Two Old Farts

By Doug Young

Two Old Farts is the story of two retired friends. While browsing the internet, Frank and Jack hear the most senior military general in North Korea present a plan to his premier for a war of retribution for Japan's attack on Korea in 1905.

 

Having been born in the 1930s, our friends are aware of the hot and cold wars that plagued the 20th century. Not letting age hold them back, they engage a stockbroker to run a cover business to fund their covert spying on North Korea. With the aid of a Kirlian camera, this little band of conspirators are the only people who can prevent World War III.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Doug Young
• Release date: Jul 2, 2023
• ISBN: 9781923061187

Book preview

Chapter 1:

Friendships Renewed

Sunday 1 May 2011–Tuesday 3 May 2011

As friends, we went back over forty years. Our friendship began when Jack Swan and I met for a week-ending drink every Friday night near the fireplace in the bar of the Formby Hotel in Devonport, Tasmania.

Over the years, we had many contacts, both socially and in business. We were never remarkably close as friendships go, but all requests from one to the other were always met with sincerity, and confidences were always honoured. Mutual respect had developed between us, and for this reason, if I were to choose one person in the world to trust, it had to be Jack.

But now, I had stumbled onto a discovery that many people and organisations would kill for. I picked up my smartphone. I will tell him I have finished my accountancy package, I thought. That will fetch him.

‘It’s Frank Elliot calling, Jack.’

‘What’s new, Frank?’ Jack asked.

‘I’ve finished my package at last,’ I said.

‘I’ve got to see this,’ Jack replied. ‘Is the bed free?’

‘It’s free,’ I answered and pressed the ‘end call’ button, not daring to discuss my discovery on the phone.

After my phone rang out twice, the email ringtone alerted me to Jack’s response.

Claire and I will arrive tomorrow (Friday) around 3 pm. We must leave on Sunday by ten to be on time for our next booking in Mackay. We will be holidaying with our daughter, Monica, and her family in Cairns until the twelfth of September.

I felt a grin spread across my face as I read Jack’s email. I knew he would take the bait, I thought.

I printed a copy of the email for Helen; she would start preparing for our visitors and invite the rest of our family for dinner on Friday night. Then, I returned to my computer to prepare for the demonstration I would give Jack on Saturday. I knew there would be no opportunity to discuss what I had found or show him anything on Friday night. On Saturday morning, I’d take him for a walk on a secluded part of the beach at the Southport Spit and explain what I had found before bringing him home to see the proof on my computer.

Claire and Jack retired in 1978 and activated their plan to move from Devonport to the mainland. They had five children, and as each completed their education, they had moved interstate or overseas for employment or higher education. Claire and Jack sold their property before the 1982 recession hit. With one daughter living in Melbourne, a son in Canberra, one of the twin girls in Cairns, the other in Sydney, and their oldest daughter in London, they could visit the Australian-based families more frequently without crossing Bass Straight on the vehicular ferry. They settled in Albury and travelled frequently.

For Helen and me, it was quite different. We were manufacturing and marketing my first accounting package. It was the early days of desktop computing for small to medium-sized businesses (SMEs). Computers and printers were very expensive and primitive, with small operating systems and limited storage. Potential customers were hesitant to fund new machines as everyone knew that interest rates were rising and another recession was coming. When the 1982 recession reached Australia, the bank called in our loans. We lost our printery, home, and car but came out with sufficient funds to move our furniture, personal effects, and our son, Bob, to rented premises on the Queensland Gold Coast. Bob set up a printery to produce the training manuals for our computer packages and business simulations for schools and colleges. Our youngest daughter Annie, with three children and husband Richard, joined us three months later, and our oldest daughter Jane did the marketing from her base in Sydney. Richard worked with Bob in his printery, and now, thirty years later, I am confident I have the best accountancy package in the world. I’ll be looking forward to hearing Jack’s comments on Saturday. I’m sure he believes ‘the package’ would never be finished.

The last time Jack and Claire visited us was the previous August. Then, I was sitting up in the hospital, full of cheek, the day after surgery to remove a brain tumour the size of a cake of bath soap. No cancers were found, but the tumour had been growing over many years and was found when it induced epileptic fits. The surgeon explained that the epilepsy would fade away within a few months, and so it had.

