorian/Julian handover.
The Yearling I have already explained and dismissed as irrelevent.
Now we turn to the Decadent, so called not only because he is responsible for the decade in question, but because almost inevitably, every decade is held to be more immoral, more unethical, more disgusting than the previous.
It's nonsense of course, but it's tradition. The Decadent is rarely if ever called upon, certainly not in the early years, mainly because the daft old buggers take a good few years to wake up properly and then start planning their hibernation way before their due time.
However – and it is a big however – the Decadent does have the power of extinction over every particle below him.
Not one to be trifled with.
Next comes the Centurion, a vicious old pervert who could wipe us all out with a mere sneeze. Luckily, the old coffin-dodger prefers to spend his days either in sleep or in the many brothels he frequents. Never quite got over the fact that the Millenium Lord, his younger brother, got the gig despite his age.
(Work that one out.)
So, there you have the structure – no, wait. I forgot the Time Lord himself, whom nobody has ever seen or spoken to and is probably the God figure so many of you – even the great, though misled, Stephen Hawkings – believe in.
As I say, that is the structure and the theory.
Now for the gory details..............
As I mentioned earlier, Time is a commodity like any other. And the value of any commodity is directly proportional to the amount of said commodity which is available.
Which in this instance, is zero. In theory.
However, let us suppose you are a very rich man. A very rich man indeed. You enjoy life to the full, you are especially well looked after in matters of health, you love your extended family, yet you do not have enough time to spend with them as you would like.
You see where I'm going with this ?
So. Let us further suppose that you have, amongst your employees, a few seedy types, as all very rich men do.
And these seedy types are acquainted with even seedier types, some of whom have contacts in the world of chronological regulation.
There has, as Tuesday pointed out, always been a second hand market, involving a few corrupt Minute Men who seek to improve their fairly miserable lot.
After all, what's a few seconds here and there between friends ?
Well, gather enough and you'll have a minute and a lot can be done with a minute, you know.
Secrete them away somewhere safe, gather some more, and then all of a sudden, you have an hour of illicit time.
A whole extra hour in which you can get up to anything you wish and nobody any the wiser !
A slightly blind eye has always been turned to this sort of activity, unless it was too blatant.
But.........this Discrepancy was on another scale altogether. To steal enough Time to lose so many entire Days, well.
No wonder Friday's cheap watch stopped.
To return to the extraordinary meeting : Poor Friday had been subject to a barrage of questioning from all present, to which his replies can best be summarised as “I don't know.”
Except when he was asked to present the audits on Lost Seconds.
After shaking like a jelly, he was forced to reply, “I can't.”
You could have heard a pin drop. Or a watch stop.
The Calendarist stared at him for a full minute.
“Why not ?” he asked in a voice full of righteous wrath.
“They've been...stolen,” replied Friday.
And then he wet himself.




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