CONNECTED

by Denman, Simon

  “Yay, hot chocolate!” cried Kate excitedly.

  “Do we have a deal?”

  “Deal!” she said pushing herself off his lap and scurrying out of the room.

  The deal Abigail had struck was that if he would just keep an eye on the kids that morning, and give them lunch, in the afternoon she would take them ice-skating, leaving him alone to pursue his work. Of course, the choice between spending a morning with the children or making small talk with their small-minded house guests was an easy one. After breakfast, he had shaken their hands and bid them farewell with such alacrity, even they had found it amusing.

  This week's Sunday Times turned out to be a disappointment. In fact the only item in the entire weighty stack of felled forest to really capture his interest was a special feature on the rise of social media. While he had no trouble understanding the appeal of Facebook – although personally, after the initial novelty of linking up with some long forgotten names from the past, he had lost interest in all their subsequent postings of pointless platitudes - the one thing he had yet to fathom was this latest micro-blogging phenomenon otherwise known as Twitter. Sharing the trivia of one's life with friends was one thing, but doing so with millions of anonymous strangers, seemed to be something else entirely. However, the article had explained how one could search on any topic of interest and immediately see what was being said about it - a kind of customizable barometer to the Zeitgeist. This made some sense to Peter, in that he could see it being useful to company marketers for example, who might then gain insight into the types of conversation occurring about their products or services, but he still saw no good reason to initiate such conversations in the first place.

  Around two o'clock, Abigail returned to fulfil her end of the bargain, and Peter finally found himself alone with enough of a window to engage in some serious theorising. Initially he had confined himself to revisiting the calculations of his post-doctoral work at Cambridge, uncertain as to whether he would still be able to make sense of it all, but to his surprise, it was all flooding back with remarkable ease. The mathematical engine of his brain, albeit with regular oiling and tuning from Dream-Zone, seemed once again to be turning over very smoothly and he had recently let it loose on some of the same problems facing today's leading theorists.

  As he read through the latest paper from a relatively unknown Dutch mathematician on quantum relativity, a new email notification appeared at the bottom of the screen. The message, a hurried note from Doug, referred to an attachment, apparently containing modified video editing software.

  Prior to his current plunge back into string theory, Peter's programming skills had become a little rusty, but with each new set of geometric shapes producing a veritable mountain of raw data, the only realistic way of extracting the resulting physics was to program the computer to crunch the numbers for him. Although some such programmes already existed, Peter had lately had to create a whole new module for one of them and to his immense satisfaction, it had worked first time.

  As he started to examine Doug's code modifications, Peter immediately saw where they were heading, and set about completing what the student had started. He found the discipline of programming immensely absorbing. While he would not have wanted to devote his whole life to it, from time to time, he thoroughly enjoyed the laser-like focus which gripped him so completely it seemed to distort his perception of time itself.

  As the last remnants of daylight filtered through the study window, he finally leant back with a long sigh and surveyed his work. This was the moment of truth: if the programme worked, then he would have full control over the synchronisation of his brother's audio files with the students' evolving fractal patterns. From this, he would finally be able to create the elusive combo file – the ultimate Dream-Zone, the effect of which promised to surpass all that had gone before. He checked the code one last time and ran the compiler. The hourglass hovered tantalisingly over the screen, its virtual sand slipping repeatedly through its narrow waist in a seemingly endless cycle until at last, there appeared a single word - Compiled.

  That the code contained no errors of syntax - that it made sense to the computer, he was now certain, but would it do what it was supposed to? He ran the finished programme, the hourglass appearing once more, followed by the promising message - Capturing Video. Peter felt his pulse quicken in anticipation, until at last a familiar succession of fractal images began to appear in the main window. “Yes!” he shouted, slapping both palms on the desk and causing the keyboard to jump a quarter inch into the air.

  With all the graphics finally captured, he dragged them down to the video editing storyboard and clicked the Play button. The video ran seamlessly, and even viewing it within the smaller sized window of the editing software, Peter felt himself start to fall under its familiar hypnotic spell. Selecting Martin's audio file under the “Soundtrack” option, he clicked Add. The oscillating graph of the acoustic waveform gradually drew itself above the video storyboard, finally prompting for an action of Save or Cancel.

  Martin, in his email to Kal, had spoken of synchronising the “rhythmic beats” of the sound with the “main colour shifts” of the graphics. If Peter could just identify these things, he was now confident that the software would allow him to synchronise them. On clicking Play, the effect was similar to running both audio and graphics simultaneously. As a physicist, it reminded him of the interference pattern created as two wave-fronts combine. Where troughs coincided with troughs, and crests with crests, they would add together to increase intensity; where troughs met crests, they would cancel each other completely. Similarly, the hypnotic effect of running the two Dream-Zone components together was in places more powerful than anything produced by either one, while in others it was weaker.

  Trying to de-construct the individual inputs for analysis, without falling under their spell however, was proving difficult. He strived to listen for these “rhythmic beats”, but each time found himself born aloft by the mesmeric sounds filling his ears, losing all capacity to evaluate their form.

