Prismatic Reflection

    It was worth a try, to de-brief the Prisoner, the idea being that if he would give me one piece of information, like the time of his birth, all the rest would follow. It didn’t!
   I have to report…….I have to report to Number Two. I wonder what I’m going to tell him? He probably won’t like it when he hears it anyway, so I don’t suppose it matters what I tell him. But what if he was watching? I bet he was watching. Anyway it wasn’t my fault, but I expect I’ll be the one to get the blame! He just didn’t trust me that’s all. I played the poor damsel in distress card, I told him that they’d let me go if he gave me some sort of information. He didn’t!
    I told them, of course I told them, that they were using the wrong approach. But they didn’t take any notice of me. I thought that if I could get him to answer one simple question, then all the rest would follow. Then there would be no need for what was to follow, it didn’t work!
    “We all to have make mistakes, sometimes we have to,” which in itself was a mistake on No.14’s part, yet later she did correct herself. It wasn’t my fault, I told No.2 that my drug had not been tested on animals yet, that I needed all of a week. He was under pressure, he hadn’t got a week, he’d only got three days. So when No.2 was kicked, he kicked down….at me! In the end the experiment was a failure, well no, No.2 didn’t lose, No.6 succeeded. And to be perfectly honest, I was pleased about that.
    How about standing for election? But don’t damage the tissue, just bruise it a little! No.6 stands as a candidate in the local election. He says he’s going to discover who the Prisoners are, and who the warders, not too sure if that will do the electorate much good! No.6 is conditioned, fed mind controlling drugs, and for what? I’m not at all sure what is achieved by the elaborate show of a democratic process, which doesn’t amount to a grain of sand in the desert!
    “It was a betrayal, and I wanted No.6 to know that if I had a second chance, that I wouldn’t do it again.” But everything that is done in the Village is a betrayal. The flesh and the mind are weak, and when pressure is brought to bear………….
    No.24 said that she wouldn’t have betrayed No.6 if she had a second chance. No.6 told No.24 that there are no second chances, to which No.24 replied “There are sometimes, for the lucky ones.” And so it is for No.2, he was given a second chance, perhaps because his former failure was seen not to be fully attributed to him. But in any case this time has was to have had no direct contact with No.6. The only thing which mattered in this case, was the success of the educational experiment of Speedlearn. But even then there was no way that No.2 could stop No.6 from involving himself. Once No.6 had listened to that recorded message about Speedlearn being an abomination, that the General must be destroyed, that was that!
    So they let No.6 escape, and to what purpose I ask you? No I’ll tell  you! It was a demonstration, as simple as that. They allowed No.6 to escape the Village because they knew that no matter where No.6 went, they could easily pick him up again. But I ask you, No.6 made it so very easy for them. For him to have gone home is understandable, after all where else should he go? In any case they had Mrs Butterworth ensconced in No.1 Buckingham Place for good measure. After that little encounter he went running back to his ex-colleagues, even after being betrayed by them once already. But I expect he was desperate for answers, and he saw the only place to get them was with his ex-colleagues, but if not with them, then elsewhere! If there is one thing I have learned, it’s that the Village Administration does nothing by halves. Such an elaborate plan, to have Number Six put in peril at sea, and for what?
   Oh the joy and fun of Carnival! The anticipation, the dressing up in exotic costume. And then the Ball in the evening, there was a cabaret, Number Six was it! He was put on trial for the possession of a radio, which he took from a dead man’s pocket. So really Number Six only had himself to blame. If he hadn’t gone and poked his nose in where it had no business, and if he had not tried to turn the discovery to his own advantage………..well he would never have been put on trial. Number Two said that there are other ways, perhaps putting Number Six on trial was one of those “other” ways!
    No.6 was told how to distinguish between the prisoners and the warders, he said he was going to do that during the election period. He didn’t do it then, so he sets about doing it now, poking his nose in, showing his authority, and that was his mistake! The Rook put to Number Six his own test, and found him to be wanting. But that was the Rook’s mistake, because No.6 really is a prisoner!
