The service was excellent and the food not at all
bad for an English restaurant, Isabelle thought, but they really could have
been anywhere, eating anything. Peter had finally emerged from the strange
little world that had rendered him so unbelievably obtuse of late. Throughout
the three courses, his loving gaze had scarcely strayed from her eyes, and his
hand reached across the table to hers at every available opportunity. At one
point, he had even cut up his food and picked up the fork in his right hand
like an American, just so he could continue holding her.
“You must really love me!” she had teased him. “I’ve never seen you abandon
your impeccable English table manners before.”
He had laughed heartily at this and leant across the table to kiss her, almost
knocking over the wine.
As they finished their desserts, the atmosphere
was heavy with anticipation.
“Some coffee or tea for you, Madam?” came the French accented voice of the
waiter.
“No – just the bill!” they had both said loudly and in unison, smiling
knowingly at one another. What followed was like a dream. Ascending the stairs,
hand in hand, as though carried along on a cushion of air, they found
themselves in the room, bound together in breathless desire. As clothes slipped
to the floor, and their naked flesh met for the first time, all the guilt,
hesitation, and uncertainty of their former encounters seemed replaced with the
remembered intimacy of long-parted lovers reuniting. She was about to make love
to her dead husband’s brother and yet, somehow, it felt right – more than right
– special in some way. Everything they had endured to this point, the sadness
and suffering, the laughter and lust, had been thrown into the melting pot, and
from this seething soup of emotion came a closeness she had never before
experienced.
For what seemed like hours, they explored each
other’s sultry forms through all available senses, sexual tension rising and
ebbing like the building swell of a tropical storm, until there was nothing
left but the ultimate expression of their love. Connected as if in mind as well
as body, they moved as one, thought as one, and loved as one. Isabelle’s pelvis
felt like a chamber of hot magma, slowly filling to unsustainable temperature
and pressure below the earth’s crust. Just as she was beginning to wonder how
much more she could take, the volcano erupted, and a tsunami of sensation
surged through her body, ripping all other thoughts asunder. A moment later,
Peter’s face contorted, as he released an explosive bellowing grunt of
satisfaction and collapsed on top of her, panting and murmuring sounds of
post-coital contentment. Isabelle closed her eyes, hugged him tightly, and for
the first time in many months, felt unreservedly happy.
She awoke the next morning to a new-found
optimism. Feeling as radiant as the early morning sun, streaming through the
curtains and setting the room aglow, she reached out across the bed to the man
who had brought her such joy and pleasure the night before. But her fingers
found nothing but ruffled sheets and duvet. She sat up drowsily, looking
towards the bathroom door, listening for sounds of movement. “Come back to
bed!” she moaned sleepily, “I’m missing you already!” She half closed her eyes,
lay back down and waited for a reply. Only the distant sound of birdsong broke
the silence. “Peter! Are you there?” She sat up again, and looked around the
room. Other than the depression in the bedding next to her, there were no signs
of his ever having been there. “Peter!” she called out again. Nothing. She
pulled herself reluctantly from the covers, crossed the room and pushed open
the bathroom door. The toilet seat was down, the basin clean, and her
toothpaste untouched. She returned to the bed and sat down feeling perplexed. Perhaps
he had been hungry and gone for some early breakfast. No, surely he would have
waited for her – or better still ordered room-service had he been that
desperate. Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted a flashing red light on
the phone next to the bed – it was the message light. She picked up the
receiver and called reception.
“Good morning madam, how can I be of assistance?”
“You have a message for me?”
“Let me see – ah yes, that’s right, the gentleman left you a note early this
morning, before he left. Would you like me to have it delivered to your room or
will you pick it up on your way down?”
“Please send it up, thank you.” She replaced the receiver and went into the
bathroom with a sickening feeling in the pit of her stomach. Had Peter
regretted their night together? Was that it? Having finally fulfilled his
fantasy, was he now going back to that miserable wife of his? Surely she hadn’t
misjudged him so spectacularly. Perhaps he just had a meeting scheduled –
something he had only remembered early this morning, and out of consideration
had decided not to wake her. That had to be it – surely.
