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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ladybird" data-source="post: 6317375" data-attributes="member: 10689">Episode 2, Chapter 11: The Hardworking TimeWatch TeamSomething about this rings a bell with Henry. "Some of my fellow agents in HM Timewatch have encountered giant cockroaches before," he remembers. "In the mid-1960s - they had something to do with the Cuban Missile Crisis. They kept trying to start nuclear wars." The giant cockroaches are called Ezeru, and they can make themselves appear human, but the telltale buzzing gives them away, and they can't touch anyone or anything."Nuclear wars," Edward sighs. This is starting to make more sense. "Isn't that what they say - that after a nuclear war, the only things left will be cockroaches?" So by starting the nuclear age 2000 years early, the cockroaches are trying to clear the way for themselves.Besides Titus Memmius, the other person who visits Lucretius a lot is Julius Caesar. He, thankfully, does not buzz."So has Titus Memmius been replaced?" Henry wonders."He must have been," says Edward. "He can't always have been a cockroach - he was famous for having sexual affairs, and you have to touch people for that!""Well, we know that he wasn't replaced 30 years ago when he had the affair with Clodia," Henry agrees. "But maybe Real Memmius was elsewhere in Rome while Cockroach Memmius was visiting Lucretius.""I think we should try to talk to the man himself," Edward decides. "Shall we go visit the seaside?"Henry grins. "Nothing wrong with having a nice seaside vacation on the clock. As it were."Mace grins too. "I like the idea of a seaside vacation that might involve a giant cockroach.""Um," says Henry. "Your idea of vacation and mine are different."So we rent a carriage and some horses to take us to Baiae, a seaside resort on the Bay of Naples. Henry volunteers to drive, and we're all happy to let him - none of the rest of us know much about Vehicles. Edward and Michel know about horses, but that's about it.It's at that moment that we realize that nobody has ever asked Henry what his day job was before he became a Timewatch agent.He was a spaceship pilot.**"Can't these things go faster?" Henry shouts, as we careen around a corner on one wheel, horses panting and lathering."No, they can't!" Edward shouts back frantically. "They're animals! You can't treat horses like that! Look at the poor things - they're nearly falling down!""But they're going so slow" Henry groans."And they will go even more slowly if they die," Michel points out. "You will observe that these are the only horses we have. We cannot exchange them at the next post - we must conserve what we have." Fortunately, he manages to persuade Henry to share driving duties with him.[sblock] If you're the type who likes to imagine a movie soundtrack, at this point in the movie, there is a montage. It alternates between peaceful slow music while Michel drives along at a nice moderate clop, and VERY LOUD FAST MUSIC while the horses gallop along with Henry at the reins.[/sblock]Baiae is a resort town, with a lovely natural harbor and beach below layers of terraced cliffs going up the hillside. The Mediterranean sparkles a beautiful blue, and the sun shines down brightly. Our two objectives here are to find out whether Memmius is a cockroach, and to lie on the beach.We decide to tackle our second objective first: BEACH DAY.It turns out that Baiae's celebrated beach is in fact a nude beach. So we lie around naked on the beach, while bath slaves offer us fruit juice and chilled wine and whatever the Roman equivalent of drinks with umbrellas in them are. One even brings around some peeled grapes. "I didn't think that actually happened!" Edward marvels.Yves flirts a woman into a cabana. Edward eats peeled grapes. We all have a wonderful time.Your TimeWatch dollars at work, folks!</blockquote>

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