****

On Saturday morning, Jack and I took a walk along a deserted stretch of beach on the Southport Spit. I chose the spot deliberately. It was one of the few locations on the Gold Coast not overlooked by high rise unit blocks, and it would be unlikely for us to be overheard.

‘Before we leave the car, Jack, I suggest you roll up your trouser cuffs,’ I said. ‘Then, we’ll take the walking sticks that I had made up to support us when walking on the sand. They have a flat piece of metal sixty mils by forty mils instead of the customary rubber-tipped point. The tide is going out, so we won’t have to dodge the incoming waves or get splashed. I often come to this strip of sand when I have a knotty problem to solve.’

We started out, looking like any two old farts out for a breath of fresh sea air.

Jack was first to speak. ‘What’s this about completing your accounting package?’ he asked. ‘And why the secrecy?’

‘It’s finished because, although it’s the best accounting package in the world, I have declared it obsolete,’ I replied.

‘That doesn’t make much sense,’ Jack was quick to pick up my illogical statement. ‘If it’s the best, how can it be obsolete. Are all of the other packages out there obsolete too?’ Jack asked.

‘Of course,’ I replied. ‘That’s where the secrecy comes in. But, you see, the other software houses, banks, governments, and academics don’t know it yet; the economic system they subscribe to is at the point of total collapse. It cannot be saved. It is obsolete!’ I emphasised the point with a wave of my stick in the air.

‘Surely that’s a bit drastic, Jack said. ‘There have always been booms and busts, and the world has always recovered. It is doing so again, although Europe seems to be a bit of a problem.’

‘I think you will agree that our economic system depends on continuous growth, but continuous growth cannot be sustained. Even if the yearly growth rate is incredibly low, it’s still a geometric progression. Even the greatest forest trees age and die. Great companies and institutions also age and die—and great civilisations. Now, our economic system is terminally ill and will soon be entering its death throes.’

‘But isn’t it true in business that if you are not going ahead, not growing, then you are going backwards?’ Jack stated.

‘That is generally accepted but without a continually growing pool of customers. The only way for a business to grow is to take customers away from others.’

‘Sure, that’s called competition—the backbone of the free enterprise system,’ Jack said enthusiastically. ‘The best products and services thrive while the inferior ones go broke. It also helps keep prices down as the business that has the greater volume can usually be more efficient, sell cheaper, and attract more customers.’

‘I think you have been brainwashed on that one, Jack,’ I argued. ‘There are many fairly priced locally manufactured products that have been forced out of business by competition from lower-priced, inferior-quality imported items. But this is a minor symptom of the incurable disease. Those we elect to govern us are not concerned about individual businesses that fail. As long as they can point to growth in the GDP and say, All is well, our economy is growing. What they don’t realise is that the growth they insist upon is the cause of the inevitable crash.’

‘Why?’ Jack asked.

‘You have heard the folktale of the grains of rice on the chessboard?’ I asked.

‘Not that I remember,’ Jack replied.

‘Briefly, it goes like this,’ I said. ‘A courtier designed the game of chess complete with the sixty-four square board, with each square alternating black or white. There were thirty-two ivory pieces, sixteen black and sixteen white; these were arranged as two armies facing each other across the board. There were eight foot-soldiers on each side. These he named pawns and eight other pieces with nobles’ names. The pawns begin the game lined up in front of the other pieces of the same colour and can make their first move by going one or two squares forward. After that, they can only move one square at a time and capture an opposing piece by moving diagonally, but if they reach the last square of the opposing line, they can transform into any other piece except the king. Each other piece has its means of moving and capturing an opposing piece. The game ends when the king of the opposing side is captured.’

‘Yes, I can play chess, but why is this important?’ Jack asked.

‘In the story, the king was so delighted with the courtier’s gift that he offered him any reward he might ask. So, the courtier asked for one grain of rice for the first square and double the quantity on the previous square for each following square on the board. When the treasurer informed the king that there was not enough rice in all the granaries in the kingdom, and never would be, the king probably had the courtier’s head chopped off for being a smartass.’ I laughed until I coughed.

‘What does that have to do with it?’ Jack asked.

‘Everything, actually. It’s the fundamental principle operating behind who we are, what we do, and what is around us.’

‘I don’t get it,’ Jack replied.

