Rebecca Saves the Human Web

Sensitive and thoughtful, 16-year-old Rebecca worries that the vindictiveness she sees everywhere in the cloud may one day overwhelm her too. Her mother has told her comforting stories about Grandma, a woman Rebecca never met — “the gentlest soul I ever knew,” her mother says, “without a vindictive bone in her body.”

Desperate to feel safe from her own darker impulses, Rebecca begins imagining her grandmother’s presence. One night, through a mysterious emotional connection, Rebecca suddenly finds herself experiencing the world through her grandmother’s 36-year-old body, in the year 2009.

Rebecca experiences something she’s never known: the bond between her grandmother and her elderly dog. In Rebecca’s time, a deadly virus wiped out all domestic dogs. When Grandma’s dog must be euthanized, Rebecca shares the devastating grief.

Just before the dog dies, it suddenly bites Grandma’s hand, then is immediately regretful. The bite leaves a strange wound.

In a traffic jam, usually passive Grandma, influenced by Rebecca, refuses to let an aggressive SUV driver cut ahead of her. At the moment the driver becomes furious, the wound on Grandma’s hand flares up, and she sees thin silver strands streaming from the man’s eyes, forming a pulsating web around his face.

Later that evening, TV news reports that a young man has beaten his wife to death. The story includes an interview with the murderer’s employer, who fired the man that morning. It’s the furious SUV driver.

Grandma pieces together the chain reaction. Still grieving the loss of her dog and arguing with her daughter, Grandma’s brief moment of anger in traffic ignited the driver’s fury. Already upset after fighting with his son, he humiliated and fired his employee, who went home drunk and misconstrued his wife’s concern about their finances as ridicule, and kills her.

Grandma encounters a homeless man. Although his face shows the menacing web and her hand throbs with warning, she offers him kindness. He stabs her to death.

Rebecca experiences the moment of death within her.

In the Being, all spirits of the dead are connected. They learn that every person on Earth emits subtle emotions that connect them to others in the Human Web.

Despite warnings that returning to Earth might cause annihilation, they return with visions of future violence. But even as they prevent some violence, the webs grow thicker and more menacing.

YouReality, an immersive technology that traps users in personalized fantasy worlds, is nearing 8 billion users, the tipping point that will collapse the Human Web in to deadly chaos. Just in time, they find the hidden servers and destroy them.

Triumph is short-lived. A voice from the Human Web: “You have less than a month to save humanity.”