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Again, the Best I can do is offer the Ebook at half price so for the month of July it will be reduced to $1.99 if you choose to make a purchase in July

Well done,

There are probably around 23 pages for you to enjoy this month. because the book starts with a little explanation as its preface. Make no mistake, Reincarnation is a fact of life, it says it, right there in the bible. This story revolves right up through the corridors of Power in Whitehall. Oh, and it also is in the corridors of the German Parliament. And the USA house of Representatives. Let's just say this is at the seat of most governments and it is being controlled by a secret agency. A Club, if you like. You've probably heard of them in your readings...

Let's get back to the book. It's a three-part thriller although as I write this the fourth and fifth books are being written as well

As always once I get the urge to write, it almost seems like it is being dictated to me.

It's an odd feeling for me. But it's probably something you should be aware of.

Again, the Best I can do is offer the Ebook at half price so for the month of July it will be reduced to $1.99 if you choose to make a purchase in July

Preface

Reincarnation is a fact of life! It even says it, right there in the Bible, if you look closely. You could go a little further and say Reincarnation is a fact of life AND a consequence of death. Think about that for a second. You die and come back in a new body.

But what if you didn’t have to die to take on a new body?

Ask yourself, if you could just take over any individual’s body and lead their life. Would you? Would you choose to live as Beyoncé or Justin Bieber, for the fame and fortune? Perhaps as Obama or as Oprah, for the powerful friends and lavish lifestyle? Maybe it would be as Angela Merkel or Bill Gates? Lots of power and influence and a good income. And when that body got old, you could just hop into another younger or richer or fitter body. You could keep doing that and getting richer and richer and live forever.

A tempting prospect, isn’t it?

Would you call it ‘Body Snatching’?

How do you know it’s not happening already?

Today? Right in front of you?

Read on…….

Introduction

Doctor Peter Emellson was close to finishing his shift at the Hospital. As a highly respected member of the teaching faculty in the field of oncology, his reputation was unsurpassed for being an innovator of new ideas in the treatment of Skin cancer and Basal Cell Melanoma. Currently his work involved research into a variety of some of the more esoteric or old-fashioned treatments for ailments of the skin. In short, he was leading research into the ‘natural medicines’ field. His personal involvement in the research gave some credence to the bringing in or use of colour therapists and naturopaths and similar alternative fields of healing.

For the past eighteen months he had met and talked with all manner of fringe healing practise and its practitioners. On principle, Doctor Emellson declined to use the term ‘medicine’ when researching these alternative beliefs. In his opinion the term ‘Medicine’ involved years of research, testing and development in a clinical environment. What he had been studying in the last year and a half was at best theory or hearsay from a wide variety of well-meaning individuals. None of whom had come even close to providing the definitive results and case studies that he needed to advance his research.

His last appointment of this shift was to meet and interview yet another of these so-called healers whose area of expertise involved something called ‘chakra alignment’.

As always Doctor Emellson went into the appointment with an open mind. He was relieved that the majority of these alternative healers were basically very well meaning. Very few had the desire to earn money from their ‘gifts’ of healing. This attitude made Doctor Emellson a little less suspicious of their motives and made him want to believe the natural healing could be an alternative to the high-priced alternatives that the drug companies were promoting.

He entered his office and sat down at his desk. His secretary ushered in the latest candidate who thought he could revolutionize medicine. The elderly healer smiled at the doctor and introduced himself as Michael Barton, a chakra healer from Wolverhampton. In his mind the good doctor tried to quell the humorous concept of Wolverhampton being a hot bed of natural healing and rose to greet the Healer.

After introductions both men sat down, and Doctor Emellson explained briefly the concept of the study he was undertaking and invited the visitor to explain the idea of his healing method in general terms.

The visitor explained that if he were able to place his hands on the chakra points of the doctor’s body, he might more ably feel the connections. Doctor Emellson agreed, and the Doctor came around the desk to allow the visitor to demonstrate his craft.

As the visitor lightly put his hands on the doctor’s head several things happened. The doctor suddenly felt very lightheaded and was aware only that he was very definitely feeling some energy or influence on his body when the visitor placed his hands softly on the top of the doctor’s head. To an onlooker the situation in the room might have looked odd. Firstly, the healer placed his hands on the Doctors head, then to his own head and finally put his hands back on the Doctors head. Within seconds the visiting healer had slumped to the floor in a state of wild disorientation and passed out. It may only have been a few seconds later, but after recovering his composure the doctor looked at his former self slumped on the floor. He called out to the receptionist asking her to summon help as the visitor had collapsed.

Kneeling down to check the visitor, the ‘new’ soul driving Doctor Emellson smiled and took in his surroundings with satisfaction. The man on the floor was regaining consciousness and dazedly looking around. When he saw the doctor kneeling over him, he stopped and looked at his own hands and then touched his face. Within moments of the doctor’s summons, two nurses arrived and burst through the door. The Doctor was kneeling over the body of the healer. He informed the nurses that his visitor had suddenly collapsed and was incoherent and suggested the visitor be admitted to the hospital. The good Doctor stepped back as the nurse began attending to the patient.

“Lie still, please. You’ve had a fall; can you tell me your name. please?”

“I’m Doctor Emellson. No, my name might be Michael. Michael Barton. I don’t know.”

Perhaps those were the last words of sanity that ever left the body of Michael Barton. The nurses quickly organised a gurney for the patient, and he was wheeled out of the Doctors’ office. As the door of his office closed behind the nurses the new occupier of Doctor Peter Emellson’s body took in its new surroundings. He smiled and sat down at the Doctor’s desk.

Chapter 1

Michael James Doull was a veteran reporter with some 20 years of reporting behind him. He did not however go back in the industry as far as the days of sitting hunched over a typewriter. His arrival in the news media melting pot had coincided with the advent of the desktop computer. With today’s technology advantages he could virtually write any story on his Smartphone, take the pictures on his Smartphone and send it whisking into his employer without ever going near an office. Mike liked that idea. In his own mind Mike knew he was getting lazy, but years of dealing with the filthy circumstances of other peoples’ lives had taken away any youthful enthusiasm.

He had enjoyed a few good paydays covering the personal side of much of the Jubilee celebrations. But that had been nearly a month ago. Now he had to wait for the Olympics to start in August before he could guarantee a few more regular pay checks heading his way.

Today he was perched on the corner of the desk of the editor of the Sun daily newspaper. It could have been any paper in the country for Mike was a freelance reporter who made his living developing any story he could get paid for by one of the national dailies. Today he was annoying the features editor of the Sun, Harry Ferguson, to try and get whatever work he could get his hands on. Times were tough with the recession, but the Sun was probably one of the few dailies that still paid freelance jocks like him to dig up dirt or fluff pieces. Occasionally the leads offered would turn into something big and result in Mike having a good payday. Most of the time he would be offered bits and pieces that he himself would have to develop into something that would make the papers in the front two or three pages. Harry Ferguson was not in a giving mood today. He’d spent most of the morning in a heads of department meeting that was called to tighten belts and budgets.

Mike Doull knew that Harry Ferguson had a temper the equivalent to his namesake in football management, but over the years Mike had managed to stay in Ferguson’s good books. Mike was one of the few in the industry who could get away with calling him ‘Fergie’ to his face. Mike was also aware that he was close to getting the newspaper editors version of the Fergie hairdryer treatment but persisted in his chat as he needed the work and the money.

Fergie had nothing to offer Mike but was willing to give him a start on an article as Mike always delivered in the Sun’s scathing style no matter how trivial the story. From the meeting that morning the editors had been asked to keep all matters relating to the current recession with its own in-house reporting staff. There were a good number of unofficial leaks coming from ‘Number 10’ that were for political gains and these were fed directly to senior reporters as they were less likely to name their sources as would a freelancer with no legal team to support them. Fergie suggested that Mike try and come back to him with some ideas of his own and offered him one day of fees to go and dig out some topics that might make a story.

With that meagre economic lifeline in his hand Mike thanked Fergie and left his office.

Going down to the reporter’s room Mike trawled the staffers who were not out in the field for any suggestions that he could follow up.

The offerings were meagre, but several ideas were forthcoming to him: As always Mike thought about the subject and immediately came up with some angles he could perhaps develop to coin up some intrigue.

There was the forthcoming visit by the Chilean miners to Manchester and a visit to Manchester United. (Perhaps a chance for a few words with the Manchester United insiders, possibly make a few contacts for future use).

There were concerns that dementia numbers were spiralling in all age ranges. (How good was our health system, is the increase due to modern day life pressures? Is there a cure?).

How well could Britain cope if we had another major freeze up (Could the country cope? Had we learned our lessons from the previous big freeze? Is this part of the global warming? Kyoto or not to Kyoto?)

EEC mandarins getting more demanding and more trivial (we can’t sell sausages anymore, have to buy all EEC goods through the EEC head office, any chance of someone in the EEC clipping the ticket and skimming an income?)

Global warming (yes, it’s an issue but not for the Sun to lead with)

There were no more issues with any initial work done on them that had been pushed to one side, so Mike sat at a free desk and made some phone calls at the Sun’s expense.

The Press office at Manchester United were not interested in dealing with a freelancer. They only spoke to accredited reporters and Mike was invited to submit his credentials from a major daily for inspection. Mike gave his thanks but knew he was far too lazy to go to all that bother.

The Dementia story showed more cooperative sources. He spoke to two hospitals and three age care facilities. All agreed that the dementia numbers were rocketing upwards, and the government should be offering more funding. Many of the people contacted offered to be interviewed and Mike promised to get back to them, in time.

In trying to get somewhere with the freeze-up story Mike was pushed from pillar to post. No one really knew who was responsible for which facet of the freeze, if it was declared an emergency. The guy at the roads board thought they had a few days stock of grit and salt and was maybe a little concerned at the replacement of that stock. He had no idea who supplied that stock, so the tale and Mike’s enthusiasm ended there.

The possible story of the EEC mandarins met with a similar fate in that the PR people Mike spoke to in Brussels were unhelpful to the point of being rude at any suggestion that the EEC was not the source of salvation for the future progress of Europe. On pressing further Mike was put through to three different people, none of whom spoke English.

Mike sat and viewed the sheet of paper in front of him. With the exception of the Dementia story all the others had been crossed out as not worth it or they involved too much effort and travelling to be worth his bother.

With a sigh, Mike picked up the phone again. As he dialed the first number, he wondered how he could jazz up the story, of more old people going loopy, sufficient for the Sun to hand over a decent cheque.

Chapter 2

Mike set up four appointments for the following day. The two morning appointments were at hospitals and were as positive as Mike expected. Yes, there were increased incidents of dementia. The person available at both hospitals for interviewing could best be described as an academic. They both led most of their answers with “interestingly….”. Mike could not get the connection between ‘interestingly’ and the topic of dementia. It appeared that cases of dementia were up quite a bit over the last five years. There were far more cases of younger people entering the hospital with this affliction and obviously the government had done nothing to meet this trend with increased funding etc. Politely making sure he had spelt their names correctly; Mike left and found a pub that served a reasonable pub lunch. Fighting off a strong urge to cancel the two afternoon appointments he sat and ate his meal and tried to jazz up what he had been told so far. He didn’t try for very long as the meal demanded more of his attention than the prospect of the story in hand.

Arriving at the 2 o’clock interview Mike met the interviewee. Maggie Smith was a no-nonsense nurse from Leeds who did not want to be a part of a structured interview. She wanted to express her thoughts and Mike was welcome to make of it what he wanted. Maggie Smith had a thought or two on a lot of things, not least of which were reinforcements of the opinions of the two old bores from the morning interviews. Further to those thoughts she was convinced there was something going on. Probably a government experiment that no one knew about. Most of the new dementia patients were quite young which was almost unheard of in her experience. Maggie wanted to give full vent to her concerns. “And another thing”, this accompanied with a wagging finger, “How come most of these patients have no build-up of symptoms. Dementia is a usually a progressive disease over several years. Lots of my patients are exhibiting full blown dementia almost overnight.” In closing, she again affirmed her belief that the damned government is up to something, and no one is letting on what it is.

Mike took to Maggie straight away. Although she was talking in a similar manner to the many crackpots expressing their views about the government or flying saucers, Mike realised that this was just Maggie’s Yorkshire way of dealing with anything. Despite only allowing twenty minutes for the interview, Mike stayed and talked with Maggie for the better part of an hour. He found her quite observant and much focussed on her patients. Mike promised to get back to her if the paper wanted more info and then he drove to his next appointment.

Appointment number four was really just a senior nurse offering a rehash of the high-minded ideas of the first two interviews. At Mike’s prodding the nurse agreed that yes, there were more cases of dementia occurring. Yes, there was much higher incidence of younger patients. And yes, there were very high numbers of patients going into dementia very rapidly which was unusual.

On his way home Mike called in to talk further with Maggie Smith but she had left for the day. It seemed her shift had finished at midday, but she had felt strongly enough about her patients to stay on and make sure Mike got the full story from her.

When he got home Mike set to and turfed out a 1000-word piece on the dementia issue. It really wasn’t a subject that could be jazzed up or sensationalized. Working the angle of Maggie Smith’s theory of a government cover up into the article was a struggle but Mike had enough years of experience behind him to get the reader to ask themselves the cover up question. Attaching the article to an email he pressed the send button and sent his words across the internet to the features editor with a silent wish that it was a slow news day, and they would be looking for fill in material.

He was surprised that within minutes Harry Ferguson emailed back to say he would use the article as it was indeed a slow news day, but it probably would be tucked away on page 6 or 7. Although it promised a paycheck, its placement in the paper didn’t guarantee much of a read or the chance of a follow up article. Out of politeness, Mike emailed Harry back and worked in a request for some upfront travel expenses to do an article on the EEC mandarins. Mentioning the possibility of a hint of corruption would usually get any editors interested. Harry Ferguson was too experienced to fall for that trick. He emailed back for Mike to come up with more details before he would consider fronting up with the funds. Mike knew there was nothing of substance to offer to Fergie, so he switched off his computer and called it a day.

Across town, in the office of Doctor Peter Emellson there was great consternation in the IT dept. it appeared that all of Doctor Emellson’s research notes for the past year or so had disappeared from his computer memory. Quite rightly, the good Doctor was berating the hospital’s IT dept as his work and study for the last 18 months had disappeared for all time. Without repeating the entire study again there was no possibility of drawing any conclusions or making any recommendations. Doctor Emellson was visibly angered with the IT technician who was at a loss to recover the missing data. The good doctor’s anger was visible to all his staff as he stormed out of the hospital and left work for the day. The anger was still on his face when he arrived home and dutifully kissed his wife. In fact, the doctor’s anger was clear to all who saw him that day. But it disappeared when he sat alone in his study at home. His anger was replaced by a smile of deep contentment as he sat and sipped a fine Malt Whisky. The contentment was for a job well done.

Chapter 3

Mike Doull’s article was reasonably prominent, and it actually made page 4. That’s the page after the Sun’s page 3 girl cover. That’s still a good location to catch the attention of those who tire of the ever smiling but still unattainable page 3 Boob babes. It is understood by most of the industry that readers of the Sun newspaper are not among the highest percentile of intellect. A story on more people going loopy was not going to attract a great audience and those who did read it were probably not of the calibre that would command a royal inquiry into the dementia problem.

As the author of the article Mike had already inwardly acknowledged the story was at an end and had already been on the phone to a couple of other Daily newspapers looking for work. Mike was therefore more than a little surprised when he received an email later in the day from Harry Ferguson asking him to make contact for a follow up article on the dementia story. Mike emailed Harry immediately and made a time to meet in Harry’s office the following day.

On entering Harry’s office, the next day Mike prepared to sit on the corner of Harry’s desk until Harry firmly pointed to a chair for Mike to sit on.

Harry started the conversation with, “We’ve had emails and phone calls from all over the place on your dementia story. So, what’s the angle?”

Mike was at a loss to answer Harry’s question and replied accordingly.

Harry explained his interest. “The Sun has readers everywhere. All the expats across the world go online to the Sun website so they can catch up with what’s happening at home.”

Mike offered the thought that it might be just for the page 3 girls, but Harry knocked that thought aside and went further.

“That’s crap! There’re more boobs, bush and bonking on the internet than you’ll ever get on page 3. The Sun online has the biggest readership of all the dailies. And your article has got them contacting us by the hundreds, make that by the thousand! We’ve had calls and emails from Australia, Italy, Japan, USA, Brazil, Switzerland and more. This dementia story has hit a nerve. I want to know why and I’m guessing you know the answer.”

“Sorry Harry, I haven’t a clue” replied Mike “but I can do a follow up for the right retainer….”

“If I didn’t know you better Mike, I’d say you were lying. Prove me wrong. I’ll put you on retainer for a week. Give me another thousand words for tomorrow and something for the Sundays”.

Mike countered with, “Make it a month’s retainer and expenses and I’ll stir you up a government enquiry.”

Harry’s final offer was two weeks plus expenses with all articles to go through his desk. Mike smiled inwardly and leaned forward to shake hands on the deal. Before shaking on the deal Harry shook his head and stressed that Mike had better get off his backside and be prepared to earn his fee.

Leaving Harry’s office, Mike rode down three floors in the lift, all the while devising his strategy. By the time he arrived at the reporter’s room he had mapped out the first few days work on the story and was ready to start work.

Sitting comfortably at a spare desk he created a new email name and account on the Sun’s domain name. All the emails that had arrived in relation to his initial article were redirected to the new account. They numbered over 400 emails. Mike also gave instructions to the IT guys that all emails with the word Dementia were to be forwarded to his new account. He then set up an automatic forward from his new account to his home email and then left the office to head home. In his mind he was already busy wording an article for the following day, to be based on the worldwide response to his first article. Perhaps he could use the high numbers to disavow the intimation of a British government cover up as he had implied. He couldn’t work in an angle that every government was involved in a cover up. Maybe he could hint that the global warming was to blame. The conspiracy theorists would love that if he could get them to ask themselves the question without him personally posing the question. His route home took him past the aged care home that he had visited the previous day to interview Maggie Smith. He called in on the off chance he could chat with her, but she had finished her shift at 12.00 and left for the day. He left his phone number with the reception and carried on home.

On arriving home Mike carried out his usual routine of grabbing a beer from the fridge, sitting at his computer and downloading emails. While the emails were coming through, he checked his phone for messages. The routine was automatic to Mike. Usually, he had finished the beer before the emails had finished coming through. Today he wondered if he had drunk his beer too hastily as the emails were only a quarter downloaded as he examined the empty beer bottle.