‘I’ll give you two basic examples. Firstly, all living creatures begin life as a single fertilised cell and begin a process of division. They soon become two cells, four cells, eight cells, and so on—just like grains of rice added across the chessboard. In the case of us humans, by the time we have grown to about one trillion cells, it is time to be expelled from the womb to allow our continuing growth to maturity.’

‘That sounds reasonable,’ Jack agreed.

‘This is the total of the first thirty-two squares on our chessboard,’ I continued.

‘I would never dream that a newborn would contain so many cells.’ Jack was amazed.

‘Of course, they are minute cells at this stage, but they contain all the ingredients to grow into a fully functioning adult. If we roughly equate this with the average gestation period, we can see that the cells in our embryo have doubled each week. Our infant now moves into a growth stage until about twenty-one years old. It now comprises one hundred trillion cells. Seven doublings of cells have occurred. The rate of doubling has slowed from weekly in the womb to once every three years. Still, the number of cells has increased one hundred times. Indeed, a dramatic feat—’

‘I’ve never thought of it like that,’ Jack interrupted. ‘I’d like to check your figures, though, when we get back.’

‘Sure, unlike the king in the tale, I’ve got Excel on my computer,’ I replied.

‘What’s your second example?’ Jack asked.

‘Let’s look at the population as a whole. Let’s say that modern man had developed fifty thousand years ago—although Homo sapiens is believed to have been established in Africa over three hundred thousand years.’

‘When did life on Earth begin?’ Jack asked.

‘I don’t think anybody has the answer to that question, Jack,’ I replied. ‘It must have taken several billion years for communities of earlier hominids to develop. ‘Experts generally agree that the world population reached one billion in 1800, placing the world population on square thirty, having taken fifty thousand years to get there.

‘The population exceeded two billion in 1930, moving us to square thirty-one on our chessboard of life.

‘The population had doubled in a mere one hundred and thirty years. The population exceeded four billion in 1974, moving us to square thirty-two. The population had doubled in only forty-four years. We now move out of the bottom half of the board into the top half. This has a significance of its own which we can discuss later.

‘The United Nations Population Division’s date when our population reached seven billion was 31 October 2011; after that, all is conjecture. However, the population will undoubtedly complete square thirty-four and reach eight billion people by 2025, a date not too far into the future. It will be on target to reach sixteen billion by 2075.’

‘Well, we won’t be here for that one even if we do make it to the end of square thirty-four,’ Jack remarked. ‘What’s the point of all this?’

‘The point is, my friend, we are facing a disaster,’ I said. ‘Humans, animals, birds, and fishes are designed to come forth from the womb or break the eggshell and begin the next stage in their growth to maturity. They then know at which square on the chessboard they are to stop the growth stage and go into the repair and replacement process for the rest of their lives. Some, of course, particularly humans, can exercise their own free will and force further growth to their own detriment.’

‘How do we do that?’ Jack asked.

‘By eating the wrong foods or too much, drinking too much, and not exercising,’ I explained.

‘I know I’ve put on a bit around the middle, but I’m not obese, and Claire and I have regular check-ups with our family doctor,’ Jack replied defensively.

‘I wasn’t being personal, Jack,’ I said. ‘You look no different to me.

‘The population as a whole has no built-in mechanism that says: stop the growth, go into replacement mode, and only produce young to replace the dying.

‘The point I am making is that there is smart growth where the system knows when to stop and the not so smart growth where the system keeps on doubling up to its inevitable destruction. Like the world population, the world economy is in the not so smart category.’

‘That may be so, but I can’t see what we can do about it,’ Jack stated.

‘We can do everything about it,’ I began. ‘We can instigate a New World Order.’

‘You haven’t become a conspiracy theory freak, have you, Frank?’ Jack asked.

‘Not at all, Jack,’ I replied. ‘The NWO that everyone fears is what we already have.’

‘What do you mean?’ Jack asked.

‘A small clique at the head of the food chain decides everything.’

‘Organised crime, yes, but I’ve never heard of a worldwide clique?’ Jack stated.

‘You won’t, Jack,’ I replied. ‘They guard their privacy and anonymity above all else. They decide where wars will be fought, who will be allowed to govern, who will be fed, housed, or receive medical aid, and who will be educated.’

‘We have government departments that control these things, Frank,’ Jack replied with a hint of disbelief in his voice.

