Night of The General

   As Number 6 returns to his cottage, outside it’s rather like Mardi Gras, everyone is celebrating the fruits of Speedlearn, he switches on the main lights. Then when he switches on the overhead lamp all the lights fuse! Suddenly the telephone begins to bleep. Picking up the receiver Number 6 is instructed to remain where he is, and not to leave. Electrics and administration are on their way. For such an emergency as this, Number 6 will find candles in the upper kitchen cabinet. A few moments later electrics turns up on one of the garden tractors, so it couldn’t have been much of an emergency, otherwise Number 151 would have walked! Number 6 then shows the electrician where the fault is just as Number 12 of administration arrives on the scene. He wants to know what’s going on, apparently there’s be a deliberate short circuit across the contacts of a light bulb….sabotage, that’s punishable! The electrician informs Number 12 that they’ll need a 2 stroke d replacement {I’ve always thought they needed a new light bulb} but perhaps he means a new fuse in the fuse box, seeing as all the lights have blown! The electrician is then instructed by Number 12 to contact Electrics control and have them switch in temporary reserve, temporary reserve from what, batteries?
   Number 12 is the first conspirator Number 6 has had, and one inside the machine, even if he is a small cog! He’s had the Professor’s lecture heard on the tape recorder micro reduced, and placed in a ballpoint pen, which he gives to Number 6. So Number 12 had been able to gain access to the Professor’s tape recorder, after Number 6 had given it to Number 2. He also gave Number 6 two security pass discs.   

   Number 12 blames Number 6 for the act of sabotage, the punishment could be a fine, it could be imprisonment {what’s that a prison within a prison, or solitary confinement} Number 6 says he’ll take the fine. So the next day Number 6 has to go to Number 12’s office in Administration, where Number 12 gives him the uniform of a Top Hat’s official, that of black suit, tie, white shirt, top hat, overcoat, dark glasses, and a document case. How Number 6 actually got those items from the Town Hall to his cottage is anyone’s guess. Even if all the items had been parcelled up, that parcel would have attracted the attention of the Observers I should have thought. And yet it was Number 12 who carried out the act of sabotage, why was this not observed by an Observer?

Be seeing you