Leaving the emails continuing their downloading, he made himself a somewhat belated lunch. When he returned to the computer, he still had time to eat a sandwich before the emails stopped coming through. He checked the feeds and with some surprise noted he had 988 new emails. Okay, he thought, maybe 400 were forwarded from the Sun account. He separated the new emails with a search word of Dementia, so that any emails with that word were pushed into a separate folder. This left him with just 49 emails to answer. Discounting the 20 or so that were offering cheap medications or Nigerian scam merchants, he went through the 20 odd remaining emails. One of the emails was from Maggie Smith and he opened that one first. She requested another chance to talk with him about the illness he had covered in his article. Strangely, she had not used the word dementia in her email, so it had not been filtered into a side folder on his computer. Maggie had given three phone numbers in her email. With his curiosity piqued, Mike reached out to pick up his phone to call her. As he did, the phone rang. When that happens it usually gives the recipient a shock. Mike was a little startled and the fact he was eating at the time caused him to choke a little. Picking up the phone, still coughing, a recognisable flat Yorkshire voice asked him if he was alright, told him that his cough didn’t sound too healthy and confirmed that it was all the traffic pollution that made Manchester an unhealthy environment. Ending with a suggestion that he should see his doctor about the cough, the caller introduced herself as Maggie Smith and reminded Mike he’d called to the aged care home to see her.

Mike grinned to himself as he recognised the no nonsense approach of his caller. He responded to her concern, “Hi Maggie and thanks for calling, No I’m not sick, I’m just choking on a sandwich, and yes, I did call you to do a follow up on our talk the other day.”

Maggie interrupted,” Well that’s good because I wanted to speak to you. I can come round and see you today if you like, where do you live? I have a car and can be there soon.”

Mike didn’t usually reveal his address to any one he met in the course of his professional life, but Maggie seemed different, so he relented and told her, and they made a time to meet at 4.00pm.

Putting the phone down, Mike grinned. Maggie Smith was a determined lady, but she seemed keen to give some more input and he quite liked her no-nonsense attitude. He felt moved to tidy up the living area of his apartment in preparation for his visitor.

Having an hour to kill before Maggie Smith’s arrival Mike sat down at his computer and wrote the follow up article for Harry Ferguson. The article was heavy on generalities and light on specifics, leaving the conspiracy theorists to draw their own conclusions as to what was happening. Opening up his email to send the article through to the editor’s desk Mike was surprised to see that he had received a further 60 emails into the dementia folder in the hour or so since lunch. Beyond thinking that was unusual, Mike shut down his computer and prepared for Maggie Smith’s arrival.

Punctually at four o’clock Maggie knocked on his door. Mike opened his front door and Maggie walked in carrying two cups of coffee. By the time she had reached the couch some 12 feet from the door Maggie had already covered the fact that she hoped Mike liked coffee, she hadn’t put sugar in his but assumed he would have some at home if he took sugar, Was he a smoker, if so then he was a silly bugger and told Mike he needed a woman round here to sort his flat out for him.

Mike was still closing the door, reeling slightly at the verbal overload. He turned to see Maggie already sat down on his couch and looking at him expectantly.

Mike mentally shook himself at the verbal onslaught.” Yes, I drink coffee, and yes, I do have sugar in the kitchen, and yes, I smoke and you’re not my mother and yes, a woman would keep the place tidy and please say you aren’t applying for the position because I’d probably kill you within the first week to get some peace. Other than that, thank you for coming here this afternoon.”

Maggie did not appear shocked at Mikes reply. “Right, I like a bloke who’s not scared to stand up to me. We’ll get along fine. Now what have you done since I saw you on Monday?”

Mike grinned at her. “You know, you might just be my mother or at least you may have been sent by her! Excuse me while I get the sugar.” He rose and went into the kitchen. He decided he was going to like working with Maggie Smith.

Returning and sitting down on the only easy chair in his apartment Mike went over the happenings of the last two days with Maggie. He explained that he had now been retained by the paper to do a follow up article and a further feature for the Sunday spread. He told her the paper had received over a thousand contacts on his article which was unheard of for a non-event issue like Dementia.

Maggie asked what the tone of the comments of the contact emails were about. Mike confessed he hadn’t looked at them yet.

Maggie hid her disapproval that Mike could churn out an article that was still so vague and really not based on any educated research. She didn’t hide it very well which led Mike to defend his work by saying that the Sun readers didn’t want to know all the gory details of dementia.

Maggie went on the attack. “And that’s where your newspaper people are getting it wrong! We actually do want to know more information on anything that intrudes on our own families, thank you very much. However, I’ve been thinking a lot since we spoke on Monday, and I’ve come up with something for you to think about. It’s not damn dementia cases we’re getting snowed under with. It’s something else. Something we haven’t seen before, but we only treat it as dementia because we haven’t got the time or staff or the bloody money to do anything else.”

Mike probed Maggie for something more. “Forgive me, but I can’t go to the editor with a story that there is a new disease that’s affecting people in huge numbers without some documentary evidence. The thoughts or hunches of one nurse are not going to keep me in anyone’s good books.”

For the second time that day Mike was told to get off his backside and do some work. Maggie expressed the sentiment using slightly more colourful tones. “Well get off your arse and do some research then. Ask all those poor buggers who emailed you what they think. If you can work that damn thing (nodding her head towards the computer on Mike’s desk) I’ll tell you what you need to ask. Come on, lad. If you pull finger, you’ll have a worthwhile story for your boss’s Sunday paper.”

Maggie wanted Mike to ask each person who emailed on the dementia case several questions such as the age of the relation when the dementia had onset. What was the length of time between onset and full-blown mental faculty losses? Were there any treatments given by the medical profession outside the usual dementia medication. Was there anything odd in the dementia sufferers’ personality? Finally, had the person died and how long after suffering the full-blown dementia onset.

While Maggie was writing down her questions for Mike to put to the respondents, Mike was sat at the computer converting all the respondents’ addresses into a mailing list. Mike noted that he had received a further 78 emails in the last two hours that had gone into the ‘dementia’ folder. Included in the folder was a reply from Harry Ferguson that his article had been accepted and would be in the Thursday morning edition.

Mike set Maggie’s question into a spreadsheet format. He then inserted them into the email along with a covering note that he was conducting a survey and would be grateful for their assistance in his research.

With the time approaching 6 pm, Mike was happy to call it a day. Two hours of Maggie Smith’s encouragement was more than enough for Mike to handle, and he looked forward to shutting the door on Maggie for the day. Mike’s attitude of doing just enough to get by had served him reasonably well over the years and he found Maggie something of a cross between his loving mother and his nagging ex-wife. On telling Maggie that the work was over for the day he was less than overjoyed to hear Maggie say she finished at lunchtime tomorrow and could be here by 12.30. Would she like him to bring him anything for lunch?

Mike promised to ring her at work in the morning and they would arrange things at that point. Shutting the door behind her he imagined that Maggie was still talking to him as she walked out of the door. Mike didn’t make the mistake of asking what she said. He closed the door and walked over to the couch and put on the evening news.

Just before he went to bed some fours later, he checked his emails and was surprised to find that over 450 replies to his survey had already been received in his inbox. Mike did not have a reputation in the industry of being over inquisitive or over eager to work. Being true to his reputation he shut the computer down and went to bed.

His sleep was disturbed at 8.30 in the morning by a phone call from Maggie Smith asking how the survey was going and had he managed any findings yet. Using the truth as his best defence Mike replied that there over 400 replies so far and he had not yet managed to find any trends developing in the survey. He agreed that Maggie could come to his apartment at 12.30 and yes, she could bring him something warm to eat. Putting the phone down and rolling over in the bed Mike tried to get back to sleep but had to admit to something resembling curiosity as to the email replies. Giving in to a long luxurious stretch he rolled out of bed and stood there in his underwear. He turned the computer on as he walked past it and made himself some breakfast. Sitting in front of the computer eating toast, Mike was still a little surprised to find how long it was taking to download the emails pouring in.

From a glance at the screen, Mike figured he had received another 200 emails overnight on the subject of dementia and a total of somewhere near 800 replies to his survey. Thinking it all looked like a lot of hard work Mike plucked out and read a few random emails. Most of them said the same thing that the mailer’s loved one had gone down with dementia very quickly. Many said it had happened overnight. Mike made a mental note to ask Maggie what usually happened with people getting dementia and then continued opening more of the survey replies.

Trying to be as dispassionate as any journalist should be was easy at the start of the survey replies. As he read more, his attention became more focused. He found himself speed reading the emails looking for ones that stood out as different. It could not escape Mike’s notice that the clear majority of the respondent’s replies were frighteningly similar. All indicated the onset had occurred without warning. Most of the respondents stated their partner or loved one was of above average intelligence. Many of them were in senior positions in their employment. On the basis of the few replies, he had read the average age of onset was 35-40 with a good percentage even younger than that. The greater majority had not suffered a long time with the disease but had died reasonably shortly after the full-blown onset of the dementia. The average life span of the respondent’s loved ones would not have exceeded 2 months.

Mike was fully immersed in the emails when his doorbell rang. Assuming it was Maggie he walked over to the door and opened it.

Maggie’s greeting was short and to the point. “And you can put some clothes on before I walk through this door. Is this how you reporters like to get your girls? Trust me, I’ve been a nurse for twenty-six years and I ‘ve seen bigger and better column inches than you can muster, my lad.”

Mike uttered a brief thought to himself along the lines of “Oh shit, I’m still in my Jama’s” but before he could explain Maggie was past him and heading to the kitchen shouting back over her shoulder that she needed plates and where were they kept.

Mike slipped past her to the bedroom and threw some clothes on. Thinking better of himself he also ducked into the bathroom and washed his face.

Walking back into the lounge Mike saw his visitor had already set the pies she had purchased on plates and along with the coffees was ready to eat.

Pushing a plate towards Mike, Maggie waited until he had taken a bite out of his pie before starting her questioning.

“Right then, what you come up with? All clever people? Young people? Come on lad, we’ve not got all day.”

Mike used the reason that his mouth was full to delay his reply. The delay was really to gather his thoughts.

Reaching behind him he grabbed the paper that Maggie had written her questions down on the previous day. Giving it to Maggie he said.” You write down what the average dementia patient should look like and then we’ll compare notes.”

Maggie carefully considered her replies which gave Mike the chance to finish his food. Then they compared notes

Mike started with “Question 1. The age of the relation when the dementia had onset.”

Maggie thought that the average age should be mid to late fifties. Mike replied that the survey showed mid to late 30’s

Maggie pulled up the next question “Question 2 The length of time between onset and full-blown mental faculty losses. With medication the full symptoms can often be delayed for a few years. I’d say two years as an average.”

Mike replied that the survey indicated an average of one day or less.

Maggie continued. “Question 3. Any treatments given by the medical profession outside the usual dementia medication? My answer would be no. we don’t have the staff or the time or the funds to do much with them other than make them comfortable and make sure they don’t harm themselves.”

Mikes findings from the survey indicated that there was usually little time for the patients to be offered different treatments.

To question 4. Was there anything odd in the dementia sufferer’s personality? Maggie said generally dementia sufferers withdrew inside themselves and became shy and almost reclusive. Mike’s respondents offered more variety on the question, but it didn’t make sense in that many of the respondent’s patients seemed to become different somehow. The word different was used in a lot of the replies.

Replying to the final question Maggie indicated there was no real timeline on the patient dying after suffering the full-blown dementia onset. She assumed an average time would be five years. Some patients would live for twenty or even thirty years with care.

Mike’s summary of the survey respondents indicated that the average life expectancy not more than two months.

Expecting Maggie to be surprised at the findings Mike was taken aback when Maggie asserted, “See! I damn well told you there was something going on!”

Mike’s liking for the easy life was kicking into his psyche and telling him that although there might indeed be something going on, did Mike really want all the hassle of finding what it was that was actually ‘going on’.

Maggie didn’t understand Mike’s psyche and carried on without interruption. “So, what are you going to do about it? This will make a great story for the Sundays. Won’t it?”

Mike agreed it would make a great story but put forward the thought that maybe it was time to talk to the editor to get his views on the story’s newsworthiness.

“Great idea.” said Maggie “Ring him now!”

Mike rang Harry Ferguson at the Sun requesting a meeting saying the story could be much bigger than first visualized. Deep inside him Mike hoped that Harry would think he was just trying to wangle more pay and tell him to forget it. However, editors of a major daily newspaper have a nose for big story, so Harry immediately suggested a meeting the next morning at 10am. Mike heard Maggie whisper behind him that 10 would be fine as she didn’t work on Fridays.

When Mike put the phone down Maggie told him that it was not even 1.30 and they could spend the rest of the day going through the survey and getting some totals and trends and geography and stuff. Inwardly Mike groaned but he sat down with Maggie to sift through the emails.

There were over 1000 replies to the survey tucked away in Mike’s inbox. It was past 8.30 when he finally eased Maggie out of his apartment. Maggie would have worked until midnight and beyond, but Mike had reached his limit. Yes, he wanted to be a part of a major story. Perhaps even a major government corruption scandal. A journo award in his name would open many doors for a freelancer for the rest of his life. It also indicated a huge amount of work and somewhere deep inside him a gut instinct told him that it would also mean trouble.

Well done,

There are probably around 23 pages for you to enjoy this month. because the book starts with a little explanation as its preface. Make no mistake, Reincarnation is a fact of life, it says it, right there in the bible. This story revolves right up through the corridors of Power in Whitehall. Oh, and it also is in the corridors of the German Parliament. And the USA house of Representatives. Let's just say this is at the seat of most governments and it is being controlled by a secret agency. A Club, if you like. You've probably heard of them in your readings...

Let's get back to the book. It's a three-part thriller although as I write this the fourth and fifth books are being written as well

As always once I get the urge to write, it almost seems like it is being dictated to me.

It's an odd feeling for me. But it's probably something you should be aware of.

Again, the Best I can do is offer the Ebook at half price so for the month of July it will be reduced to $1.99 if you choose to make a purchase in July

Preface

Reincarnation is a fact of life! It even says it, right there in the Bible, if you look closely. You could go a little further and say Reincarnation is a fact of life AND a consequence of death. Think about that for a second. You die and come back in a new body.

But what if you didn’t have to die to take on a new body?

Ask yourself, if you could just take over any individual’s body and lead their life. Would you? Would you choose to live as Beyoncé or Justin Bieber, for the fame and fortune? Perhaps as Obama or as Oprah, for the powerful friends and lavish lifestyle? Maybe it would be as Angela Merkel or Bill Gates? Lots of power and influence and a good income. And when that body got old, you could just hop into another younger or richer or fitter body. You could keep doing that and getting richer and richer and live forever.

A tempting prospect, isn’t it?

Would you call it ‘Body Snatching’?

How do you know it’s not happening already?

Today? Right in front of you?

Read on…….

Introduction

Doctor Peter Emellson was close to finishing his shift at the Hospital. As a highly respected member of the teaching faculty in the field of oncology, his reputation was unsurpassed for being an innovator of new ideas in the treatment of Skin cancer and Basal Cell Melanoma. Currently his work involved research into a variety of some of the more esoteric or old-fashioned treatments for ailments of the skin. In short, he was leading research into the ‘natural medicines’ field. His personal involvement in the research gave some credence to the bringing in or use of colour therapists and naturopaths and similar alternative fields of healing.

For the past eighteen months he had met and talked with all manner of fringe healing practise and its practitioners. On principle, Doctor Emellson declined to use the term ‘medicine’ when researching these alternative beliefs. In his opinion the term ‘Medicine’ involved years of research, testing and development in a clinical environment. What he had been studying in the last year and a half was at best theory or hearsay from a wide variety of well-meaning individuals. None of whom had come even close to providing the definitive results and case studies that he needed to advance his research.

His last appointment of this shift was to meet and interview yet another of these so-called healers whose area of expertise involved something called ‘chakra alignment’.

As always Doctor Emellson went into the appointment with an open mind. He was relieved that the majority of these alternative healers were basically very well meaning. Very few had the desire to earn money from their ‘gifts’ of healing. This attitude made Doctor Emellson a little less suspicious of their motives and made him want to believe the natural healing could be an alternative to the high-priced alternatives that the drug companies were promoting.

He entered his office and sat down at his desk. His secretary ushered in the latest candidate who thought he could revolutionize medicine. The elderly healer smiled at the doctor and introduced himself as Michael Barton, a chakra healer from Wolverhampton. In his mind the good doctor tried to quell the humorous concept of Wolverhampton being a hot bed of natural healing and rose to greet the Healer.

After introductions both men sat down, and Doctor Emellson explained briefly the concept of the study he was undertaking and invited the visitor to explain the idea of his healing method in general terms.

The visitor explained that if he were able to place his hands on the chakra points of the doctor’s body, he might more ably feel the connections. Doctor Emellson agreed, and the Doctor came around the desk to allow the visitor to demonstrate his craft.

As the visitor lightly put his hands on the doctor’s head several things happened. The doctor suddenly felt very lightheaded and was aware only that he was very definitely feeling some energy or influence on his body when the visitor placed his hands softly on the top of the doctor’s head. To an onlooker the situation in the room might have looked odd. Firstly, the healer placed his hands on the Doctors head, then to his own head and finally put his hands back on the Doctors head. Within seconds the visiting healer had slumped to the floor in a state of wild disorientation and passed out. It may only have been a few seconds later, but after recovering his composure the doctor looked at his former self slumped on the floor. He called out to the receptionist asking her to summon help as the visitor had collapsed.

Kneeling down to check the visitor, the ‘new’ soul driving Doctor Emellson smiled and took in his surroundings with satisfaction. The man on the floor was regaining consciousness and dazedly looking around. When he saw the doctor kneeling over him, he stopped and looked at his own hands and then touched his face. Within moments of the doctor’s summons, two nurses arrived and burst through the door. The Doctor was kneeling over the body of the healer. He informed the nurses that his visitor had suddenly collapsed and was incoherent and suggested the visitor be admitted to the hospital. The good Doctor stepped back as the nurse began attending to the patient.

“Lie still, please. You’ve had a fall; can you tell me your name. please?”

“I’m Doctor Emellson. No, my name might be Michael. Michael Barton. I don’t know.”

Perhaps those were the last words of sanity that ever left the body of Michael Barton. The nurses quickly organised a gurney for the patient, and he was wheeled out of the Doctors’ office. As the door of his office closed behind the nurses the new occupier of Doctor Peter Emellson’s body took in its new surroundings. He smiled and sat down at the Doctor’s desk.

