Elsewhere... The General
"Elsewhere" is an office, where one man (Dwight) stands staring at a large globe topped by an eagle, while another man (the General) sits behind a red desk, smoking a cigarette in a holder. (I've only ever seen women use those in movies from decades ago.) The general holds a picture of TST, and papers or pictures are scattered on his desk, along with a Newton's Cradle toy with seven balls, and a nameplate whose last letters look like "...ARD".
Dwight wonders what happens now, and the General states his intention to "kill all of them": the Cables, Barclay, the Tremayne Woman, and TST, whose name is/was Alec Holland.
The General also refers to Arcane's "strange kind of airship", so the cyborg possibility remains.
Dwight and the General plan to tell people it's a matter of "national security", which will stop all questions and open all doors. (Date of publication: Jan 1984, so written in 1983, when Margaret Thatcher was PM, seatbelts became mandatory, people demonstrated against nuclear weapons, and Black Adder first aired (according to Wikipedia).)
There are references to "our agents" and "our people in Virginia" (home base of CIA and FBI) and "the D.D.I." (deputy director of intelligence?) and "Sunderland". Which is an "it" not a person, apparently, and sleek and coordinated and efficient and like a death machine.
To sunder is to cut, to break apart. The land of the alone.
There's a "truth" (aka secret) about the DDI and Sunderland, and the General wants to kill everyone who knows it. He sets the balls in motion, and they go kdik-kdik-kdik, but never get anywhere. He remembers watching his men preparing for battle that morning (the flashback shown in boxes with rounded corners) and comments that the people he's planning to kill '"think they're safe." Then he stops the ball (kirrididik) and says: "They're in for a rude awakening."
Layout - the panels on the verso page are simple, with three rows (one panel, three panels, three panels). On the recto page, the whole-page black background is of the Newton's cradle balls, while superimposed are three panels with rounded corners, showing uniformed people loading truck and helicopter and then setting forth. Those are happening elsewhen, with voice-over in yellow and blue rectangular text boxes, while the General's words are in white bubbles as he watches the little balls.
But surrounding all these panels, on either side of the pages as if they were columns framing a doorway, are two mirror-images of TST. Not identical copies, no reverse printing, but distinct. It's large scale, with a face at the top of the page and an open right and left hand on the bottom. So TST holds the General in his hands, while the General holds an image of TST in his hands.
And for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
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