Networked: A gripping sci-fi thriller

by LK Chapman

  I saw that the Network planned to withdraw, that it would cease its involvement with human life, it would go back to being in the background, to learning, and growing, and evolving, and that while its relationship with us was over for now, it was not over forever. When it knew more, it would return, and when it returned, it would do so in a more informed, more considerate, more respectful way.

  I felt the Network fading from me, as I felt all the other people fading from me, and though I’d chosen life, I couldn’t quite bear for it to end, and I tried to somehow claw them back to me, just for a little longer.

  ‘Interface,’ I said desperately, before he was gone entirely.

  ‘Yes?’ he said, his tone as clipped and precise as ever.

  I wasn’t sure what I wanted to say, so I just mumbled incoherently. ‘I don’t...’ I said, ‘I don’t know...’

  ‘Did you understand before the end?’ he asked me.

  ‘Understand what?’

  ‘That the Network never meant to upset you. We only meant to learn, and to show you all a new possibility.’

  ‘I know,’ I said, ‘I understand. Please... do you... do you have to go?’

  ‘You know that we do.’

  I tried to hold on to him, but I couldn’t, it was beyond my power.

  ‘Interface,’ I said, ‘I’m sorry. I should have trusted you; you never did anything to hurt me. You never did anything to hurt Lily, or Dan. You tried to help them.’

  ‘Why would you trust us?’ he asked, ‘We gave you little enough reassurance. Dan and Lily felt like they needed the Network, but they don’t need us. They need you.’

  ‘But I... I need you.’

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘that is certainly not true.’

  ‘Interface!’ I called out loud, but I felt him fade further, and I was engulfed by a sense of loss. I still wanted to carry on talking to him. I still wanted to know more, to know everything about the Network. But I couldn’t articulate any more questions. I couldn’t think what to say, and though I felt like I was chasing him, trying to keep him in my head, inevitably he continued to fade, to weaken, and eventually, to disappear.

  When he was gone, and we were alone, we threw our arms around each other helplessly, united by our sorrow at him leaving us, and for a while there seemed to be nothing but the ache of his absence.

  But strangely, it didn’t last. For a while, our pain seemed enormous, his loss intolerable, but then it was replaced by our sheer joy at being alive, until we were embracing each other out of happiness, not out of grief, and we spoke to each other unintelligibly, not really hearing each other, not really saying anything that made any sense, but we all knew what each other meant. We’d been through something so extreme, so remarkable, and yet here we were on the other side.

  The sun had burnt through all the misty clouds by the time we calmed down a little, and it felt warm on my hair and my back. I kept thinking that I had so much to worry about, so many responsibilities, and then I kept remembering that I didn’t, not anymore. It was over. Affrayed no longer existed, not in the form that had caused all the trouble. I was about to suggest we go home, when I noticed that Dan was staring at Lily, and I felt a difficult mixture of emotions as I remembered his feelings for her. There seemed to be so much tension between them that the air was alive with it, but when Dan finally spoke, it wasn’t what I expected. All of a sudden, in a voice that was almost a strangled cry, he said, ‘I don’t feel it anymore,’ and as if the effort of saying it was completely overwhelming to him, he practically collapsed into Lily’s arms.

  I thought, at first, that he was crying, but then it seemed like he was laughing, and then I realised he was doing a bit of both at once.

  Lily just held him calmly, her expression hard to read.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked her in total confusion, ‘what’s happened?’

  ‘Nothing’s happened,’ she said, ‘but everything is going to be okay now, everything is over now.’

  She gently stroked Dan’s back, and closed her eyes for a moment.

  ‘It’s okay,’ she whispered, ‘it’s okay, it’s okay.’

  I still wasn’t sure what was happening, but I could see that to them it was something profoundly important, and I watched as a couple of tears spilled from beneath Lily’s eyelashes, and they dropped onto Dan’s t-shirt, making little dark circles on the green fabric.

  ‘I don’t... love you anymore,’ Dan said, with a mixture of relief and sadness.

  ‘I know,’ Lily said, ‘and I don’t love you anymore, either.’

  Eventually, they stopped embracing one another, and stood a little apart, looking at each other almost shyly.

  ‘But, what we did...’ Dan said.

  ‘I know,’ Lily said.

  ‘I shouldn’t have done it!’ he said, ‘it was wrong, you’re married to Nick.’ He waved his arm in my direction, as if to emphasise who I was.

  ‘It wasn’t wrong,’ Lily said, ‘don’t you remember it? It was the furthest thing from wrong. We had to be that close, we had to all love each other. Last night I loved you as you loved me, and we both loved Nick, and Nick loved both of us. But it could never have stayed that way. It had to end, as I knew it would. I knew that if we did it, all this would pass, and Nick and I would be husband and wife again, and you would be our closest, most precious friend.’

  I stepped closer to them, and once again, for the last time, Lily took both of our hands in hers.

  ‘We’ll never forget what happened,’ she said, looking at both of us, ‘we must never forget it. But it could never be repeated, because unity that complete, that beautiful, is just too fragile for our real lives. We all know it.’

