Networked: A gripping sci-fi thriller

by LK Chapman

  Most importantly, I could feel, dimly, as the contents of their minds changed. I could see now why we needed this. I could see that it made total sense, that for their minds to be so close it felt like their bodies needed to be that close. All the emotion, all the intimacy, all the connectedness that was growing between us needed an outlet, some way of expressing it that was beyond words. Soon I felt Dan begin to experience the bliss of being included and as his mind adjusted, so we all were brought higher, brought beyond any consideration of boundaries, of distance, of what was normal. We basked in the glow of togetherness, as our experience ceased to even be shaped in any usual way, not by time, not by worries, not by physical needs.

  The Presence kept pushing, and my nerves sang with an experience of transcendence so total and complete that it brought tears to my eyes, my skin prickled with goose bumps and I shivered uncontrollably. But then beyond my awareness of Lily and Dan’s minds, the Presence allowed me to have some experience of it, and I began to feel its content- an incredible wealth of information rushing past me, more knowledge than I could possibly comprehend. The Presence allowed me to reach towards the information, positively encouraged me, and I wanted it so much. But as I approached it, I realised how massive it was, a scale beyond anything I could imagine. In the face of such a quantity of data, of knowledge, I was filled with awe so intense that it frightened me, forcing me to drop to my knees on the grass, my forehead against the ground, hot tears on my face.

  ‘It’s okay,’ said the Presence in his eerie voice. As he spoke, I remembered that the Presence was Interface- that it had Interface’s voice, even though the voice was inside my head.

  ‘Please,’ he continued, ‘stand up.’

  The feelings of awe began to subside, and when I raised my head I saw that Lily and Dan were both struggling to their feet in a daze, and I realised they must both have dropped to their knees just as I had.

  ‘What was that?’ I asked Interface, not speaking out loud but within my mind.

  ‘That was the edge of the Network. I tried to give you as close as I currently can to an experience of it, but you can’t cope with it. To have continued any further would have caused irreparable damage.’

  ‘What is the Network?’ I asked, yet again.

  ‘It is what you witnessed. Information. Total openness and equality. An entirely decentralised system where all knowledge is freely shared.’

  It took a moment for this to really sink in, but if it was true, if that really was the nature of the Network, it sounded incredible.

  ‘Why couldn’t we cope with it?’ I asked, ‘why would it have hurt us?’

  ‘Why do you ask? Do you wish you could experience it further?’

  Now the feelings of awe, elevation and transcendence were fading I began to remember things. I remembered myself, who I was, and what Interface had threatened to have Dan and me do to Lily.

  ‘Please don’t base your opinion of me on that,’ Interface said, ‘I would hope that now you understand a little more of the Network you will choose to allow its research to continue because you want to, not because you fear it.’

  ‘Is your research about making us able to experience the Network?’

  ‘Potentially. But not exclusively. There is a way to go before we can hope to communicate directly, and you have little concept of our culture.’

  ‘I do understand it,’ I said, ‘I understand everything you said it was.’

  ‘Yes, but not nearly well enough. You don’t live that way yourselves. You’re too used to being separate.’

  ‘But I want to understand. I want to know what you are.’

  ‘I know. And possibly some day you will. After all, your minds, in the correct state, are theoretically compatible with the Network.’

  ‘Then what stops us?’

  ‘You do. You are used to the way you live now. That’s not a problem. I must admit I’m surprised how much you seem to enjoy aspects of the Network, how much you seem to want to be involved in it. Perhaps I can bring you closer, but not yet. For the moment you cannot hope to communicate with it directly. Only through me.’

  Chapter 28

  On the walk home I phoned mum to say we’d found Lily, and all through the conversation Lily looked painfully embarrassed.

  ‘She must think I’m a total fruitcake,’ Lily said the second I ended the call. ‘I was doing some seriously weird stuff.’

  ‘We’ve all done some weird stuff,’ Dan said. He’d been very quiet since all the things that happened at the top of the hill.

