No Going Back

By D. T. Adams

Has a photo ever ruined your life?

 

These days, it can happen to anyone. We live in a world where billions of photos are taken every day and loads of them end up online for anyone to see. Most are harmless. Some can have devastating effects and even wreak havoc on a person's life. 

 

Meet Brian Weathers, an anonymous writer whose books are quite popular. He could be famous if he wanted, but fame is something he's always avoided at all costs. All he wants is a quiet, private life where no one ever recognises him.

 

However, he's well aware of the staggering power a photo can have thanks to social media and the internet. He knows just a single photo can turn someone who's little known into someone famous. To protect himself against this, he publishes under a pen name and has only told close friends and family about his writing. He's never had the courage to step into the spotlight.

 

So what's going to happen when a photo threatens to reveal his identity and shatter his privacy? Is a crisis looming for him? Will he have a meltdown?

 

If you're after a modern-day The Catcher in the Rye, you'll enjoy No Going Back.

 

What disastrous effects can one photo have? Buy now and find out.

The sequel, My Time, is coming out in 2024.

• Language: English
• Publisher: D. T. Adams
• Release date: Oct 6, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215792629

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

THE NEXT BIG THING

My publisher told me my newest novel, The Purpose of Lost Life, was going to be my most successful one yet. It had a story that was going to excite the public. It was going to shake people’s thoughts and ideas up. It was going to be adored by the critics. It was going to ‘go viral’ and sell, sell, sell, possibly even smashing a record or two in the process. It was going to make me a very rich man indeed.

The publishing house was going to do one of its biggest ever advertising campaigns for my novel. The staff were going to dedicate a lot of time and energy to it because they truly believed it had the potential to become the next big thing. It was going to become one of those rare books that come along every once in a while and capture the public’s attention, dominate the media and have so much of a snowball effect that people eventually get sick of hearing about them. All I heard from my publisher was grand statements, ambitious predictions and talk of large amounts of money.

To be honest, I tuned out a bit because I was getting bored. My publisher had started repeating himself, which he often did. He was very much wrapped up in this fantasy world of his where The Purpose of Lost Life was indeed the next big thing. He was the happiest I’d ever seen him and was unable to stop pacing the room because he was that pleased. Then there was me, just sitting there watching him, with a sort of bland, nondescript look on my face, as was the norm – I was quite the stolid type. Even Selina, the intern who was shadowing my publisher for the day, looked as if she thought he was being a bit overzealous. She barely said a word – pretty much all I saw her do was sit there and make notes now and then.

My publisher looked more excited than I’d ever seen him look before. He was saying all these things with such certainty and conviction as if he was a hundred per cent sure my novel was going to be that successful. I didn’t blame him for sounding so excited – after all, if the novel turned out to be a big hit, he was going to benefit from it financially, just like I would. I knew he meant well, but I just couldn’t buy into this excessive optimism of his.

Of course, I wanted my books to sell well. I was a novelist by profession and I was well aware that my books had to sell quite a lot of copies if I was to continue making a living from writing. However, there was a huge part of me that felt nervous whenever things like sales and success were brought up in conversation.

You see, being a novelist involves putting your writing ‘out there’ for public consumption, so to speak. The problem these days is that simply making your writing public isn’t enough. Society seems to dictate that if you put something out there for public consumption, no matter what it is, you should also put yourself out there and make yourself public.

In other words, if you get a book published and it’s a success, you should be prepared to receive a certain amount of fame and recognition in return. Anyone who makes any sort of contribution to society should just expect to be singled out from the crowd and put on a pedestal for others to admire, respect and look up to.

But what if you don’t want that for yourself? What if you want to write books and remain completely and utterly anonymous? What if you want to continue making contributions without having any sort of fame or recognition come your way? What if you don’t want to fall in line with what society wants?

I had never wanted to become a celebrity or anything like that. I always thought that if you wanted to become famous you should, by all means, go out there and pursue fame to your heart’s content. But, if you didn’t want to become famous, you shouldn’t be forced into it, even if you happened to be really successful at whatever you did.