There was a knock on the door and an envelope was
handed to her. She took a deep breath and opened it.
Dear
Isabelle,
Thank you for the most wonderful evening of my life.
I want you to know that I love you more than I have ever loved before, or will
ever love again.
I’m sorry that I must now leave you without saying goodbye. One day, I promise
you will understand. Last night, as I lay in the dark, listening to your
breathing, it all finally became clear. 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!
All my love
Peter.
Isabelle reread the note, running her fingertips
over the elegant script, as tears streamed down her cheeks. It looked like a
goodbye note, and yet the profession of love, and the promise to be always with
her, seemed to contradict that. But go where - and see what? Had he lost his
mind? She picked up the phone and dialled Peter’s mobile. Wherever he was, he
wasn’t picking up. She tried the home phone. Again there was no answer. The
note carried a finality which troubled her deeply. She was not ready to say
goodbye. No matter what he was going through, she wanted to be there to help
him through it. Wherever he was going, she wanted to come too. After so much
waiting, she wasn’t about to let him go this easily. She dressed quickly and
grabbed her car keys.
It was eight o’clock and the local rush-hour was
in full swing. Over-protective mothers, dolled up to the nines, were escorting
their precocious progeny the half-mile to school in giant, gas-guzzling
four-by-fours while their jaded executive husbands sat frustrated behind the
wheels of other shiny, yet stationary symbols of self-proclaimed status and
success. It was a strange and alien world to Isabelle, lacking the indomitable
vigour of a city like Paris, yet with none of the tranquillity of a rural
location. It seemed to be the worst of both worlds. She could certainly
understand why Peter so much enjoyed visiting Littlewick, although of course,
she hoped there was more to it than this.
Eventually breaking free from the automotive
assembly line that was the London road, she wove her way swiftly through the
sprawling network of roundabouts to Peter’s cul-de-sac. Parking in the empty
driveway, she got out and started to make her way to the front door. The sound of
an engine could be heard from within the garage. Perhaps he was just on his way
out, she thought, waiting for the door to open. But it remained closed. She
walked over and heaved on the latch. It moved a little and a cloud of exhaust
billowed out from the gap. Using both hands she hoisted the door all the way up
into the recess and looked with horror at the sight of a garden hose leading
from the exhaust pipe to the driver’s window. Taking a deep breath, she ran in
and pulled at the handle of the door. It was locked. She looked around and saw
a hammer on a bench at the back of the room. Gulping in a mouthful of the
noxious fumes, she went for the hammer, her eyes beginning to stream. She swung
wildly at the windows sending a hail of tiny glass fragments into the car’s
interior. Grappling with the lock, she sucked in another lung-full of the
choking cloud and wrenched open the door. Peter was motionless, his seat
reclined, his head lying comfortably against the rest with his eyes closed, as
though enjoying a peaceful nap. His cheeks were pink and flushed, giving him a
paradoxically healthy appearance. An open bottle of pills lay on the passenger
seat beside him. She switched off the engine and started to shake him violently
by the shoulders, yelling at the top of her voice. “Wake up! God damn it Peter,
don’t you dare do this to me!” His skin felt cool to the touch, but not
cold. She dragged him from the car and out into the driveway collapsing beside
him, coughing and spluttering. “Help me!” she wailed, feeling his neck for a
pulse and finding none. She held his nose and placed her mouth over his,
blowing hard and watching the rib-cage rise and fall. She repeated this several
times and then palpitated the chest as she had been shown in first aid classes
with the Saint John Ambulance. A young woman appeared from the house next door.
“Call an ambulance!” Isabelle shouted. “Now!”
The woman disappeared for a few minutes then re-emerged. “They’re on their
way!” she said.
Isabelle collapsed, distraught, onto Peter’s chest, fearing it was already too
late.
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.