  ‘She thought you were high,’ I said.

  Lily groaned. ‘I feel awful,’ she said. ‘And the customers- we were talking to them about funeral flowers for God’s sake.’

  We were nearing the flat, and I noticed there was a man I didn’t recognise leaning casually against the wall. He was not much older than us, and tall and slim- almost gangly, dressed in smart dark-wash jeans and a check shirt. I realised immediately who he must be and what he wanted, and sure enough as soon as he spotted us he rushed over, very friendly and reasonable, offering us the chance to tell our side of the story over Affrayed’s controversy.

  ‘We don’t have anything to say,’ I said simply as I unlocked the door. He persisted for a while, then realised I was serious.

  ‘Well, if you change your mind,’ he said, trying to hand me his card.

  ‘We won’t,’ I said.

  Once we were inside, in privacy, it seemed like there were about a million things we needed to talk about, but nowhere to start.

  Lily drifted into the kitchen and opened the fridge-freezer next to my desk.

  ‘We need to go shopping,’ she said, as she rummaged around. ‘What do you want for dinner?’

  ‘Okay, I’m just going to say it,’ Dan said, ‘what the hell happened back there?’

  Lily closed the fridge, sat on the end of the desk, and started pulling at a loose black thread from the hem of her Winterbourne Flowers t-shirt.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said.

  ‘Well, we all felt the same thing, didn’t we?’ I asked, ‘all that information?’

  ‘Information?’ Lily asked, ‘what do you mean?’

  ‘The Network,’ I said, ‘it’s made of information. Interface said that to me himself. Couldn’t you feel it? It was... massive. Overwhelming.’

  ‘I felt utter trust and connectedness,’ Lily said, ‘and a sense of these... entities... but which knew each other inside out, and I thought it would be good to feel that way, to know everything about everyone, but when I tried to embrace it the scale was just too massive, the union so extreme. There were no... I don’t know. I just got the sense that there were no individuals, not really, no distinction, just everything as one, and it frightened me.’

  I turned to Dan. ‘So what did you feel?’ I asked.

  ‘It was...’ he looked down at the ground and rubbed the back of his neck. ‘It sounds pretty stupid,’ he said, ‘but I think it was beauty, and light and such intricate, complicated patterns. It was like this huge map of interconnectedness.’ He spread his arms wide to illustrate it. ‘Like, this massive landscape that went on and on and it was all sort of made of white light, yet there was detail, and I knew there was endless detail, that the whole thing, the system, whatever it was, was growing outwards, but also inwards, so that if you zoomed in on one particular part there’d be more and more, just endless complicated repetition. Like, you know, fractals? It was a bit like that. But it was like you both said, the scale was too much and I wanted to be a part of it but at the same time I was scared shitless.’

  ‘What are fractals?’ Lily asked.

  ‘It’s the same pattern over and over again,’ I said, ‘and the whole thing is made out of the same pattern, so that when you see one part close up, there’s more of the same. Lots of stuff in nature is like it.’

  ‘So we all experienced slightly different things,’ Lily said, ‘but they were all kind of on a similar theme, and all based around what we
seek from the world- knowledge and understanding for Nick, intimacy for me and beauty for Dan.’

  ‘Did Interface speak to you afterwards?’ I asked.

  They both nodded.

  ‘He told me that the Network is about information and connectedness,’ I explained, ‘about knowledge being shared with total openness. So I guess that kind of covers all the things you mentioned.’

  ‘I... I asked him about why he keeps making me and Lily do things,’ Dan said, ‘and he said that he doesn’t. He says it’s just a natural result of making us feel close like that. That it seems to be what we do in those conditions.’

  ‘He would say that.’

  Dan shrugged. ‘Yeah, well. Who the hell knows what he’s doing? If he is researching us, he’s never going to say what he’s really up to.’

