The Secret Manuscript

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Ben darted up the staircase, nearly ploughing into several students along the way. He paid no mind to the annoyed pedestrians and kept an ear to ear grin stretched across his face. He had no idea if Kyle would be upstairs in the lab, but figured it was the best place to look.

  Ben enthusiastically ran down the hall, searching every science lab on the top floor. In the last one, he found Kyle. As soon as Kyle saw Ben, he did a double-take. For one, it was strange to see Ben on campus in a science lab, and two, he looked as if he had just won the lottery. There was a zest about him, a new-found fervour for life — whatever it was, Kyle could immediately tell something was different about his friend.

  “Ben, what are you doing here?” Kyle asked.

  Ben was completely out of breath and was panting. “I have to speak with you, now,” he replied with a sense of urgency.

  “Is everything okay?”

  “Everything is great!” Ben said loudly.

  “Okay, take it easy. Calm yourself,” Kyle said. “How did you find me?”

  “I’ll explain later. Is there a place where we can go that’s private?”

  Kyle led the way down an empty hallway to a locked supply room in which he had access. There was a numbered panel just below the doorknob. As Kyle pressed his thumb against the buttons to enter his code, Ben couldn’t help but look. When they entered the room, Ben shut the door behind him.

  “So what’s going on?” Kyle asked.

  “Kyle, I’m going to tell you something incredible and you’re not going to believe me.”

  “Okay, but make it quick, I have a lot of work to do.”

  “Last night, I was poking around in the basement and found a secret door in the fireplace.”

  “Let me guess, you found twenty-two million dollars?”

  “No… something better.”

  Kyle crossed his arms and focused intently on what Ben was saying. He restrained himself from interrupting, allowing Ben to speak freely.

  “I flipped a switch and one of the side walls retracted to reveal a hidden doorway. I crawled through and discovered a long corridor that wrapped around the house and eventually led to a steel door. The door was locked, but I was able to gain access by entering a ten digit code… and guess where I got the code from?”

  “Tell me.”

  “From one of the notes I had received in Cold Lake. It was still in my back pocket.”

  “You haven’t washed those pants since Cold Lake?”

  “I don’t like to wash my jeans often because… you know, that’s not important.”

  Kyle continued to listen in a state of suspended disbelief. A part of him did not want to believe the fantastic tale of his mischievous friend, who was known to concoct stories to get a rouse out of people. However, what Ben had said so far was certainly plausible given that the house was old and its origins were still a mystery. The entire time, the scientist in Kyle looked for holes in his friend’s story and empirical evidence that could be verified. If in fact Ben was lying about his account, it should be fairly easy to prove him wrong once they both went down into the basement and inspected the fireplace together.

  “So I entered the code and the door opened. On the other side of the door was a room that looked like something out of a Sherlock Holmes novel. It was filled with shelves of books, a desk, and a couch,” Ben paused a brief moment to catch his breath.

  “As it turns out, I found something of great interest down there,” Ben said, reaching into his backpack and pulling out the secret manuscript.

  Kyle was not really sure what to say. He took the manuscript from Ben’s hands, flipped through it and read a few bits at random, then handed it back. “Okay, so what is this?” he asked.

  “This here…” Ben said, stalling for dramatic effect, “is a manuscript of my entire life.”

  The words hit Kyle’s ear, but did not induce the expected result.

  “What do you mean?” Kyle said, sounding confused and unimpressed.

  “Kyle, don’t you realize what I just said? I found a story about my life — every major moment from past, present, and even future — buried behind some secret door, which I just happened to have the code for in my pocket.”

  “Look Ben, I’m not sure what inspired you to come all this way to tell me this nonsense, but I have a hectic schedule and a lot of work to do. So if you don’t mind…”

  Ben repositioned himself in front of the door, blocking the only exit. “Kyle, you don’t understand. Read this.” Ben shoved the papers in his face and he began reading. It described Ben coming to the university to look for Kyle. In an effort to save time, Kyle skimmed the rest of the text. The last part he read described the preceding events, which led to the precise moment they were in. This definitely caught Kyle’s attention. Even though he had yet to say a word, the intrigue was written on his face. His eyebrows furrowed as his logical mind tried to make sense of it.

  “You see now?” Ben asked. “How did I know you would lead me into this back room?”

  “Is this your idea of a joke, Ben? Is this the story you’ve been working on?”

  “No, I swear on anything. I’m telling the truth.” Ben shouted.

  “Okay, okay, calm down.”

  “Want to know something even stranger?” Ben asked as he frantically flipped to the part in the story where he met Vanessa. “Okay, here. In this version, it says I met a beautiful woman in a green coat moments before I found you. I said hello, she said hello back, blah-blah-blah, right? Listen to this,” Ben said as he began to read:

  ‘The moment Vanessa walked away, Ben kicked himself for not getting her number. But that was not Ben’s style. Throughout his life, he had never once asked out a woman because he had always lacked the courage.’”

  “This actually happened,” Ben said. “I was outside looking for you and then by chance decided to enter this building. Of all the buildings, I chose this one. I did that because it looked like it was going to rain. So I entered the building, sat down, and started to read the manuscript. I wanted to find you and so I figured the story might have a part in it where I find you. I read the part that I just read to you, except instead of being a coward and not asking for her number, I asked for it and she gave it to me,” Ben said, still with an overly excited tone. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper with the name and number of the alleged woman in the green coat.

  Kyle wanted to doubt Ben so badly, but Ben was actually quite convincing. He had never seen Ben so excited in all his life. In addition to that, many other aspects of Ben’s story seemed to be cohesive — the fact he found Kyle, the scene where they talked in the storage room, and the phone number from the woman.

  “Ben, if what you’re saying is true, then it’s beyond comprehension.”

