The Missing Millionaire

Miriam pored over the myriad pixels on her monitor that collectively formed to comprise an eerie tableau, a series of squares meshed together, aerial photographs taken by a great unconsciousness that is the satellite. Its mechanical eyes, magnified to nth powers, may have been the only thing that had seen the fated plane descend in its death throes, it held the secret to the millionaire’s final resting place, a performance artist’s piece of twisted fuselage amongst the trees. Given an even timeline, we all wind up amongst the trees, reconnected with the ground, the carbonised essence of life made whole.

Miriam’s grandmother had turned 83. Leaning close to hear her, she’d told Miriam of the afterlife. Energy that lifted and waned upon the spiritual plane of the universe. She said she was looking forward to seeing the galaxies through the eyes of an awakened consciousness. Perhaps that consciousness would also have seen where the millionaire’s plane had downed.

Miriam clicked the mouse and with deft moves of the wrist, she covered hundreds of miles, looking for anomalies, something which stuck out from the landscape of sand and Spinifex as foreign, man-made. As she went she recorded the grid references she had covered. She was a search volunteer, one of hundreds committed to finding the millionaire. Her motivations were less to do with charity and more to do with being a part of a greater whole, to do with connecting with a collective consciousness made possible through the digital world.

Miriam was a freelance editor. She worked from home, receiving her work in plain manila envelopes, stamped confidential, do not bend. She conferred with the Chief Editor and HR departments remotely, through a tiny spherical light and glistening lens of her web cam. She always wore her white blouse, and black vest, hair pulled up into an austere bun and red lipstick applied to present an almost regal look, the way her aquiline nose made her look like a noblewoman. She controlled the cam, it never dropped to reveal her moth-eaten track pants or jimmy-jams. She would have died had they seen her moccasins.

She would write an article on the search, she had a unique perspective having been selected as one of the key volunteers. She had chatted to others in the search chat room. One was a mother of three, who lived just four suburbs away. They would never meet in real life, though they chatted regularly each day now, five minutes here, thirty here. She knew the names of her children, and that her husband was a landscape gardener. She knew that the mother couldn’t stand the heat, preferred winter any day.

She sighed, set her messenger status to ‘Away’ and stretched. The fridge yielded no results – condiments, sauce, capers, olives. A half-eaten tub of yogurt - natural taken too far – the creamy texture tasted bitter without the artificial flavouring and strawberry red colouring. There was a phone bill and a postcard from a friend in Japan in the letterbox. She slit open the third envelope. It was a rejection letter from the publisher, thanks but no thanks to her manuscript – about a suburban affair gone awry – but keep submitting, we would like to see more of your work in the future.

She alt-tabbed to her editing work, but the words on the screen merged into one, she couldn’t concentrate. Would her death ever be as significant as the missing millionaire's?