Success part1

Old Jim was still looking out of his window overlooking the roundabout, bemoaning the fact that nothing interesting was happening these days. The same old drivers were still making the same old mistakes, but ever since the rats had escaped from the island, there wasn’t any excitement anymore. He often wished he knew what had happened to the little chaps. He heaved a big sigh and took his eyes off the road to have a sip of tea.

Loud impatient hooting made him return to his observations; something was happening and he’d missed the start of it. The police had stopped the traffic and some men in white coats had walked across to the island and were searching through the undergrowth. None of the lorry drivers and cars that normally used the roundabout seemed very pleased. Old Jim chuckled, there might even be a fight if he was lucky!

Bits of twisted metal and the remains of an old car battery were eventually removed, then shortly afterwards the police moved away.

The traffic queues took about an hour before the roundabout returned to normal, but Jim was rubbing his hands with glee, perhaps somebody should have taken notice when he’d reported the rats and their goings on a year ago, but no, he was only a daft old man and everyone had ignored him.

----O----

Ron was the scientist in charge of trying to develop rat intelligence. Two years ago a couple of batches of the most promising rats had disappeared. Following the paper work through, had revealed that they had gone missing whilst being delivered to another facility.

Thank goodness he’d had enough sense to collect all the reports for the areas on the delivery lorry’s route for analysis. A promising note had surfaced, from some daft old chap who lived in a house overlooking a roundabout on the route. He claimed to have seen various attempts by rats trying to escape from the island, until eventually they had disappeared after building a machine that created a blue light.

Ron was a keen science fiction fan, if this report was true then fantastic as it may seem, it could well be that the rats had developed a crude form of matter transmission. What ever the case, it was certainly worth having a good look around on the island.

It had taken him quite a long time to organise the expedition. It was only when he had finally convinced a senior official at the War Office of the potential, that permission to close the roundabout had been given. The official had been overjoyed at the prospect of moving troops and their equipment instantaneously from one place to another and thought it was well worth taking a chance on the outcome.

Ron’s phone rang, he was being called down to the laboratory to see the results of the search on the island.

At first sight it looked like a heap of junk. Some of it was of course, after all the rats had no access to machinery and could only cobble together the items found on the roundabout. There was also evidence that several of the items had been involved in some sort of explosion.

The lab phone rang. He was wanted down in reception now. Oh well it was a hard life, probably whatever it was could have easily been dealt with by a subordinate. He asked the people sorting through the debris to put the charred items in one heap, any other significant finds in another and finally put the rubbish in a heap somewhere out of the way.

He was rather surprised to see one of his original team holding a folder and looking very excited.

“Hello Harvey I didn’t expect to find you here I thought you were on holiday in Derbyshire!”

“I was,” he replied, “but I took the kids to a circus near Buxton and you’ll never believe what I found!”

He showed Ron the papers in his folder. It was a copy of a legal document signed by someone on behalf of our lost rats.

“I don’t understand,” said Ron, “these documents have been signed by somebody called George!”

Harvey laughed and told him that KY42273 had changed his name to George and was well able to understand legal documents and sign his own name. “In fact,” he continued, “all the adult rats can understand and write at least four languages. It has to be seen to be believed! Not only that but I’ve got them all outside in a van.”

Ron went outside to have a look, he knew his team had been aiming at creating intelligence, but what Harvey was saying was way over the top of any expectations he’d ever had.

Sure enough as promised there was an open box full of rats. As he approached, one of them wrote something on a card and held it up for him to see. ‘Hello Ron.’ It said. Then it turned the card over and wrote ‘My identity was KY42273, now known as George.’