  ‘It hardly even feels real anymore,’ Dan said sadly, and at his words, Lily let go of our hands to undo the bottom few buttons of her crinkly white blouse, then she pressed both of our palms against her bare skin, against that special place just below her stomach. She smiled down serenely, and as we followed her gaze she said, ‘it was real.’

  Epilogue

  Our time since the morning on the cliff top has been a whirlwind of activity. Dan has got his own place, Lily and I have a new place, and most importantly I think for everyone’s wellbeing, Dan and I can finally work from a studio, not from our homes. I feel ashamed sometimes that the money for it all came from Affrayed because it sometimes feels like dirty money, like blood money, because of the players who died. But although Lily would usually be the one for superstitious talk like that, it was actually her who pushed Dan and me into using it.

  ‘Build your company,’ she said, ‘employ some people, do something good with it.’

  So we’re doing something good with it. We’re making a new game, and although it bears little resemblance to what we actually went through, we were pleased when our new idea of a game based around hacking and fraud allowed us to logically give it the title Networked.

  We can’t ever say publicly what the deeper meaning is behind the name, but between the three of us, we all know what it represents. The name is for the players who died, those whose memories, thoughts and emotions live on somewhere, in a strange new world that even I can still barely comprehend. It’s for us- for what we learnt from the place without fear and without trust, where everything was about being as one. It’s for the night we shared on the beach, that was too beautiful for this world, but that will exist as long as we remember it and keep it alive. It’s for the Network itself, which is often in our thoughts- because we wonder whether it’s almost ready to try something else, whether perhaps it already is trying something else, with different people, in a different place. But most of all, though it embarrasses her when we say it, the game is for Lily- because although she said so many times in the past that she wanted to die, at the moment when it mattered most she found a love and appreciation for her body so deep that she used it to save not just herself, and not just us, but everybody.

  A note from the author

  Thank you so much for buying Networked.
I hope that you enjoyed reading it.

  As an independent author, one of the most difficult things is getting my book seen by potential readers, because if nobody knows about it, nobody will read it.

  This is where you can help!

  There is a short survey on my website that you can use to let me know how you discovered my books. (lkchapman.com/feedback/survey/). This will help me to understand where to focus my efforts in the future.

  Also, if you enjoyed this book and have a spare few minutes, please consider leaving a rating and review, as even a short review can make a big difference!

  Thanks again for reading.

  Also by LK Chapman

  Too Good for this World

  Anything for Him

  Acknowledgements

  Throughout writing Networked I have been amazed by the amount of support and encouragement I have received, and how excited everybody has been to see it published. In particular I would like to thank my husband and my parents for being there for me through the sometimes difficult journey of writing this novel; Shaun Smith for giving me such valuable and honest feedback on Networked; Ann Batten for answering my questions about working in a florist; Ben Smith and Carol Barber for help with proof-reading; and finally the whole of the indie games community for being such an inspiration to me.

  Nick’s discussion of waves in Chapter 29 was inspired by the documentary The Secret Life of Waves, originally broadcast on BBC 4 on 2nd February 2011.

  About the author

  Louise Katherine Chapman was born in Somerset, UK in 1986. She studied Psychology at the University of Southampton before working as a psychologist developing personality questionnaires. She is now writing full time and lives with her husband in Hampshire. Networked is her first novel.

  You can find out more about LK Chapman by visiting her website www.lkchapman.com.

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  Too Good for this World

  A short story prequel/sequel to Networked by LK Chapman

  Two years after her husband’s death in a bizarre suicide pact between players of an online game, Imogen is still reeling and desperate for answers.

  Struggling to cope with her loss and isolation, she is sure that the strange messages she starts receiving are a figment of her imagination. Except that before he died her husband claimed to have had unusual experiences while in the game- experiences where he had been linked to other people, and heard a voice, and controlled the game with his mind. He’d said that the game was more than just that- that it was a new way to live.

  As the messages Imogen receives become harder to write off as a trick of her mind she begins to think the unthinkable. Could it be possible? Could her husband still be alive?

  Too Good for this World is a short story that will raise questions you’ll definitely want answered, and can be read as a prequel or sequel to LK Chapman’s debut novel Networked.

  Too Good for this World is available FREE from most ebook retailers.

  For more information visit http://www.lkchapman.com

  Anything for Him

  A chilling psychological thriller by LK Chapman

  To Sammie, Jay is her first boyfriend; someone to be loved and adored, someone she is desperate to make happy.

  For Felicity, eleven years later, Jay is a distraction from the traumatic loss of her parents; her relationship with him uncomplicated, impulsive and mindless.

  Then Jay turns Felicity’s world upside down when he asks her to help him get revenge on a childhood friend; a friend he said destroyed his relationship with Sammie, and wrecked his life. But when Felicity agrees to Jay’s strange plan, she gradually begins to realise she’s treading a path that has been trodden by Sammie before her, as Jay becomes increasingly controlling and abusive, and she finds herself trapped.

  But what neither Felicity nor Sammie realise is that there has always been someone else in the background of Jay’s life, someone obsessed and dangerous, someone who they really shouldn’t turn to for help, because when it comes to Jay, this person will do anything for him.

  For more information visit http://www.lkchapman.com