You might be wondering why I chose to become a novelist, putting things out there for the public when I was so averse to fame. Writing stories was what I loved doing the most and I always firmly believed that it was possible to go through life and avoid fame, no matter how much society wanted to force it on you. There were risks, of course, but I always took the right steps to protect my anonymity as much as I could. Some might think the steps I’d taken were a bit extreme, but you simply can’t afford to let your guard down these days.

I published all of my books under a pen name, of course. Even though lots of novelists use pen names and manage to avoid fame, I didn’t think that would be enough for me. When I was writing my first novel, I knew I had to do more than just hide behind a false name; I did everything possible to avoid one day becoming recognisable. I knew I would have to take lots of precautions, but they were necessary if I was going to be successful at writing novels while remaining just a face in the crowd. Come to think of it, I didn’t even want to be a face in the crowd; I wanted to be somewhere far away from crowds where I was free to relax and not worry about things.

Believe it if you will, not a single person at the publishing house, not even my publisher himself, knew what I really looked like. This was because whenever I went there, I always made an effort to disguise myself. For my very first meeting there, I wore large sunglasses, a hat and posh clothes, all of which I had bought the week earlier – each item I bought from a different shop, just to be on the safe side. I had also dyed my hair blonde and adopted a different accent from my own. I usually spoke in a standard, plain British accent, but whenever I was at the publishing house an old Scottish drawl would come out from somewhere.

After the first meeting was a success, I decided I’d use the same disguise every time I had another one there.

I remember my first meeting with my publisher and although I didn’t say much, he clearly thought I was odd; not that I cared. To be honest, I was just glad the meeting went well and that my publisher didn’t think my accent was fake or anything. Even though I would always rush in and out of the building as fast as I could – the less time I spent there, the better – sometimes I thought some of the people there gave me funny looks.

If anyone from the publishing house were to pass me in the street and I wasn’t in my posh disguise, they wouldn’t recognise me; I was certain of it. That was exactly how I always wanted it to be and thankfully, that was exactly how it was.

‘What do you think? Aren’t you excited?’ my publisher asked me, snapping me out of the dreamlike state I’d been in.

‘Well, I certainly hope it’s going to be a success. I’d be stupid not to want it to sell.’

‘You don’t seem that excited.’

‘Oh, I am.’ I was never the type to show my emotions. Tell me I’d won the lottery and you’d be lucky if I cracked a smile. I nearly always had a deadpan expression on my face. ‘You should know by now I don’t show my feelings.’ My publisher made an odd sort of facial gesture to indicate that he agreed.

The rest of the meeting was nothing special. I was never one to talk much at these things and that was mainly because my publisher would do most of the talking; I wasn’t the type to talk much at all, to be honest. Most of my words were written, not spoken – I was the complete opposite of a chatterbox – and I was more than happy with that.

There was an itch in my eye. It was annoying and wouldn’t go away. I lifted my sunglasses for the briefest of moments and sorted it out, then I realised I’d made a huge mistake. In lifting the sunglasses, I’d left my face exposed: my publisher or the intern could have easily seen what I actually looked like.

How could I have been so stupid and reckless? I felt panicked and alarmed. What if one of them had seen what I looked like? I cursed myself for being so irresponsible. I had to be constantly aware of things that could give me away. Just one little slip-up could have devastating consequences. Just one tiny, seemingly insignificant thing could result in huge changes to my life, changes I’d never wanted and would never willingly welcome.

I felt like a complete idiot for losing focus and lifting the sunglasses, even if it was just for something as trivial as itching my eye. It had been a moment of madness. I reminded myself then and there that I had to forever keep my guard up and couldn’t afford to make any more silly mistakes.

Luckily though, my publisher was in a world of his own still pacing the room, talking about the hoped-for success of The Purpose of Lost Life and the intern looked vacant as she wrote down her notes. Neither of them had seen me – I was saved! Panic over.