‘It goes much further, Jack,’ I replied, letting Jack see that I was serious about what I was saying. ‘They also direct what an ounce of gold is worth today and the exchange rate of every currency.’

‘There is even more government control of the money, Frank,’ Jack persisted.

I ignored Jack’s interruption and continued.

‘They determine who can borrow and what interest will be paid on borrowings,’ I said. ‘Then they vary the interest over the life of the loan to suit their ends.’

‘Finally, they reach out into the future, putting a price on everything from currencies, oil, corn, cotton, pork bellies, water, and the right to pollute the atmosphere. Then, to add insult to injury, they invite anyone with dollars to invest; from the so-called mum and dad investors up to the superannuation, pension, and investment funds, local councils, and governments to come into their glittering casino and play. Instead of offering roulette, baccarat, dice, or poker machines, they offer the stock market, bond market, money market, and futures market. Like all good casinos, the house never loses.’

‘Frank, every country has controlling bodies supervising their banks and treasuries, and then there is The International Monetary Fund and World Bank,’ Jack said. ‘Aren’t you getting a bit out of your depth here?’

‘Not at all,’ I replied. ‘Since I retired, I have had ten years to study what’s going on in the world.’

‘You said that there was a small clique that runs this casino,’ Jack said. ‘Who are they?’

‘Some of the very rich are the living descendants of royalty and adventurers whose fortune was plundered from the New World in the Middle Ages,’ I explained. ‘Others amassed their wealth from the wars fought across Europe and the Middle East for centuries. A relatively recent development has been the creation of billionaires by floating social media and information technology companies.’

‘By the look of things, one could do nicely investing in space right now,’ Jack contributed.

‘The financial markets can be seen as the clique’s professional face, but they do not stop there,’ I continued. ‘They are well represented in controlling what we might call the blue-collar trades of wealth and power. The drug trade, the arms trade, the slave trade, the porn trade, the spy trade, and the stand-over trade all answer to them.’

‘I don’t see what we can do about all this,’ Jack remarked. ‘I know it’s a pretty grim situation out there, but it’s beyond our power to do anything about it.’

‘No, it’s not,’ I quickly responded. ‘I have found a way to make it happen and to do it quickly.’

‘How?’ Jack asked.

‘First of all, what I want to tell you could threaten yours, mine, and our loved one’s lives.’

‘What could be that dramatic at our age?’ Jack asked.

‘I’m serious. I believe that I am the only person in the world in possession of certain knowledge. The knowledge that more than one person or organisation would willingly kill for. That’s why I suggested our stroll along this stretch of beach,’ I continued. ‘No high-rise units with balconies to place a camera or long-range listening device. The only concern would be a spy satellite passing overhead. Besides, the waves are noisy today, so that will be a help.’

My God, he’s flipped, thought Jack. The brain tumour and epilepsy have been too much for him. Jack had heard of cases where altered personalities had occurred after these operations even though the patient’s physical appearance and functioning had recovered. So, he must have some sort of paranoia.

Instead, he asked, ‘What can be so important? Why you? Why me?’

‘That’s three questions,’ I said. ‘I’ll answer the last two, and then you can decide whether you want to hear the answer to the first.’

‘In answer to the why you? It came to me accidentally. At the time, I was recuperating and had time on my hands. I was playing around with a Kirlian camera.’

‘What’s a Kirlian camera?’ Jack interrupted.

‘It’s a form of photography discovered by Semyonov Kirlian in 1939. It captures on film the electrical energy given off by living things. These images appear as an aura around the subject. Just if you thought I had lost my marbles, what I have to say is a scientific fact—no dreams, no trance, no clairvoyance. Remember, you used to say, Don’t tell them, show them? I’ll show you when we get home.’

‘I asked why me?’ Jack asked again.

‘That’s simple. I trust you, and I know you’ll keep me on the straight and narrow. I’ve had the information for two months and haven’t even dared tell Helen or anyone in my family. As to why I am telling you? I need your help in deciding what to do. It must not get into the wrong hands. So, I will tell you one crucial part of the information. Now, on your agreement that if you don’t want to know more, you will keep this minor bit secret, and we will skip the demonstration.’