Chapter 1

Michael James Doull was a veteran reporter with some 20 years of reporting behind him. He did not however go back in the industry as far as the days of sitting hunched over a typewriter. His arrival in the news media melting pot had coincided with the advent of the desktop computer. With today’s technology advantages he could virtually write any story on his Smartphone, take the pictures on his Smartphone and send it whisking into his employer without ever going near an office. Mike liked that idea. In his own mind Mike knew he was getting lazy, but years of dealing with the filthy circumstances of other peoples’ lives had taken away any youthful enthusiasm.

He had enjoyed a few good paydays covering the personal side of much of the Jubilee celebrations. But that had been nearly a month ago. Now he had to wait for the Olympics to start in August before he could guarantee a few more regular pay checks heading his way.

Today he was perched on the corner of the desk of the editor of the Sun daily newspaper. It could have been any paper in the country for Mike was a freelance reporter who made his living developing any story he could get paid for by one of the national dailies. Today he was annoying the features editor of the Sun, Harry Ferguson, to try and get whatever work he could get his hands on. Times were tough with the recession, but the Sun was probably one of the few dailies that still paid freelance jocks like him to dig up dirt or fluff pieces. Occasionally the leads offered would turn into something big and result in Mike having a good payday. Most of the time he would be offered bits and pieces that he himself would have to develop into something that would make the papers in the front two or three pages. Harry Ferguson was not in a giving mood today. He’d spent most of the morning in a heads of department meeting that was called to tighten belts and budgets.

Mike Doull knew that Harry Ferguson had a temper the equivalent to his namesake in football management, but over the years Mike had managed to stay in Ferguson’s good books. Mike was one of the few in the industry who could get away with calling him ‘Fergie’ to his face. Mike was also aware that he was close to getting the newspaper editors version of the Fergie hairdryer treatment but persisted in his chat as he needed the work and the money.

Fergie had nothing to offer Mike but was willing to give him a start on an article as Mike always delivered in the Sun’s scathing style no matter how trivial the story. From the meeting that morning the editors had been asked to keep all matters relating to the current recession with its own in-house reporting staff. There were a good number of unofficial leaks coming from ‘Number 10’ that were for political gains and these were fed directly to senior reporters as they were less likely to name their sources as would a freelancer with no legal team to support them. Fergie suggested that Mike try and come back to him with some ideas of his own and offered him one day of fees to go and dig out some topics that might make a story.

With that meagre economic lifeline in his hand Mike thanked Fergie and left his office.

Going down to the reporter’s room Mike trawled the staffers who were not out in the field for any suggestions that he could follow up.

The offerings were meagre, but several ideas were forthcoming to him: As always Mike thought about the subject and immediately came up with some angles he could perhaps develop to coin up some intrigue.

There was the forthcoming visit by the Chilean miners to Manchester and a visit to Manchester United. (Perhaps a chance for a few words with the Manchester United insiders, possibly make a few contacts for future use).

There were concerns that dementia numbers were spiralling in all age ranges. (How good was our health system, is the increase due to modern day life pressures? Is there a cure?).

How well could Britain cope if we had another major freeze up (Could the country cope? Had we learned our lessons from the previous big freeze? Is this part of the global warming? Kyoto or not to Kyoto?)

EEC mandarins getting more demanding and more trivial (we can’t sell sausages anymore, have to buy all EEC goods through the EEC head office, any chance of someone in the EEC clipping the ticket and skimming an income?)

Global warming (yes, it’s an issue but not for the Sun to lead with)

There were no more issues with any initial work done on them that had been pushed to one side, so Mike sat at a free desk and made some phone calls at the Sun’s expense.

The Press office at Manchester United were not interested in dealing with a freelancer. They only spoke to accredited reporters and Mike was invited to submit his credentials from a major daily for inspection. Mike gave his thanks but knew he was far too lazy to go to all that bother.

The Dementia story showed more cooperative sources. He spoke to two hospitals and three age care facilities. All agreed that the dementia numbers were rocketing upwards, and the government should be offering more funding. Many of the people contacted offered to be interviewed and Mike promised to get back to them, in time.

In trying to get somewhere with the freeze-up story Mike was pushed from pillar to post. No one really knew who was responsible for which facet of the freeze, if it was declared an emergency. The guy at the roads board thought they had a few days stock of grit and salt and was maybe a little concerned at the replacement of that stock. He had no idea who supplied that stock, so the tale and Mike’s enthusiasm ended there.

The possible story of the EEC mandarins met with a similar fate in that the PR people Mike spoke to in Brussels were unhelpful to the point of being rude at any suggestion that the EEC was not the source of salvation for the future progress of Europe. On pressing further Mike was put through to three different people, none of whom spoke English.

Mike sat and viewed the sheet of paper in front of him. With the exception of the Dementia story all the others had been crossed out as not worth it or they involved too much effort and travelling to be worth his bother.

With a sigh, Mike picked up the phone again. As he dialed the first number, he wondered how he could jazz up the story, of more old people going loopy, sufficient for the Sun to hand over a decent cheque.

Chapter 2

Mike set up four appointments for the following day. The two morning appointments were at hospitals and were as positive as Mike expected. Yes, there were increased incidents of dementia. The person available at both hospitals for interviewing could best be described as an academic. They both led most of their answers with “interestingly….”. Mike could not get the connection between ‘interestingly’ and the topic of dementia. It appeared that cases of dementia were up quite a bit over the last five years. There were far more cases of younger people entering the hospital with this affliction and obviously the government had done nothing to meet this trend with increased funding etc. Politely making sure he had spelt their names correctly; Mike left and found a pub that served a reasonable pub lunch. Fighting off a strong urge to cancel the two afternoon appointments he sat and ate his meal and tried to jazz up what he had been told so far. He didn’t try for very long as the meal demanded more of his attention than the prospect of the story in hand.

Arriving at the 2 o’clock interview Mike met the interviewee. Maggie Smith was a no-nonsense nurse from Leeds who did not want to be a part of a structured interview. She wanted to express her thoughts and Mike was welcome to make of it what he wanted. Maggie Smith had a thought or two on a lot of things, not least of which were reinforcements of the opinions of the two old bores from the morning interviews. Further to those thoughts she was convinced there was something going on. Probably a government experiment that no one knew about. Most of the new dementia patients were quite young which was almost unheard of in her experience. Maggie wanted to give full vent to her concerns. “And another thing”, this accompanied with a wagging finger, “How come most of these patients have no build-up of symptoms. Dementia is a usually a progressive disease over several years. Lots of my patients are exhibiting full blown dementia almost overnight.” In closing, she again affirmed her belief that the damned government is up to something, and no one is letting on what it is.

Mike took to Maggie straight away. Although she was talking in a similar manner to the many crackpots expressing their views about the government or flying saucers, Mike realised that this was just Maggie’s Yorkshire way of dealing with anything. Despite only allowing twenty minutes for the interview, Mike stayed and talked with Maggie for the better part of an hour. He found her quite observant and much focussed on her patients. Mike promised to get back to her if the paper wanted more info and then he drove to his next appointment.

Appointment number four was really just a senior nurse offering a rehash of the high-minded ideas of the first two interviews. At Mike’s prodding the nurse agreed that yes, there were more cases of dementia occurring. Yes, there was much higher incidence of younger patients. And yes, there were very high numbers of patients going into dementia very rapidly which was unusual.

On his way home Mike called in to talk further with Maggie Smith but she had left for the day. It seemed her shift had finished at midday, but she had felt strongly enough about her patients to stay on and make sure Mike got the full story from her.

When he got home Mike set to and turfed out a 1000-word piece on the dementia issue. It really wasn’t a subject that could be jazzed up or sensationalized. Working the angle of Maggie Smith’s theory of a government cover up into the article was a struggle but Mike had enough years of experience behind him to get the reader to ask themselves the cover up question. Attaching the article to an email he pressed the send button and sent his words across the internet to the features editor with a silent wish that it was a slow news day, and they would be looking for fill in material.

He was surprised that within minutes Harry Ferguson emailed back to say he would use the article as it was indeed a slow news day, but it probably would be tucked away on page 6 or 7. Although it promised a paycheck, its placement in the paper didn’t guarantee much of a read or the chance of a follow up article. Out of politeness, Mike emailed Harry back and worked in a request for some upfront travel expenses to do an article on the EEC mandarins. Mentioning the possibility of a hint of corruption would usually get any editors interested. Harry Ferguson was too experienced to fall for that trick. He emailed back for Mike to come up with more details before he would consider fronting up with the funds. Mike knew there was nothing of substance to offer to Fergie, so he switched off his computer and called it a day.

Across town, in the office of Doctor Peter Emellson there was great consternation in the IT dept. it appeared that all of Doctor Emellson’s research notes for the past year or so had disappeared from his computer memory. Quite rightly, the good Doctor was berating the hospital’s IT dept as his work and study for the last 18 months had disappeared for all time. Without repeating the entire study again there was no possibility of drawing any conclusions or making any recommendations. Doctor Emellson was visibly angered with the IT technician who was at a loss to recover the missing data. The good doctor’s anger was visible to all his staff as he stormed out of the hospital and left work for the day. The anger was still on his face when he arrived home and dutifully kissed his wife. In fact, the doctor’s anger was clear to all who saw him that day. But it disappeared when he sat alone in his study at home. His anger was replaced by a smile of deep contentment as he sat and sipped a fine Malt Whisky. The contentment was for a job well done.

Chapter 3

Mike Doull’s article was reasonably prominent, and it actually made page 4. That’s the page after the Sun’s page 3 girl cover. That’s still a good location to catch the attention of those who tire of the ever smiling but still unattainable page 3 Boob babes. It is understood by most of the industry that readers of the Sun newspaper are not among the highest percentile of intellect. A story on more people going loopy was not going to attract a great audience and those who did read it were probably not of the calibre that would command a royal inquiry into the dementia problem.

As the author of the article Mike had already inwardly acknowledged the story was at an end and had already been on the phone to a couple of other Daily newspapers looking for work. Mike was therefore more than a little surprised when he received an email later in the day from Harry Ferguson asking him to make contact for a follow up article on the dementia story. Mike emailed Harry immediately and made a time to meet in Harry’s office the following day.

On entering Harry’s office, the next day Mike prepared to sit on the corner of Harry’s desk until Harry firmly pointed to a chair for Mike to sit on.

Harry started the conversation with, “We’ve had emails and phone calls from all over the place on your dementia story. So, what’s the angle?”

Mike was at a loss to answer Harry’s question and replied accordingly.

Harry explained his interest. “The Sun has readers everywhere. All the expats across the world go online to the Sun website so they can catch up with what’s happening at home.”

Mike offered the thought that it might be just for the page 3 girls, but Harry knocked that thought aside and went further.

“That’s crap! There’re more boobs, bush and bonking on the internet than you’ll ever get on page 3. The Sun online has the biggest readership of all the dailies. And your article has got them contacting us by the hundreds, make that by the thousand! We’ve had calls and emails from Australia, Italy, Japan, USA, Brazil, Switzerland and more. This dementia story has hit a nerve. I want to know why and I’m guessing you know the answer.”

“Sorry Harry, I haven’t a clue” replied Mike “but I can do a follow up for the right retainer….”

“If I didn’t know you better Mike, I’d say you were lying. Prove me wrong. I’ll put you on retainer for a week. Give me another thousand words for tomorrow and something for the Sundays”.

Mike countered with, “Make it a month’s retainer and expenses and I’ll stir you up a government enquiry.”

Harry’s final offer was two weeks plus expenses with all articles to go through his desk. Mike smiled inwardly and leaned forward to shake hands on the deal. Before shaking on the deal Harry shook his head and stressed that Mike had better get off his backside and be prepared to earn his fee.

Leaving Harry’s office, Mike rode down three floors in the lift, all the while devising his strategy. By the time he arrived at the reporter’s room he had mapped out the first few days work on the story and was ready to start work.

Sitting comfortably at a spare desk he created a new email name and account on the Sun’s domain name. All the emails that had arrived in relation to his initial article were redirected to the new account. They numbered over 400 emails. Mike also gave instructions to the IT guys that all emails with the word Dementia were to be forwarded to his new account. He then set up an automatic forward from his new account to his home email and then left the office to head home. In his mind he was already busy wording an article for the following day, to be based on the worldwide response to his first article. Perhaps he could use the high numbers to disavow the intimation of a British government cover up as he had implied. He couldn’t work in an angle that every government was involved in a cover up. Maybe he could hint that the global warming was to blame. The conspiracy theorists would love that if he could get them to ask themselves the question without him personally posing the question. His route home took him past the aged care home that he had visited the previous day to interview Maggie Smith. He called in on the off chance he could chat with her, but she had finished her shift at 12.00 and left for the day. He left his phone number with the reception and carried on home.

On arriving home Mike carried out his usual routine of grabbing a beer from the fridge, sitting at his computer and downloading emails. While the emails were coming through, he checked his phone for messages. The routine was automatic to Mike. Usually, he had finished the beer before the emails had finished coming through. Today he wondered if he had drunk his beer too hastily as the emails were only a quarter downloaded as he examined the empty beer bottle.

Leaving the emails continuing their downloading, he made himself a somewhat belated lunch. When he returned to the computer, he still had time to eat a sandwich before the emails stopped coming through. He checked the feeds and with some surprise noted he had 988 new emails. Okay, he thought, maybe 400 were forwarded from the Sun account. He separated the new emails with a search word of Dementia, so that any emails with that word were pushed into a separate folder. This left him with just 49 emails to answer. Discounting the 20 or so that were offering cheap medications or Nigerian scam merchants, he went through the 20 odd remaining emails. One of the emails was from Maggie Smith and he opened that one first. She requested another chance to talk with him about the illness he had covered in his article. Strangely, she had not used the word dementia in her email, so it had not been filtered into a side folder on his computer. Maggie had given three phone numbers in her email. With his curiosity piqued, Mike reached out to pick up his phone to call her. As he did, the phone rang. When that happens it usually gives the recipient a shock. Mike was a little startled and the fact he was eating at the time caused him to choke a little. Picking up the phone, still coughing, a recognisable flat Yorkshire voice asked him if he was alright, told him that his cough didn’t sound too healthy and confirmed that it was all the traffic pollution that made Manchester an unhealthy environment. Ending with a suggestion that he should see his doctor about the cough, the caller introduced herself as Maggie Smith and reminded Mike he’d called to the aged care home to see her.

Mike grinned to himself as he recognised the no nonsense approach of his caller. He responded to her concern, “Hi Maggie and thanks for calling, No I’m not sick, I’m just choking on a sandwich, and yes, I did call you to do a follow up on our talk the other day.”

Maggie interrupted,” Well that’s good because I wanted to speak to you. I can come round and see you today if you like, where do you live? I have a car and can be there soon.”

Mike didn’t usually reveal his address to any one he met in the course of his professional life, but Maggie seemed different, so he relented and told her, and they made a time to meet at 4.00pm.

Putting the phone down, Mike grinned. Maggie Smith was a determined lady, but she seemed keen to give some more input and he quite liked her no-nonsense attitude. He felt moved to tidy up the living area of his apartment in preparation for his visitor.

Having an hour to kill before Maggie Smith’s arrival Mike sat down at his computer and wrote the follow up article for Harry Ferguson. The article was heavy on generalities and light on specifics, leaving the conspiracy theorists to draw their own conclusions as to what was happening. Opening up his email to send the article through to the editor’s desk Mike was surprised to see that he had received a further 60 emails into the dementia folder in the hour or so since lunch. Beyond thinking that was unusual, Mike shut down his computer and prepared for Maggie Smith’s arrival.

Punctually at four o’clock Maggie knocked on his door. Mike opened his front door and Maggie walked in carrying two cups of coffee. By the time she had reached the couch some 12 feet from the door Maggie had already covered the fact that she hoped Mike liked coffee, she hadn’t put sugar in his but assumed he would have some at home if he took sugar, Was he a smoker, if so then he was a silly bugger and told Mike he needed a woman round here to sort his flat out for him.

Mike was still closing the door, reeling slightly at the verbal overload. He turned to see Maggie already sat down on his couch and looking at him expectantly.

Mike mentally shook himself at the verbal onslaught.” Yes, I drink coffee, and yes, I do have sugar in the kitchen, and yes, I smoke and you’re not my mother and yes, a woman would keep the place tidy and please say you aren’t applying for the position because I’d probably kill you within the first week to get some peace. Other than that, thank you for coming here this afternoon.”

Maggie did not appear shocked at Mikes reply. “Right, I like a bloke who’s not scared to stand up to me. We’ll get along fine. Now what have you done since I saw you on Monday?”

Mike grinned at her. “You know, you might just be my mother or at least you may have been sent by her! Excuse me while I get the sugar.” He rose and went into the kitchen. He decided he was going to like working with Maggie Smith.

Returning and sitting down on the only easy chair in his apartment Mike went over the happenings of the last two days with Maggie. He explained that he had now been retained by the paper to do a follow up article and a further feature for the Sunday spread. He told her the paper had received over a thousand contacts on his article which was unheard of for a non-event issue like Dementia.

Maggie asked what the tone of the comments of the contact emails were about. Mike confessed he hadn’t looked at them yet.

Maggie hid her disapproval that Mike could churn out an article that was still so vague and really not based on any educated research. She didn’t hide it very well which led Mike to defend his work by saying that the Sun readers didn’t want to know all the gory details of dementia.

Maggie went on the attack. “And that’s where your newspaper people are getting it wrong! We actually do want to know more information on anything that intrudes on our own families, thank you very much. However, I’ve been thinking a lot since we spoke on Monday, and I’ve come up with something for you to think about. It’s not damn dementia cases we’re getting snowed under with. It’s something else. Something we haven’t seen before, but we only treat it as dementia because we haven’t got the time or staff or the bloody money to do anything else.”

Mike probed Maggie for something more. “Forgive me, but I can’t go to the editor with a story that there is a new disease that’s affecting people in huge numbers without some documentary evidence. The thoughts or hunches of one nurse are not going to keep me in anyone’s good books.”

For the second time that day Mike was told to get off his backside and do some work. Maggie expressed the sentiment using slightly more colourful tones. “Well get off your arse and do some research then. Ask all those poor buggers who emailed you what they think. If you can work that damn thing (nodding her head towards the computer on Mike’s desk) I’ll tell you what you need to ask. Come on, lad. If you pull finger, you’ll have a worthwhile story for your boss’s Sunday paper.”