I watched them both for a few seconds and they just carried on as normal. I felt a huge surge of relief and started to relax as the feelings of worry and dread dissipated. That was one disaster I had managed to avoid, but I had to scold myself because it was a disaster I’d nearly caused all on my own.

What if one of them had seen me and could identify me? The thought of that was too awful to comprehend. If just one of them had seen me without the sunglasses on, who knew what events out of my control it could have triggered. I’d had a brief moment of complete and utter idiocy, but I was saved and I’d learnt a valuable lesson that I should have already learnt.

Thankfully, the meeting ended not long after my little slip-up of sorts. If my publisher hadn’t had a meeting with another novelist scheduled, I could have ended up sitting there all afternoon. I thanked my publisher, said goodbye to him and the intern and hastily made my way out of the building. I always felt a sense of freedom and joy whenever I left the publishing house and was out on the streets of London, for some reason.

Though I was always glad to be out of the publishing house and to have another meeting over and done with, I was never glad to find myself in London. The city was the complete antithesis of, well, me. It was far too busy and there were always far too many people constantly rushing to and fro at goodness only knows what speed. The way of life in that place was far too frenetic and chaotic for my liking. I much preferred the small town I lived in, which was about an hour away by train. Everything was much more laidback and the pace of life was slower and less stressful; it was ideal for me.

I only ever made the trek to London if I absolutely had to. You’re probably wondering why I would willingly ‘put myself out there’ (albeit in disguise) and travel to the city to speak with my publisher in person. Why didn’t I just restrict all contact with him to phone calls and emails? If I did, I wouldn’t have to go through the hassle of disguising myself every once in a while; it was only a few times a year, if that, but still.

You see, I didn’t want to miss out on real-world experiences, to a certain degree. I still wanted to interact with the world around me, even if that meant occasionally having to don some sort of disguise. As a novelist, I spent a considerable amount of my time staring at my laptop screen typing away. I guess you could call me a mouse potato. It’s quite a solitary and at times lonely profession. Being a novelist, you do miss out on human interaction a lot.

That was why whenever I was away from my laptop, I liked to make the most of chances to interact with the wider world. Though I guess you could say I was reclusive in some ways, I wasn’t entirely a recluse because I still embraced the fact there was a world all around me – I just knew I had to be a bit careful whenever I interacted with it.

I was quite a normal guy. At least, I considered myself to be somewhat normal. I had my writing career and lived by myself in a flat in my hometown. I had a few friends I’d known for years and well, that was it. I was just a plain Joe; quite demure a lot of the time and generally a bit of a boring, anodyne chap. All I wanted was to forever have a normal life. I was fairly happy with the life I had at this point in time and wanted it to continue as it was, me just doing my writing, seeing friends and family and maybe one day meeting a nice woman to marry and have kids with. Pretty normal aspirations, wouldn’t you agree?

Once at the train station, I went to a public bathroom and got changed out of my disguise. I took my backpack off and got out my crumpled-up day clothes to change into. I then left the cubicle looking like a different person: the posh clothes were gone, as were the sunglasses and the hat. My hair was still dyed blonde though. I would always use some cheap dye that would come out in just one wash. I would wash it out when I got back home.

My train was due to leave in about half an hour or so. I got something to eat from some overpriced cafe and sat down to indulge in one of my favourite hobbies: people-watching. I enjoyed it because it gave me lots of ideas for things like plot points and character development. It also helped me zone out of the real world and focus instead on the worlds I’d invented for my books.

I couldn’t afford to let myself get too carried away with it, though. This session would only be a brief one; sometimes I got so caught up in things that I ended up spending several hours wistfully watching people go by, those people perhaps becoming characters in my books, or making me think differently about characters I’d already created.

As I ate my sandwich, I watched as hundreds of people rushed all about, heading in this direction and that direction, with more and more people constantly pouring into the station. It was a never-ending stream of people, each one with some destination in mind, each one with somewhere to go. It was all too much for me. I could cope with these crowds once in a while, but not every day like these people.

