...cont'd...FIN

Economics. There were two main systems. That was what people thought. Capitalism, and Communism. There was also a third way, but that had not been tried. It had only been tried in a few countries, and countries didn't exist. Not really. Not if you really imagined. And B. was an imaginer, that was not in doubt. The correct solution was, in fact, the third and a half way, but B. was ahead of his time. That was to be expected. Another age must judge him.

The system at the Post Office, - whatever it was - had proved to be hopelessly inadequate. Not fit for purpose - that was the phrase wasn't it? Yes. The queuing was completely unnecessary, and B. hated the unnecessary. It was reminiscent of his soujourns to the labyrinths of Byzantium, and, more than that, resembled the anaconda of his draught excluder. It was clear he was expected to instigate a Conga.

Perhaps it had been a quadruple bluff, to get him to reveal himself, but B. was too sharp for that. B. sharp - even the piano recognised his genius. And B. was indeed a genius. Had people not said he was somehow touched? They had. Some were sharper than others, that was to be expected. That was how evolution worked.

The reaction to the Conga had been unfortunate, to say the least. And this was largely the fault of the shuffler. The six-legged half human, half metal, shuffle-being who had blocked B.'s path to enlightenment. The details were unimportant. Too often people concentrated on the details, when the whole picture was what mattered. Suffice to say, B. arrived at the Separator unnecessarily delayed, and in a state of agitation. Things would be different when he was in charge, that much was certain.

The partially reflective vertical separator divided the Enlightened Ones from the Pilgrims. B. wasted no further time in making himself clear. It was best to use their language - a matter of basic courtesy, somewhat lacking in the world at then, and, having triumphed in the night, having successfully cracked the secret code-voices, B. assumed the stance of the locust, and shrilled the eternal questions to the Enlightened Ones. One after the other.

It was like being back in the pencil case again, although his trousers had split. Objective morality seemed to take an age, perhaps two, before B. had cleverly steered the conversation onto Free Will, and the nature of carpets. There appeared to be a slight difficulty with the local dialect, and B. had been misunderstood. Maybe he had pronounced something incorrectly, or was it a homophone for something offensive? At any rate, the overreaction of the Enlightened Ones had been spectacular. Could the troika have got to them too? No, that was close to being paranoid. And B. was far from being paranoid. Close and far were different words, and B. could hardly be more than one word at the same time, unless he was a sentence. But that would be sentencing. Now where had he heard that before? It wasn't important.

The pencil case closed. Guilty.