It was unremarkable in so many ways. Just an ordinary silver-coloured key, with a hole at the top and the letters ‘NTC’ below that. You could see this sort of thing just about anywhere – but not normally in my pocket: it wasn’t mine, and it wasn’t Julie’s either, so how did it get there?

“What’s this?” I said, staring at the item back at our apartment.
“It’s a key,” Julie replied matter-of-factly. I smiled ruefully at her observation. 

“Right – but what’s it doing in my pocket?”

“Dunno. But it must be yours – or someone gave it to you. Google perhaps? What does NTC mean?”

“No idea… ‘Never Try Cricket,’ perhaps?” I used to play the game, but was hit by the hard ball three times before I got the message to quit. One the first occasion, just above an eye; another time on the side of my head; and the last time, full in the mouth – cutting my lip and loosening two teeth. I never played cricket again after that.

I tried to focus on how the key could have got in my pocket. Was it Google’s? The wine was kicking in now, and I couldn’t concentrate fully – and Julie was getting ready for bed.

* * * 

The next morning, I met Google for coffee and told her about the key.

“No, not mine,” she said. “Have you asked Julie?”

“Yeah. No luck.”

Sometimes I forget that Google’s Chinese. We yabber away in English and it seems we’re of the same race. Then I’ll say something like, ‘What are you doing for Easter?’ and she gives me that quizzical, scientist-type look of hers, as if I’m a monkey from the Amazon rain-forest who’s just grunted at her. And then, when she talks in Mandarin or the local Shanghai dialect, that’s a give-away too.

“Are you hungry?” she asked.

In the old days, before the Chinese greeted each other with ‘Ni Hao’ (literally, ‘you good’) the normal greeting was ‘Ni chi le ma?’ – meaning, ‘have you eaten?’ Anyway, I hadn’t, nor had she, so we headed to Hongmei Road for lunch.

The restaurant wasn’t busy, and we had no problem getting a quiet table at the back. We ordered, and I showed her the key. She examined it closely for a couple of minutes through her new, translucent pink spectacles.

“And you’ve no idea where it came from?” she asked.
I shrugged. “It just appeared in my pocket yesterday.”
“Then you’ve got to get connected,” she said.  

The first time I’d heard that expression was when the writings began. Before that, I’d had dreams, or visions – vivid thoughts in the twilight zone between full consciousness and sleep. If those visions were sent to get my attention, they succeeded. My first experience was in Shanghai after Google’s beautiful red scooter was stolen… that was when the writings began.  In a city of twenty-five million people, they told me was exactly where to find the lost scooter.

When I wheeled the bike back to school, Google was ecstatic, and I felt amazed, overwhelmed – and a little lost. It was like discovering sex for the first time – something simultaneously wonderful and confusing – and totally unexpected. And it changed my life. After that, I wanted to learn about whatever had directed me to the scooter. I’d never been religious; but now I knew there was something bigger and more connected to the Universe than anything I’d known – and I wanted to get close to it.

Sometimes it was easy to ‘connect’ to ‘The Source’, as Google called the writings;  but other times, it seemed to be out for lunch. Or maybe I just wasn’t listening.

“Simon – did you hear me? If you want to learn about the key, you’ve got to get connected!”
“Oh, sorry… miles away. You know it’s not always that easy,” I replied lamely.
“You’ve got to try!”  

“I tried last night…” She looked at me with expectant eyes. “I’d been drinking a little…” I admitted. She looked at me quizzically. “A lot,” I said.
The food arrived, and we began eating.

“We might have to do this manually,” I said between mouthfuls of pizza. “Find the door, the cupboard – whatever that fits the key.”
She stopped eating and looked up. “Do you know how many doors, cupboards and mail-boxes there are in Shanghai?” 
“More than one?” I said. Then I knew I had to write. “Just a sec…”

I hurriedly pulled the notepad out of my bag. The words were suddenly there, a conversation I had to have withThe Source.

