Read Online Multiversum by Leonardo Patrignani - Free Book Online Page A

here.’
    â€˜Maybe she ran into some problems. She’s probably on her way.’
    â€˜No, that’s not it. We just talked.’
    Marco reversed his electric wheelchair away from the computer area. He stopped by a small table that had a bottle of mineral water on it. He took a few gulps while he tried to figure out what Alex meant by that phrase.
    â€˜You just talked … in your minds?’
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜Well, what did she tell you? Did she explain why she wasn’t there?’
    â€˜The exact opposite.’
    â€˜I’m not sure I follow.’
    Alex looked around, as if he was afraid that someone might be listening in, but there was nothing but the waves crashing against the pilings beneath the pier.
    â€˜She says that she’s here, right where I’m standing right this second.’
    His friend was speechless. From the very first instant that Alex had spoken to him about Jenny and their bizarre encounters, he’d never doubted for even a second that his friend was telling the truth and, more importantly, that he hadn’t lost his mind. He was convinced that all the gears in Alex’s head were meshing properly. In that case, though, what lay behind their failure to meet?
    She was there, or at least she’d told Alex that she was right where the two of them had agreed to meet. But there was no one on the pier, according to what his friend had told him. Just an empty pier.
    â€˜Alex, you do realise that what you said makes no sense, right?’
    â€˜That’s what I keep telling myself. None of this makes any sense. I’m going out of my mind!’ Alex pounded his fist on the ground.
    â€˜Listen to me. Try to stay calm: there has to be a rational explanation. Give me ten minutes. I need to check something out. I’ll call you right back.’
    â€˜All right,’ said Alex unhappily.
    â€˜Don’t move from there, stay right where you are — go get a bite if you want, but try not to do anything until you hear from me again.’
    Alex put his phone in his pocket, picked up his backpack, and started walking towards the steps that led down to the beach. There was a group of kids playing soccer in the distance. A man with a dog was walking briskly along the edge of the surf. At that moment, Alex understood the meaning of the phrase he’d read on the internet, when he’d typed in the name of that neighbourhood and had found himself looking at a travel website that said: the quietest area in Melbourne, an oasis of relaxation.
    He sighed impatiently and stretched out on the sand, his eyes lost in the clear blue sky. The migraine was starting to subside.
    In the meantime, Marco had typed a series of search terms into Seeker and was waiting for the results.
    Seeker was a program he’d invented himself. He always liked to say that it was destined to become the most extraordinary search engine in the world. He’d be able to sell it to some big software developer and make a huge amount of money.
    It was just a pity that, for now, the software was completely illegal.
    The algorithm that Seeker was based on ensured that its search encompassed many levels. It went through posts and comments on forums, Facebook status updates, tweets on Twitter, the contents of Myspace, and all the major platforms that used software to allow users to interact. The results were then compared with those produced by the top search engines and the most reliable encyclopaedias, as well as online archives and databases. The basic idea behind this software was to intertwine online and offline content: results that couldn’t be verified would be combined with solid, reliable information. Only in this way, Marco insisted, was it possible to plumb the infinite array of possibilities and come up with new hypotheses. The point, then, was to formulate hypotheses, not to go in search of prepackaged answers. But there was an area — certainly the most