Maggie wanted Mike to ask each person who emailed on the dementia case several questions such as the age of the relation when the dementia had onset. What was the length of time between onset and full-blown mental faculty losses? Were there any treatments given by the medical profession outside the usual dementia medication. Was there anything odd in the dementia sufferers’ personality? Finally, had the person died and how long after suffering the full-blown dementia onset.

While Maggie was writing down her questions for Mike to put to the respondents, Mike was sat at the computer converting all the respondents’ addresses into a mailing list. Mike noted that he had received a further 78 emails in the last two hours that had gone into the ‘dementia’ folder. Included in the folder was a reply from Harry Ferguson that his article had been accepted and would be in the Thursday morning edition.

Mike set Maggie’s question into a spreadsheet format. He then inserted them into the email along with a covering note that he was conducting a survey and would be grateful for their assistance in his research.

With the time approaching 6 pm, Mike was happy to call it a day. Two hours of Maggie Smith’s encouragement was more than enough for Mike to handle, and he looked forward to shutting the door on Maggie for the day. Mike’s attitude of doing just enough to get by had served him reasonably well over the years and he found Maggie something of a cross between his loving mother and his nagging ex-wife. On telling Maggie that the work was over for the day he was less than overjoyed to hear Maggie say she finished at lunchtime tomorrow and could be here by 12.30. Would she like him to bring him anything for lunch?

Mike promised to ring her at work in the morning and they would arrange things at that point. Shutting the door behind her he imagined that Maggie was still talking to him as she walked out of the door. Mike didn’t make the mistake of asking what she said. He closed the door and walked over to the couch and put on the evening news.

Just before he went to bed some fours later, he checked his emails and was surprised to find that over 450 replies to his survey had already been received in his inbox. Mike did not have a reputation in the industry of being over inquisitive or over eager to work. Being true to his reputation he shut the computer down and went to bed.

His sleep was disturbed at 8.30 in the morning by a phone call from Maggie Smith asking how the survey was going and had he managed any findings yet. Using the truth as his best defence Mike replied that there over 400 replies so far and he had not yet managed to find any trends developing in the survey. He agreed that Maggie could come to his apartment at 12.30 and yes, she could bring him something warm to eat. Putting the phone down and rolling over in the bed Mike tried to get back to sleep but had to admit to something resembling curiosity as to the email replies. Giving in to a long luxurious stretch he rolled out of bed and stood there in his underwear. He turned the computer on as he walked past it and made himself some breakfast. Sitting in front of the computer eating toast, Mike was still a little surprised to find how long it was taking to download the emails pouring in.

From a glance at the screen, Mike figured he had received another 200 emails overnight on the subject of dementia and a total of somewhere near 800 replies to his survey. Thinking it all looked like a lot of hard work Mike plucked out and read a few random emails. Most of them said the same thing that the mailer’s loved one had gone down with dementia very quickly. Many said it had happened overnight. Mike made a mental note to ask Maggie what usually happened with people getting dementia and then continued opening more of the survey replies.

Trying to be as dispassionate as any journalist should be was easy at the start of the survey replies. As he read more, his attention became more focused. He found himself speed reading the emails looking for ones that stood out as different. It could not escape Mike’s notice that the clear majority of the respondent’s replies were frighteningly similar. All indicated the onset had occurred without warning. Most of the respondents stated their partner or loved one was of above average intelligence. Many of them were in senior positions in their employment. On the basis of the few replies, he had read the average age of onset was 35-40 with a good percentage even younger than that. The greater majority had not suffered a long time with the disease but had died reasonably shortly after the full-blown onset of the dementia. The average life span of the respondent’s loved ones would not have exceeded 2 months.

Mike was fully immersed in the emails when his doorbell rang. Assuming it was Maggie he walked over to the door and opened it.

Maggie’s greeting was short and to the point. “And you can put some clothes on before I walk through this door. Is this how you reporters like to get your girls? Trust me, I’ve been a nurse for twenty-six years and I ‘ve seen bigger and better column inches than you can muster, my lad.”

Mike uttered a brief thought to himself along the lines of “Oh shit, I’m still in my Jama’s” but before he could explain Maggie was past him and heading to the kitchen shouting back over her shoulder that she needed plates and where were they kept.

Mike slipped past her to the bedroom and threw some clothes on. Thinking better of himself he also ducked into the bathroom and washed his face.

Walking back into the lounge Mike saw his visitor had already set the pies she had purchased on plates and along with the coffees was ready to eat.

Pushing a plate towards Mike, Maggie waited until he had taken a bite out of his pie before starting her questioning.

“Right then, what you come up with? All clever people? Young people? Come on lad, we’ve not got all day.”

Mike used the reason that his mouth was full to delay his reply. The delay was really to gather his thoughts.

Reaching behind him he grabbed the paper that Maggie had written her questions down on the previous day. Giving it to Maggie he said.” You write down what the average dementia patient should look like and then we’ll compare notes.”

Maggie carefully considered her replies which gave Mike the chance to finish his food. Then they compared notes

Mike started with “Question 1. The age of the relation when the dementia had onset.”

Maggie thought that the average age should be mid to late fifties. Mike replied that the survey showed mid to late 30’s

Maggie pulled up the next question “Question 2 The length of time between onset and full-blown mental faculty losses. With medication the full symptoms can often be delayed for a few years. I’d say two years as an average.”

Mike replied that the survey indicated an average of one day or less.

Maggie continued. “Question 3. Any treatments given by the medical profession outside the usual dementia medication? My answer would be no. we don’t have the staff or the time or the funds to do much with them other than make them comfortable and make sure they don’t harm themselves.”

Mikes findings from the survey indicated that there was usually little time for the patients to be offered different treatments.

To question 4. Was there anything odd in the dementia sufferer’s personality? Maggie said generally dementia sufferers withdrew inside themselves and became shy and almost reclusive. Mike’s respondents offered more variety on the question, but it didn’t make sense in that many of the respondent’s patients seemed to become different somehow. The word different was used in a lot of the replies.

Replying to the final question Maggie indicated there was no real timeline on the patient dying after suffering the full-blown dementia onset. She assumed an average time would be five years. Some patients would live for twenty or even thirty years with care.

Mike’s summary of the survey respondents indicated that the average life expectancy not more than two months.

Expecting Maggie to be surprised at the findings Mike was taken aback when Maggie asserted, “See! I damn well told you there was something going on!”

Mike’s liking for the easy life was kicking into his psyche and telling him that although there might indeed be something going on, did Mike really want all the hassle of finding what it was that was actually ‘going on’.

Maggie didn’t understand Mike’s psyche and carried on without interruption. “So, what are you going to do about it? This will make a great story for the Sundays. Won’t it?”

Mike agreed it would make a great story but put forward the thought that maybe it was time to talk to the editor to get his views on the story’s newsworthiness.

“Great idea.” said Maggie “Ring him now!”

Mike rang Harry Ferguson at the Sun requesting a meeting saying the story could be much bigger than first visualized. Deep inside him Mike hoped that Harry would think he was just trying to wangle more pay and tell him to forget it. However, editors of a major daily newspaper have a nose for big story, so Harry immediately suggested a meeting the next morning at 10am. Mike heard Maggie whisper behind him that 10 would be fine as she didn’t work on Fridays.

When Mike put the phone down Maggie told him that it was not even 1.30 and they could spend the rest of the day going through the survey and getting some totals and trends and geography and stuff. Inwardly Mike groaned but he sat down with Maggie to sift through the emails.

There were over 1000 replies to the survey tucked away in Mike’s inbox. It was past 8.30 when he finally eased Maggie out of his apartment. Maggie would have worked until midnight and beyond, but Mike had reached his limit. Yes, he wanted to be a part of a major story. Perhaps even a major government corruption scandal. A journo award in his name would open many doors for a freelancer for the rest of his life. It also indicated a huge amount of work and somewhere deep inside him a gut instinct told him that it would also mean trouble.

Well done,

There are probably around 23 pages for you to enjoy this month. because the book starts with a little explanation as its preface. Make no mistake, Reincarnation is a fact of life, it says it, right there in the bible. This story revolves right up through the corridors of Power in Whitehall. Oh, and it also is in the corridors of the German Parliament. And the USA house of Representatives. Let's just say this is at the seat of most governments and it is being controlled by a secret agency. A Club, if you like. You've probably heard of them in your readings...

Let's get back to the book. It's a three-part thriller although as I write this the fourth and fifth books are being written as well

As always once I get the urge to write, it almost seems like it is being dictated to me.

It's an odd feeling for me. But it's probably something you should be aware of.

Again, the Best I can do is offer the Ebook at half price so for the month of July it will be reduced to $1.99 if you choose to make a purchase in July

Preface

Reincarnation is a fact of life! It even says it, right there in the Bible, if you look closely. You could go a little further and say Reincarnation is a fact of life AND a consequence of death. Think about that for a second. You die and come back in a new body.

But what if you didn’t have to die to take on a new body?

Ask yourself, if you could just take over any individual’s body and lead their life. Would you? Would you choose to live as Beyoncé or Justin Bieber, for the fame and fortune? Perhaps as Obama or as Oprah, for the powerful friends and lavish lifestyle? Maybe it would be as Angela Merkel or Bill Gates? Lots of power and influence and a good income. And when that body got old, you could just hop into another younger or richer or fitter body. You could keep doing that and getting richer and richer and live forever.

A tempting prospect, isn’t it?

Would you call it ‘Body Snatching’?

How do you know it’s not happening already?

Today? Right in front of you?

Read on…….

Introduction

Doctor Peter Emellson was close to finishing his shift at the Hospital. As a highly respected member of the teaching faculty in the field of oncology, his reputation was unsurpassed for being an innovator of new ideas in the treatment of Skin cancer and Basal Cell Melanoma. Currently his work involved research into a variety of some of the more esoteric or old-fashioned treatments for ailments of the skin. In short, he was leading research into the ‘natural medicines’ field. His personal involvement in the research gave some credence to the bringing in or use of colour therapists and naturopaths and similar alternative fields of healing.

For the past eighteen months he had met and talked with all manner of fringe healing practise and its practitioners. On principle, Doctor Emellson declined to use the term ‘medicine’ when researching these alternative beliefs. In his opinion the term ‘Medicine’ involved years of research, testing and development in a clinical environment. What he had been studying in the last year and a half was at best theory or hearsay from a wide variety of well-meaning individuals. None of whom had come even close to providing the definitive results and case studies that he needed to advance his research.

His last appointment of this shift was to meet and interview yet another of these so-called healers whose area of expertise involved something called ‘chakra alignment’.

As always Doctor Emellson went into the appointment with an open mind. He was relieved that the majority of these alternative healers were basically very well meaning. Very few had the desire to earn money from their ‘gifts’ of healing. This attitude made Doctor Emellson a little less suspicious of their motives and made him want to believe the natural healing could be an alternative to the high-priced alternatives that the drug companies were promoting.

He entered his office and sat down at his desk. His secretary ushered in the latest candidate who thought he could revolutionize medicine. The elderly healer smiled at the doctor and introduced himself as Michael Barton, a chakra healer from Wolverhampton. In his mind the good doctor tried to quell the humorous concept of Wolverhampton being a hot bed of natural healing and rose to greet the Healer.

After introductions both men sat down, and Doctor Emellson explained briefly the concept of the study he was undertaking and invited the visitor to explain the idea of his healing method in general terms.

The visitor explained that if he were able to place his hands on the chakra points of the doctor’s body, he might more ably feel the connections. Doctor Emellson agreed, and the Doctor came around the desk to allow the visitor to demonstrate his craft.

As the visitor lightly put his hands on the doctor’s head several things happened. The doctor suddenly felt very lightheaded and was aware only that he was very definitely feeling some energy or influence on his body when the visitor placed his hands softly on the top of the doctor’s head. To an onlooker the situation in the room might have looked odd. Firstly, the healer placed his hands on the Doctors head, then to his own head and finally put his hands back on the Doctors head. Within seconds the visiting healer had slumped to the floor in a state of wild disorientation and passed out. It may only have been a few seconds later, but after recovering his composure the doctor looked at his former self slumped on the floor. He called out to the receptionist asking her to summon help as the visitor had collapsed.

Kneeling down to check the visitor, the ‘new’ soul driving Doctor Emellson smiled and took in his surroundings with satisfaction. The man on the floor was regaining consciousness and dazedly looking around. When he saw the doctor kneeling over him, he stopped and looked at his own hands and then touched his face. Within moments of the doctor’s summons, two nurses arrived and burst through the door. The Doctor was kneeling over the body of the healer. He informed the nurses that his visitor had suddenly collapsed and was incoherent and suggested the visitor be admitted to the hospital. The good Doctor stepped back as the nurse began attending to the patient.

“Lie still, please. You’ve had a fall; can you tell me your name. please?”

“I’m Doctor Emellson. No, my name might be Michael. Michael Barton. I don’t know.”

Perhaps those were the last words of sanity that ever left the body of Michael Barton. The nurses quickly organised a gurney for the patient, and he was wheeled out of the Doctors’ office. As the door of his office closed behind the nurses the new occupier of Doctor Peter Emellson’s body took in its new surroundings. He smiled and sat down at the Doctor’s desk.

Chapter 1

Michael James Doull was a veteran reporter with some 20 years of reporting behind him. He did not however go back in the industry as far as the days of sitting hunched over a typewriter. His arrival in the news media melting pot had coincided with the advent of the desktop computer. With today’s technology advantages he could virtually write any story on his Smartphone, take the pictures on his Smartphone and send it whisking into his employer without ever going near an office. Mike liked that idea. In his own mind Mike knew he was getting lazy, but years of dealing with the filthy circumstances of other peoples’ lives had taken away any youthful enthusiasm.

He had enjoyed a few good paydays covering the personal side of much of the Jubilee celebrations. But that had been nearly a month ago. Now he had to wait for the Olympics to start in August before he could guarantee a few more regular pay checks heading his way.

Today he was perched on the corner of the desk of the editor of the Sun daily newspaper. It could have been any paper in the country for Mike was a freelance reporter who made his living developing any story he could get paid for by one of the national dailies. Today he was annoying the features editor of the Sun, Harry Ferguson, to try and get whatever work he could get his hands on. Times were tough with the recession, but the Sun was probably one of the few dailies that still paid freelance jocks like him to dig up dirt or fluff pieces. Occasionally the leads offered would turn into something big and result in Mike having a good payday. Most of the time he would be offered bits and pieces that he himself would have to develop into something that would make the papers in the front two or three pages. Harry Ferguson was not in a giving mood today. He’d spent most of the morning in a heads of department meeting that was called to tighten belts and budgets.

Mike Doull knew that Harry Ferguson had a temper the equivalent to his namesake in football management, but over the years Mike had managed to stay in Ferguson’s good books. Mike was one of the few in the industry who could get away with calling him ‘Fergie’ to his face. Mike was also aware that he was close to getting the newspaper editors version of the Fergie hairdryer treatment but persisted in his chat as he needed the work and the money.

Fergie had nothing to offer Mike but was willing to give him a start on an article as Mike always delivered in the Sun’s scathing style no matter how trivial the story. From the meeting that morning the editors had been asked to keep all matters relating to the current recession with its own in-house reporting staff. There were a good number of unofficial leaks coming from ‘Number 10’ that were for political gains and these were fed directly to senior reporters as they were less likely to name their sources as would a freelancer with no legal team to support them. Fergie suggested that Mike try and come back to him with some ideas of his own and offered him one day of fees to go and dig out some topics that might make a story.

With that meagre economic lifeline in his hand Mike thanked Fergie and left his office.

Going down to the reporter’s room Mike trawled the staffers who were not out in the field for any suggestions that he could follow up.

The offerings were meagre, but several ideas were forthcoming to him: As always Mike thought about the subject and immediately came up with some angles he could perhaps develop to coin up some intrigue.

There was the forthcoming visit by the Chilean miners to Manchester and a visit to Manchester United. (Perhaps a chance for a few words with the Manchester United insiders, possibly make a few contacts for future use).

There were concerns that dementia numbers were spiralling in all age ranges. (How good was our health system, is the increase due to modern day life pressures? Is there a cure?).

How well could Britain cope if we had another major freeze up (Could the country cope? Had we learned our lessons from the previous big freeze? Is this part of the global warming? Kyoto or not to Kyoto?)

EEC mandarins getting more demanding and more trivial (we can’t sell sausages anymore, have to buy all EEC goods through the EEC head office, any chance of someone in the EEC clipping the ticket and skimming an income?)

Global warming (yes, it’s an issue but not for the Sun to lead with)

There were no more issues with any initial work done on them that had been pushed to one side, so Mike sat at a free desk and made some phone calls at the Sun’s expense.

The Press office at Manchester United were not interested in dealing with a freelancer. They only spoke to accredited reporters and Mike was invited to submit his credentials from a major daily for inspection. Mike gave his thanks but knew he was far too lazy to go to all that bother.

The Dementia story showed more cooperative sources. He spoke to two hospitals and three age care facilities. All agreed that the dementia numbers were rocketing upwards, and the government should be offering more funding. Many of the people contacted offered to be interviewed and Mike promised to get back to them, in time.

In trying to get somewhere with the freeze-up story Mike was pushed from pillar to post. No one really knew who was responsible for which facet of the freeze, if it was declared an emergency. The guy at the roads board thought they had a few days stock of grit and salt and was maybe a little concerned at the replacement of that stock. He had no idea who supplied that stock, so the tale and Mike’s enthusiasm ended there.

The possible story of the EEC mandarins met with a similar fate in that the PR people Mike spoke to in Brussels were unhelpful to the point of being rude at any suggestion that the EEC was not the source of salvation for the future progress of Europe. On pressing further Mike was put through to three different people, none of whom spoke English.

Mike sat and viewed the sheet of paper in front of him. With the exception of the Dementia story all the others had been crossed out as not worth it or they involved too much effort and travelling to be worth his bother.

With a sigh, Mike picked up the phone again. As he dialed the first number, he wondered how he could jazz up the story, of more old people going loopy, sufficient for the Sun to hand over a decent cheque.

Chapter 2

Mike set up four appointments for the following day. The two morning appointments were at hospitals and were as positive as Mike expected. Yes, there were increased incidents of dementia. The person available at both hospitals for interviewing could best be described as an academic. They both led most of their answers with “interestingly….”. Mike could not get the connection between ‘interestingly’ and the topic of dementia. It appeared that cases of dementia were up quite a bit over the last five years. There were far more cases of younger people entering the hospital with this affliction and obviously the government had done nothing to meet this trend with increased funding etc. Politely making sure he had spelt their names correctly; Mike left and found a pub that served a reasonable pub lunch. Fighting off a strong urge to cancel the two afternoon appointments he sat and ate his meal and tried to jazz up what he had been told so far. He didn’t try for very long as the meal demanded more of his attention than the prospect of the story in hand.