  By comparison, dissecting the fractal progressions was trivial; now captured as video, they could be slowed to a manageable sequence of individual frames, and as such, while still fascinating, their hypnotic impact was lost. As he did this, he noticed that at regular intervals, the patterns appeared to flip in on themselves, creating an illusion of zooming further into the image, and with each flip, the light intensity of the screen pulsated with different colours. These had to be the phase shifts mentioned by Kal! - but what about the audio?

  As the veil of night descended on Bracknell, Peter rolled his chair back, reaching for the light switch behind his head. In doing so, the audio cut from one ear. Looking at the PC, he saw that the headphone jack had half emerged from the socket. He began to push it back in, and then stopped. Instead he clicked Play and listened. With only one ear exposed to the sound, its potency was immediately destroyed and for the first time, he began to hear the constituent sounds for what they were. It seemed incredible he had not tried this before, but it had simply never occurred to him. The harmonic progressions and overall acoustic contour of the passage seemed to defy standard musical convention, and yet was somehow still rooted in the familiar. There were multiple rhythms and melodies running at once, each evoking different feelings and emotions. Peter pushed home the headphone jack, and instead used the software to isolate left and right stereo channels in turn. “Well I'll be damned!” he said to himself, after several minutes toggling between inputs.

  Martin had evidently composed what sounded like two symmetrically opposing, yet perfectly complementary audio tracks. Each channel appeared to create a succession of expectations in Peter's mind as to what would come next, only for those expectations to be subsequently violated. And yet the violations on one side were somehow being satisfied by complementary violations on the other. It was a perfect symmetry - the sublimation of musical perfection. The attack and timbre of each individual tone - some reminiscent of bell-c
himes, others the gentle plucking of harp-strings, or even human voices - were endowed with an ambiguity suggestive of having been crafted for maximum emotional impact. Whether in the music itself, or reconstructed as musical imagery within Peter's own mind, the effect was truly sublime. He had known Martin to be a musical genius, but this was beyond anything he had thought humanly possible. A tear trickled down his cheek, and a lump began to swell in his throat.

  Alternating between right and left channels, he slowly became aware of repetitive breaks in the rhythm, each of which corresponded to the moments of violated expectation identified earlier. These had to be the beats to which Martin had referred. Peter clicked on the slider and carefully stretched the audio waveform to align vertically with the colour phase shifts. They fit perfectly. For the entire length of the waveform, the beats matched the phase shifts. An enormous coincidence, or an indication of some greater underlying property which connected both phenomena? With some trepidation, he once again clicked Play. What followed was beyond anything he could have imagined.

  Within seconds, the rich musical sound-scape unfolding within his head began to meld with the exploding array of colour, hue and form before his eyes, until he could no longer discern sound from vision. Even his senses of touch, taste, and smell were captive to the same surreal synaesthetic experience. His inner ears registered movement, but with no clear sense of orientation. It felt as though he were tumbling through space and time in a weightless, slow motion roll. Like eyes adjusting to the dark, his mind was awakening to a transcendent, multi-sensory thought-scape through which he could apparently navigate at will. Through mental focus, each of the seemingly infinite panoramas of cognitive vistas summoned an avalanche of distinct thoughts, feelings, and emotions, cascading through his conscious mind like a lifetime of experience, fast-forwarding at incredible speed - yet with full awareness. Every point along the way presented a new and boundless array of vistas of its own, connecting every thought with a multitude of others. From diving on the Great Barrier Reef to standing on the moon and gazing back at the fragile blue Earth, every imaginable experience and sensation seemed available to be lived and relived in an endlessly rich and redolent phantasmagoria.

  Gradually, an overwhelming calm and serenity overcame him, bringing with it a sense of infinite knowledge and potential. At the same time, as awareness of a warming, comforting, and familiar presence slowly embraced him, he wept.

  CHAPTER 18

  The flashing lights of Singh's strobe test were as unproductive as they were unpleasant. The neurologist watched the EEG trace with an air of frustration. “Okay, today for some reason, whatever you have doesn't seem to be triggered by either hyperventilation or stroboscopic stimulation. There's healthy activity in the occipital region, but no sign of it developing into an epileptic event. We can try acoustic stimulation, but if the strobe doesn't set it off, I doubt that will either. Maybe you're just having a good day.”

  It didn't feel like a good day, thought Doug, inserting the earphones and listening as a series of high pitched tones cycled repetitively in his head. Singh continued to regard the screen with the same lack of excitement. A large black crow flew by the window, drawing Doug's attention. As his head turned to follow its course, the earphone cable caught on one of the electrodes, causing it to dislodge from his scalp. While Singh leant forward to reattach the wayward probe, Doug was briefly reminded of how hard it had been to get to sleep that second night in hospital, with all those things attached to his head. He then remembered the iPod.

  “You know, I've just remembered something,” he said suddenly. “That night in the EEG lab, I think I was listening to my iPod when I went to sleep.”

  “Are you sure?” said Singh looking up from the screen. “I don't remember seeing it on the video.”

  “I'm certain of it – you see, I was having trouble getting to sleep, with all these electrodes on my head, so I thought I'd try some music.”