‘Okay,’ Jack replied. ‘Tell me more.’ Jack knew he would keep an old friend’s secret to the grave, if necessary, even if it were only a hallucination.

‘To stop the clique that rule governments and global corporations from the shadows requires two things to happen at the same time,’ I stated. ‘The first is to make money obsolete; the second is to give every adult a direct vote on all matters of importance.’

‘How do you think you can do that?’ Jack asked.

‘That will become clear when you see my demonstration. I stumbled upon this knowledge when I connected the Kirlian camera to a USB port on my computer. It was rather frightening at first to see faint rays of shimmering colours reaching out from around my body.

‘On the first occasion that I made this connection, I was too surprised to realise the significance of what I was doing. I then thought I’d call Helen to come and see what was on the screen, and immediately the screen changed to show her sitting at the table in the breakfast room reading the newspaper. I stopped calling her as I didn’t want to spook her with something I failed to understand myself; instead, I thought back over my life, and each time I thought of a particular person, event, or time, the screen painted that scene.

‘I could hear the words being spoken and see the expressions on people’s faces together with the rays of light emanating from their bodies. Several times I realised that what was being said were the actual words used at the time and sometimes quite different from what I had remembered of the occasion.

‘An hour passed as I looked back on some occasions where I was made a fool of or taken advantage of. Other scenes were fantastic to see. I thought of Edgar Cayce, and straight away, the screen showed Cayce lying on his sofa asleep but dictating answers to the questions posed in a letter from which his wife was reading.’

‘Who is Cayce?’ Jack asked.

‘Edgar Cayce was born in Kentucky in 1877 and died in Virginia Beach, Virginia, in 1945. He was known as the sleeping prophet as he would go into a trance state and dictate replies to letters from people seeking help, usually for health matters.

‘Fortunately, his answers were taken down in shorthand, and he had no knowledge of what he had dictated until they were read back to him. He explained that his answers were coming from the Akashic Records and other mystic sources. He has been thoroughly investigated, and although he didn’t publish a book himself, there have been many investigations and publications about his life.

‘At this point, I realised that I had accessed the Akashic Records.’ I paused.

‘Hold on, what’s Akashic Records?’ Jack asked.

‘It is an accurate record with no operator error and no chance of misinterpretation. No editing of the past or re-writing of history is possible. Remarkably, this source of knowledge has been discussed in all ages, down to the present. You could say it has been hidden in plain sight—however, it is invisible to our senses’ normal spectrum.

‘These records are said to contain the life story of all who have ever lived. I’m sure you would find a quick search on Google for Akashic Records remarkably interesting. You could think of your Akashic Records as being the backup copy of every second of your life to date.

‘Every sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch that you have experienced are all there. Every thought you have had and every word you have spoken are locked away for eternity. Everyone has heard the drowning man story where his life flashed by him in a matter of seconds. Well, that was his Akashic Records doing a rapid replay.’

‘You believe this stuff?’ Jack asked. ‘It sounds a bit far-fetched to me; incredulous, in fact.’

‘Sure, and I’ll show you when we get home,’ I replied confidently.

‘It is the only true database of everyone’s past, right up to the present millisecond.’ I took a breath and continued. ‘I said locked away for no aspect of the Akashic Records can be changed. It doesn’t matter one little bit how much we regret or apologise for some past action; it can never be undone or taken back. Similarly, no event in the future can be foretold.

‘The future for all of us consists of probabilities and many possibilities. They come into reality as we exercise our free will. No-one can say that any event will happen on any date or time in the future. Nobody, not even yourself, knows how you will exercise your own free will from instant to instant.

‘For example, you could well say that I am talking rubbish, turn around, and walk back to the car. What the best of the psychics do is to access the most likely thing to occur, but no-one can anticipate another person’s free will.’

‘Is this the "Book of Life"?’ Jack asked.

‘Some call it that,’ I replied. ‘Can you imagine what uses this technology could be put to and how any one person or group might kill to control it?’

Jack thought for a moment before replying.

‘Frankly, no; I don’t understand this aura business or what use it is to anyone other than the psychics.’

‘Well, it gives me access to every truth and every lie,’ I confirmed.

‘Tell me again what the Akashic Records do,’ Jack said.

