Connected (35 page)

The storm hit with the fury of a monsoon. The low
dark clouds which had rumbled angrily all the way down the A12 were finally
releasing their pent up wrath on the M25. Sheets of water cascaded from the
flashing, thundering sky, creating an impression of driving through endless
strobe-lit waterfalls. The Porsche’s windscreen wipers battled valiantly - and
judging by the speed of the other traffic, probably better than most – but
there was little alternative but to slow down and let the heavens drain.

The sound was deafening; the constant hiss and
roar of the tyres as they fought for traction on the slick tarmac of the
motorway, and the relentless wavelike hammering of raindrops on steel, made
conversation all but impossible.
Doug glanced at his watch. “It’s going to be tight,” he shouted through the
din, looking ahead at the slowly advancing trail of red tail-lights
disappearing into the watery gloom beyond.
“We’ll make it,” said Nadia confidently, “It can’t keep this up for much
longer.”
An hour or so later as they turned off onto the M3, the thunder eventually
subsided and the waterfall was replaced by a steady drizzle, almost welcoming
by contrast.

They arrived at the crematorium some thirty
minutes late and made their way quietly into the back of the small chapel. Next
to the coffin at the front, an Anglican priest was intoning religious verses to
a group of twenty or so sombre individuals of assorted shapes and sizes. A
forty-something blonde woman, whom Doug took to be the wife, stood with two
small children at the front. Nadia clutched his arm, squeezing it tight. “He
had children!” she whispered, tears welling in her eyes.

Doug wondered how he had arrived at this point,
standing at the funeral of a middle-aged man whom, until a month or so before,
he had never known existed. Perhaps he shouldn’t have come. In the short time
they had been acquainted he had only actually met Peter once, and yet he felt
partly responsible for the man’s tragic demise. Had he not returned that first
call, exchanged files with him, or worked on the video editing software, that
man might still be alive. But then, was that not life: a series of seemingly
innocuous decisions and chance encounters, the consequence of which shaped the
future in often wholly unpredictable ways? Was there such a thing as fate? Was
the Universe truly deterministic? Did every event follow unswervingly from the
state of things that preceded? If this were true, then what we thought to be
conscious choice or free will were instead just the inevitable firings of
neurons based on past experience and genetic make-up. The fact that such things
could never be predicted would be due to the impossibility of knowing the
initial conditions with sufficient accuracy, not because they were truly
random. Then again, quantum theory supposedly did allow for the entry of true
randomness. To Doug, this was some comfort. The idea that every seemingly free
choice he had made since birth could have had no other outcome was a deeply unsettling
one. Randomness, while no more allowing of free will, would at least mean that
the future was not entirely pre-determined.

Classical chamber music had started to play
through the chapel’s audio system, and as the coffin slipped slowly away
through the curtain, a sense of finality seemed to wash over the congregation.
From the way their bodies quivered, he guessed the two children at the front
had started to cry, although their mother remained remarkably calm and
composed. Eventually, the doors opened and the chapel gradually emptied into
the continuing drizzle. He took Nadia by the arm and led her out to the
courtyard.

