Even Now There Remains A Puzzlement!

    Cobb. Yes we have been here many times previously, and the question remains, why was he brought to The Village? He told the Prisoner, when asked, that it was difficult to tell how long he’d been there. Days, weeks, months. One can imagine that the doctor-Number 40 from ‘Dance of the Dead’ had been experimenting on him in order to extract any such information he might have. After all Cobb did say that they wanted to know all about him, that he wasn’t sure if he’d told them or not. Well we only have Cobb’s word for that. Some have it that Cobb was brought to The Village simply for that encounter on the ward of the hospital between him and a former colleague. Why that should be I’ve no idea. After all, the Prisoner had probably only arrived in The Village the previous day! Myself I prefer to think that that meeting was an accident, a mistake, that it perhaps should not have happened. Because what had Number 2 achieved by the meeting of Cobb and the Prisoner?
    If Cobb had been brought to The Village in order to have any such information extracted from him, they had most likely been working on him for weeks, even months. He appeared to be in a bad way in the hospital. So if this was true, his recovery was truly miraculous. For them to have turned Cobb in so short a time following his encounter with the Prisoner, was quick work indeed, seeing as later he’s fully compis mentis and ready to leave The Village to take up his new appointment.  And yet the new Number 2 uses a curious phrase to Cobb, “I hope your stay had its lighter moments.” This suggests that Cobb had been working for The Village all the time. Or on the other hand, the Number 2s could be very callous, and this could merely have been a jibe at Cobb’s expense towards his treatment in The Village. His staged suicide and mock funeral all so that Number 6 and Number 9 could be brought together. Cobb and the Prisoner had to meet somewhere, why not on a ward of the hospital? And yet whatever happened between Number 6 and Number 9, whether the Prisoner managed to escape The Village in the helicopter or not, together with the fact that Cobb betrayed an old colleague and possible friend, the one fact remains. To Number 6 Cobb is still dead!

Be seeing you