Arriving at the 2 o’clock interview Mike met the interviewee. Maggie Smith was a no-nonsense nurse from Leeds who did not want to be a part of a structured interview. She wanted to express her thoughts and Mike was welcome to make of it what he wanted. Maggie Smith had a thought or two on a lot of things, not least of which were reinforcements of the opinions of the two old bores from the morning interviews. Further to those thoughts she was convinced there was something going on. Probably a government experiment that no one knew about. Most of the new dementia patients were quite young which was almost unheard of in her experience. Maggie wanted to give full vent to her concerns. “And another thing”, this accompanied with a wagging finger, “How come most of these patients have no build-up of symptoms. Dementia is a usually a progressive disease over several years. Lots of my patients are exhibiting full blown dementia almost overnight.” In closing, she again affirmed her belief that the damned government is up to something, and no one is letting on what it is.

Mike took to Maggie straight away. Although she was talking in a similar manner to the many crackpots expressing their views about the government or flying saucers, Mike realised that this was just Maggie’s Yorkshire way of dealing with anything. Despite only allowing twenty minutes for the interview, Mike stayed and talked with Maggie for the better part of an hour. He found her quite observant and much focussed on her patients. Mike promised to get back to her if the paper wanted more info and then he drove to his next appointment.

Appointment number four was really just a senior nurse offering a rehash of the high-minded ideas of the first two interviews. At Mike’s prodding the nurse agreed that yes, there were more cases of dementia occurring. Yes, there was much higher incidence of younger patients. And yes, there were very high numbers of patients going into dementia very rapidly which was unusual.

On his way home Mike called in to talk further with Maggie Smith but she had left for the day. It seemed her shift had finished at midday, but she had felt strongly enough about her patients to stay on and make sure Mike got the full story from her.

When he got home Mike set to and turfed out a 1000-word piece on the dementia issue. It really wasn’t a subject that could be jazzed up or sensationalized. Working the angle of Maggie Smith’s theory of a government cover up into the article was a struggle but Mike had enough years of experience behind him to get the reader to ask themselves the cover up question. Attaching the article to an email he pressed the send button and sent his words across the internet to the features editor with a silent wish that it was a slow news day, and they would be looking for fill in material.

He was surprised that within minutes Harry Ferguson emailed back to say he would use the article as it was indeed a slow news day, but it probably would be tucked away on page 6 or 7. Although it promised a paycheck, its placement in the paper didn’t guarantee much of a read or the chance of a follow up article. Out of politeness, Mike emailed Harry back and worked in a request for some upfront travel expenses to do an article on the EEC mandarins. Mentioning the possibility of a hint of corruption would usually get any editors interested. Harry Ferguson was too experienced to fall for that trick. He emailed back for Mike to come up with more details before he would consider fronting up with the funds. Mike knew there was nothing of substance to offer to Fergie, so he switched off his computer and called it a day.

Across town, in the office of Doctor Peter Emellson there was great consternation in the IT dept. it appeared that all of Doctor Emellson’s research notes for the past year or so had disappeared from his computer memory. Quite rightly, the good Doctor was berating the hospital’s IT dept as his work and study for the last 18 months had disappeared for all time. Without repeating the entire study again there was no possibility of drawing any conclusions or making any recommendations. Doctor Emellson was visibly angered with the IT technician who was at a loss to recover the missing data. The good doctor’s anger was visible to all his staff as he stormed out of the hospital and left work for the day. The anger was still on his face when he arrived home and dutifully kissed his wife. In fact, the doctor’s anger was clear to all who saw him that day. But it disappeared when he sat alone in his study at home. His anger was replaced by a smile of deep contentment as he sat and sipped a fine Malt Whisky. The contentment was for a job well done.

Chapter 3

Mike Doull’s article was reasonably prominent, and it actually made page 4. That’s the page after the Sun’s page 3 girl cover. That’s still a good location to catch the attention of those who tire of the ever smiling but still unattainable page 3 Boob babes. It is understood by most of the industry that readers of the Sun newspaper are not among the highest percentile of intellect. A story on more people going loopy was not going to attract a great audience and those who did read it were probably not of the calibre that would command a royal inquiry into the dementia problem.

As the author of the article Mike had already inwardly acknowledged the story was at an end and had already been on the phone to a couple of other Daily newspapers looking for work. Mike was therefore more than a little surprised when he received an email later in the day from Harry Ferguson asking him to make contact for a follow up article on the dementia story. Mike emailed Harry immediately and made a time to meet in Harry’s office the following day.

On entering Harry’s office, the next day Mike prepared to sit on the corner of Harry’s desk until Harry firmly pointed to a chair for Mike to sit on.

Harry started the conversation with, “We’ve had emails and phone calls from all over the place on your dementia story. So, what’s the angle?”

Mike was at a loss to answer Harry’s question and replied accordingly.

Harry explained his interest. “The Sun has readers everywhere. All the expats across the world go online to the Sun website so they can catch up with what’s happening at home.”

Mike offered the thought that it might be just for the page 3 girls, but Harry knocked that thought aside and went further.

“That’s crap! There’re more boobs, bush and bonking on the internet than you’ll ever get on page 3. The Sun online has the biggest readership of all the dailies. And your article has got them contacting us by the hundreds, make that by the thousand! We’ve had calls and emails from Australia, Italy, Japan, USA, Brazil, Switzerland and more. This dementia story has hit a nerve. I want to know why and I’m guessing you know the answer.”

“Sorry Harry, I haven’t a clue” replied Mike “but I can do a follow up for the right retainer….”

“If I didn’t know you better Mike, I’d say you were lying. Prove me wrong. I’ll put you on retainer for a week. Give me another thousand words for tomorrow and something for the Sundays”.

Mike countered with, “Make it a month’s retainer and expenses and I’ll stir you up a government enquiry.”

Harry’s final offer was two weeks plus expenses with all articles to go through his desk. Mike smiled inwardly and leaned forward to shake hands on the deal. Before shaking on the deal Harry shook his head and stressed that Mike had better get off his backside and be prepared to earn his fee.

Leaving Harry’s office, Mike rode down three floors in the lift, all the while devising his strategy. By the time he arrived at the reporter’s room he had mapped out the first few days work on the story and was ready to start work.

Sitting comfortably at a spare desk he created a new email name and account on the Sun’s domain name. All the emails that had arrived in relation to his initial article were redirected to the new account. They numbered over 400 emails. Mike also gave instructions to the IT guys that all emails with the word Dementia were to be forwarded to his new account. He then set up an automatic forward from his new account to his home email and then left the office to head home. In his mind he was already busy wording an article for the following day, to be based on the worldwide response to his first article. Perhaps he could use the high numbers to disavow the intimation of a British government cover up as he had implied. He couldn’t work in an angle that every government was involved in a cover up. Maybe he could hint that the global warming was to blame. The conspiracy theorists would love that if he could get them to ask themselves the question without him personally posing the question. His route home took him past the aged care home that he had visited the previous day to interview Maggie Smith. He called in on the off chance he could chat with her, but she had finished her shift at 12.00 and left for the day. He left his phone number with the reception and carried on home.

On arriving home Mike carried out his usual routine of grabbing a beer from the fridge, sitting at his computer and downloading emails. While the emails were coming through, he checked his phone for messages. The routine was automatic to Mike. Usually, he had finished the beer before the emails had finished coming through. Today he wondered if he had drunk his beer too hastily as the emails were only a quarter downloaded as he examined the empty beer bottle.

Leaving the emails continuing their downloading, he made himself a somewhat belated lunch. When he returned to the computer, he still had time to eat a sandwich before the emails stopped coming through. He checked the feeds and with some surprise noted he had 988 new emails. Okay, he thought, maybe 400 were forwarded from the Sun account. He separated the new emails with a search word of Dementia, so that any emails with that word were pushed into a separate folder. This left him with just 49 emails to answer. Discounting the 20 or so that were offering cheap medications or Nigerian scam merchants, he went through the 20 odd remaining emails. One of the emails was from Maggie Smith and he opened that one first. She requested another chance to talk with him about the illness he had covered in his article. Strangely, she had not used the word dementia in her email, so it had not been filtered into a side folder on his computer. Maggie had given three phone numbers in her email. With his curiosity piqued, Mike reached out to pick up his phone to call her. As he did, the phone rang. When that happens it usually gives the recipient a shock. Mike was a little startled and the fact he was eating at the time caused him to choke a little. Picking up the phone, still coughing, a recognisable flat Yorkshire voice asked him if he was alright, told him that his cough didn’t sound too healthy and confirmed that it was all the traffic pollution that made Manchester an unhealthy environment. Ending with a suggestion that he should see his doctor about the cough, the caller introduced herself as Maggie Smith and reminded Mike he’d called to the aged care home to see her.

Mike grinned to himself as he recognised the no nonsense approach of his caller. He responded to her concern, “Hi Maggie and thanks for calling, No I’m not sick, I’m just choking on a sandwich, and yes, I did call you to do a follow up on our talk the other day.”

Maggie interrupted,” Well that’s good because I wanted to speak to you. I can come round and see you today if you like, where do you live? I have a car and can be there soon.”

Mike didn’t usually reveal his address to any one he met in the course of his professional life, but Maggie seemed different, so he relented and told her, and they made a time to meet at 4.00pm.

Putting the phone down, Mike grinned. Maggie Smith was a determined lady, but she seemed keen to give some more input and he quite liked her no-nonsense attitude. He felt moved to tidy up the living area of his apartment in preparation for his visitor.

Having an hour to kill before Maggie Smith’s arrival Mike sat down at his computer and wrote the follow up article for Harry Ferguson. The article was heavy on generalities and light on specifics, leaving the conspiracy theorists to draw their own conclusions as to what was happening. Opening up his email to send the article through to the editor’s desk Mike was surprised to see that he had received a further 60 emails into the dementia folder in the hour or so since lunch. Beyond thinking that was unusual, Mike shut down his computer and prepared for Maggie Smith’s arrival.

Punctually at four o’clock Maggie knocked on his door. Mike opened his front door and Maggie walked in carrying two cups of coffee. By the time she had reached the couch some 12 feet from the door Maggie had already covered the fact that she hoped Mike liked coffee, she hadn’t put sugar in his but assumed he would have some at home if he took sugar, Was he a smoker, if so then he was a silly bugger and told Mike he needed a woman round here to sort his flat out for him.

Mike was still closing the door, reeling slightly at the verbal overload. He turned to see Maggie already sat down on his couch and looking at him expectantly.

Mike mentally shook himself at the verbal onslaught.” Yes, I drink coffee, and yes, I do have sugar in the kitchen, and yes, I smoke and you’re not my mother and yes, a woman would keep the place tidy and please say you aren’t applying for the position because I’d probably kill you within the first week to get some peace. Other than that, thank you for coming here this afternoon.”

Maggie did not appear shocked at Mikes reply. “Right, I like a bloke who’s not scared to stand up to me. We’ll get along fine. Now what have you done since I saw you on Monday?”

Mike grinned at her. “You know, you might just be my mother or at least you may have been sent by her! Excuse me while I get the sugar.” He rose and went into the kitchen. He decided he was going to like working with Maggie Smith.

Returning and sitting down on the only easy chair in his apartment Mike went over the happenings of the last two days with Maggie. He explained that he had now been retained by the paper to do a follow up article and a further feature for the Sunday spread. He told her the paper had received over a thousand contacts on his article which was unheard of for a non-event issue like Dementia.

Maggie asked what the tone of the comments of the contact emails were about. Mike confessed he hadn’t looked at them yet.

Maggie hid her disapproval that Mike could churn out an article that was still so vague and really not based on any educated research. She didn’t hide it very well which led Mike to defend his work by saying that the Sun readers didn’t want to know all the gory details of dementia.

Maggie went on the attack. “And that’s where your newspaper people are getting it wrong! We actually do want to know more information on anything that intrudes on our own families, thank you very much. However, I’ve been thinking a lot since we spoke on Monday, and I’ve come up with something for you to think about. It’s not damn dementia cases we’re getting snowed under with. It’s something else. Something we haven’t seen before, but we only treat it as dementia because we haven’t got the time or staff or the bloody money to do anything else.”

Mike probed Maggie for something more. “Forgive me, but I can’t go to the editor with a story that there is a new disease that’s affecting people in huge numbers without some documentary evidence. The thoughts or hunches of one nurse are not going to keep me in anyone’s good books.”

For the second time that day Mike was told to get off his backside and do some work. Maggie expressed the sentiment using slightly more colourful tones. “Well get off your arse and do some research then. Ask all those poor buggers who emailed you what they think. If you can work that damn thing (nodding her head towards the computer on Mike’s desk) I’ll tell you what you need to ask. Come on, lad. If you pull finger, you’ll have a worthwhile story for your boss’s Sunday paper.”

Maggie wanted Mike to ask each person who emailed on the dementia case several questions such as the age of the relation when the dementia had onset. What was the length of time between onset and full-blown mental faculty losses? Were there any treatments given by the medical profession outside the usual dementia medication. Was there anything odd in the dementia sufferers’ personality? Finally, had the person died and how long after suffering the full-blown dementia onset.

While Maggie was writing down her questions for Mike to put to the respondents, Mike was sat at the computer converting all the respondents’ addresses into a mailing list. Mike noted that he had received a further 78 emails in the last two hours that had gone into the ‘dementia’ folder. Included in the folder was a reply from Harry Ferguson that his article had been accepted and would be in the Thursday morning edition.

Mike set Maggie’s question into a spreadsheet format. He then inserted them into the email along with a covering note that he was conducting a survey and would be grateful for their assistance in his research.

With the time approaching 6 pm, Mike was happy to call it a day. Two hours of Maggie Smith’s encouragement was more than enough for Mike to handle, and he looked forward to shutting the door on Maggie for the day. Mike’s attitude of doing just enough to get by had served him reasonably well over the years and he found Maggie something of a cross between his loving mother and his nagging ex-wife. On telling Maggie that the work was over for the day he was less than overjoyed to hear Maggie say she finished at lunchtime tomorrow and could be here by 12.30. Would she like him to bring him anything for lunch?

Mike promised to ring her at work in the morning and they would arrange things at that point. Shutting the door behind her he imagined that Maggie was still talking to him as she walked out of the door. Mike didn’t make the mistake of asking what she said. He closed the door and walked over to the couch and put on the evening news.

Just before he went to bed some fours later, he checked his emails and was surprised to find that over 450 replies to his survey had already been received in his inbox. Mike did not have a reputation in the industry of being over inquisitive or over eager to work. Being true to his reputation he shut the computer down and went to bed.

His sleep was disturbed at 8.30 in the morning by a phone call from Maggie Smith asking how the survey was going and had he managed any findings yet. Using the truth as his best defence Mike replied that there over 400 replies so far and he had not yet managed to find any trends developing in the survey. He agreed that Maggie could come to his apartment at 12.30 and yes, she could bring him something warm to eat. Putting the phone down and rolling over in the bed Mike tried to get back to sleep but had to admit to something resembling curiosity as to the email replies. Giving in to a long luxurious stretch he rolled out of bed and stood there in his underwear. He turned the computer on as he walked past it and made himself some breakfast. Sitting in front of the computer eating toast, Mike was still a little surprised to find how long it was taking to download the emails pouring in.

From a glance at the screen, Mike figured he had received another 200 emails overnight on the subject of dementia and a total of somewhere near 800 replies to his survey. Thinking it all looked like a lot of hard work Mike plucked out and read a few random emails. Most of them said the same thing that the mailer’s loved one had gone down with dementia very quickly. Many said it had happened overnight. Mike made a mental note to ask Maggie what usually happened with people getting dementia and then continued opening more of the survey replies.

Trying to be as dispassionate as any journalist should be was easy at the start of the survey replies. As he read more, his attention became more focused. He found himself speed reading the emails looking for ones that stood out as different. It could not escape Mike’s notice that the clear majority of the respondent’s replies were frighteningly similar. All indicated the onset had occurred without warning. Most of the respondents stated their partner or loved one was of above average intelligence. Many of them were in senior positions in their employment. On the basis of the few replies, he had read the average age of onset was 35-40 with a good percentage even younger than that. The greater majority had not suffered a long time with the disease but had died reasonably shortly after the full-blown onset of the dementia. The average life span of the respondent’s loved ones would not have exceeded 2 months.

Mike was fully immersed in the emails when his doorbell rang. Assuming it was Maggie he walked over to the door and opened it.

Maggie’s greeting was short and to the point. “And you can put some clothes on before I walk through this door. Is this how you reporters like to get your girls? Trust me, I’ve been a nurse for twenty-six years and I ‘ve seen bigger and better column inches than you can muster, my lad.”

Mike uttered a brief thought to himself along the lines of “Oh shit, I’m still in my Jama’s” but before he could explain Maggie was past him and heading to the kitchen shouting back over her shoulder that she needed plates and where were they kept.

Mike slipped past her to the bedroom and threw some clothes on. Thinking better of himself he also ducked into the bathroom and washed his face.

Walking back into the lounge Mike saw his visitor had already set the pies she had purchased on plates and along with the coffees was ready to eat.

Pushing a plate towards Mike, Maggie waited until he had taken a bite out of his pie before starting her questioning.

“Right then, what you come up with? All clever people? Young people? Come on lad, we’ve not got all day.”

Mike used the reason that his mouth was full to delay his reply. The delay was really to gather his thoughts.

Reaching behind him he grabbed the paper that Maggie had written her questions down on the previous day. Giving it to Maggie he said.” You write down what the average dementia patient should look like and then we’ll compare notes.”

Maggie carefully considered her replies which gave Mike the chance to finish his food. Then they compared notes

Mike started with “Question 1. The age of the relation when the dementia had onset.”

Maggie thought that the average age should be mid to late fifties. Mike replied that the survey showed mid to late 30’s

Maggie pulled up the next question “Question 2 The length of time between onset and full-blown mental faculty losses. With medication the full symptoms can often be delayed for a few years. I’d say two years as an average.”

Mike replied that the survey indicated an average of one day or less.

Maggie continued. “Question 3. Any treatments given by the medical profession outside the usual dementia medication? My answer would be no. we don’t have the staff or the time or the funds to do much with them other than make them comfortable and make sure they don’t harm themselves.”

Mikes findings from the survey indicated that there was usually little time for the patients to be offered different treatments.

