Prismatic Reflection

    “You cannot do this to me!” Why not? “Because I am not a number, I am a free man!” Don’t make me laugh ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, besides that line’s been done to death! You’re no longer a free man, you are a prisoner! You are no longer a person, or individual, there is no longer the right to be individual, and such is the way that individuality will no longer be tolerated. And we do this to you, because we can!
    “My cottage, or rather a room in my cottage, is exactly how it was in my house.” Of course, it is the way of things. We couldn’t possibly build our residents their actual full-sized residence, this is only a Village you know. But we do like for our residents to feel right at home. Well it helps relieve the first initial shock of discovering that they are not in fact at home. As for the surveillance “You know they are watching, I know it. It does not prove that you or I are sympathetic, but the community has to live, so must you.”
    So what is it that you are doing that is so interesting, that makes them so intrigued to be watching you? Perhaps if you stop doing whatever it is you are doing, they will then stop watching you. Are you really so important to them? Perhaps you are suspected of something? Or were about to do something, and either you were brought here to be stopped, or because it was already too late. There was one who was brought here, he’d resigned his job, about to do a runner to foreign parts. Well he couldn’t be allowed to do that, so he was brought here to the Village!
    It’s not so bad, just as long as you tell them what they want. I told them in just two days, and now they’ll look after me for as long as I live. They say that bars do not a prison make, there are no bars here, and yet there is no escape! I was told that it’s all a question of mental agility, the fact that the find can take you out of the prisoner, the physical prison that is. That you can imagine yourself anywhere you like. You could be at home, perhaps you’ll take a walk out this evening, go for a pint at the local pub, do some late shopping, go for a meal, or simply go for a walk. Along the avenue, onto Broadway, turning right onto South Street, and right at the ‘T’ junction to finally arrive in the centre of the Village. Perhaps we’ll go to the newsagents and tobacconist, even the butchers and the bakers, we don’t have a candlestick maker!
   And yet you are still here, not escaped yet then? Mentally you can escape for a short while, but physically there is no escaping the Village, unless……..If one was to concentrate hard enough, and for long enough, might not one transport oneself to some far away place, a deserted beach perhaps. But your mind is weak, you are not a dreamer, and therefore not fit for escape. You are a prisoner, no more than that, brought to the Village because you resigned your job.
   “Where am I? Why was I brought here?” You’re in my Village now! You have been brought here because you are Village. “Where, where is this Village?” I am the latest dreamer of the Village, and I have a passion for flat open spaces. It is a place which I call the Old Country, after all it is where I was born, and know it like the back of my hand. It can be a cold and desolate landscape, the biting icy cold wind comes straight from the Russian Steppes. My ancestors were known to smoke opium simply to help get themselves through the long dark, cold winter months. So sit down, relax, there’s time for a pipe or three, now you’re here, in my Village, everyone smokes opium here………

Be seeing you