Do We Know Where Saltzman Is?

    The man in the photograph may look like the Colonel, but if you recall he underwent a change of mind. I’m using the original spelling of Saltzman for personal choice. Obviously he won’t look like that now, it’s been fifty years. He will have changed his appearance several times by now especially if I had a body like the Colonel’s which wouldn’t have been to my liking at all!

     The Colonel arrived in The Village blindfolded, such is the security regulation. He was then driven to the Town Hall by taxi where he alighted, oh no, that was the Prisoner on the day of his arrival, I’m writing about the Colonel. He went to the Green Dome to see Number 2. “Ah Colonel, had a good trip?” “Yes thank you.” He refuses breakfast…..you know Number 2, no matter who he is, is very kind to all new arrivals in The Village offering them breakfast the way he does……the Colonel is a man of business, he doesn’t like to waste time, and would appreciate if he could be told his duties as soon possible. You see he has no idea why he’s there in The Village. All the Colonel knows, is that he was sent to The Village by the highest authority…no not Number One, but rather I suspect by those masters we hear so much about back in London. But it’s not a question of pride, more of gratification! The Colonel seems unsettled about being in The Village, he wants to get on with whatever he’s there for. No doubt he felt even more unsettled as he was laid on an operating table within the Saltzman machine in readiness for the mind transference. If his opinion of someone who spends time pacing his room whilst drinking tea and eating a ham sandwich is rather stupid, he may well soon change opinion. Because soon he’ll have to act very differently, having had not only a change of mind, but a change of clothes as well, so that at least then he’ll look the part! I wonder if he went kicking and screaming as they strapped him into the Saltzman machine? No perhaps not, the Colonel would have remained calm, with a stiff upper lip, a man who would do his duty, no matter what that duty was! And yet he may well have been sedated as was No.6 during the mind transference procedure. Mentioning No.6, No.2 must have been in somewhat of a hurry, because for the only time during No.6’s time in The Village, he is forcibly taken from his home by four security guards. When previously they had always come for No.6 in the night after he had been sedated by his nightcap! So No.6 went kicking and had to be sedated. So we have No.6 with the mind of the Colonel, and the mind of No.6 in a body not at all to his liking, the Colonel’s. Why the Colonel and not a field agent is anyone’s guess, and with his body back in The Village when ZM73 wakes up he has no-one to go running back to, so he has to go over the Colonel’s head, hence Sir

Charles Portland who is no help to ZM73 at all. So he has to find Professor Saltzman himself, but at least he has a clue via the photographic slides, Kandersfeld in Austria. Now ZM73 finds himself in a tricky situation, no it’s not the fact he was closely followed by XB4 {Potter}, but that he’s in the unusual position of needing the help of The Village’s administration. Because his body lies over the ocean! But thankfully an agent working for The Village is on hand to help, and in time ZM73 and Professor Saltzman find themselves in The Village, and for all we know Potter as well!
      So once again, as it so often does in The Village, comes down to a question of time and Saltzman needs 12 hours to prepare himself and his machine. And when it comes to that Saltzman machine, if The Village administration didn’t know where Saltzman is, where did they get the Saltzman machine from? They had no Saltzman machine of their own, there’s no Salzman machine they could have borrowed, so when acquiring one…… isn’t that how it goes? What’s more through his machine Saltzman rights a wrong, as well as engineering his own escape, the only person ever to have escaped The Village even though his mind does occupy a body not to his liking, the Colonel’s. That was fifty years ago, so who can say who Professor Saltzman looks like now. He could have changed his appearance numerous times over the years and decades in a form of immortality just as long as the Professor’s mind remains active. And could be anywhere in the world. As for the Colonel, he is the second person to have been seconded to The Village not to leave it. And yet to all intents and purposes, the Colonel’s mind having long since departed, it is the body of Professor Jacob Saltzman that lies buried over the ocean in The Village cemetery. And what of Potter? Whether he was left paralysed in that cellar of the Barber’s shop, or was taken to The Village, he would have a good deal of explaining to do, either to No.2, or Sir Charles Portland. Do you know, I’m not at all sure which would be the worse!

Be seeing you