  “I know. Believe me, I am just as perplexed as you are.”

  Kyle struggled to find the right words to say since the manuscript had so many implications that challenged his core beliefs. It seemed to imply the concept of fatalism — the idea that there are some events that inevitably happen regardless of the agent’s choosing. Since Ben was still free to choose to act contrary to what was in the story, the concept of free will was not completely challenged. Nevertheless, it was a major breakthrough in human history. The next obvious question was, where did it come from?

  “So what do you make of all this?” Ben asked.

  Kyle was dumbfounded. He just stood there with a perplexed look on his face, shaking his head in disbelief. After careful deliberation, he offered a hypothesis.

  “So, you found this in Gringer’s house, right? So the logical conclusions to draw are one of two: either Gringer is clairvoyant and can predict the future, or he happened to write a story that ended up coming true.”

  “Oh, by the way,” Ben added, “according to the story, Charles Gringer was my grandfather.”

  “Interesting, that explains a lot actually.”

  “It does?”
r />   “Sure. Charles Gringer knew details of your past and wrote them down. He then made predictions about your future and perhaps even helped to orchestrate some of the events in your life, such as giving you a house, which undoubtedly influenced your decision to move to Calgary.”

  “Do you think Gringer burned down my apartment?”

  “Who knows?”

  “But Kyle, even you have to admit, if Charles Gringer was somehow pulling certain strings and manipulating events in my life like some evil puppet master, he was very specific. How did he get me and you to bump into each other, and how did he know about the woman in the green coat?”

  “Maybe she’s a plant,” he suggested. “He could’ve hired her to walk by at that moment just to mess with you. I mean, he definitely has the money now to pull off a prank like that.”

  “Why would he do that? And if so, does that mean you’re a plant too.”

  “I can assure you I am not a plant. As far as why he would do something like this, I mean, either he is really twisted and gets enjoyment out of manipulating events in people’s lives, or he is testing you in some way. Or maybe he’s just old and senile and this is what passes for amusement for bored rich people.”

  “Let’s go back to the clairvoyant hypothesis for a minute. Explain that to me.”

  “It’s the idea that some people have senses beyond the ordinary human senses of smell, sight, hearing, touch, and taste. A clairvoyant is thought to have the special ability to know information about a person or a physical event through some extrasensory perception.”

  “Like a psychic?”

  “Yes, exactly,” Kyle said. “But I think the simplest explanation is the most likely one.”

  “Which is?”

  “I think you may have told someone these events, forgot you told them, and they wrote them down.”

  “Believe me, I didn’t tell anyone.”

  “Perhaps at some point in your past, you went to a hypnotist or a therapist… or a hypnotherapist.”

  “Okay, but I haven’t been to a hypnotherapist.”

  “That’s just it, if you were hypnotised, you may not be able to recall that experience.”

  “Like amnesia.”

  “Sure, that’s one way, but people have selective memory. The science is not fully understood. Basically, there are a number of ways a person can forget. Sometimes people just have too many memories and their brain pushes out old memories to make room for new ones.”

  “But I’m only twenty-four, I should have lots of room.”

  “Well, people’s brains work differently.”

  Ben did not feel like they were making progress. He exhaled a deep breath and clasped his fingers behind his head.

  “Okay, what else?”

  “Perhaps you abused some sort of substance that damaged certain memory banks in your brain.”

  “Do you really believe that?”

  “Who knows? All these possibilities are on the table at this point. Besides, that is better than my next suggestion.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Have you ever considered the possibility you have a split personality disorder? Think about it, you didn’t write this, Larry did!”

  “Shut up.”

  “I’m just saying, sometimes people develop these kinds of disorders to block out bad memories, and you’ve said so yourself you’ve had a lot of bad memories.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Sometimes a traumatic experience can make a person forget. It’s another coping mechanism. The brain deletes the memory in order to protect itself.”

  “But I still remember terrible events,” Ben rebutted.

  “Again, the science is not fully understood yet.”

  “Kyle, all your theories so far revolve around me telling someone my story, or me writing the story myself and then forgetting about it. What about you, did you tell my story to anyone? After all, I found this manuscript in Calgary, a city in which you spent a lot of time in.”

  “Definitely not.”

  “How do you know, maybe one of your other personalities did… or maybe your just forgot about it!”

  “Very funny.”

  “So far, none of our theories satisfactorily answer the question about the author of this manuscript seemingly knowing future events.”

  “Yeah, that is a bit puzzling,” Kyle said. “There is one really farfetched idea that we have yet to consider.”

  “What is it?”

  “Some scientists are studying the possibility of something called remote viewing.”

  “Remote viewing? What’s that?”

  “It’s basically when you hijack a person’s brain and view their memories.”

  “Is that possible… in theory?”

  “Well, in scientific terms, there’s a process. Something first becomes a hypothesis, then a model, then a theory, then a law.”

  “And where does remote viewing fall?”

  “It’s not even in the theoretical stage yet.”

  “Okay then, so hypothetically, how would remote viewing be possible?”

  “I suppose it would work the same way a computer hacker would hack into someone’s computer and access all their files. Obviously, it wouldn’t be through a computer, but the idea would work the same way.”

  “Is it possible?”

  “I guess. Anything’s possible, right? However, I wouldn’t even begin to come up with a plausible scenario where someone could do that with today’s technology. Scientists have been able to hijack the brains of insects and animals, but they first have to implant a chip into their brains. And they have to be in close proximity to their subject. But we’re talking about remote controlling the basic movements in primitive species, not reading people’s thoughts and memories. Even if that were possible, why would anyone want to hijack your memory bank? No offence.”

  “None taken.”

  “But even still,” Kyle continued, “how could they know future events?”