Dear reader.

We return to our saga, with the high probability that their protector ‘Benny-Boy’ and his comrade in arms Julian Assange may have blown themselves to bits our heroes contemplate a future of freedom. Even the death sentence inflicted upon them via Gina in service to MI6 and Her Majesty the Queen seemed to have left them in a state of composure. Almost as if nothing really mattered now, and the end, whenever it came would just be another footnote to un-remarkable lives unanointed by Clean Coal or the Gas Led Recovery.

But shaken by recent events they are cautious as to which direction fate may take them. Hold onto this next fate-ful episode, “A fistful of Bit-coin”, or “For a few petro-dollars more”

Anything to avoid making sense.

It dawned upon then slowly at first. Almost as if the consciousness of being free and then imprisoned again was immaterial. Almost as if the entire saga of finding the evil oppressor who so heinously defiled our tea-lady never happened. It was a ‘Johnson-esque’ moment. (We, the editors of passive complicity would like to apologise for this inadvertent reference to the former British PM as his conduct is considered ‘unbecoming’, but nonetheless speaks of a new future for the UK, a bright and glittering post Brexit for the UK and  a  trajectory from here on that  can only be down.)

It was that moment of incalculable peace that follows a particularly destructive moment in global affairs. The moment when the dust truly settles, and the realisation flows that everything may actually turn out all right. And then the consequent fear of rationality kicking in, which tells the subconscious like a death-rattle that the pause is brief, enjoy it whilst we can, for the next moment may be downward. But there they were. Looking reflectively at what they’d been through. The smoke and the wreckage of the Centurion tank, and the  the arrival of Clifford and  the Rotodyne They acknowledged that ‘Benny-boy’ and Julian had gone, and the potential that they alone, and unshackled may have once again walked free, unpursued and disengaged from evil.

It was Terry who first punctuated the silence.

‘Anyone for another Camel’? He handed the pack around and it returned to him untouched, with the realisation of freedom the core heroes Ces and Quent had decided not to smoke themselves to death. They had chosen to just live themselves to death. Even if it were one last moment to be savoured.  ‘You know’, Ces opined,’ it’s been a rocky road, but from hereon, I’ve made a resolution of sorts’.

“What’s that’? Quent enquired disengagedly. ‘I dunno, I’m not gonna try and be helpful anymore.  If someone is in deep shit, I’ll just sigh, say TOUGH aint it!! And just walk away. People can just go and have their crisis and I’ll be left in peace’.

A capitulation to moral cowardice or self interest?

‘But’, Quent enquired, won’t that just be a capitulation to moral cowardice and self-interest’?

‘Yeah, but Nah, but It’d all keep us all outta trouble’. Look where it got us trying to find out who did it to Ms Culthorpe. We’ve had everyone in the Coalition trying to knock us off, and now we’ve got a new government we can only hope we don’t get ‘Witness K’d’. With that the expression ‘Witness K’d, we all felt a chill. No one wanted to be imprisoned for the rest of their lives for doing the right thing. It would be an act of sheer ‘Assangen-ment’!

‘ Assangement’? Enquired Terry.

Another capitulation to moral cowardice and self- interest

‘Yeah’, Ces replied., ‘It’s a case of whatever you’ve done the cogs have whirred for so long the reason why no longer matters, you just get screwed cos it’s the orthodoxy for being a clever little prick in the first place.  Lest face it unless you’re rich like Jeff Bezos, or Elon Musk you can be a clever little prick, but if you’re poor like Julian you are slotted. The public, states, even Vladimir and Xi, the one thing they cannot stand is a clever little prick who’s not rich or not preoccupied with screwing the public. It’s not right. Only rich people can screw the public and get away with it.  And Boris’s problem, he just wasn’t rich enough.

Terry and Quent thought about what Ces had said and it made them reflective. With the burnt-out tank still smouldering, Dutto and Sophie trapped down below and the prospect of death by execution, hunger, exhaustion or just neglect not fully ripened, they drew on another Camel and practised the art of blowing smoke- rings. Anything was paradise compared to what they’d faced, and for the moment, like Witness K, they were just happy to go with the flow.

‘Well then’, Ces phlegmatically said, ‘how are we gonna get outta this one. Gina means business and like the resource rent tax, she always gets her way’?

Forgotten people exchange treats outside Aldi

‘I dunno’, Terry replied nonchalantly, in the olden days the only way out of a place like this was either in a Bristol transport or one of the old Land Rovers they had lying about.  But’, he paused and surveyed the dry, weed encrusted apron of tarmac, ‘I spose all that’s gone now. And ya know, no one will ever come back to Barnaby Downs just like no one will come to Maralinga cos there’s nothing to see, and bugger all to do unless you want to let off a few more nukes….. and I think the Poms took the lot of the unused ones back home’. The three of them stared into the horizon, Cos they were now ‘forgotten people’ it was a ‘lost horizon”. Worse than Burke and Wills, their purpose for being there in the first place was long forgotten, and they also sadly knew, that they themselves were now forgotten. ‘Just sand in the hourglass’? Ces reflected. ‘Yeah or flocculated terrigenous sedimentary clasts in the great river of life, or’?

The last plane outta Maralinga

Terry was more reflective, ‘or just the quietly dissipating smoke-ring from the last puff of a camel’. They nodded approvingly at Terry’s use of metaphor and sat glumly considering their chance of survival. Can they survive  Gina’s edict and the arid interior? Can they prevail and find and exit strategy? Will it hurt more than Brexit? Be sillier than Meg-cit? And worse ever than the funding for carparks outside train stations where no one needed car parks in the first place? Find out in the next contentious episode; A funded car- park needs a whiteboard’, or ‘No need for funded car parks in Maralinga cos it aint a safe seat and if it were it’d be funded a funda-mentalist’.