I want to know about the key…
One way leads to another.
‘Why did you give it to me?’ I asked.
You need to find the lock.
‘Why not just lead me to the lock?’ 
I am!
‘A quicker way, I mean.’ 
So impatient! You only found the key last night!
‘Okay, sorry!’
The journey is important… remember?
‘Yes… right, I forgot.’ 
Start by being a detective, and do what detectives do.
‘Detect?’
Exactly.
‘Okay, got it. I think.’
The journey is important. 

“What did it say?” Google asked after I’d closed my notepad.
“We’ve have got to work at it this time.”
“What do you mean?”
“The journey is important,” I replied. She nodded in understanding.  

* * *

On one occasion, The Source told Simon to go to Suzhou by train, a city eighty kilometres west of Shanghai. When he asked why, the Source just said, ‘To show me you can.’

‘What do I do when I get there?’ he asked.
Await my instructions, it said.

So, he caught the next bullet train from Hongqiao railway station, and when he arrived in Suzhou he took out his notepad.
‘What now?’ he wrote.
You can go back now, it said. 

Puzzled and confused, he bought another ticket and went back to Shanghai.

That night, he talked to the Source. ‘Why send you me on a wild goose-chase today?’
I didn’t. 

‘You could have fooled me.’
Clearly, I did. Who did you talk to on the train?

He thought for a minute, then wrote ‘An old man… a Chinese university professor who spoke pretty good English.’
And what did he ask you?

‘He asked me what I was doing in China.’ 
And what did you say?

‘I told him I was a teacher… it’s simpler than the other stuff.’
And then what?

‘He asked me if I could help him with an academic paper he’d written. It was all in Chinese, but the Abstract had to be in English as well, and he didn’t think his English was good enough for that.’ 
And did you help him? 

‘I guess I did… he had several grammatical errors, and I corrected them for him.’
Yes, you did a good job. And the findings of his research paper will be of great benefit to mankind one day. Still think I sent you on a wild-goose chase?  

After that he realised that the journey is always important, not just the destination.

* 

I love Google in many ways. I actually think I’d take the first bullet for her, if it came to it. Not like my love for Julie, quite a different love from that. In some ways, a deeper love for Google – like the love for a sister or brother… or daughter perhaps.

But at times, I have to say, she thinks I’m a little weird; she usually puts that down to me being a foreigner – but she always supports me, crazy or not. After working at Shanghai International College, she got a job with a local magazine. Well, she was a qualified journalist, and the school work was really only until she’d completed her Masters. Whilst we worked together at SIC, I realised how important she’d become to me; we had a real connection, and I didn’t want to lose that – or her.

That night, just as I was drifting off to sleep, I had a strong thought that Google would phone. I stayed awake for as long as I could; but I was tired and the next thing I knew it was morning. Google hadn’t called, and I must admit I felt a bit put out by this misinformation. In the morning, I got out my pad and wrote.

You should take Julie out for dinner tonight.
‘Why?’
She needs to eat.
‘Where should I take her?’
Try taking her to a restaurant… they have food there.
‘Duh! Which restaurant?’
So many questions! 
‘Okay… well, how about the place we went last time?’
No answer.

So, I decided to follow that thought, and suggested the idea to Julie when I got home. She was up for it. With my work, and this preoccupation with ‘the key’, my mind hadn’t been fully focussed on my home life recently, so I thought I owed her dinner. 

We were greeted at the restaurant like VIP’s… that’s just how it is at some of these places in Shanghai. And I suppose we were sort of regulars at the restaurant. Then just as we were seated, a young man approached me.

“Excuse me sir, did you leave a black umbrella here the last time you visited the restaurant.”

I thought back to our previous dinner, and the torrential rain we experienced when we arrived, but which had stopped after dinner. I looked at Julie, who sighed. I was always forgetting things.

“Yes, that will probably me mine,” I admitted.
“Ah, good sir. Then I’ll need your key to release it.”

I looked at Julie, and she looked back at me, and we just laughed. 

END.