  Almost unconsciously, I found myself sitting down next to Lily on the desk and making a show of putting my arm around her, but then I felt almost ashamed for doing so. In the cold light of day, of course I didn’t want her to kiss Dan. But it hadn’t been like that then. It had felt different, it had felt right. It had felt wonderful.

  ‘Maybe we should trust him,’ Lily said, ‘Interface, I mean.’

  ‘I can’t trust something I don’t understand,’ I said.

  She was looking down at her hands folded in her lap.

  ‘What is it, Lily?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, it’s just that... none of you are saying it but the Network, Interface. We all thought they were people. But, they’re not, are they? They can’t be.’

  She sounded like she knew something, like there was more to it.

  ‘Lily, what did you talk to Interface about afterwards?’

  ‘I asked him if he was human.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Well, he said no. So I asked him, I don’t know why, but I just asked if he had DNA. And he said no. So, I asked him if he was...’ she giggled nervously, ‘so, I asked him if he, if the Network, were aliens. And he didn’t seem able to give me a straight answer. He said that he supposed they were to us. But, I guess it’s just semantics. Anything can be “alien”, it’s subjective really.’

  ‘So they’re not human, they don’t have DNA and they may or may not be aliens,’ Dan said, with a look of utter disbelief at the words coming out of his mouth.

  ‘They’re not aliens,’ I said. I mean, there was no way. Sure, the Network was able to do incredible things, unimaginable things. But there would be an explanation, and the Network being aliens was not, could not be it.

  Chapter 29

  The next morning, I was stunned to find that when I went into the living room Dan was not only already up, but he’d gathered together all his belongings from where they’d been spread throughout the room and organised them into a few neat piles against the wall. I could actually see the floor in front of the TV again.

  ‘What’s all this?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m sorting my life out,’ he said. ‘I spent the last half hour booking property viewings. I’ve got four lined up today already.’

  ‘Nice,’ I said. ‘So you’re serious about not moving back home?’

  He shrugged. ‘It’s not my home anymore,’ he said, ‘besides, I’ve got to move on sometime, right?’

  He was almost so upbeat that I had the feeling he was putting it on. Then I realised he was still looking at me- that he expected an answer.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘I think it’s the right decision.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, nodding to himself distractedly. ‘Okay, well, the first one’s at ten, so I’m off.’

  He was just walking towards the door when I noticed a sheet of paper on the floor, half hidden under the sofa. It looked like a drawing.

  ‘What’s this?’ I said as I bent down to pick it up. It was a strange drawing. It was of a landscape, just fields, trees, all the usual things. But instead of being drawn normally all the objects were made up partly, or in some cases entirely, of tiny, laborious lines of ones and zeros.

  Dan took it out of my hand. ‘I drew it last night,’ he said. ‘That’s to say, in the middle of the night. I couldn’t get it out of my head.’ He screwed it up into a ball and tossed it onto the sofa without a second thought. ‘Well, I’ll see you later I guess.’

  Lily was still fast asleep when I went back into the bedroom, and I was going to leave her to it- she’d been so exhausted over the past couple of weeks that it was a relief to see her resting. But just as I was turning to leave something about her expression caught my eye and I sat down very gently on the bed to watch for a moment. I could tell from the way her eyelids were flickering that she was dreaming, and she looked incredibly relaxed, and healthy somehow. Her cheeks were rosy, the corners of her mouth turned up in a secretive little smile.

  After a few seconds she made a little noise of what sounded like pleasure and any thought I had of leaving her to it was gone as I became sure she was having a sex dream. She certainly looked like she was having a nice time inside her head. I sat completely still and silent, keen not to wake her. But suddenly, with a sharp intake of breath, her eyes opened and for a long while her gaze was fuzzy and unfocussed and she seemed completely at a loss as to where she was.

  ‘Lily?’ I said.

  She looked at me blankly, but then all of a sudden she was back and she smiled blissfully.

  ‘Nice dream?’ I asked.

  ‘Yeah,’ she breathed, ‘the best.’