‘As far as I can see, it doesn’t do anything,’ I answered. ‘But passively and without any sense of judgement, it records everything we humans and nature put out in our auras—every deed, every thought. The aura is the pen—or perhaps a multicoloured paintbrush would be a better description—which writes our entries in the Akashic Records.’

‘Remarkably, more than fourteen thousand of Edgar Cayce’s readings are held by the Association for Research and Enlightenment (ARE) in Virginia Beach, USA and are still used to help people today. Apparently, there were about eight thousand other readings that he had given before they were systematically recorded. The point here is that Cayce was using these powers that I have now found in a more personal way. He often referred to being handed a book on the person’s life for whom he was doing a reading.’

‘The book must be pretty full by now,’ Jack remarked.

‘Some speak of it as a book—probably to make it more understandable for their listeners. Book of Remembrance, The Hall of Records, and other similar expressions.’

‘It seems very complicated,’ Jack said as he paused to have a rest.

‘I like to think of it as the ultimate computer database with unlimited capacity but no more physical being than a photon of light. The modern supercomputer shows that such a concept is feasible. One tiny USB stick can now hold more data than the combined capacity of all the computer systems I have ever worked on. We already transmit data wirelessly as words and figures, moving film and photographs in colour, money transfers, and mail. All of these things are hints as to what is possible.

‘For me, the Akashic Records is not something mystic that resides out there somewhere, but a database of vibrations that rides along and around us all. In my Akashic spreadsheet, we each have a column that identifies us uniquely. In this spreadsheet, rows are added by the millisecond, recording each thought and everything sensed around us and everybody else.

‘For the future, our column is divided into two. One half contains the probable events that we are most likely to meet based on our inheritance. The second contains the possible events we could choose to undertake, exercising our free will. As each millisecond passes, our choice between probable and possible events crystallises as our cast in stone unchangeable past.

‘No matter how we might excuse ourselves, blame our circumstances, or blame others, that’s it. It’s written for all time.’

‘Okay,’ Jack spoke when I drew breath. ‘You mentioned we’re born with inheritances. Where do they come from?’

‘Naturally, a significant chunk of our inheritance comes in our DNA; some would say all of it,’ I replied. ‘Like Edgar Cayce and most people worldwide, others believe that we have many past lives, and some of our past skills, prejudices, and beliefs are remembered in this life. Some call this karma.’

‘What happens when we die?’ Jack asked.

‘In computer science, it doesn’t make any sense to delete a record. Every other record in the system is related to it. It is the same in the Akashic Records; every record in this vast database is related to every other record. Deleting it on death or dropping it from the live records robs all the other records of the ability to access any of the data in the deceased person’s life.

‘Computer systems don’t work that way. Our biggest and most powerful computer systems with massive databases are a primitive version of the Akashic Records. It also opens other things to speculate about. You have heard scientists speak of the possibility of parallel universes existing in the cosmos?’

‘Yes, we’ve seen a couple of good movies on that theme,’ Jack said.

‘What if on death, the spirit—or whatever you consider is the you in you, apart from your physical body—instantly started pulsing in another universe,’ I said.

‘And what if sometime in the future, that spirit or soul or energy came back to this universe. It would want to pick up its flatlining record from the past. That would explain where child prodigies and geniuses come from as they are now accessing their past life memories from the flatline record they have revived.

‘I remember three children from one family from my primary school days who were brilliant violinists. I learned to play the violin for four years in high school and know how difficult it is to play this instrument unless you are born to it.’

‘I’ve experienced the same problem,’ Jack admitted. ‘I wanted to play the trumpet like Louis Armstrong. I failed.’

‘Consider another example, I began. ‘The designer of my computer had access to the lives of all who had gone before him. He didn’t invent the QWERTY keyboard, the vacuum tube, the transistor, or the printed circuit. No person could construct one manually in many lifetimes or it would be at a prohibitive cost. My wireless keyboard, mouse, and USB receiver combined cost is only thirty-five dollars. It didn’t even need an instruction manual. It came with a piece of paper that indicated where to put the batteries.’

‘Yes, and every year or so, you throw them away and buy a new one,’ Jack added.

‘Okay, where were you on the night of 12 March last year?’ I asked.

‘I’d have to think about that one,’ Jack replied. ‘I know we were at your place on our trip north.’

‘Correct, but did you simply recall the fact or were you viewing a scene from that day. Like, who was there, what music was being played, what scents were in the air, what was being discussed?’