To question 4. Was there anything odd in the dementia sufferer’s personality? Maggie said generally dementia sufferers withdrew inside themselves and became shy and almost reclusive. Mike’s respondents offered more variety on the question, but it didn’t make sense in that many of the respondent’s patients seemed to become different somehow. The word different was used in a lot of the replies.

Replying to the final question Maggie indicated there was no real timeline on the patient dying after suffering the full-blown dementia onset. She assumed an average time would be five years. Some patients would live for twenty or even thirty years with care.

Mike’s summary of the survey respondents indicated that the average life expectancy not more than two months.

Expecting Maggie to be surprised at the findings Mike was taken aback when Maggie asserted, “See! I damn well told you there was something going on!”

Mike’s liking for the easy life was kicking into his psyche and telling him that although there might indeed be something going on, did Mike really want all the hassle of finding what it was that was actually ‘going on’.

Maggie didn’t understand Mike’s psyche and carried on without interruption. “So, what are you going to do about it? This will make a great story for the Sundays. Won’t it?”

Mike agreed it would make a great story but put forward the thought that maybe it was time to talk to the editor to get his views on the story’s newsworthiness.

“Great idea.” said Maggie “Ring him now!”

Mike rang Harry Ferguson at the Sun requesting a meeting saying the story could be much bigger than first visualized. Deep inside him Mike hoped that Harry would think he was just trying to wangle more pay and tell him to forget it. However, editors of a major daily newspaper have a nose for big story, so Harry immediately suggested a meeting the next morning at 10am. Mike heard Maggie whisper behind him that 10 would be fine as she didn’t work on Fridays.

When Mike put the phone down Maggie told him that it was not even 1.30 and they could spend the rest of the day going through the survey and getting some totals and trends and geography and stuff. Inwardly Mike groaned but he sat down with Maggie to sift through the emails.

There were over 1000 replies to the survey tucked away in Mike’s inbox. It was past 8.30 when he finally eased Maggie out of his apartment. Maggie would have worked until midnight and beyond, but Mike had reached his limit. Yes, he wanted to be a part of a major story. Perhaps even a major government corruption scandal. A journo award in his name would open many doors for a freelancer for the rest of his life. It also indicated a huge amount of work and somewhere deep inside him a gut instinct told him that it would also mean trouble.

Well done,

There are probably around 23 pages for you to enjoy this month. because the book starts with a little explanation as its preface. Make no mistake, Reincarnation is a fact of life, it says it, right there in the bible. This story revolves right up through the corridors of Power in Whitehall. Oh, and it also is in the corridors of the German Parliament. And the USA house of Representatives. Let's just say this is at the seat of most governments and it is being controlled by a secret agency. A Club, if you like. You've probably heard of them in your readings...

Let's get back to the book. It's a three-part thriller although as I write this the fourth and fifth books are being written as well

As always once I get the urge to write, it almost seems like it is being dictated to me.

It's an odd feeling for me. But it's probably something you should be aware of.

Again, the Best I can do is offer the Ebook at half price so for the month of July it will be reduced to $1.99 if you choose to make a purchase in July

Preface

Reincarnation is a fact of life! It even says it, right there in the Bible, if you look closely. You could go a little further and say Reincarnation is a fact of life AND a consequence of death. Think about that for a second. You die and come back in a new body.

But what if you didn’t have to die to take on a new body?

Ask yourself, if you could just take over any individual’s body and lead their life. Would you? Would you choose to live as Beyoncé or Justin Bieber, for the fame and fortune? Perhaps as Obama or as Oprah, for the powerful friends and lavish lifestyle? Maybe it would be as Angela Merkel or Bill Gates? Lots of power and influence and a good income. And when that body got old, you could just hop into another younger or richer or fitter body. You could keep doing that and getting richer and richer and live forever.

A tempting prospect, isn’t it?

Would you call it ‘Body Snatching’?

How do you know it’s not happening already?

Today? Right in front of you?

Read on…….

Introduction

Doctor Peter Emellson was close to finishing his shift at the Hospital. As a highly respected member of the teaching faculty in the field of oncology, his reputation was unsurpassed for being an innovator of new ideas in the treatment of Skin cancer and Basal Cell Melanoma. Currently his work involved research into a variety of some of the more esoteric or old-fashioned treatments for ailments of the skin. In short, he was leading research into the ‘natural medicines’ field. His personal involvement in the research gave some credence to the bringing in or use of colour therapists and naturopaths and similar alternative fields of healing.

For the past eighteen months he had met and talked with all manner of fringe healing practise and its practitioners. On principle, Doctor Emellson declined to use the term ‘medicine’ when researching these alternative beliefs. In his opinion the term ‘Medicine’ involved years of research, testing and development in a clinical environment. What he had been studying in the last year and a half was at best theory or hearsay from a wide variety of well-meaning individuals. None of whom had come even close to providing the definitive results and case studies that he needed to advance his research.

His last appointment of this shift was to meet and interview yet another of these so-called healers whose area of expertise involved something called ‘chakra alignment’.

As always Doctor Emellson went into the appointment with an open mind. He was relieved that the majority of these alternative healers were basically very well meaning. Very few had the desire to earn money from their ‘gifts’ of healing. This attitude made Doctor Emellson a little less suspicious of their motives and made him want to believe the natural healing could be an alternative to the high-priced alternatives that the drug companies were promoting.

He entered his office and sat down at his desk. His secretary ushered in the latest candidate who thought he could revolutionize medicine. The elderly healer smiled at the doctor and introduced himself as Michael Barton, a chakra healer from Wolverhampton. In his mind the good doctor tried to quell the humorous concept of Wolverhampton being a hot bed of natural healing and rose to greet the Healer.

After introductions both men sat down, and Doctor Emellson explained briefly the concept of the study he was undertaking and invited the visitor to explain the idea of his healing method in general terms.

The visitor explained that if he were able to place his hands on the chakra points of the doctor’s body, he might more ably feel the connections. Doctor Emellson agreed, and the Doctor came around the desk to allow the visitor to demonstrate his craft.

As the visitor lightly put his hands on the doctor’s head several things happened. The doctor suddenly felt very lightheaded and was aware only that he was very definitely feeling some energy or influence on his body when the visitor placed his hands softly on the top of the doctor’s head. To an onlooker the situation in the room might have looked odd. Firstly, the healer placed his hands on the Doctors head, then to his own head and finally put his hands back on the Doctors head. Within seconds the visiting healer had slumped to the floor in a state of wild disorientation and passed out. It may only have been a few seconds later, but after recovering his composure the doctor looked at his former self slumped on the floor. He called out to the receptionist asking her to summon help as the visitor had collapsed.

Kneeling down to check the visitor, the ‘new’ soul driving Doctor Emellson smiled and took in his surroundings with satisfaction. The man on the floor was regaining consciousness and dazedly looking around. When he saw the doctor kneeling over him, he stopped and looked at his own hands and then touched his face. Within moments of the doctor’s summons, two nurses arrived and burst through the door. The Doctor was kneeling over the body of the healer. He informed the nurses that his visitor had suddenly collapsed and was incoherent and suggested the visitor be admitted to the hospital. The good Doctor stepped back as the nurse began attending to the patient.

“Lie still, please. You’ve had a fall; can you tell me your name. please?”

“I’m Doctor Emellson. No, my name might be Michael. Michael Barton. I don’t know.”

Perhaps those were the last words of sanity that ever left the body of Michael Barton. The nurses quickly organised a gurney for the patient, and he was wheeled out of the Doctors’ office. As the door of his office closed behind the nurses the new occupier of Doctor Peter Emellson’s body took in its new surroundings. He smiled and sat down at the Doctor’s desk.

Chapter 1

Michael James Doull was a veteran reporter with some 20 years of reporting behind him. He did not however go back in the industry as far as the days of sitting hunched over a typewriter. His arrival in the news media melting pot had coincided with the advent of the desktop computer. With today’s technology advantages he could virtually write any story on his Smartphone, take the pictures on his Smartphone and send it whisking into his employer without ever going near an office. Mike liked that idea. In his own mind Mike knew he was getting lazy, but years of dealing with the filthy circumstances of other peoples’ lives had taken away any youthful enthusiasm.

He had enjoyed a few good paydays covering the personal side of much of the Jubilee celebrations. But that had been nearly a month ago. Now he had to wait for the Olympics to start in August before he could guarantee a few more regular pay checks heading his way.

Today he was perched on the corner of the desk of the editor of the Sun daily newspaper. It could have been any paper in the country for Mike was a freelance reporter who made his living developing any story he could get paid for by one of the national dailies. Today he was annoying the features editor of the Sun, Harry Ferguson, to try and get whatever work he could get his hands on. Times were tough with the recession, but the Sun was probably one of the few dailies that still paid freelance jocks like him to dig up dirt or fluff pieces. Occasionally the leads offered would turn into something big and result in Mike having a good payday. Most of the time he would be offered bits and pieces that he himself would have to develop into something that would make the papers in the front two or three pages. Harry Ferguson was not in a giving mood today. He’d spent most of the morning in a heads of department meeting that was called to tighten belts and budgets.

Mike Doull knew that Harry Ferguson had a temper the equivalent to his namesake in football management, but over the years Mike had managed to stay in Ferguson’s good books. Mike was one of the few in the industry who could get away with calling him ‘Fergie’ to his face. Mike was also aware that he was close to getting the newspaper editors version of the Fergie hairdryer treatment but persisted in his chat as he needed the work and the money.

Fergie had nothing to offer Mike but was willing to give him a start on an article as Mike always delivered in the Sun’s scathing style no matter how trivial the story. From the meeting that morning the editors had been asked to keep all matters relating to the current recession with its own in-house reporting staff. There were a good number of unofficial leaks coming from ‘Number 10’ that were for political gains and these were fed directly to senior reporters as they were less likely to name their sources as would a freelancer with no legal team to support them. Fergie suggested that Mike try and come back to him with some ideas of his own and offered him one day of fees to go and dig out some topics that might make a story.

With that meagre economic lifeline in his hand Mike thanked Fergie and left his office.

Going down to the reporter’s room Mike trawled the staffers who were not out in the field for any suggestions that he could follow up.

The offerings were meagre, but several ideas were forthcoming to him: As always Mike thought about the subject and immediately came up with some angles he could perhaps develop to coin up some intrigue.

There was the forthcoming visit by the Chilean miners to Manchester and a visit to Manchester United. (Perhaps a chance for a few words with the Manchester United insiders, possibly make a few contacts for future use).

There were concerns that dementia numbers were spiralling in all age ranges. (How good was our health system, is the increase due to modern day life pressures? Is there a cure?).

How well could Britain cope if we had another major freeze up (Could the country cope? Had we learned our lessons from the previous big freeze? Is this part of the global warming? Kyoto or not to Kyoto?)

EEC mandarins getting more demanding and more trivial (we can’t sell sausages anymore, have to buy all EEC goods through the EEC head office, any chance of someone in the EEC clipping the ticket and skimming an income?)

Global warming (yes, it’s an issue but not for the Sun to lead with)

There were no more issues with any initial work done on them that had been pushed to one side, so Mike sat at a free desk and made some phone calls at the Sun’s expense.

The Press office at Manchester United were not interested in dealing with a freelancer. They only spoke to accredited reporters and Mike was invited to submit his credentials from a major daily for inspection. Mike gave his thanks but knew he was far too lazy to go to all that bother.

The Dementia story showed more cooperative sources. He spoke to two hospitals and three age care facilities. All agreed that the dementia numbers were rocketing upwards, and the government should be offering more funding. Many of the people contacted offered to be interviewed and Mike promised to get back to them, in time.

In trying to get somewhere with the freeze-up story Mike was pushed from pillar to post. No one really knew who was responsible for which facet of the freeze, if it was declared an emergency. The guy at the roads board thought they had a few days stock of grit and salt and was maybe a little concerned at the replacement of that stock. He had no idea who supplied that stock, so the tale and Mike’s enthusiasm ended there.

The possible story of the EEC mandarins met with a similar fate in that the PR people Mike spoke to in Brussels were unhelpful to the point of being rude at any suggestion that the EEC was not the source of salvation for the future progress of Europe. On pressing further Mike was put through to three different people, none of whom spoke English.

Mike sat and viewed the sheet of paper in front of him. With the exception of the Dementia story all the others had been crossed out as not worth it or they involved too much effort and travelling to be worth his bother.

With a sigh, Mike picked up the phone again. As he dialed the first number, he wondered how he could jazz up the story, of more old people going loopy, sufficient for the Sun to hand over a decent cheque.

Chapter 2

Mike set up four appointments for the following day. The two morning appointments were at hospitals and were as positive as Mike expected. Yes, there were increased incidents of dementia. The person available at both hospitals for interviewing could best be described as an academic. They both led most of their answers with “interestingly….”. Mike could not get the connection between ‘interestingly’ and the topic of dementia. It appeared that cases of dementia were up quite a bit over the last five years. There were far more cases of younger people entering the hospital with this affliction and obviously the government had done nothing to meet this trend with increased funding etc. Politely making sure he had spelt their names correctly; Mike left and found a pub that served a reasonable pub lunch. Fighting off a strong urge to cancel the two afternoon appointments he sat and ate his meal and tried to jazz up what he had been told so far. He didn’t try for very long as the meal demanded more of his attention than the prospect of the story in hand.

Arriving at the 2 o’clock interview Mike met the interviewee. Maggie Smith was a no-nonsense nurse from Leeds who did not want to be a part of a structured interview. She wanted to express her thoughts and Mike was welcome to make of it what he wanted. Maggie Smith had a thought or two on a lot of things, not least of which were reinforcements of the opinions of the two old bores from the morning interviews. Further to those thoughts she was convinced there was something going on. Probably a government experiment that no one knew about. Most of the new dementia patients were quite young which was almost unheard of in her experience. Maggie wanted to give full vent to her concerns. “And another thing”, this accompanied with a wagging finger, “How come most of these patients have no build-up of symptoms. Dementia is a usually a progressive disease over several years. Lots of my patients are exhibiting full blown dementia almost overnight.” In closing, she again affirmed her belief that the damned government is up to something, and no one is letting on what it is.

Mike took to Maggie straight away. Although she was talking in a similar manner to the many crackpots expressing their views about the government or flying saucers, Mike realised that this was just Maggie’s Yorkshire way of dealing with anything. Despite only allowing twenty minutes for the interview, Mike stayed and talked with Maggie for the better part of an hour. He found her quite observant and much focussed on her patients. Mike promised to get back to her if the paper wanted more info and then he drove to his next appointment.

Appointment number four was really just a senior nurse offering a rehash of the high-minded ideas of the first two interviews. At Mike’s prodding the nurse agreed that yes, there were more cases of dementia occurring. Yes, there was much higher incidence of younger patients. And yes, there were very high numbers of patients going into dementia very rapidly which was unusual.

On his way home Mike called in to talk further with Maggie Smith but she had left for the day. It seemed her shift had finished at midday, but she had felt strongly enough about her patients to stay on and make sure Mike got the full story from her.

When he got home Mike set to and turfed out a 1000-word piece on the dementia issue. It really wasn’t a subject that could be jazzed up or sensationalized. Working the angle of Maggie Smith’s theory of a government cover up into the article was a struggle but Mike had enough years of experience behind him to get the reader to ask themselves the cover up question. Attaching the article to an email he pressed the send button and sent his words across the internet to the features editor with a silent wish that it was a slow news day, and they would be looking for fill in material.

He was surprised that within minutes Harry Ferguson emailed back to say he would use the article as it was indeed a slow news day, but it probably would be tucked away on page 6 or 7. Although it promised a paycheck, its placement in the paper didn’t guarantee much of a read or the chance of a follow up article. Out of politeness, Mike emailed Harry back and worked in a request for some upfront travel expenses to do an article on the EEC mandarins. Mentioning the possibility of a hint of corruption would usually get any editors interested. Harry Ferguson was too experienced to fall for that trick. He emailed back for Mike to come up with more details before he would consider fronting up with the funds. Mike knew there was nothing of substance to offer to Fergie, so he switched off his computer and called it a day.

Across town, in the office of Doctor Peter Emellson there was great consternation in the IT dept. it appeared that all of Doctor Emellson’s research notes for the past year or so had disappeared from his computer memory. Quite rightly, the good Doctor was berating the hospital’s IT dept as his work and study for the last 18 months had disappeared for all time. Without repeating the entire study again there was no possibility of drawing any conclusions or making any recommendations. Doctor Emellson was visibly angered with the IT technician who was at a loss to recover the missing data. The good doctor’s anger was visible to all his staff as he stormed out of the hospital and left work for the day. The anger was still on his face when he arrived home and dutifully kissed his wife. In fact, the doctor’s anger was clear to all who saw him that day. But it disappeared when he sat alone in his study at home. His anger was replaced by a smile of deep contentment as he sat and sipped a fine Malt Whisky. The contentment was for a job well done.

Chapter 3

Mike Doull’s article was reasonably prominent, and it actually made page 4. That’s the page after the Sun’s page 3 girl cover. That’s still a good location to catch the attention of those who tire of the ever smiling but still unattainable page 3 Boob babes. It is understood by most of the industry that readers of the Sun newspaper are not among the highest percentile of intellect. A story on more people going loopy was not going to attract a great audience and those who did read it were probably not of the calibre that would command a royal inquiry into the dementia problem.

As the author of the article Mike had already inwardly acknowledged the story was at an end and had already been on the phone to a couple of other Daily newspapers looking for work. Mike was therefore more than a little surprised when he received an email later in the day from Harry Ferguson asking him to make contact for a follow up article on the dementia story. Mike emailed Harry immediately and made a time to meet in Harry’s office the following day.

On entering Harry’s office, the next day Mike prepared to sit on the corner of Harry’s desk until Harry firmly pointed to a chair for Mike to sit on.

Harry started the conversation with, “We’ve had emails and phone calls from all over the place on your dementia story. So, what’s the angle?”

Mike was at a loss to answer Harry’s question and replied accordingly.

Harry explained his interest. “The Sun has readers everywhere. All the expats across the world go online to the Sun website so they can catch up with what’s happening at home.”

Mike offered the thought that it might be just for the page 3 girls, but Harry knocked that thought aside and went further.

“That’s crap! There’re more boobs, bush and bonking on the internet than you’ll ever get on page 3. The Sun online has the biggest readership of all the dailies. And your article has got them contacting us by the hundreds, make that by the thousand! We’ve had calls and emails from Australia, Italy, Japan, USA, Brazil, Switzerland and more. This dementia story has hit a nerve. I want to know why and I’m guessing you know the answer.”