Standing some distance from the others under a
large umbrella was a striking dark haired woman in her mid to late thirties
holding a handkerchief to her eyes. She noticed Doug’s stare and smiled back
kindly as if grateful for the attention.
“I bet you that’s Isabelle,” said Nadia. They walked over and introduced
themselves.
“I’m Peter’s sister-in-law, Isabelle,” said the woman with a slight French
accent. Nadia squeezed Doug’s arm.
“I’m so very sorry for your double loss,” said Doug. “I didn’t know Peter well
- we corresponded and spoke a little - but I heard about your husband. A good
friend of mine also died recently.”
She let out a long sigh. “I discovered them both,” she said, her voice starting
to tremble. “The two people I loved most dearly turned out … not to love
anything at all.”
“They weren’t themselves,” said Doug, wondering if he might be overstepping the
mark. “It never makes any rational sense to those left behind, which is why we
should look at it as a consequence of disease rather than a conscious decision.”
“That’s what everyone keeps telling me, but I saw him the evening before and
the note…” she trailed off.
“Peter left a note?” he asked suddenly.
She glanced around nervously. “No, I’m sorry, I’m just upset. I really should
be going.” She turned and started to walk back to the car-park.
Nadia nudged him, “Go and talk to her.”
“S’il vous plaît Madame!” he said, following her.
She turned around looking momentarily disorientated, “Vous parlez français?”
“Oui!” he continued in French. “Peter left me a note as well – at least sort
of.” He pulled a folded sheet of paper from the pocket of his suit jacket onto
which he had copied the recurring words from Peter’s Twitter aggregation.
“What’s this?” she asked, “That’s not Peter’s handwriting.”
“No, it’s mine, but last week, he created a programme on the Internet which
seemed to collect random text posted by all sorts of different people around
the world.”
Isabelle looked perplexed.
“The details don’t really matter, but over the course of this week, these words
have been repeating again and again – and your name appears here too.”
She studied the paper for a moment and then frowned. “But that can’t have come
from Peter!”
“Well, as I said, I know it’s from other random people, but judging by the
content and its similarity to other conversations I’ve had with him, Peter had
to be behind it somehow.”
“But you said this has come over the course of this week?”
“Yes.”
“Peter died last Friday!”
For several moments they just looked at each other, and then she reached into
her purse, looking around apprehensively before handing over an envelope
embossed with the logo of some fancy hotel. Inside was a sheet of similarly
marked stationery on which a short note had been elegantly penned. “I would
obviously rather you didn’t mention this to anyone,” said Isabelle, her cheeks
flushing.
Doug read the note, feeling somewhat embarrassed himself, as its intimate
nature became apparent, and then he stopped. He looked again at the words from
the aggregation tool: Doug – sentient – beings – Universe - connected –
emergent – collective - consciousness – Zone - Dream – experience – knowledge -
Peter – Isabelle – new – life”
“Oh my God!” said Doug, beckoning to Nadia to join them and then switching back
to English.
“He thought Dream-Zone was heaven.”
Isabelle took a step backwards, looking suddenly fearful. “Please don’t start
that! You sound like Martin before he died.”
“That’s because he believed the same thing! Look, don’t be afraid - let me
explain. Your late husband created the most amazing passage of music. Somehow
these sounds trigger something deep inside the brain, the effect of which,
curiously, is very similar to a certain type of epileptic seizure. Anyway, at
around the same time, my best friend and I were creating a series of evolving
mathematical patterns which, when viewed on the computer screen, produced an
almost identical effect. Somehow, Martin came across this work and he and Kal –
my friend - combined the music with the graphics to create a video clip. This
clip - what we now call Dream-Zone - unlocked all sorts of wonderful abilities
within the mind – perhaps even telepathy.”
Nadia nodded vigorously towards Isabelle in confirmation. “If it wasn’t for
Peter reading my mind, I probably wouldn’t be alive today.”
Isabelle’s eyes widened doubtfully at this, but nodded earnestly for Doug to
continue.
“Through his continued research into string theory, Peter concluded that every
point in the Universe is in fact connected to every other point through higher
dimensions. He then reasoned that the brains of all living things – or how did
he put it – all sentient beings, which I suppose might even include any little
green men up there – are also connected. From this interconnected network of
minds, he believed, emerges a kind of single collective consciousness.”
“And Dream-Zone connects you to this,” said Nadia excitedly.
Isabelle had glazed over slightly, but seemed to want him to continue.
“Exactly! And so when you enter the ‘Zone’, you can experience anything that’s
ever been experienced by anyone who’s ever lived, and you can know anything
that has ever been known. The thing I could never understand though, was how
such a fantastic experience could lead someone to commit suicide - but that
passage in your note, Isabelle, explains it.”
“What passage?” asked Nadia.
“He says here that – where is it: ‘No living soul should ever venture where I
have been, nor behold what I have seen and yet I did. Now I must go there one
more time. This is not the end. I will be with you always!’ Don’t you see? He
believed that Dream-Zone was heaven – that when he died, that was where he
would end up. This message to me through Twitter was his way of giving me that
knowledge without my having to experience it for myself. That’s why they all
tried to delete and destroy the file before taking their lives. They felt that
once anyone became aware of what they were really dealing with, it would only
be a matter of time before they came to the same conclusion.”
“But why would they care?” asked Nadia.
“Because if you follow their logic, then without the brains of the living, there
would be no existence after death. When we die, they must have thought that the
mind and memories of the individual were somehow transferred to the
collective.”
“The dead live on in the minds of the living,” said Isabelle slowly, as if
recalling something from long ago. She took down the umbrella and looked up at
the brightening sky with a sad smile.
“At least, I reckon that’s what Peter believed - and maybe Kal and Martin
also,” said Doug.
“And Dmitri,” added Nadia, “his final behaviour would make more sense, seen in
this light.”
“I rather like the idea,” said Isabelle, her face clearing, “although
personally, I’ve never doubted the existence of an afterlife.”
“What about that bit at the end though?” asked Nadia, taking Doug’s piece of
paper. “Here it is - ‘Peter – Isabelle – new - life’ - what do you suppose that
means?”
Isabelle placed a hand protectively over her belly, as a more hopeful smile
crept across her face. “I think I might know.” she sighed.

- THE END –

Dear Reader,

Thank you for purchasing
Connected. I sincerely hope you enjoyed the reading as much as I enjoyed the
writing of it. I’m currently working on a brand new book, which I hope to
launch early in 2013. To learn more about this and other projects, why not
visit my website at
www.simondenman.com
.

Of course, as a debut
author, any favourable review you see fit to leave on the Amazon website would
be enormously helpful to me and greatly appreciated. If you can spare the few
minutes it takes to do this, just visit the book’s page on the Amazon site from
which you purchased, scroll down to the review section and then click, “
Create
your own Review
.” Just a few words on why you enjoyed the book would be
terrific, after which you just click “
preview
” and then “
Publish
”.

Many thanks

Simon Denman.