Having said that, I did enjoy walking through crowds. The reason was that doing so was a sign that things were going right for me. If I could walk through a crowd of people – through the streets of London, for example – and not a single person recognised me, that was great because that was all I wanted.

Going forward in life, I wanted continued success as a novelist but also complete anonymity. I wanted to be financially comfortable with a decent enough bibliography, but at the same time, no fame or anything like that. I wanted the success, but not the recognition.

My hope was that in ten or twenty years, I’d be able to walk through the streets of London, or indeed the streets of anywhere in the world for that matter, and not a single person would recognise me. Every time I left my flat and ventured out, I felt satisfied and content that no one stopped me to ask me about my books. I hoped that it would always be like that. I couldn’t imagine how hard I would find it if people were capable of recognising me.

My books had sold fairly well, but I was far from a huge name in the world of novel writing; even if I had put myself out there, I doubted I’d get much recognition anyway. If I’d made myself known and my books had only sold a few hundred copies, I would still be worried that someone would recognise me, even though the chances of that happening would be incredibly slim.

The thing is, once you put yourself out there for whatever reason, there’s always a chance that someone somewhere will see your photo, then see you in person and recognise you. It all hinges on photos: all it takes is one single photo and you can go from being completely anonymous to someone people in the crowd can recognise. A single photo stood between my maintaining the life I wanted for myself and my having a life I’d never wanted for myself.

A lot of people these days don’t fully appreciate just how much power a single photo can have. It can transform you from a mere face in the crowd that no one notices, into someone everyone in the crowd looks up to, recognises and won’t forget or stop pestering.

The world today is a cruel place and thanks to the horror that is the internet, fame can come to anyone, even those who don’t want it. All it takes is one photo. Once there’s a photo of you out there that can be used to identify you, there’s a chance – albeit a very small one, but a chance, nonetheless – that someone will one day stop you in the street after having recognised you and ask you for a goddamn selfie or something like that. If there’s a photo of you online that identifies you in any way, you might as well wave goodbye to your privacy, your anonymity and your control over your life.

I may sound like I’m exaggerating, but what I’m saying is true, especially for people like me who have a legitimate reason to be famous. You see, society had a pedestal waiting for me to sit on because I’d written a few books that had been moderately successful. Society wanted to reward me with fame because of my success in writing, but I wouldn’t let that happen because that wasn’t what I wanted in my life.

Society was persistent; it was constantly importuning me to give in and put myself out there. The scary fact of the matter was that it could take just a single photo to make me famous and once you’re famous, once there’s a single identifying photo of you out there, that’s it: there’s no going back.

CHAPTER 2

THE INCIDENT ON THE TRAIN

I was soon on the train and had an hour to kill before I would arrive at my hometown. I usually read on trains, though if I happened to bag a window seat, I would spend most of the journey looking out of the window watching the world go by. This train was particularly crowded and the only seat I could get was one of those awful table ones designed for families. I was on the aisle sitting opposite some dishevelled-looking guy in his twenties in a suit, tapping furiously at his phone; next to him was a fancy, smartly dressed woman who was yakking away on her phone, occasionally breaking into a haughty laugh; next to me was a teenage boy, who had his music blaring, despite having earphones in. Quite the mix of people. This was going to be a fun train ride for me!

I didn’t need to rely on any sort of device to keep me occupied like these people. Each one of them seemed to be glued to their smartphone. Sadly, whenever the train pulled into a station, I would look and see that most of the passengers waiting to get on were also glued to their smartphones or tablets. It was a sad sign of the times, I thought.

People seem to rely on their phones and other devices far too much. Sure, smartphones are ‘smart’ and can do all manner of things, but having one is far from the be-all and end-all of life. The thing is, instead of using smartphones moderately, some people let them replace things that don’t need replacing at all. The more things you let a smartphone replace, the more you have to rely on this single device. They’re tools of such power yet in a way, they’re too powerful. They take over a person’s life and the sad thing is that a growing number of people seem to positively embrace them. It upsets me to think that there’s such a thing as smartphone addiction, it really does. Though to be honest, it doesn’t surprise me.

