This chapter deals with a day that came to symbolise a wider frustration and anger for Guru and The Wizard Niccolo. That is, it deals with the hiring of a puppet, a marionette so unable (or unwilling) to detect when their behaviour and actions are being determined by the will of others that the net cost is formidable. Huge and longstanding swathes of the Kingdom were switched off by this puppet, or else neglected or misserviced to a point where they severed all contact with the Place of Learning.

The Bully had recently been in courtship with the employing echelons of the Place of Learning to a point where they had become receptive to the idea of another member being added into his group. Given that neither Guru nor The Wizard Niccolo were, in his eyes, men of erudition, it was deigned that a newly clever person of delivery need be plucked from the Labour Exchange and into his clutches. In the preceding weeks to this invidious appointment, The Bully made stark effort to have both the Guru and The Wizard Niccolo feel as if they were in some way outmoded, inadequate and in all ways about to experience a wrenching change.

The day of interview came. Given the much-vaunted community dimension to the work of his group, it had been decided that representatives from across the Kingdom would sit in observance of a presentation from each runner in this deceitful and contrived race. Thus the usual condescending missive was fired out across the Kingdom: "Come again into this place of learning and be part of something new and special; pledge allegiance to The Bully and what will follow shall amaze and excite beyond all comprehension." These missives were variously incentivized with offers of money or contraptions in the case of those people whom The Bully felt may be of particular use to him or else be malleable in ways that may benefit or further his singular and underhanded aims.

Some twenty community leaders sat at the table as the proceedings commenced. For all the world they had again been sold an idyll by The Bully, an idealistic utopia of responsive learning wherein The New Erudite would fulfil all of their funded needs and bring sunny regeneration and newly arable territories where now there lie relative decay. Sadly, this is not what these people received in the coming months and years. Their territories were further degraded and the eager brains of their people dulled with muddy and useless malpractice, and in all ways The Bully had vigorously lied to them. This New Erudite had gravely failed them, and the overall relationship with the Place of Learning - through The Bully's group - was in extremely in the way of harm.

But back to our account of the day itself, prior to the fateful selection of The New Erudite FUBC.

In terms of real and tangible quality and worth to the sensible man, the day was an unmitigated, time-consuming disaster. The candidates were all at once sloppy, talentless and not a little ugly-looking. At first came a man of squatted posture, who began with what promised to be engaging complexity and intrigue until his wheels fell off. His presentation hit a not-insurmountable technical pause but he was nonetheless unnerved to a point where he became useless and feeble, and was promptly helped out of the light. Next there came a female of such ostentation and noise that the room was palpably divided between amusement and distaste. Had it been a stageshow or a street demonstration, the woman may have found her paid forté. But it was not and as such her garishly coloured newspapers and screeching insistence of suitability were the stuff of arrogance that had the assembled representatives staring embarrassedly into their notepads.

Finally there came FUBC. A flaccid, pale individual who at three-something decades already had too many chins. His countenance immediately invited the stifled ridicule that is usually reserved for the infirm and bodily defective. In any case, although the employment brief had been to demonstrate an artful talent to engage the diverse peoples of the Kingdom, FUBC decided to reinvent the goods wagon and set about showing the audience a means of communication already long known to them. That is, he demonstrated the act of Looking Out, a means of sending people messages that they could collect afresh irrespective of the time of sending. It was a kind of asynchronous talking, to be sure, but it was not new and had been pioneered many years before and was now an expected staple in even the most rudimentary and primitive outposts.

The Dutchman, still over from Nether Lands, was disgusted with all the unrestricted and stakeless anger that is afforded to a non-permanent visitor. For him it was an outrage from the beginning, and an absolute travesty that any of this could have reached the public stages as it infuriatingly had. He knew that these were not people of quality; they were incompetent would-be soldiers, destined for the actual rank of unquestioning pawn but duly afforded the title of Teacher.

The interior feedback too was forcefully dissonant. Why, the Guru and the Wizard angrily lamented, would The Bully seek to employ anyone so limp, so forgettable and so unsuitable to innovation? Why employ someone so lazily passive that there would be no progress beyond the braggart and empty self-publicities of The Bully? Why would it be so that no work was relevant nor good unless sanctioned by The Bully and delivered by FUBC? But then hidden in these frustrated questions were in fact the answers also.

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