The New No.2

    {The pair of steel doors opened suddenly and a man in a double breasted plain dark blazer, grey polo neck jersey, grey flannel trousers, and deck shoes stood on the top of the steel gantry. He held an umbrella shooting stick, and about his neck and shoulders the old school scarf}
    I am the new Number Two the man said loudly.
    The Supervisor looked up at the man. So what?
    Well I just thought I’d make your acquaintance.
    What? You don’t think we need Number Two coming in here introducing himself every time a new one takes up the position do you?
    Well of all the cheek, and you are?
    The Supervisor.
   Well you won’t be the Supervisor for very much longer with that attitude.
    {Number 2 descended the steel steps onto the Control Room floor}
    It’s alright for you, I’m the new boy, I don’t know how any of all this works.
    You don’t need to sir, that’s why I’m here.
    Well I like to know how things work. What are they doing?
    They are the Observers.
    Just five of them?
    Seven, there are two other Observers on the steel see-saw.
    Yes I was about to come to that. What it is?
    It’s a see-saw sir.
    I can see that, I do have eyes you know!
    The duration of an Observer watching a monitor is twenty minutes, then the Observer has to take a break. The motion of the see-saw as it goes up and down.........
    Its goes round and round as well.
    Yes sir, the motion we find extends the Observers time in front of a monitor, by about ten minutes.
    What about him?
    Who sir?
    That man there?
    Well sir he...........
    And you my man, what do you do?
    I look after this button.
    What does it do?
    Well when I get the Orange Alert I press the button.
    What then?
    That orange light lights up and then I know I’ve released the Guardian.
    Who gives the Orange Alert?
    I do.
    Well couldn’t you press that button as well?
    Certainly not, that’s what we’ve got him for, I’m the Supervisor. I give the Orange Alert and he presses the button.
    And then?
    The Guardian is released from somewhere on the seabed.
    I see, well carry on.
    Yes sir, we were going to.
    There’s no need for insolence, I am your superior.
    Yes Number Two……for the time being!
    I maybe new here..................and who’s that?
    Who Number Two?
    That man on the screen?
    That’s Number Six.
    Why is he doing that?
    Doing what Number Two?
    He’s having a wa......
    A walk Number Two. Yes he does tend to pace up and down in his cottage like that, he does it for hours on end.
    Why?
    He finds it difficult to relax. He’s always on edge.
    While he’s eating and drinking?
    Mostly then.
    He’ll wear out that carpet if he’s not careful. If he wants to walk he should go outside.
    Why are you here Number Two?
    To introduce myself.
    No, why are you here in The Village?
    Oh I see what you mean, to take Number Six out of The Village for a few hours. Prepare the amnesia room, I want to take his mind back to the day before ZM73 resigned!
    That’s been tried before
    Well we’ll try it again….alright?
    Yes Number Two
    But this time its going to be different…………………..

Be seeing you

Hot Enough For June

    A few weekends ago now, my wife and I watched the 1964 film ‘Hot Enough For June’ a 1964 film starring Dirk Bogarde as an unemployed Czech-speaking writer Nicholas Whistler.

    Somewhere in British Intelligence an official hands in a number of passports, official property, as well as an item of personal property to a clerk standing behind a counter. These items are then placed in a drawer marked 007. The drawer is then closed, and the label turned over, it reads “DECEASED.” That put me in mind of the label on the grey filing cabinet in which ZM73 was filed away in, marked “RESIGNED.”
   Nicholas Whistler is recruited through the Labour Exchange to work as a trainee executive working for a glass company, which is a cover for British Intelligence. Whistler, because he speaks Czech, is sent on an undercover mission to Prague to visit a glass factory there on what he thinks is a piece of friendly industrial espionage. He is given a recognition signal “It’s hot enough for June,” to which his contact will respond with “Ah but you should have been here last September.”
   Having arrived in Prague Whistler is given a driver, a young, and attractive woman Comrade Vlasta Simonova, who is herself a Czech agent, her father being head of the secret police. Whistler attracted to Comrade Vlasta Simonova asks her out, and they agree to meet at the “Golden Cockerel.” This information is passed to her father, Comrade Simonova head of the secret police, who despatches an “observer” to watch the couple at the “Golden Cockerel.” This scene pricked my ears up, as it was the word “Observer” which made me think of ‘the Prisoner.’ Leo Mckern also features in the film, as Comrade Simonova-head of the secret police intermittently drinks milk, so it appears like  

Number 2 in ‘A B and C’ and ‘The General,’ he suffers from a stomach ulcer!

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Exhibition of Arts And Crafts

                     “The Ecstasy of Illusion!”

 BcNu

They Might Let Me Go!