  ‘What was it?’

  Instead of answering, she smiled mysteriously and rolled over onto her side, facing away from me.

  ‘Lily,’ I coaxed her, ‘you can’t say that and then not tell me what it was.’

  ‘Is Dan still asleep?’ she asked.

  ‘Don’t try to change the subject,’ I said, and I started to tickle her until she was shrieking with laughter and trying to slap my hands away. ‘Stop it!’ she said, ‘enough. Enough.’

  ‘Come on, Lily, tell me what you were dreaming about. I could do with something to take my mind off things.’

  Lily sat up and pulled the duvet round her shoulders, still smiling a little as she looked at me.

  ‘I can’t tell you,’ she said.

  ‘How come?’

  ‘It was a complicated dream. I need to think about it before I tell you.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said, and then I added teasingly, ‘must have been one hell of a sex dream.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Lily asked, startled, ‘I didn’t say it was about sex.’

  ‘Was it?’

  She smiled and pulled the duvet right up round her face until all I could see of her were two big eyes and a waterfall of hair. ‘Maybe,’ she said. Then she let the duvet drop a little. ‘So is Dan still asleep?’ she asked, ‘if he is, I thought maybe you and me could have a bath together, it’s ages since we did that.’

  I was slightly taken aback by the randomness of her suggestion, but I thought it might be quite nice, and at least she seemed happy, if a little distracted. ‘He’s gone out to look for a flat,’ I said.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘even better then.’

  …

  In the bath Lily lay against me, her head on my chest, her eyes closed, and she seemed about to go to sleep again. Even when I decided to cup her lovely soft breasts in my hands she barely stirred, and soon they started rising and falling more deeply as she drifted off into sleep. For a while I let her rest, but soon all my questions and confusion became too much and I needed to talk to her.

  ‘Lily, you don’t really think the Network could be aliens, do you?’ I asked as I busied myself trying to find a more comfortable place for my feet. In the end I managed to wedge one between the hot tap and the wall and hang the other over the side against the shower curtain.

  She gave a little start, and I realised that despite all my wriggling about she had stayed asleep. ‘Did you say something?’ she said.

  ‘I asked if you really think the Network could be aliens.’

  For a long while she was silent and I won
dered if she was drifting off again.

  ‘No,’ she said finally, ‘but I do have another idea.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I think... I think the Network might be God.’

  I was shocked.

  ‘God?’ I asked, ‘what on earth makes you say that?’

  ‘Well, because what happened yesterday, at the top of the hill, that was a spiritual experience. And the nature of the Network- connectedness, information, beauty. It just seems like... you know, like it’s something bigger than us. Wise, powerful.’

  ‘There’s connectedness, information and beauty in all sorts of things,’ I said, ‘much of it in things people make and do. It annoys me when people think things like that only come from God.’

  Lily began to try and move my hands, which I’d forgotten were still resting on her breasts. I let her push them away.

  ‘You can’t be touching me like that while we’re having this conversation,’ she said.

  ‘Why not?’ I asked.

  With some effort, Lily turned around in the bath and sat cross-legged in front of me.

  ‘It seems, I don’t know... disrespectful,’ she said.

  I laughed. ‘Because we’re talking about God?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, yeah,’ she said. She was looking down at her legs, but I could see she was smiling a little.

  ‘Should I go and get dressed before we carry on talking then?’ I teased her, ‘or is nudity okay? What do you think?’

  She laughed and flicked some water at me. ‘You’re awful!’ she said, ‘you’re going straight to hell, you know that?’

  I flicked her back. ‘Good,’ I said, ‘I’ll take you with me.’

  Lily quickly grew serious again.

  ‘Don’t you think it makes some sense?’ she asked.

  ‘Not really. I mean... well, no. It doesn’t make any sense to me at all.’ I was trying to be gentle. I didn’t want to crush her when she was expressing what she felt, but I certainly didn’t want to encourage her. Not in this.