Further Tales From The Village

 

    I don’t spend all my time spying, I leave that sort of thing to the Observers, well they do see and hear everything you know. Sometimes, not all the time I require assistance, and I do not always accept it when it’s offered. Sometimes I’m clever enough to work on my own as an administrator; although I am interim for most of the time I do still have to oversee the running of the village. Oh you thought it ran itself, that there are a number of Civil Servants running the village on my behalf, well that’s the administration for you. It’s not partisan the administration, it serves each new incumbent equally and without question.

    It’s not easy at times sitting in the big chair, especially when it comes to dealing with No.6. I don’t know why they bother with him, it’s not as though it’s a crime to chuck up a job. And yet the reason was the only thing missing from his file, and we do like to know everything. I have to admit No.6 did pose something of a challenge, the supervisor, who is quite a capable chap himself, thought the maid was going to pull it off that time. But no, I knew from the very beginning that the situation with No.6 had to be handled very differently. But no extreme measures, well not in the beginning, they wanted No.6 handled with kid gloves. They didn’t want a man of fragments, they wanted him with a whole heart, body and soul, well our masters saw that he had a future with them, he must be won over!

   They thought to let him escape then take him on a journey which he believed would end in an office he knew very well in London, and if it hadn’t been for Post 5 having the correct English time it might have worked! And that is the way with No.6; he’s almost always in luck’s way. Was No.14 guilty of helping No.6 when he managed to follow her to the secret laboratory in the woods, because she was forced to prove her drug on No.6? Oh the tissue managed to get bruised a little, but only because the two motor mechanics were allowed to wreak their revenge upon him for giving them a jolly good dunking in the estuary. And if it wasn’t for that bruised fingernail he might not have seen through it all and regained his mental identity.

    Of course it’s not all about No.6, there are other details which have had to be attended to, the educational experiment called Speed Learn. A great deal of faith was placed in both the General and the professor, his subject being history. A three year history university degree in three minutes, the historical subjects are questionable, but I suppose in such an educational experiment it’s not the subject that is important, but way the material is delivered to the student. Experimentation plays a big part in the village, experimentation in the extraction of information, in human behaviour, and there are times when experiments conducted on animals and mammals are adapted to use on human beings. This then is the dark side to the village as a large number of citizens found out. Therapy treatment of all kinds are employed by some less than caring doctors, and some are pacified by the use of isolation of the aggressive frontal lobes by leucotomy. More than that brainwashing techniques are employed, as well as a mind exchanging   process. At one point in the ordeal No.6 did eventually escape and make it all the way back to his house in London, but then for some strange reason he just couldn’t get back quick enough Lost Horizon springs to mind. And for those with an imaginative mind, what boy doesn’t like playing cowboys shooting it out with a gang of gunslingers. The village is a place of betrayal, basically the reason behind it is for the collecting of information by fair means or foul. It’s governed by one side or the other, by masters located who knows where. It’s isolated, a complete unit of society, but which society? One minute there are democratic elections, the next democracy has been done away with, well to some extent because we are democratic in some ways. And yet some people do give the impression that they can enjoy themselves, especially on the beach. Which means that there is a certain amount of given leisure time. But is the village Shangri-la? Utopia, certainly one No.2 sees the village as a blueprint for World order, the whole World as the village, and there’s No.6 who cannot wait to be the first man on the Moon, and for all we know he might have made it in that rocket of his! As for me, I’m the new interim No.2!

Be seeing you