‘At first, I recalled the fact, but as you spoke, other details came into my memory. They were pretty fragmented though, like a series of photographs with fairly dark backgrounds.’

‘Right; my memories seem to be much like that also. After a while, they become difficult to recall at all. I read once that a patient was kept awake during a brain operation. The surgeon happened to touch an area in the brain, and the patient started to describe a past event in full detail as if it was happening in the present.’

‘Well, what does this mean?’ Jack asked.

‘In computer terms, if we deleted a person’s Akashic Records on death, nobody living in the present or future would know they had existed,’ I replied. ‘We would never have known about Plato, Socrates, Beethoven, Michelangelo, and their friends.

‘We carry around in our brains those memories which might be of use to us now. How to read and write, for example. When we stop using these, we lose them very slowly.

‘As a computer programmer, it doesn’t make sense to me to carry around in my head a video of everything we have ever heard or seen, particularly as much of what we see and hear makes a very slight impression on us, and we never intend to recall any of it in the future.

‘Just think of a passenger train with five hundred passengers on board. Only one record is needed to hold all the detail about the train—how many carriages, names of the crew, speed, location, destination, ETA, and how many passengers. Much of this information is of no interest to the individual passenger. Still, it is of use to someone, particularly if there happens to be a mishap. All that needs to be recorded in each passenger’s record is the identification number of the train. With so much of our brain given over to the motor skills, digestion, and senses’ functioning, it makes no sense for us to carry around information that exists elsewhere.’

‘Wow!’ Jack said. ‘What if only you see something of importance while looking out the window?’

‘It will have broadcast itself to the Akashic Records, Jack, even if I didn’t feel it important at the time,’ I replied.

‘Don’t go around telling everyone that they are a sending and receiving station to the universe, or you’ll get locked up,’ Jack replied.

‘I have no intention of talking about this to anyone,’ I stated. ‘You asked where all of this data was stored. From my reading, I believe that it travels along with all of us in real-time. There is no great computer database in the sky. It is travelling along with the energy that is us and around us. It might be simpler to say that it travels and resides in and with time. Much like the smartphone, it doesn’t store every fact or tune or scene that you ever access; it just goes back to the source and displays it again for you.’

‘That’s starting to make sense,’ Jack said. ‘After all, everything that we ever remember comes from the past, doesn’t it? We can’t remember the future, can we?’

‘No,’ I replied. ‘But it would be nice if we could preview our probabilities and possibilities and judge the relative merits and chances of success. Had enough for now?’

‘No!’ Jack replied. ‘Why is this knowledge so dangerous?’

‘That’s easy,’ I said. ‘Have you ever wondered what the truth was behind JFK’s assassination? What happened to the Beaumont children? What happened to Azaria Chamberlain? Peter Falconio? Or any other unsolved or not satisfactorily solved crime? Or did Shakespeare really write Shakespeare? Or the life of Christ? Or any other person or event in the history of life on Earth?

‘The answer to any of these questions could be dangerous knowledge to possess, let alone substantiate it. While billions of people would welcome the whole truth, it only takes one person or group who doesn’t want the truth known. They would go to any length to keep it hidden; they certainly wouldn’t flinch at murder.’

‘I am starting to get your drift,’ Jack replied.

‘Now is the time. If you agree to help me decide how this knowledge will be used, you will certainly keep what we are doing secret. In fact, it could be quite fun to outsmart some of the greedy and elite who control us now!’

‘Count me in,’ said Jack, not really understanding what he was getting into and thinking, Why not one last fling, one roll of the dice, before the end.

The two old farts continued to the car, deep in their thoughts.

****

‘Well, what do we do with this, whatever it is?’ Jack asked when we were back home and seated in front of my computer.

‘There are two options as I see it,’ I began. ‘We could set out to be the richest and most powerful two people who ever lived and control world affairs, or we could change the world for everyone.’

‘I don’t know about you, but I’m too old to be fussed about becoming the richest man in the cemetery, so it had better be option two,’ Jack decided.

‘That’s my view, too,’ I replied.

‘Where do we start?’ Jack asked.

