Another Road

by HAZEL KAHAN

Set in the present, Another Road is a love story that develops over a new technology with the power to enhance and amplify consciousness. Although the story is centered in the United States, especially in New York City but also in Martha's Vineyard, key events take place in Australia, India, Israel and Europe.

Sara Marcus is a successful professional New York City woman in her late 40s. She runs her own focus group business, through which she has developed strong contacts with technology companies. Sara Marcus is of Jewish European extraction, the child of German refugees who fled Hitler's Europe for India, where Sara spent some of her formative years. She has her own tragic past that she has buried and refuses to talk about: when she was much younger, her two children were killed in a private plane crash along with her estranged husband.

The story begins with an acrimonious lunch in a trendy New York restaurant during which Sara dissolves her partnership with a gay business man. She leaves behind the verbal violence of this conversation and encounters physical violence in a focus group she conducts with HIV patients, one of whom stabs another participant with a pair of scissors. Her handling of this chaos and crisis leads her to Johnny Riven, a PR executive in a multinational consulting company, who becomes first her client and then, on a cold February weekend on Martha's Vineyard, her lover. During this weekend, Johnny confides in Sara that he has left his job and is starting a new company called Cortica, to be funded by Stealth Walker, a family friend. He wants Sara to work very closely with them. Sara, who has a penchant for younger men, starts to fall in love with Johnny who is ten years her junior. Despite their deepening personal and professional relationship, Sara and Johnny each keep important information secret from each other.

After hearing her speak at a marketing conference, a woman approaches Sara and asks her to join a group of high-level technology women for a mysterious weekend in one of the mansions of Newport, Rhode Island. She is introduced to the Indrans, a group of high profile technology women women who share a belief in Buddhism and deep concern about the dangers and power of technology.

When she receives a phone call inviting her to be a beta tester for Spirit, a new device that amplifies consciousness in those who wear it, Sara assumes that it is the Indrans who have given her name to Ubiwhere, the company that is developing Spirit. The invitation is for a one-week testing period that takes place in a strange, fantastical house on the Montauk dunes. Before they are accepted, Sara and six other candidates have to prove they are spiritually, psychologically and emotionally worthy of being Spirit holders, or Spirits, for short. To activate the Spirit, a small chip is placed on the skin, as close to the heart as possible.

Johnny arranges for Sara to meet Stealth Walker for dinner at the Harvard Club during which she discovers, to her horror, that not only were he and Johnny responsible for her invitation to be a beta tester for Spirit, but also that they themselves are Spirits. Shocked by the deceit, Sara has second thoughts about being associated with Stealth Walker who fills her with unease and with Cortica which she begins to think is an evil company. She confronts Johnny who persuades her that she is wrong and that the Spirit connection will enhance their love for each other. For the first time in her life, Sara experiences the joy of working with somebody she loves, a joy that is amplified by the connectivity the Spirit technology makes possible. For the first time in her professional life she feels she is working on a product that is actually beneficial for mankind.

Slowly and despite her resistance, Sara's doubt returns. She realizes that Spirit is actually a Trojan horse through which Stealth Walker, Johnny Riven and their Cortica R&D team will introduce another product, UniMind. This product is slipped into the bloodstream, not worn on the external skin as the Ubiwhere Spirit is. It is designed not to enhance consciousness but to give marketers and advertisers power over consumers by stimulating desire for goods and services. When they return to Martha's Vineyard to celebrate their first year together, Johnny hands Sara a memo about the Indrans and she discovers that Stealth and Johnny have infiltrated the group and know she is one of them. As these revelations accumulate, Sara becomes utterly disenchanted, outraged and dejected and severs her contractual ties with Cortica and her personal relationship to Johnny.

This severance does not affect the marketing of the Ubiwhere Spirit. Cortica arranges a worldwide product launch with Johnny Riven as spokesman. He is ubiquitous and becomes a media celebrity and icon. Sara watches him on television and follows his progress as a groupie would. Johnny, still in love, needs her affirmation but she remains aloof. He is starting to realize that she may be right about the potential evil of the technology. His ambivalence is showing and his partner, Stealth Walker, is beginning to distrust him.

Needing to get away, Sara goes to Israel to stay with Lucento, the brother of her dead husband. In his 70s, Lucento is an artist living a bohemian life in an old Arab village. She discovers that an American had visited him a few weeks earlier and had given him a Spirit. She is aghast at the complexity of Johnny's deception. As Lucento tries to comfort her, she starts to think of Johnny not as evil but as lost, too young for the responsibility of this enormous technology. Influenced by Lucento's wisdom, she is determined to find a way to work with, rather than against Johnny, who is becoming unhinged under the pressure and ambivalence of his business, and the mistrust of his partner, Stealth Walker.

From the airport in Tel-Aviv, she calls one of the Indrans to ask her advice and is told that Anya Tepper has the answers. A meeting is arranged in the United Lounge at JFK between Sara, fresh off the plane and Tepper, who is on her way to Vietnam. Sara vaguely remembers that Anya also did some work for Cortica but doesn't remember that she is the former wife of Stealth Walker. Sara is deeply confused by the discovery that the Indrans and Cortica are connected, until Anya points out that she, Sara, is also one such link.

Tepper reveals to Sara that the UniMind technology is very far from being real, that it may never work. Johnny's conflict and despair may therefore be unwarranted as is Sara's rejection of him. Euphoric at this understanding, Sara contacts Johnny to meet her in Paris, a trip they had planned but cancelled when she ended the relationship.

As she waits for him to arrive at de Gaulle Airport in Paris, she feels a massive upheaval in her Spirit and knows that something has happened to Johnny. A phone call from Stealth Walker tells her that Johnny has been ambushed and killed on his way to Dulles Airport.

Because Johnny has become a celebrity, the funeral service is marked by crowds and banners celebrating his life and vowing revenge for his death. A few days later, Stealth Walker commits suicide and leaves a note acknowledging responsibility for Johnny's death.

Anya Tepper takes over Cortica and brings in some of the Indrans, including Sara, to manage the company and ensure that the technology is used for good and not for evil.