The Visitors - Part 22 - 3WW; The Serialists - 7/2/2013

The Visitors

Part 22

     Wat Shures, the Professor, Sebastian and Pigsly Kaycornes were gathered together in the Professor's elegant sitting room in Nottingham.    It was a month since the successful meeting of teachers in Kingston Town Hall, since when all who had been in attendance had enthusiastically set about trying to improve the way their pupils and colleagues used and developed their brains.
     School curricula, that reflected the continuous simplification and 'dumbing down' of academic standards and requirements that had been taking place over the past few years, were now being questioned, criticised, and in many cases ignored, or revised in the classrooms.   Head teachers, ministers and the government itself were helpless in the face of this revolt, which was nationwide in nature, since the Its and their human helpers were all working to the same, co-ordinated programme.    Other disciplines, such as physics, astrology, astronomy,  archaeology, et.al., inspired and encouraged by their own It led working groups, had found enough supporters for the new ideology of 'mind over matter' to cause panic and confusion among their leaders.    Only politicians and the religious hierarchies were holding out, trying desperately to hold on to their various dogmas.   
     A 'boxy', twenty- year- old television set, which the Professor had switched on a few minutes earlier, was showing an emergency news programme.  Reports were coming in from around the world of peaceful demonstrations in favour of governmental support for the 'mind over matter' idea, being violently disrupted by police or militia, using extremely heavy-handed methods.      In Whitehall, outside the gates of Downing Street, a small group of around thirty Junior School teachers, carrying placards showing the simple acronym - 'M.O.M.', or in the case of three of them - 'MOM's the word', were suddenly set upon by police wearing helmets and full riot gear, and wielding batons and riot shields.  After a scuffle, seven protesting teachers were thrust into a police waggon and driven off, and the rest were hustled down the street towards Parliament Square.  Interviewed on the pavement by a TV news reporter, a middle aged teacher, with blood running down her face from a blow on the head, said: 'It was just like the Battle of the Beanfield, at Stonehenge, all over again.'
      'Were you there too?' asked the reporter.
      'Yes I was - and I got my head bashed there as well.'
    Sebastian leaped to his feet and paced furiously round the room.  'That's bloody awful!' he said angrily.  'And we haven't got that witch Thatcher to blame for it this time  either.  I would never have thought the wimp we have for a Prime Minister would ever have authorised something like that.'
     'He is not his own master,' said Pigsly.  'He is just following the procedures laid down by those who do rule you.'  
     'The damned 'one percenters' you mean?' 
     'Exactly!   It will backfire on them, one day, perhaps - I hope.'
     'You hope?'  Sebastian was surprised.   'You mean, you don't know for sure - one way or the other, with all your powers?'
     'Oh, my dear chap,' said Pigsly, 'of course we can't know.  We could make things happen easily enough, but you know we are forbidden to do that.  Grey Tit is still insisting that you must save yourselves by exercising your own free-will.'
     The Professor, who was wandering around the room with a whisky bottle in his hand, replenishing drinks, said:  'I suppose the best way to move forward is to embarrass the authorities with sweet reasonableness; show everyone who has a taste for violent control that it just won't work.'  He poured whisky into Wat's glass, in which a blob of Marmite lay in wait.  'Remember, the trickle of soft water will wear away a mountain just as effectively as bashing at it with a hammer.'
     'Spoken like a true psychologist,' said Sebastian, with a snort, 'In the meantime they're bashing us with everything they've got - and our campaign's only a little over a month old.  Dammit! They're even shooting people in America.  Shooting them!  Why, in Heaven's name?'
     Wat Shures, who was stirring it's whisky and Marmite with a finger, said:  'Oh, I can think of 51 reasons, straight off, but I won't go into that area of conjecture right now.'
     The Professor was about to press Wat for more, when the front door-bell rang, followed by a rapid and heavy knocking.  The Professor looked at his watch, and saw that it was nine-thirty in the evening.   'Now who the devil can that be?' he said, and went to find out.   Opening the door he found Major Henry Warren, and Captain Bond of MI.6 standing in his front porch.  They were both slightly dishevelled, and both seemed to be in a state of alarm.    Crowding into his doorway, Major Warren said:
     'Professor, could we come inside quickly do you think?'


To be continued.......
     
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