PROMPT 003: A watch repair person can't figure out why a watch stopped running - until they find something inside it that shouldn't be there

 The Old Man knew all the answers; at least that’s how it seemed. So was it ironic or appropriate that his back was curved into a permanent question mark? The posture resulted from decades slouched over his workstation, a jeweler’s loop pressed to his eye, his bony fingers curved around tiny tweezers and miniscule screwdrivers, his face inches from the innards of an antique watch.

Sasha watched him work from her own smaller station next to his. He was the master, she the apprentice, and she watched closely - or at least as closely as she could. The Old Man enjoyed a salami sandwich on rye with a thick slice of raw onion every day at lunch, and his breath was overpowering in the afternoons.

Apprentice at a watch repair shop was never on Sasha’s bingo card. She grew up two blocks from the store, a remnant of the postwar years. In its heyday, the shop was one of dozens along the street, an automat on one side and a pharmacy on the other, and across the wide avenue from a toy store. The watch shop stayed open even as the neighborhood crumbled around it. Now its neighbors were a fried fish shack, two liquor stores, a pawn shop, a laundromat, and a dozen vacant facades.

As a child, Sasha loved walking by the store, staring at the shiny gold pocket watches and big wooden clocks in the front window, her face pressed against the retrofitted steel bars. Sometimes the little man in the back would wave at her, sometimes he would wave her away. Then one day he signaled for her to come inside. She stopped by every day after that. The Old Man took a liking to Sasha, and despite his gruff nature, she liked him right back. As soon as she graduated high school, the Old Man offered her a job.

It didn’t pay well, and she was not given much responsibility. She had never touched the inner workings of an automatic watch, only peered over the Old Man’s shoulder as he worked, narrating his steps in his monotone growl. Besides learning from the master, the only work she was trusted to do was changing batteries in quartz watches. 

She preferred to work on watches with a screw-on back, loved the unique motility of the specialized, tri-tipped wrench that clamped down on the case back so it could be twisted open easily. The one in front of her, though, was the other kind: a snap-on case back. These watches were usually junk. Prying off the back with a sharp blade was not difficult, but snapping the cover back into place with the hand-operated press was another matter: if the watch was a centimeter out of center on the press, the discs holding the watch in place would crush the crystal on the front of the watch. Sasha had done this once and only once. The Old Man sighed, patted her on the shoulder, and said, “Next one comes out of your paycheck.”

She slipped the blade underneath the lip of the case back on the old Timex in front of her and twisted her wrist. The covering separated from the case with a satisfying pop.

As her eyes adjusted to the workings of the watch, she felt her heart skip.

One feature of a modern quartz watch is that the movement is tiny compared to an automatic timepiece; most of them, even with the battery, take up only the space of four stacked dimes. But the style of modern watches called for size - many men’s watch cases were two inches across. The tiny movement would float around inside such a huge case, if not for a plastic ring that kept the movement centered.

There was no ring in the watch Sasha was looking at. Something else was holding the movement in place.

She leaned in for a closer look, and tentatively poked the object with a pair of tweezers. It looked like… it felt like… paper, folded in a perfect ring around the movement. And it had writing on it. Printed in tiny block text around the ring were the words, IN CASE OF EMERGENCY.

Sasha pulled the ring out with the tweezers and held it up to the light. She saw a crease where she could unfold the note, but she was worried she would never get it back in the watch if she did.

She set everything down on the table and walked over to The Old Man.

“That Timex I’m working on,” she said. “Do you remember who brought it in?”

“The mailman.”

“It’s his watch?”

“No, Sasha. It came in the mail. Prepaid. Just change the battery and send it back, okay?” He cocked an eye in her direction before turning back to his own work.

Sasha wasn’t the type to let a mystery linger. Back at her desk, Sasha carefully picked at the ring of paper. A corner came untucked, and then it unrolled easily. The paper was tissue thin but sturdy, and the writing on it was neat and tiny. The square of paper was no larger than a cocktail napkin, but it was covered on one side with text - she made out the words PROTOCOL and ENHANCEMENT and TIME SHIFT SETTINGS and EXTREME CAUTION without the use of a magnifying glass.

As she read the words on the paper, fiddling aimlessly with the crown on the Timex, she felt a presence behind her and heard a voice. It was The Old Man’s voice, but somehow different.

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