‘The majority of people, businesses, organisations, and governments in the world are maxed out,’ I began. ‘Not just their credit cards but mortgages, car finance, and debt on all of the other toys that they have been convinced that they must have. We now have a situation where most people must curtail their spending because they can’t borrow more, and those with available funds curtail their spending because they are afraid of the future. If the consumers stop consuming, that alone is a trigger for disaster in this economic system.

‘Simultaneously, most developing countries—the so-called third world—are so poor that they wouldn’t know what maxed out was. The trouble now is that too many countries can’t borrow sufficient money to meet their needs. They struggle to pay interest on their existing debts and to make repayments when they become due. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the world economy is stuffed.’

‘That’s a bit drastic, isn’t it?’ Jack asked with some surprise.

‘No. The bubble is about to burst,’ I answered. ‘While the world has rushed forward into the twenty-first century, making brilliant advances in technology and the sciences, the world’s economies have struggled with a system based on values of thousands of years ago. Remember, even Jesus was reputed to have thrown the moneychangers out of the temple. Nothing has changed, except the moneychangers probably now own the temple.’

‘You think we can do anything about it?’ Jack asked, obviously believing that nothing we did would change anything.

‘Yes, we not only can but must,’ I replied. ‘With access to the Akashic Records, we should be able to pull it off.’

‘I know you were an accountant before you turned to programme, but that hardly qualifies you to design a worldwide economic system?’ Jack stated, surprised that I would make such a claim.

‘I don’t have to,’ I replied. ‘Buckminster Fuller—Bucky, to his friends—worked it out when he declared that we should all be considered multibillionaires. And that wealth can only increase. He stated that all we needed was a new accounting, and now with our latest technologies and access to the Akashic Records, it all becomes possible.’

‘But where do we start?’ Jack asked. ‘You’re not looking for a reshuffle of the money or going communistic, are you?’

‘Not at all,’ I replied. ‘All such ideas and ideologies are last century’s failures. Nature never goes backwards. But as I said, Bucky pointed the way forward. We only have to bring it about.’

‘I suppose you have some ideas on doing that?’ Jack asked.

‘Yes, I already mentioned that money was obsolete,’ I replied. ‘I’ll explain the reasons more fully later. It is enough, for now, to know that money is holding back progress and hastening us along the road to disaster. It is more important to show you what I have discovered before Helen and Claire get home from shopping.

‘My computer set up is nothing unusual. An ageing Toshiba Satellite Portable with a twenty-seven-inch ASUS screen attached, and an even older Sony Vaio with wireless broadband.’

‘Mine is much the same, except I have a desktop instead of a portable,’ Jack explained.

‘A Canon printer, copier, and scanner connected to the Sony complete my package,’ I said.

‘This is the Kirlian camera, Jack,’ I said, indicating a flat hand-shaped pad.

‘I’ve never seen one of them before,’ Jack remarked.

‘It is attached to the Toshiba by a USB cable. There is nothing on the Toshiba that connects it with anything else, nor is there one word of the project on paper anywhere.’

I unclipped the one terabyte flash drive from around my neck and slid it into a USB port on the Toshiba. A welcoming screen displayed showing 4D Future Accounting.

‘Is it all on that little thing?’ Jack asked, sounding as though he didn’t think it possible.

‘Marvellous how small they’re making these things nowadays,’ I replied, ignoring Jack’s comment. ‘What I’m going to show you is the first section of the work. Here we will be accounting for every person who ever lived on Earth: more than one hundred billion unique records.’

A typical login panel for the accounting package appeared with the usual username and password fields. I explained to Jack that anyone gaining access to this computer would only find the conventional accounting software. Digging deeper, they would also find the source code for the package and other everyday emails and transactions expected of the typical seventy-seven-year-old pensioner.

I ignored the conventional login and instead placed my hand on the sensor pad of the Kirlian camera. A new screen appeared on the Toshiba.

‘Did it read your fingerprints or handprint to give you access?’ Jack asked.

‘No, it read my aura,’ I replied. ‘This is the only login system that can’t be broken.

‘I am not really accessing this computer but using it to display on the screen what I want to see or learn from the Akashic Records.

‘The fields on the next screen are merely prompts I have programmed to make it easier for me to move about amongst the billions of records and the billions of years of life on Earth. Then, having logged on to my Akashic Record, I connect to the person or subject I hold in my mind. My aura transmits the request to my Akashic Records. It immediately picks