“Sorry Harry, I haven’t a clue” replied Mike “but I can do a follow up for the right retainer….”

“If I didn’t know you better Mike, I’d say you were lying. Prove me wrong. I’ll put you on retainer for a week. Give me another thousand words for tomorrow and something for the Sundays”.

Mike countered with, “Make it a month’s retainer and expenses and I’ll stir you up a government enquiry.”

Harry’s final offer was two weeks plus expenses with all articles to go through his desk. Mike smiled inwardly and leaned forward to shake hands on the deal. Before shaking on the deal Harry shook his head and stressed that Mike had better get off his backside and be prepared to earn his fee.

Leaving Harry’s office, Mike rode down three floors in the lift, all the while devising his strategy. By the time he arrived at the reporter’s room he had mapped out the first few days work on the story and was ready to start work.

Sitting comfortably at a spare desk he created a new email name and account on the Sun’s domain name. All the emails that had arrived in relation to his initial article were redirected to the new account. They numbered over 400 emails. Mike also gave instructions to the IT guys that all emails with the word Dementia were to be forwarded to his new account. He then set up an automatic forward from his new account to his home email and then left the office to head home. In his mind he was already busy wording an article for the following day, to be based on the worldwide response to his first article. Perhaps he could use the high numbers to disavow the intimation of a British government cover up as he had implied. He couldn’t work in an angle that every government was involved in a cover up. Maybe he could hint that the global warming was to blame. The conspiracy theorists would love that if he could get them to ask themselves the question without him personally posing the question. His route home took him past the aged care home that he had visited the previous day to interview Maggie Smith. He called in on the off chance he could chat with her, but she had finished her shift at 12.00 and left for the day. He left his phone number with the reception and carried on home.

On arriving home Mike carried out his usual routine of grabbing a beer from the fridge, sitting at his computer and downloading emails. While the emails were coming through, he checked his phone for messages. The routine was automatic to Mike. Usually, he had finished the beer before the emails had finished coming through. Today he wondered if he had drunk his beer too hastily as the emails were only a quarter downloaded as he examined the empty beer bottle.

Leaving the emails continuing their downloading, he made himself a somewhat belated lunch. When he returned to the computer, he still had time to eat a sandwich before the emails stopped coming through. He checked the feeds and with some surprise noted he had 988 new emails. Okay, he thought, maybe 400 were forwarded from the Sun account. He separated the new emails with a search word of Dementia, so that any emails with that word were pushed into a separate folder. This left him with just 49 emails to answer. Discounting the 20 or so that were offering cheap medications or Nigerian scam merchants, he went through the 20 odd remaining emails. One of the emails was from Maggie Smith and he opened that one first. She requested another chance to talk with him about the illness he had covered in his article. Strangely, she had not used the word dementia in her email, so it had not been filtered into a side folder on his computer. Maggie had given three phone numbers in her email. With his curiosity piqued, Mike reached out to pick up his phone to call her. As he did, the phone rang. When that happens it usually gives the recipient a shock. Mike was a little startled and the fact he was eating at the time caused him to choke a little. Picking up the phone, still coughing, a recognisable flat Yorkshire voice asked him if he was alright, told him that his cough didn’t sound too healthy and confirmed that it was all the traffic pollution that made Manchester an unhealthy environment. Ending with a suggestion that he should see his doctor about the cough, the caller introduced herself as Maggie Smith and reminded Mike he’d called to the aged care home to see her.

Mike grinned to himself as he recognised the no nonsense approach of his caller. He responded to her concern, “Hi Maggie and thanks for calling, No I’m not sick, I’m just choking on a sandwich, and yes, I did call you to do a follow up on our talk the other day.”

Maggie interrupted,” Well that’s good because I wanted to speak to you. I can come round and see you today if you like, where do you live? I have a car and can be there soon.”

Mike didn’t usually reveal his address to any one he met in the course of his professional life, but Maggie seemed different, so he relented and told her, and they made a time to meet at 4.00pm.

Putting the phone down, Mike grinned. Maggie Smith was a determined lady, but she seemed keen to give some more input and he quite liked her no-nonsense attitude. He felt moved to tidy up the living area of his apartment in preparation for his visitor.

Having an hour to kill before Maggie Smith’s arrival Mike sat down at his computer and wrote the follow up article for Harry Ferguson. The article was heavy on generalities and light on specifics, leaving the conspiracy theorists to draw their own conclusions as to what was happening. Opening up his email to send the article through to the editor’s desk Mike was surprised to see that he had received a further 60 emails into the dementia folder in the hour or so since lunch. Beyond thinking that was unusual, Mike shut down his computer and prepared for Maggie Smith’s arrival.

Punctually at four o’clock Maggie knocked on his door. Mike opened his front door and Maggie walked in carrying two cups of coffee. By the time she had reached the couch some 12 feet from the door Maggie had already covered the fact that she hoped Mike liked coffee, she hadn’t put sugar in his but assumed he would have some at home if he took sugar, Was he a smoker, if so then he was a silly bugger and told Mike he needed a woman round here to sort his flat out for him.

Mike was still closing the door, reeling slightly at the verbal overload. He turned to see Maggie already sat down on his couch and looking at him expectantly.

Mike mentally shook himself at the verbal onslaught.” Yes, I drink coffee, and yes, I do have sugar in the kitchen, and yes, I smoke and you’re not my mother and yes, a woman would keep the place tidy and please say you aren’t applying for the position because I’d probably kill you within the first week to get some peace. Other than that, thank you for coming here this afternoon.”

Maggie did not appear shocked at Mikes reply. “Right, I like a bloke who’s not scared to stand up to me. We’ll get along fine. Now what have you done since I saw you on Monday?”

Mike grinned at her. “You know, you might just be my mother or at least you may have been sent by her! Excuse me while I get the sugar.” He rose and went into the kitchen. He decided he was going to like working with Maggie Smith.

Returning and sitting down on the only easy chair in his apartment Mike went over the happenings of the last two days with Maggie. He explained that he had now been retained by the paper to do a follow up article and a further feature for the Sunday spread. He told her the paper had received over a thousand contacts on his article which was unheard of for a non-event issue like Dementia.

Maggie asked what the tone of the comments of the contact emails were about. Mike confessed he hadn’t looked at them yet.

Maggie hid her disapproval that Mike could churn out an article that was still so vague and really not based on any educated research. She didn’t hide it very well which led Mike to defend his work by saying that the Sun readers didn’t want to know all the gory details of dementia.

Maggie went on the attack. “And that’s where your newspaper people are getting it wrong! We actually do want to know more information on anything that intrudes on our own families, thank you very much. However, I’ve been thinking a lot since we spoke on Monday, and I’ve come up with something for you to think about. It’s not damn dementia cases we’re getting snowed under with. It’s something else. Something we haven’t seen before, but we only treat it as dementia because we haven’t got the time or staff or the bloody money to do anything else.”

Mike probed Maggie for something more. “Forgive me, but I can’t go to the editor with a story that there is a new disease that’s affecting people in huge numbers without some documentary evidence. The thoughts or hunches of one nurse are not going to keep me in anyone’s good books.”

For the second time that day Mike was told to get off his backside and do some work. Maggie expressed the sentiment using slightly more colourful tones. “Well get off your arse and do some research then. Ask all those poor buggers who emailed you what they think. If you can work that damn thing (nodding her head towards the computer on Mike’s desk) I’ll tell you what you need to ask. Come on, lad. If you pull finger, you’ll have a worthwhile story for your boss’s Sunday paper.”

Maggie wanted Mike to ask each person who emailed on the dementia case several questions such as the age of the relation when the dementia had onset. What was the length of time between onset and full-blown mental faculty losses? Were there any treatments given by the medical profession outside the usual dementia medication. Was there anything odd in the dementia sufferers’ personality? Finally, had the person died and how long after suffering the full-blown dementia onset.

While Maggie was writing down her questions for Mike to put to the respondents, Mike was sat at the computer converting all the respondents’ addresses into a mailing list. Mike noted that he had received a further 78 emails in the last two hours that had gone into the ‘dementia’ folder. Included in the folder was a reply from Harry Ferguson that his article had been accepted and would be in the Thursday morning edition.

Mike set Maggie’s question into a spreadsheet format. He then inserted them into the email along with a covering note that he was conducting a survey and would be grateful for their assistance in his research.

With the time approaching 6 pm, Mike was happy to call it a day. Two hours of Maggie Smith’s encouragement was more than enough for Mike to handle, and he looked forward to shutting the door on Maggie for the day. Mike’s attitude of doing just enough to get by had served him reasonably well over the years and he found Maggie something of a cross between his loving mother and his nagging ex-wife. On telling Maggie that the work was over for the day he was less than overjoyed to hear Maggie say she finished at lunchtime tomorrow and could be here by 12.30. Would she like him to bring him anything for lunch?

Mike promised to ring her at work in the morning and they would arrange things at that point. Shutting the door behind her he imagined that Maggie was still talking to him as she walked out of the door. Mike didn’t make the mistake of asking what she said. He closed the door and walked over to the couch and put on the evening news.

Just before he went to bed some fours later, he checked his emails and was surprised to find that over 450 replies to his survey had already been received in his inbox. Mike did not have a reputation in the industry of being over inquisitive or over eager to work. Being true to his reputation he shut the computer down and went to bed.

His sleep was disturbed at 8.30 in the morning by a phone call from Maggie Smith asking how the survey was going and had he managed any findings yet. Using the truth as his best defence Mike replied that there over 400 replies so far and he had not yet managed to find any trends developing in the survey. He agreed that Maggie could come to his apartment at 12.30 and yes, she could bring him something warm to eat. Putting the phone down and rolling over in the bed Mike tried to get back to sleep but had to admit to something resembling curiosity as to the email replies. Giving in to a long luxurious stretch he rolled out of bed and stood there in his underwear. He turned the computer on as he walked past it and made himself some breakfast. Sitting in front of the computer eating toast, Mike was still a little surprised to find how long it was taking to download the emails pouring in.

From a glance at the screen, Mike figured he had received another 200 emails overnight on the subject of dementia and a total of somewhere near 800 replies to his survey. Thinking it all looked like a lot of hard work Mike plucked out and read a few random emails. Most of them said the same thing that the mailer’s loved one had gone down with dementia very quickly. Many said it had happened overnight. Mike made a mental note to ask Maggie what usually happened with people getting dementia and then continued opening more of the survey replies.

Trying to be as dispassionate as any journalist should be was easy at the start of the survey replies. As he read more, his attention became more focused. He found himself speed reading the emails looking for ones that stood out as different. It could not escape Mike’s notice that the clear majority of the respondent’s replies were frighteningly similar. All indicated the onset had occurred without warning. Most of the respondents stated their partner or loved one was of above average intelligence. Many of them were in senior positions in their employment. On the basis of the few replies, he had read the average age of onset was 35-40 with a good percentage even younger than that. The greater majority had not suffered a long time with the disease but had died reasonably shortly after the full-blown onset of the dementia. The average life span of the respondent’s loved ones would not have exceeded 2 months.

Mike was fully immersed in the emails when his doorbell rang. Assuming it was Maggie he walked over to the door and opened it.

Maggie’s greeting was short and to the point. “And you can put some clothes on before I walk through this door. Is this how you reporters like to get your girls? Trust me, I’ve been a nurse for twenty-six years and I ‘ve seen bigger and better column inches than you can muster, my lad.”

Mike uttered a brief thought to himself along the lines of “Oh shit, I’m still in my Jama’s” but before he could explain Maggie was past him and heading to the kitchen shouting back over her shoulder that she needed plates and where were they kept.

Mike slipped past her to the bedroom and threw some clothes on. Thinking better of himself he also ducked into the bathroom and washed his face.

Walking back into the lounge Mike saw his visitor had already set the pies she had purchased on plates and along with the coffees was ready to eat.

Pushing a plate towards Mike, Maggie waited until he had taken a bite out of his pie before starting her questioning.

“Right then, what you come up with? All clever people? Young people? Come on lad, we’ve not got all day.”

Mike used the reason that his mouth was full to delay his reply. The delay was really to gather his thoughts.

Reaching behind him he grabbed the paper that Maggie had written her questions down on the previous day. Giving it to Maggie he said.” You write down what the average dementia patient should look like and then we’ll compare notes.”

Maggie carefully considered her replies which gave Mike the chance to finish his food. Then they compared notes

Mike started with “Question 1. The age of the relation when the dementia had onset.”

Maggie thought that the average age should be mid to late fifties. Mike replied that the survey showed mid to late 30’s

Maggie pulled up the next question “Question 2 The length of time between onset and full-blown mental faculty losses. With medication the full symptoms can often be delayed for a few years. I’d say two years as an average.”

Mike replied that the survey indicated an average of one day or less.

Maggie continued. “Question 3. Any treatments given by the medical profession outside the usual dementia medication? My answer would be no. we don’t have the staff or the time or the funds to do much with them other than make them comfortable and make sure they don’t harm themselves.”

Mikes findings from the survey indicated that there was usually little time for the patients to be offered different treatments.

To question 4. Was there anything odd in the dementia sufferer’s personality? Maggie said generally dementia sufferers withdrew inside themselves and became shy and almost reclusive. Mike’s respondents offered more variety on the question, but it didn’t make sense in that many of the respondent’s patients seemed to become different somehow. The word different was used in a lot of the replies.

Replying to the final question Maggie indicated there was no real timeline on the patient dying after suffering the full-blown dementia onset. She assumed an average time would be five years. Some patients would live for twenty or even thirty years with care.

Mike’s summary of the survey respondents indicated that the average life expectancy not more than two months.

Expecting Maggie to be surprised at the findings Mike was taken aback when Maggie asserted, “See! I damn well told you there was something going on!”

Mike’s liking for the easy life was kicking into his psyche and telling him that although there might indeed be something going on, did Mike really want all the hassle of finding what it was that was actually ‘going on’.

Maggie didn’t understand Mike’s psyche and carried on without interruption. “So, what are you going to do about it? This will make a great story for the Sundays. Won’t it?”

Mike agreed it would make a great story but put forward the thought that maybe it was time to talk to the editor to get his views on the story’s newsworthiness.

“Great idea.” said Maggie “Ring him now!”

Mike rang Harry Ferguson at the Sun requesting a meeting saying the story could be much bigger than first visualized. Deep inside him Mike hoped that Harry would think he was just trying to wangle more pay and tell him to forget it. However, editors of a major daily newspaper have a nose for big story, so Harry immediately suggested a meeting the next morning at 10am. Mike heard Maggie whisper behind him that 10 would be fine as she didn’t work on Fridays.

When Mike put the phone down Maggie told him that it was not even 1.30 and they could spend the rest of the day going through the survey and getting some totals and trends and geography and stuff. Inwardly Mike groaned but he sat down with Maggie to sift through the emails.

There were over 1000 replies to the survey tucked away in Mike’s inbox. It was past 8.30 when he finally eased Maggie out of his apartment. Maggie would have worked until midnight and beyond, but Mike had reached his limit. Yes, he wanted to be a part of a major story. Perhaps even a major government corruption scandal. A journo award in his name would open many doors for a freelancer for the rest of his life. It also indicated a huge amount of work and somewhere deep inside him a gut instinct told him that it would also mean trouble.

Well done,

There are probably around 23 pages for you to enjoy this month. because the book starts with a little explanation as its preface. Make no mistake, Reincarnation is a fact of life, it says it, right there in the bible. This story revolves right up through the corridors of Power in Whitehall. Oh, and it also is in the corridors of the German Parliament. And the USA house of Representatives. Let's just say this is at the seat of most governments and it is being controlled by a secret agency. A Club, if you like. You've probably heard of them in your readings...

Let's get back to the book. It's a three-part thriller although as I write this the fourth and fifth books are being written as well

As always once I get the urge to write, it almost seems like it is being dictated to me.

It's an odd feeling for me. But it's probably something you should be aware of.

Again, the Best I can do is offer the Ebook at half price so for the month of July it will be reduced to $1.99 if you choose to make a purchase in July

Preface

Reincarnation is a fact of life! It even says it, right there in the Bible, if you look closely. You could go a little further and say Reincarnation is a fact of life AND a consequence of death. Think about that for a second. You die and come back in a new body.

But what if you didn’t have to die to take on a new body?

Ask yourself, if you could just take over any individual’s body and lead their life. Would you? Would you choose to live as Beyoncé or Justin Bieber, for the fame and fortune? Perhaps as Obama or as Oprah, for the powerful friends and lavish lifestyle? Maybe it would be as Angela Merkel or Bill Gates? Lots of power and influence and a good income. And when that body got old, you could just hop into another younger or richer or fitter body. You could keep doing that and getting richer and richer and live forever.

A tempting prospect, isn’t it?

Would you call it ‘Body Snatching’?

How do you know it’s not happening already?

Today? Right in front of you?

Read on…….

Introduction

Doctor Peter Emellson was close to finishing his shift at the Hospital. As a highly respected member of the teaching faculty in the field of oncology, his reputation was unsurpassed for being an innovator of new ideas in the treatment of Skin cancer and Basal Cell Melanoma. Currently his work involved research into a variety of some of the more esoteric or old-fashioned treatments for ailments of the skin. In short, he was leading research into the ‘natural medicines’ field. His personal involvement in the research gave some credence to the bringing in or use of colour therapists and naturopaths and similar alternative fields of healing.

For the past eighteen months he had met and talked with all manner of fringe healing practise and its practitioners. On principle, Doctor Emellson declined to use the term ‘medicine’ when researching these alternative beliefs. In his opinion the term ‘Medicine’ involved years of research, testing and development in a clinical environment. What he had been studying in the last year and a half was at best theory or hearsay from a wide variety of well-meaning individuals. None of whom had come even close to providing the definitive results and case studies that he needed to advance his research.

His last appointment of this shift was to meet and interview yet another of these so-called healers whose area of expertise involved something called ‘chakra alignment’.

As always Doctor Emellson went into the appointment with an open mind. He was relieved that the majority of these alternative healers were basically very well meaning. Very few had the desire to earn money from their ‘gifts’ of healing. This attitude made Doctor Emellson a little less suspicious of their motives and made him want to believe the natural healing could be an alternative to the high-priced alternatives that the drug companies were promoting.

He entered his office and sat down at his desk. His secretary ushered in the latest candidate who thought he could revolutionize medicine. The elderly healer smiled at the doctor and introduced himself as Michael Barton, a chakra healer from Wolverhampton. In his mind the good doctor tried to quell the humorous concept of Wolverhampton being a hot bed of natural healing and rose to greet the Healer.