The way I see it, there are two worlds: the real world and the Second World. It’s a bit self-explanatory: the real world is the world we live in and interact with (obviously); the Second World is the world of the internet, the media and social media. You exist in the real world, but you can also have a Second World identity, i.e. profiles and accounts on different websites. The Second World is pretty much anything that’s put online: it’s photos and videos of people, things and events; it’s online news, blogs, vlogs and the like; it’s any form of media or any type of content that’s put online to be consumed and shared.

There used to be a time when there was just the real world, but then the Second World was gradually invented. Over time, it became so huge and important that an alarmingly large proportion of people have come to spend a significant amount of time in it. The people I saw at the train stations, for example. Most of them were staring at their smartphones, digesting Second World content, whether it was by scrolling through social media pages, reading news online or checking out photographs someone had sent them.

Every time someone uploads something online, whether it’s a photo, a video, a piece of writing or whatever, they make the Second World bigger, more important and more relevant. Its growth is exponential because people these days just blindly accept its presence; young people don’t know what life was like before the proliferation of the Second World, so they just take it for what it is. Older people know what things were like when there was only the real world, but sadly most of them have given in and continue to fuel its growth by uploading things to it of their own volition.

People seem to seek solace in the Second World. They seem to get more from it than they would from the real world. They would spend more time in it if they could, but they have real-world commitments holding them back. Very few people these days seem to favour the real world and its offerings; many apparently prefer the Second World and its digital, unreal offerings. As for me, I just impugned its very purpose and motivation.

The main reason that I was so indifferent to the Second World was that I knew it could have real-world consequences and that those consequences could be devastating. I was talking about myself, of course, and how someone could upload something to some social media site that could eventually result in my becoming famous.

If there was no Second World – no internet, no media, no social media – I would be safe. But because it existed, I’d had to take steps to protect myself and my anonymity. I couldn’t help but appreciate just how powerful the Second World was; it was something I had to always be aware of so I could prevent it from ruining my anonymity.

If someone took a photo of me and didn’t post it anywhere online, but instead printed it out, that wouldn’t be so much of a problem because I could simply snatch the photo from them and rip it up. Even if they stopped me and went on to display it somewhere, it probably wouldn’t have much of an effect at all. It would only be seen by people who were in the same place and the number of people who would take the time to look at the photo and memorise my face probably wouldn’t be that great.

On the other hand, if they uploaded it online, there was no telling what would happen. It could be seen by goodness knows how many people all over the world in an instant. If the photo was restricted to the real world, its visibility was also restricted – by that, I mean the number and range of people who could see it. If it was uploaded to the Second World, it was significantly less restricted, to the point where it could potentially be seen by hundreds or even thousands of people, or even tens or hundreds of thousands, or even millions.

That was what I found so terrifying about the Second World, the sheer power of it combined with its unpredictability. You could never accurately predict exactly what content would become popular in the Second World and what wouldn’t. If there was an identifying photo of me in the Second World, the chances of it becoming popular or going viral and doing irreparable damage were incredibly slim given the sheer volume of other pieces of internet content. But still, the possibility remained and that to me was a horrifying prospect.

I bring this up because it was the Second World I was thinking of to pass my time on the train. I wondered just how much time the people sitting at the table with me spent in the Second World on an average day. I imagined they spent at least several hours a day devouring content and they probably uploaded a fair bit of content themselves. If each one of these people suddenly lost their phone, what would they do? Well, I imagined they’d just go out and buy another one. But what if they lost their phones and couldn’t ever get another one? How ever would they cope?

The thing was, everyone they knew was probably just as addicted to and reliant on the Second World as they were. So if they lost their means of accessing the Second World, they’d more than likely feel left out, as if they were missing out on something. I guess I could understand it in a way. If all your friends and family were on social media and you came off it, you would have to make a sort of adjustment if you wanted to keep up with them as much as you did before.