    Is that what they said, they might let you go if you gave them some sort of information?
    Yes.
    What kind of information?
    I don’t know, they never said.
    So basically I could tell you anything, and you would go running off to Number Two to tell it to him and he would let you go!
    Yes.
    And you expect me to believe you?
    I don’t know.
    And you believe Number Two?
    You won’t help me?
    I can’t help myself. But I can tell you what to do....get out!
    Wh...what?
    Get out.............what are they watching now? Well there you are Two whoever you are Two, it didn’t work. I’m sending your little agent back to you.   
    Not very good at this are you?
    Do you want me to finish my dusting?
    No, I want you to go, I don’t suspect for one minute that you really are a housemaid.
    I’m sorry.
    Sorry, what for?
    Suddenly the cottage door opened and two men in black entered.
    You would have saved yourself a great deal of pain Number Ninety-nine.
   One of the two men in black over coat and top hat produced a peculiar gun. He squeezed the trigger and a cloud of vapour issued forth, the room began to spin, and Ninety-nine dropped to the floor.
    Why don’t you get smart Ninety-nine. All you have to do is tell me what I want to know and they’ll release you.
    Let me go, what I’ll be able to leave The Village?
    No, not leave The Village, release you from the hospital into The Village.
    So I told them what they wanted to know, and they released me.....from the hospital. Now Number Two tells me that if I pledge my allegiance to The Village he has the authority to let me leave, and go back to my former life. But I haven’t got a former life. I resigned my position, the house, the car and everything else went with it! 
    I woke up on a park bench, in clothes which suit my situation in life, I am a vagrant, I sleep rough on the streets and beg for money. Don’t ask how I came to this situation, all I did was resign. I haven’t eaten for two days, I wish, I wish I were still in.........................The Village!

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Quote For The Day

    “He had no radio of his own. There’s no radio he could have borrowed, so when acquiring one………”
                                       {Number 240 – Dance of The Dead}

    If the Prisoner had no radio of his own, that there was no radio the Prisoner could have borrowed, if Number 240 believed that, where did she imagine the Prisoner could have acquired one from, if it’s as she believed? That would have made it impossible for the Prisoner to have had a radio. But perhaps that didn’t matter, the fact that Number 34 had the radio in the first place, only the fact that Number 240 and Number 2 saw the Prisoner with the radio on the Lookout. And to think, Number 240 was Number 34’s observer who not only didn’t know he was dead {a fact which can be explained by the fact that Number 240 worked the day shift and Number 34 died in the night, so 240 wouldn’t have known} but didn’t know Number 34 was in possession of a small transistor radio either………. And so the same might have been said of Number 34, he had no radio of his own, there was no radio he could have borrowed, so when acquiring one…….!

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A Question of Personalities!

    Number 1 is an introvert, well what could be more introverted than hiding in a rocket? So it would seem likely that an opposite extrovert, Number 6, would be needed to mediate with the outside world whilst the mastermind, Number 1, stays hidden. He is a rational type, intuitional, thinking, and judging, a natural leader who prefers to remain hidden in the background until others "demonstrate their inability to lead." Could this possibly apply equally to Number 6? This being the latest attempt by Number 1, to find such an extrovert who can mediate with the outside world.

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They Made A Mistake!

    I told them, I told them again and again, over and over I told them you’ve made a mistake. You’ve got the wrong man! But they didn’t see it like that, and besides, even if they had made a mistake, they would never admit to it, I would never be allowed to leave because I already knew too much. So here I am, Number 2 said, and here I’ll stay, whether you like it or not, so you might as well get used to it!
    Everyday I set myself to some kind of work or task, mainly to keep myself occupied, and to stop myself from going mad. Oh in the meantime they questioned me, interrogated me, and I told them all I knew, which was precious little. The doctor, ha! doctor, more like the chief torturer, said that if I didn’t stop holding back information it would be all the worse for me. I told him he had the wrong man, that I didn’t know anything. A nurse gave me an injection, I don’t know what it was but boy did I talk, I talked and talked and talked until I talked my head off. I told them my life story, it was pretty boring now I come to think about it, not an exciting life at all. Number 2 came to visit the hospital one day, came to visit me in fact. I remember he asked the doctor about the progress she was making.................... Number 2 didn’t believe a word of it, said I was jamming, using the telling of my life story to block out everything else. Who did they think I was, Harry Palmer, John Drake or James Bond? I couldn’t be that clever or strong, it wasn’t my fault if the doctor was so stupid she didn’t recognize the truth when she heard it, and Number 2 if it comes to that.
    So they eventually left me alone to live out my life in the peaceful atmosphere of The Village. I’m a painter now, a simple enough job, no prospects but its steady work. Then one day I was asked to transfer to The Village mortuary, and there was a secret funeral. No cortege travelled through The Village, no brass band, mourners or undertakers, just the doctor and two gravediggers. Once the funeral was over, I asked one of the grave diggers who it was they buried without proper funeral arrangements. Who told me it wasn’t anyone of importance, just the doctor having one of her mistakes buried that’s all!

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