CHAPTER 26
Nadia appeared in the doorway, wearing black silk pyjamas and standing slightly askew, a flash of bare hip showing between the top and bottoms. “When are you going to turn that thing off and come to bed?” she said with a pretence of grumpiness.
“It's the weirdest thing!” said Doug, smiling then looking back at the computer screen.
“What is?” she asked wearily.
“You remember that link I told you about – the one Peter posted to his Twitter account a couple of weeks ago – that aggregation tool?”
“What about it – I thought you said it just pulled random tweets from across the Internet?”
“Well, that's the thing. They seemed random, but ...I don't know – over time, some words seem to be repeating over and over.”
“How do you mean?” she said, cuddling up beside him on the sofa.
“Well the first thing I noticed was the way the names Doug and Peter kept cropping up. It turns out that in all the thousands of tweets aggregated by this thing, there are three names which keep recurring way more than any others: Doug, Peter and Isabelle.”
“Who's Isabelle?”
“I've no idea – maybe his wife. Anyway, at first I thought perhaps for some reason he had programmed it to search Twitter for anything to do with these names, but when I tried that, I got something totally different - so I think it must be something else.”
“What are the other words?”
“Well, what I've just been doing is pasting the output of Peter's programme into this online text analysis tool. What this thing does, is provide various statistics about the frequency of all the words and phrases in the text, ranking them according to their rate of occurrence.”
“You know, no matter how much you pretend you're not, you really are a geek! Do you know that?” she said, smiling up at him.
“Thanks – I think,” he said. “Anyway - when I did this, it turns out that the same handful of words are repeating over and over – much more that you'd expect from a random sampling of text.”
“Are they all from the same people?”
“No, that's just it, the same words are appearing in different tweets by different apparently unrelated people from around the world.”
“So what are the words?”
“Okay, so based on the ranking and of course taking out all the common prepositions, conjunctions and whatnot, we have: Doug – sentient – beings – Universe - connected – emergent – collective - consciousness – Zone - Dream – experience – knowledge - Peter – Isabelle – new – life.”
“Looks like some sort of geeky message from Peter to you.”
“If it is, then it's a bloody long-winded way to do it, when he could have just picked up the phone – and besides, it looks very similar to his earlier theory-of-everything rants – you know - that every part of the Universe is connected to every other, and that our brains are all somehow connected together too. That's how he reckons he was able to read your mind the other week - remember?”
“Collective consciousness – that's kind of like group-think isn't it – Zeitgeist and all that? And Zone - Dream must refer to Dream-Zone.”
“Yeah – I suppose so,” he said, staring at the list again and starting to feel tired.
“So what's the message – that all sentient beings in the Universe are connected to an emergent collective consciousness?” she asked.
“And Dream-Zone lets you experience that – and gives you knowledge – I don't know – something like that.”
“And there are no clues in Peter's own tweets?”
“No, he hasn't logged on for ages now. The last message was over a week ago when he told me to destroy Dream-Zone. I haven't heard from him since – except this freaky collective consciousness message - if that's what it is.”
“Why don't you give him a call in the morning?”
“Yeah, I think I will. We haven't spoken since I told him about the seizures he was probably giving himself every time he ran Dream-Zone.”
“I remember – you said he didn't believe you.”
“More like he didn't really seem to care.”
“Well at least you warned him. Look, can we go to bed now?”
He shut the laptop and kissed her. “How could I ever refuse an offer like that?”
After breakfast, Doug phoned Peter's mobile. “He's still not answering!” he said, starting to roll his first cigarette of the day.
“Well, try his land-line.”
“I don't have the number.”
“You are hopeless sometimes,” she said, snatching the phone from his hand. “What's his surname?”
“Sawyer.”
“And he lives in Bracknell, right?”
Doug nodded. She dialled a few numbers. “Bracknell – Peter Sawyer” she said into the phone. “Yes – that'll be him – could you put me through? Thanks!” She handed back the phone. “It's ringing!” she said with an air of smugness.
“Okay, smart-arse,” he said, putting it to his ear.
“Hello, this is Abigail.”
“Erm – hi, could I speak to Peter please?” said Doug.
There was pause. “Who is this, please?”
“It's Doug Richards, I'm a student at the University of Essex. Peter and I have been exchanging emails - I just have a couple of questions for him if that's all right.”
There was another pause – longer this time. “This is his wife Abigail. Peter is dead,” came the reply.
“Oh my God, I'm so sorry.” gasped Doug, “How did it happen?”
“It was – suicide – the funeral's this afternoon at two PM if you'd like to attend. It's at the crematorium.”
Nadia was looking at him with an expression of concern. “What is it?”
“He's dead! Killed himself.” He took the cigarette he had rolled and stepped out onto the balcony. Storm clouds were rolling in from the horizon over the castle, and there was a mugginess in the air which seemed to carry with it a sense of anticipation and foreboding.
Nadia's arms wrapped around his waist from behind and she leant her chin on his shoulder. “Promise me you'll do as he said and destroy that thing before it does any more harm,” she whispered.
He studied his unlit cigarette for a few seconds, and then crushed it in his hand. “I just don't get it! Everyone who experiences Dream-Zone seems to think it's the most amazing thing, and then all of a sudden, they go and kill themselves.”
“We know it screws with your head – all those seizures can't be good for anyone. Maybe it just reaches a point where the good experiences suddenly turn bad.”
“But then you'd just stop using it.”
“Maybe you can't – maybe it's like a drug, and you have to keep going back for more fixes until you can't stand it any longer.”
Doug was pensive for a moment. “Listen I know it's quite a long way, but do you think we could make it to the funeral? It's this afternoon at two.”
Nadia looked at her watch. “We should be able to do that, if we leave within the next hour. Bracknell's what – a couple of hours drive from here?”
“The way you drive – probably less,” he said with a grin.
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-l
ights 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 fantas
tic 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 –
What next?
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.
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