My life was quite dull, to be honest. To liven things up, every now and then I liked to imagine myself doing crazy things in mundane situations. Being a novelist, I had quite an active imagination. My dreams were especially vivid and had a certain verisimilitude to them. I felt it was good practice to imagine myself doing various out-of-the-ordinary things.

The three people at the table were so engrossed in whatever they were getting from their smartphones that they would probably lash out at me if I dared to take their phones away from them. Could I bring myself to do that?

I had a bit of fun imagining myself reaching across the table and taking the twenty-something’s phone off him as he was tapping away at it. How would he react? What would he do? Well, he would stare at me in disbelief and then shout for it back, being so very dependent on it. Would I give it back to him? No, I would test him and see how he would cope without it. I would get up, open the window and gleefully toss his precious phone right out of it. Now how would he react to that?

As for the fancy woman, I expected she would exclaim loudly and yell something like ‘Thief! Thief!’ and act as a sort of damsel in distress or something. She seemed well-to-do and to be honest, I imagined she had another phone or smart device tucked away in her bag anyway, so snatching her phone probably wouldn’t cause the biggest upset.

It was the teenage boy sitting next to me who I expected would react the most to having his phone taken away from him. The youth of today, where would they be without their phones? Where would they be without the good, the great, the almighty internet to guide them through life? My goodness – he would have to get answers from real-life people and possibly even books! The shock! The horror! How ever would he cope? He was probably brought up in front of a screen. After all, the top parenting tip these days is that if your kid’s screaming the place down, plonk them down in front of a screen and they’ll quieten down for a few hours.

The teenager beside me was probably used to spending most of his time staring at screens; he’d probably contributed more to the growth of the Second World than both the people sitting on the other side of the table.

I imagined how amusing it would be to quickly snatch his phone out of his hands and perhaps stamp on it to render it unusable? He would probably verbally or physically assault me – or both – before proceeding to have a panicky meltdown and go into shock or something.

Of course, my imaginings were highly exaggerated, but I found them fun and entertaining. They were something I enjoyed every now and then. I didn’t think I was far from the truth though. I really did think that if the teenager was to become separated from his phone, his reaction would be significant and he would be at a loss for how to go on through life with no phone to his name.

I got up and went to the toilet, which was a few carriages away. The one perk of having an aisle seat was that there wasn’t anyone you had to ask to let you out. After doing what I needed to do I made my way back to my seat. As I passed through the coach before mine, a woman got up and made her way towards me, presumably to go to the toilet as well.

It ended up being one of those awkward moments when you have to squish past each other because the aisle is so narrow. However, after we’d got past each other, I felt a tap on my shoulder. Curious, I turned around to see the woman looking at me with an odd, quizzical expression on her face.

‘Sorry, but I think I know you from somewhere? I can’t quite put my finger on it,’ she said and as she spoke, I froze on the spot.

A wave of panic came over me. I didn’t know what to do or say. I was completely still and out of words to say. I stared at this woman who I didn’t recognise from anywhere, simply waiting for her to say something to me.

A few seconds of awkward silence passed before the woman said, ‘Maybe not then. Sorry!’ and she turned and proceeded to make her way to the toilet.

Even as she exited the coach, I was still rooted to the spot, overcome with shock and surprise. I had started sweating and I noticed my breathing was a little bit faster than normal. It was only on seeing someone else stand up that I snapped out of my paralysed state and hastily headed back to my seat.

Once I was sitting down, I felt relieved. What had got me so worked up was how sudden and unexpected the whole thing had been. It had happened out of the blue with no sort of indication or forewarning. Even though it was clear the woman didn’t recognise me in the end – I certainly didn’t recognise her from anywhere – it was the act of someone, a stranger, approaching me and saying they thought they recognised me that had affected me.

Even though it was impossible that she could have recognised me from my writing, I still couldn’t help but feel freaked out by the whole scenario. When she spoke and said she thought she’d recognised me, my mind immediately assumed the