The Ordeal Of No.2!

    For three nights Number 6 is removed from the confines of his cottage, and taken through the woods to a secret laboratory there. The idea being that with the aid of a doctor and her newly developed drug, Number 2 intends to get into and manipulate the dreams of Number 6. This to discover what would have happened had they not go to him first. It’s easy to feel sorry for, and sympathise with the Prisoner. But it’s not a whole bundle of laughs for Number 2 either, as it can be as much an ordeal for Number 2 as it is for Number 6. He doesn’t actually live in the Green Dome, that might be described as Number 2’s residence, but in actual fact it’s merely his office. While Number 6 enjoys a comfortable cottage, Number 2 has a small room somewhere in the Underworld of The Village.

   The impression is given that Number 2 has had Number 6’s while life researched and computed in order to have the reason why Number 6 resigned boiled down to three people, A B and C. But surely the whole of the Prisoner’s life had already been researched before his arrival in The Village. After all the manager of the Labour Exchange said they had everything about the Prisoner, even the fact that he had given up sugar four years and three months ago on medical advice. So there was actually no need for Number 2 to have the Prisoner’s whole life researched, all he had to do was read Number 6’s file, and have that information fed into the computer!

   Number 2 was put under so much pressure by his superior {presumably Number 1} that he wasn’t even given a week, only three days. Why, are they running out of time so soon? Well not really, the three days reflects there having been only three doses of the doctors “wonder drug.” Any more than three doses and that would prove fatal to the Prisoner.

    But if that wasn’t enough, this Number 2 is unlucky enough to be given a second chance in ‘The General,’ in order to oversee a unique educational experiment. It would seem that someone in the outside world, probably in the government, an Minister for Education, had been approached about Speedlearn. It was something which could not simply be imposed on pupils and students in schools, colleges, and universities, the process would call for experimentation. What was the government to do? There was only one thing they could do, have both the General and the Professor taken to The Village, and the Speedlearn experiment conducted on the inmates there. Well surely no-one thought that Speedlearn had been developed simply for the good of The Village community.

   But for a second time Number 2 was guilty of one thing, underestimating Number 6! If  the result of ‘A B and C’ wasn’t bad enough for Number 2, the outcome of ‘The General’ was far worse, when you consider the loss of a super computer, along with the deaths of both the Professor and Number 12 of administration! But at least for this Number 2 the ordeal was finally over!

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