she sees it, her calm and pleasant facade turns furious and she tears the sketch in two. He searches her lodgings, finding busts carved of him and of Number Two, and smashes a lifelike effigy representing the sleeping Professor. Number Six fears Speed Learn could eventually be used for mind control. Number Twelve assists him by giving him a set of passes and a pen that will play a message about the professor's confession. Before the next lesson is to be broadcast, Number Six infiltrates the projection room and installs his own message. He is detected and thwarted in this attempt, and the real message is broadcast. Number Six is interrogated but refuses to reveal the complicity of Number Twelve. Number Two claims that the "General" will know who his accomplice was. The "General" is revealed to be a sophisticated, experimental mainframe computer which has purportedly been programmed to be able to answer any question put to it. As Number Two is about to ask who assisted Number Six, Number Six states that there is a question that the "General" cannot answer. Number Two arrogantly accepts the challenge; when Number Six feeds his brief question into the "General", the computer begins to sputter and emit smoke after its data banks fail to find the answer to the question. Fearing the worst, the Professor tries to shut down the computer, and as it begins to overload, Number Twelve tries to rescue the professor. The "General" self-destructs, killing both men in the process. A distraught Number Two asks Number Six what the question was. The General, and Number Two's plans, were destroyed by a simple epistemological trick: "Why?" Notes "The General" is first mentioned by Number Two in the episode "The Schizoid Man". That episode also featured another Villager with the Number Twelve, in this case Number Six's doppelgänger. While the Number Twelve in "The General" clearly states to Number Two he has been in the Village "quite a long time", this could potentially gives rise to questions of episode order and continuity. However the assignment of numbers appears somewhat arbitrary throughout the series; for instance Number Eight is assigned to three different characters. Neither the Professor nor his wife are assigned a number. One of the busts that Number Six pulls the dust sheet off in the Professor's house is that of the Number Two played by Leo McKern in the