   You have to be hammer or anvil, remember? Perhaps there is justice, of a kind in this episode. Number Six involved himself as an avenger of the death of Number seventy-three, a woman Number Six never knew. He caused the downfall of Number Two who was paranoid about there being enemies within the Village. He saw plots and conspiracies all around him, and everyone in the Village was suspect! Number Two’s superior, whether it was Number One or some other person or number, could have put a stop to Number Six’s activities against Number Two. But the power that be, allowed Number Six to continue against Number Two, who was brought to his knees because he feared there was no-one in the Village he could trust. And Number Six played on that paranoia. Perhaps the power that be enjoyed seeing what Number Six was doing to Number Two, through some perverseness.
    ‘It’s your Funeral,’ that sounds just about right, and it very nearly was for someone! And A Change of Mind, well that’s a title which might be better suited to the next episode. Although No.2 didn’t fair too well in either. The one denounced as being Unmutual, and his successor has a dead Colonel on his hands, and the escape of Professor Seltzman to explain to a superior. But at least he was able to obtain the reversal process for the Seltzman machine, something which was not needed in the first place!
   ‘Living in Harmony,’ that title could be reflect the mood required for A Change of Mind! Here No.2 has to explain the murder of No.22, and the suicide of No.8, as well as the complete and utter failure to extract the reason behind the Prisoner’s resignation. ‘The Girl Who Was Death,’ whoever came up with this idea to get No.6 to open up, to children of all people. Didn’t they realise that No.6 would be aware that “they” would be watching? The only thing revealed during the telling of the fairytale, was part of the Prisoner’s former life as a secret agent, or that of an actor playing the role of a secret agent!
    Once Upon A Time was no fairytale, but it would become a question of life and death for either No.2 or No.6, if not both. It was certainly an ordeal that would take some surviving. No.6 survived, and No.2 apparently…….died!
    I feel like a new man! But No.2 didn’t really die, although I’m sure originally he was supposed to have died. Fall Out, and there was a falling out amongst friends. It led to a violent revolution that in turn led a mass breakout, something No.2 attempted after having been elected as a new No.2. And of course there was escape, finally. There were also two No.2’s in this episode, as a third former No.2 had been brought back to take the position of Judge who presided over the final manipulation of No.6. It was of course a compete disaster. There was the evacuation, the escape of the Butler, a former No.2 who resigned, and the former No.6. But perhaps the most disastrous moment was the launching of the rocket, with No.1 sealed in the nose cone. Whatever his fate might have been, it must have been the most terrible of all. No.1 may have become the first man on the Moon. At the very least he became “the man out there,” possibly stranded in a deteriorating orbit around the Earth, until faced with an uncontrollable re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere in which the rocket, and No.1 would either burn up…….or be smashed to pieces in a collision with terra firma.
    And yet after reading all that, you know as well as I, that it didn’t stop there. The Prisoner is not simply a prisoner of the Village, he’s also trapped in a vicious circle that carries on repeating itself over and over and over again, and again. The Prisoner could try and break the vicious circle. He might for example not resign his job. But you know as well as I that the Prisoner is a single minded fellow, and once he’s made up his mind to do a thing. Besides, I sure that whatever the Prisoner might try to do in order to change the vicious circle of events and so extricate himself, the circle of fate would always find a way to adapt itself, so to maintain the events that hold the Prisoner, prisoner. But more than that……………….What if one day you woke up to find your surroundings altered. That you had been taken out of the environment you have come to know as the Village, Italianate, situated on an estuary, surrounded on three sides by woods and mountains beyond, together with a beach and sea beyond that. Then to wake up in some new apartment, similar to your own, yet different. To find yourself in a Village surrounded by desert and mountains for as far as the eye can see. That is what has happened to No.6. His individualistic tendencies, his defiant nature remaining steadfast into his old age. So much so that mentally No.6 was transposed to another Village in order to be helped….mentally. Imagine being moved from one Village to another. You know there is another place, you dream of another place, of a former life, but now you are further away from that former life than ever before. Because there is no London, there is only the Village. What could be worse than that? Being helped in the desert by a man who doesn’t come from the Village, and seeing that man as a bloody miracle. Only to die, to suffer a Village death, only to wake up in the Village that you know so well, and still a prisoner!

I’ll be seeing you