  Singh nodded slowly, “Well, music has been known to trigger these types of seizures. Do you happen to remember what was playing?”

  “I usually just put it on shuffle – so any one of several thousand different things I'm afraid. You know, now I come to think of it, I was listening to my iPod when it happened in the gym, too. Perhaps it wasn't the exercise after all.” He recalled this last episode. The shock of being shaken out of it by Becky, and the subsequent excitement of the day, had all but erased the preceding memories. Now, as he thought back through the bizarre and tragic dream, he remembered how it had started. “Actually, yes, I think I do know what set it off - on that occasion at least,” said Doug. He asked Singh to pass the iPod from his coat pocket, selected the Dream-Zone audio file, and pressed Play.

  “Whoa!“ said Singh almost immediately, as Doug felt himself transported off to that special place he was beginning to know so well. He finally removed the earplugs and gazed around the room with the heightened sense of awareness and understanding which always seemed to follow.

  “You're fully conscious?” asked Singh, glancing from Doug's face to the EEG trace and back again.

  “More than ever,” replied Doug, with a confident smile.

  “What's your name?”

  “Doug Richards,” he replied quickly.

  “What day is it?”

  “Monday of course.”

  “Do you know where you are?”

  “I'm in Colchester General Hospital. It's my third visit. The first was last Saturday when I presented to A&E with concussion following a trauma to the head. The second time was...”

  “Extraordinary!” Singh interrupted. “Do you mind if I hear that?”

  “Be my guest,” said Doug, passing Singh one of the ear buds and letting it replay, so they could both hear it. Singh raised his eyebrows, then frowned.

  “Interesting ... but not the kind of sounds usually associated with seizures.”

  “So do I have temporal lobe epilepsy or not?” asked Doug impatiently.

  “Yes, you do.” Singh hesitated a moment. “Just like before, the EEG trace is unmistakable - but I've never seen it spread across the whole brain like this without impairing consciousness. According to this, you shouldn't even be lucid right now.”

  “I can assure you I am. In fact I feel great,” said Doug.

  “Be that as it may, you've just had – are having - a partial seizure, and that's not a good thing for your brain. Just sit here and rest for a little while. The nurse will get you unwired and bring you to my office when you're ready.”

  “I'd like to try you on a low dose of Gabapentin to start with,” said Singh, scribbling a prescription and handing it across the desk. “It's one of the standard anti-epilepsy drugs now - particularly effective for partial seizures. There's a slight possibility of some associated drowsiness, but generally the side-effects are very mild. Of course, if you do have any problems, then you need to let me know immediately - if necessary, we can look at switching you to something else.”

  “So how long will I have to take these?”

  “Well, that depends. If you stop having seizures then after some time, we could try gradually reducing the dose and then maybe stop it altogether, but we mustn’t withdraw too quickly.”

  “So do you think this was caused by my head hitting the post?”

  “Given the timing, it seems likely that there is some connection, but it's quite rare to see this kind of thing resulting from a recent specific head trauma. It could be that there was already an underlying problem though - and then the bang to your head just brought it to the fore.”

  “But what about the scarring you saw on the MRI? The hippocampal sclerosis?”

  “Yes, well that kind of cell loss is definitely linked to temporal lobe epilepsy, but there is still some debate as to whether it's the cause of the problem, or its effect.”

  “What - so you're saying that the scarring could have been caused by the epilepsy - rather than the other way round?”

  “It's possible, which is one of
the reasons I want to put you on medication.”

  “And what if the medication doesn't work.”

  “Let’s not go there for now. In some extreme cases, where seizures become debilitating, and medication proves ineffective, then we sometimes consider surgery, but with you, we're nowhere near there yet. In most cases it can be treated very effectively with drugs. Let's just take things one step at a time for now and see how we do.”

  It was just starting to spit with rain as Doug left the hospital. He turned up the collar of his donkey jacket and trudged off down the long wet path towards campus. Cindy, or rather Nadia, had left a number of new messages on his mobile, but as yet, he had returned none. He wanted to hate her - to forget her - to move on, yet no matter how much he thought of the lies and betrayal, he was unable to dismiss the incredible way she had made him feel. Looking back, he could see that everything prior to Sunday night had been a lie - albeit the most sexy and enjoyable lie he had ever encountered - but last night had seemed different. He had sensed something deeper between them and this, he supposed, is why in the end, he had not mentioned her to Bullock. The inspector had conveniently shown up on campus just as Doug had been getting ready to leave for his appointment with Singh, so once again he had found himself in the policeman's old Mondeo on his way to Colchester General Hospital. En route, Doug had explained his theory about Markov ordering the computer hack and subsequent theft of Martin's PC in pursuit of Dream-Zone. Whether Bullock had believed any of it was hard to gauge, the bushy face, as usual, giving little away, although when Doug had mentioned visiting the club, the man had made clear his disapproval. Of course this might just have been a general disapproval of strip clubs, but somehow Doug doubted that.

  Suddenly, the throaty roar of a large decelerating engine announced its presence behind him. He looked round as the silver Porsche drew up alongside.

  “Get in!” shouted Nadia. “Please.”