Gentle reader, your chronicler is bemused. Has Ndbag turned to the dark side? Tired of his attempts to confer wisdom upon the slack-jawed yokels who comprise his followers, has he had enough? Have we offended him somehow?
Or is there more to this 'ZK' than meets the eye?
Sometimes, he tells us, things are not as they appear to be. A truism, to be sure. But how are we to interpret it? Are we to infer that ZK's previous intrusion was done in jest, that he is a true friend to the boogeyman? Or should we assume that Ndbag is following Machiavelli's dictum "keep your friends close and your enemies closer"? Or is, perhaps, something completely different is going on, an arcane plot to which we hapless followers are not privy?
As we sit, bewildered, there seems no way to tell.
And as we realise this, we discover the truth; that it doesn't really matter. Friend or enemy, ZK's presence teaches us a valuable lesson about the complexity of the world in which we live.
I'm sure we all recall the time The Doctor went to Skaro in an attempt at preventing Davros from creating the daleks. What if he had succeeded? The universe would be an entirely different place. To be sure, billions of lives would be saved, but saved only from destruction at the plungers of the daleks. Who knows how many more would have died by other means? If the universe's greatest threat never existed, what would have filled the niche? Some of those destroyed by the daleks may otherwise have gone on to become an even greater threat.
And so it is with ZK. Yes, we view him as a sleekit, cow'rin', tim'rous beastie. But what if there were no ZK? Can we say with any certainty that the world would be a better place? And even if could say so, how would his absence change us? We're all the sum of our experiences, and ZK's malign influence has touched us all in ways that we can't even begin to comprehend. We may think we'd be better off, but who knows? ZK may well be the saviour of all life on this planet. You might scoff at the notion, but you can't state categorically that it isn't the case.
By embracing ZK, Ndbag is telling us that we should accept what has happened. Terrible though the past may have been for some of us, but nothing will be gained by wishing we could change it. We can resolve never to let such things happen again, but what we can not -- what we must not -- do is bemoan what has gone before.
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