Pressure

"Oooooooooooooh!" shrieked Margaret, laughing. "When did you swallow a dictionary, then?"

Molly smiled, but continued to look entirely serious. This was one of her best tricks, Margaret always thought; you could never dent her air of authority.

"Cognitive dissonance," she continued, "is what happens when you try to hold two conflicting ideas at the same time. You know that feeling when you buy something you really want? Just after, you wonder if you've done the right thing, or paid too much, or... well, that's a kind of cognitive dissonance. You realise the thing you've bought isn't perfect, but you bought it thinking it was."

"Alice must have had that cogitative wossname about her husband," chuckled Margaret, only to be rewarded with a stern look from both Alice and Molly.

"Anyway," said Molly with a definite that's-enough-of-that tone. "This dissonant feeling, we don't like it. Makes us very uncomfortable. We try to get rid of it, usually by altering what we think to fit the situation."

"Just like Alice," muttered Margaret, never really knowing when a joke was over.

Molly ignored her.

"The thing is, Mr Armstrong, the people you've brainwashed can't change the way they think. And can you start to imagine how frustrated they're feeling about it?

"You and your lot have piled the pressure onto this town till it can't take any more. And it's about to blow."



Part Three begins here.