After introductions both men sat down, and Doctor Emellson explained briefly the concept of the study he was undertaking and invited the visitor to explain the idea of his healing method in general terms.

The visitor explained that if he were able to place his hands on the chakra points of the doctor’s body, he might more ably feel the connections. Doctor Emellson agreed, and the Doctor came around the desk to allow the visitor to demonstrate his craft.

As the visitor lightly put his hands on the doctor’s head several things happened. The doctor suddenly felt very lightheaded and was aware only that he was very definitely feeling some energy or influence on his body when the visitor placed his hands softly on the top of the doctor’s head. To an onlooker the situation in the room might have looked odd. Firstly, the healer placed his hands on the Doctors head, then to his own head and finally put his hands back on the Doctors head. Within seconds the visiting healer had slumped to the floor in a state of wild disorientation and passed out. It may only have been a few seconds later, but after recovering his composure the doctor looked at his former self slumped on the floor. He called out to the receptionist asking her to summon help as the visitor had collapsed.

Kneeling down to check the visitor, the ‘new’ soul driving Doctor Emellson smiled and took in his surroundings with satisfaction. The man on the floor was regaining consciousness and dazedly looking around. When he saw the doctor kneeling over him, he stopped and looked at his own hands and then touched his face. Within moments of the doctor’s summons, two nurses arrived and burst through the door. The Doctor was kneeling over the body of the healer. He informed the nurses that his visitor had suddenly collapsed and was incoherent and suggested the visitor be admitted to the hospital. The good Doctor stepped back as the nurse began attending to the patient.

“Lie still, please. You’ve had a fall; can you tell me your name. please?”

“I’m Doctor Emellson. No, my name might be Michael. Michael Barton. I don’t know.”

Perhaps those were the last words of sanity that ever left the body of Michael Barton. The nurses quickly organised a gurney for the patient, and he was wheeled out of the Doctors’ office. As the door of his office closed behind the nurses the new occupier of Doctor Peter Emellson’s body took in its new surroundings. He smiled and sat down at the Doctor’s desk.

Chapter 1

Michael James Doull was a veteran reporter with some 20 years of reporting behind him. He did not however go back in the industry as far as the days of sitting hunched over a typewriter. His arrival in the news media melting pot had coincided with the advent of the desktop computer. With today’s technology advantages he could virtually write any story on his Smartphone, take the pictures on his Smartphone and send it whisking into his employer without ever going near an office. Mike liked that idea. In his own mind Mike knew he was getting lazy, but years of dealing with the filthy circumstances of other peoples’ lives had taken away any youthful enthusiasm.

He had enjoyed a few good paydays covering the personal side of much of the Jubilee celebrations. But that had been nearly a month ago. Now he had to wait for the Olympics to start in August before he could guarantee a few more regular pay checks heading his way.

Today he was perched on the corner of the desk of the editor of the Sun daily newspaper. It could have been any paper in the country for Mike was a freelance reporter who made his living developing any story he could get paid for by one of the national dailies. Today he was annoying the features editor of the Sun, Harry Ferguson, to try and get whatever work he could get his hands on. Times were tough with the recession, but the Sun was probably one of the few dailies that still paid freelance jocks like him to dig up dirt or fluff pieces. Occasionally the leads offered would turn into something big and result in Mike having a good payday. Most of the time he would be offered bits and pieces that he himself would have to develop into something that would make the papers in the front two or three pages. Harry Ferguson was not in a giving mood today. He’d spent most of the morning in a heads of department meeting that was called to tighten belts and budgets.

Mike Doull knew that Harry Ferguson had a temper the equivalent to his namesake in football management, but over the years Mike had managed to stay in Ferguson’s good books. Mike was one of the few in the industry who could get away with calling him ‘Fergie’ to his face. Mike was also aware that he was close to getting the newspaper editors version of the Fergie hairdryer treatment but persisted in his chat as he needed the work and the money.

Fergie had nothing to offer Mike but was willing to give him a start on an article as Mike always delivered in the Sun’s scathing style no matter how trivial the story. From the meeting that morning the editors had been asked to keep all matters relating to the current recession with its own in-house reporting staff. There were a good number of unofficial leaks coming from ‘Number 10’ that were for political gains and these were fed directly to senior reporters as they were less likely to name their sources as would a freelancer with no legal team to support them. Fergie suggested that Mike try and come back to him with some ideas of his own and offered him one day of fees to go and dig out some topics that might make a story.

With that meagre economic lifeline in his hand Mike thanked Fergie and left his office.

Going down to the reporter’s room Mike trawled the staffers who were not out in the field for any suggestions that he could follow up.

The offerings were meagre, but several ideas were forthcoming to him: As always Mike thought about the subject and immediately came up with some angles he could perhaps develop to coin up some intrigue.

There was the forthcoming visit by the Chilean miners to Manchester and a visit to Manchester United. (Perhaps a chance for a few words with the Manchester United insiders, possibly make a few contacts for future use).

There were concerns that dementia numbers were spiralling in all age ranges. (How good was our health system, is the increase due to modern day life pressures? Is there a cure?).

How well could Britain cope if we had another major freeze up (Could the country cope? Had we learned our lessons from the previous big freeze? Is this part of the global warming? Kyoto or not to Kyoto?)

EEC mandarins getting more demanding and more trivial (we can’t sell sausages anymore, have to buy all EEC goods through the EEC head office, any chance of someone in the EEC clipping the ticket and skimming an income?)

Global warming (yes, it’s an issue but not for the Sun to lead with)

There were no more issues with any initial work done on them that had been pushed to one side, so Mike sat at a free desk and made some phone calls at the Sun’s expense.

The Press office at Manchester United were not interested in dealing with a freelancer. They only spoke to accredited reporters and Mike was invited to submit his credentials from a major daily for inspection. Mike gave his thanks but knew he was far too lazy to go to all that bother.

The Dementia story showed more cooperative sources. He spoke to two hospitals and three age care facilities. All agreed that the dementia numbers were rocketing upwards, and the government should be offering more funding. Many of the people contacted offered to be interviewed and Mike promised to get back to them, in time.

In trying to get somewhere with the freeze-up story Mike was pushed from pillar to post. No one really knew who was responsible for which facet of the freeze, if it was declared an emergency. The guy at the roads board thought they had a few days stock of grit and salt and was maybe a little concerned at the replacement of that stock. He had no idea who supplied that stock, so the tale and Mike’s enthusiasm ended there.

The possible story of the EEC mandarins met with a similar fate in that the PR people Mike spoke to in Brussels were unhelpful to the point of being rude at any suggestion that the EEC was not the source of salvation for the future progress of Europe. On pressing further Mike was put through to three different people, none of whom spoke English.

Mike sat and viewed the sheet of paper in front of him. With the exception of the Dementia story all the others had been crossed out as not worth it or they involved too much effort and travelling to be worth his bother.

With a sigh, Mike picked up the phone again. As he dialed the first number, he wondered how he could jazz up the story, of more old people going loopy, sufficient for the Sun to hand over a decent cheque.

Chapter 2

Mike set up four appointments for the following day. The two morning appointments were at hospitals and were as positive as Mike expected. Yes, there were increased incidents of dementia. The person available at both hospitals for interviewing could best be described as an academic. They both led most of their answers with “interestingly….”. Mike could not get the connection between ‘interestingly’ and the topic of dementia. It appeared that cases of dementia were up quite a bit over the last five years. There were far more cases of younger people entering the hospital with this affliction and obviously the government had done nothing to meet this trend with increased funding etc. Politely making sure he had spelt their names correctly; Mike left and found a pub that served a reasonable pub lunch. Fighting off a strong urge to cancel the two afternoon appointments he sat and ate his meal and tried to jazz up what he had been told so far. He didn’t try for very long as the meal demanded more of his attention than the prospect of the story in hand.

Arriving at the 2 o’clock interview Mike met the interviewee. Maggie Smith was a no-nonsense nurse from Leeds who did not want to be a part of a structured interview. She wanted to express her thoughts and Mike was welcome to make of it what he wanted. Maggie Smith had a thought or two on a lot of things, not least of which were reinforcements of the opinions of the two old bores from the morning interviews. Further to those thoughts she was convinced there was something going on. Probably a government experiment that no one knew about. Most of the new dementia patients were quite young which was almost unheard of in her experience. Maggie wanted to give full vent to her concerns. “And another thing”, this accompanied with a wagging finger, “How come most of these patients have no build-up of symptoms. Dementia is a usually a progressive disease over several years. Lots of my patients are exhibiting full blown dementia almost overnight.” In closing, she again affirmed her belief that the damned government is up to something, and no one is letting on what it is.

Mike took to Maggie straight away. Although she was talking in a similar manner to the many crackpots expressing their views about the government or flying saucers, Mike realised that this was just Maggie’s Yorkshire way of dealing with anything. Despite only allowing twenty minutes for the interview, Mike stayed and talked with Maggie for the better part of an hour. He found her quite observant and much focussed on her patients. Mike promised to get back to her if the paper wanted more info and then he drove to his next appointment.

Appointment number four was really just a senior nurse offering a rehash of the high-minded ideas of the first two interviews. At Mike’s prodding the nurse agreed that yes, there were more cases of dementia occurring. Yes, there was much higher incidence of younger patients. And yes, there were very high numbers of patients going into dementia very rapidly which was unusual.

On his way home Mike called in to talk further with Maggie Smith but she had left for the day. It seemed her shift had finished at midday, but she had felt strongly enough about her patients to stay on and make sure Mike got the full story from her.

When he got home Mike set to and turfed out a 1000-word piece on the dementia issue. It really wasn’t a subject that could be jazzed up or sensationalized. Working the angle of Maggie Smith’s theory of a government cover up into the article was a struggle but Mike had enough years of experience behind him to get the reader to ask themselves the cover up question. Attaching the article to an email he pressed the send button and sent his words across the internet to the features editor with a silent wish that it was a slow news day, and they would be looking for fill in material.

He was surprised that within minutes Harry Ferguson emailed back to say he would use the article as it was indeed a slow news day, but it probably would be tucked away on page 6 or 7. Although it promised a paycheck, its placement in the paper didn’t guarantee much of a read or the chance of a follow up article. Out of politeness, Mike emailed Harry back and worked in a request for some upfront travel expenses to do an article on the EEC mandarins. Mentioning the possibility of a hint of corruption would usually get any editors interested. Harry Ferguson was too experienced to fall for that trick. He emailed back for Mike to come up with more details before he would consider fronting up with the funds. Mike knew there was nothing of substance to offer to Fergie, so he switched off his computer and called it a day.

Across town, in the office of Doctor Peter Emellson there was great consternation in the IT dept. it appeared that all of Doctor Emellson’s research notes for the past year or so had disappeared from his computer memory. Quite rightly, the good Doctor was berating the hospital’s IT dept as his work and study for the last 18 months had disappeared for all time. Without repeating the entire study again there was no possibility of drawing any conclusions or making any recommendations. Doctor Emellson was visibly angered with the IT technician who was at a loss to recover the missing data. The good doctor’s anger was visible to all his staff as he stormed out of the hospital and left work for the day. The anger was still on his face when he arrived home and dutifully kissed his wife. In fact, the doctor’s anger was clear to all who saw him that day. But it disappeared when he sat alone in his study at home. His anger was replaced by a smile of deep contentment as he sat and sipped a fine Malt Whisky. The contentment was for a job well done.

Chapter 3

Mike Doull’s article was reasonably prominent, and it actually made page 4. That’s the page after the Sun’s page 3 girl cover. That’s still a good location to catch the attention of those who tire of the ever smiling but still unattainable page 3 Boob babes. It is understood by most of the industry that readers of the Sun newspaper are not among the highest percentile of intellect. A story on more people going loopy was not going to attract a great audience and those who did read it were probably not of the calibre that would command a royal inquiry into the dementia problem.

As the author of the article Mike had already inwardly acknowledged the story was at an end and had already been on the phone to a couple of other Daily newspapers looking for work. Mike was therefore more than a little surprised when he received an email later in the day from Harry Ferguson asking him to make contact for a follow up article on the dementia story. Mike emailed Harry immediately and made a time to meet in Harry’s office the following day.

On entering Harry’s office, the next day Mike prepared to sit on the corner of Harry’s desk until Harry firmly pointed to a chair for Mike to sit on.

Harry started the conversation with, “We’ve had emails and phone calls from all over the place on your dementia story. So, what’s the angle?”

Mike was at a loss to answer Harry’s question and replied accordingly.

Harry explained his interest. “The Sun has readers everywhere. All the expats across the world go online to the Sun website so they can catch up with what’s happening at home.”

Mike offered the thought that it might be just for the page 3 girls, but Harry knocked that thought aside and went further.

“That’s crap! There’re more boobs, bush and bonking on the internet than you’ll ever get on page 3. The Sun online has the biggest readership of all the dailies. And your article has got them contacting us by the hundreds, make that by the thousand! We’ve had calls and emails from Australia, Italy, Japan, USA, Brazil, Switzerland and more. This dementia story has hit a nerve. I want to know why and I’m guessing you know the answer.”

“Sorry Harry, I haven’t a clue” replied Mike “but I can do a follow up for the right retainer….”

“If I didn’t know you better Mike, I’d say you were lying. Prove me wrong. I’ll put you on retainer for a week. Give me another thousand words for tomorrow and something for the Sundays”.

Mike countered with, “Make it a month’s retainer and expenses and I’ll stir you up a government enquiry.”

Harry’s final offer was two weeks plus expenses with all articles to go through his desk. Mike smiled inwardly and leaned forward to shake hands on the deal. Before shaking on the deal Harry shook his head and stressed that Mike had better get off his backside and be prepared to earn his fee.

Leaving Harry’s office, Mike rode down three floors in the lift, all the while devising his strategy. By the time he arrived at the reporter’s room he had mapped out the first few days work on the story and was ready to start work.

Sitting comfortably at a spare desk he created a new email name and account on the Sun’s domain name. All the emails that had arrived in relation to his initial article were redirected to the new account. They numbered over 400 emails. Mike also gave instructions to the IT guys that all emails with the word Dementia were to be forwarded to his new account. He then set up an automatic forward from his new account to his home email and then left the office to head home. In his mind he was already busy wording an article for the following day, to be based on the worldwide response to his first article. Perhaps he could use the high numbers to disavow the intimation of a British government cover up as he had implied. He couldn’t work in an angle that every government was involved in a cover up. Maybe he could hint that the global warming was to blame. The conspiracy theorists would love that if he could get them to ask themselves the question without him personally posing the question. His route home took him past the aged care home that he had visited the previous day to interview Maggie Smith. He called in on the off chance he could chat with her, but she had finished her shift at 12.00 and left for the day. He left his phone number with the reception and carried on home.

On arriving home Mike carried out his usual routine of grabbing a beer from the fridge, sitting at his computer and downloading emails. While the emails were coming through, he checked his phone for messages. The routine was automatic to Mike. Usually, he had finished the beer before the emails had finished coming through. Today he wondered if he had drunk his beer too hastily as the emails were only a quarter downloaded as he examined the empty beer bottle.

Leaving the emails continuing their downloading, he made himself a somewhat belated lunch. When he returned to the computer, he still had time to eat a sandwich before the emails stopped coming through. He checked the feeds and with some surprise noted he had 988 new emails. Okay, he thought, maybe 400 were forwarded from the Sun account. He separated the new emails with a search word of Dementia, so that any emails with that word were pushed into a separate folder. This left him with just 49 emails to answer. Discounting the 20 or so that were offering cheap medications or Nigerian scam merchants, he went through the 20 odd remaining emails. One of the emails was from Maggie Smith and he opened that one first. She requested another chance to talk with him about the illness he had covered in his article. Strangely, she had not used the word dementia in her email, so it had not been filtered into a side folder on his computer. Maggie had given three phone numbers in her email. With his curiosity piqued, Mike reached out to pick up his phone to call her. As he did, the phone rang. When that happens it usually gives the recipient a shock. Mike was a little startled and the fact he was eating at the time caused him to choke a little. Picking up the phone, still coughing, a recognisable flat Yorkshire voice asked him if he was alright, told him that his cough didn’t sound too healthy and confirmed that it was all the traffic pollution that made Manchester an unhealthy environment. Ending with a suggestion that he should see his doctor about the cough, the caller introduced herself as Maggie Smith and reminded Mike he’d called to the aged care home to see her.

Mike grinned to himself as he recognised the no nonsense approach of his caller. He responded to her concern, “Hi Maggie and thanks for calling, No I’m not sick, I’m just choking on a sandwich, and yes, I did call you to do a follow up on our talk the other day.”

Maggie interrupted,” Well that’s good because I wanted to speak to you. I can come round and see you today if you like, where do you live? I have a car and can be there soon.”

Mike didn’t usually reveal his address to any one he met in the course of his professional life, but Maggie seemed different, so he relented and told her, and they made a time to meet at 4.00pm.

Putting the phone down, Mike grinned. Maggie Smith was a determined lady, but she seemed keen to give some more input and he quite liked her no-nonsense attitude. He felt moved to tidy up the living area of his apartment in preparation for his visitor.

Having an hour to kill before Maggie Smith’s arrival Mike sat down at his computer and wrote the follow up article for Harry Ferguson. The article was heavy on generalities and light on specifics, leaving the conspiracy theorists to draw their own conclusions as to what was happening. Opening up his email to send the article through to the editor’s desk Mike was surprised to see that he had received a further 60 emails into the dementia folder in the hour or so since lunch. Beyond thinking that was unusual, Mike shut down his computer and prepared for Maggie Smith’s arrival.

Punctually at four o’clock Maggie knocked on his door. Mike opened his front door and Maggie walked in carrying two cups of coffee. By the time she had reached the couch some 12 feet from the door Maggie had already covered the fact that she hoped Mike liked coffee, she hadn’t put sugar in his but assumed he would have some at home if he took sugar, Was he a smoker, if so then he was a silly bugger and told Mike he needed a woman round here to sort his flat out for him.

Mike was still closing the door, reeling slightly at the verbal overload. He turned to see Maggie already sat down on his couch and looking at him expectantly.

Mike mentally shook himself at the verbal onslaught.” Yes, I drink coffee, and yes, I do have sugar in the kitchen, and yes, I smoke and you’re not my mother and yes, a woman would keep the place tidy and please say you aren’t applying for the position because I’d probably kill you within the first week to get some peace. Other than that, thank you for coming here this afternoon.”

Maggie did not appear shocked at Mikes reply. “Right, I like a bloke who’s not scared to stand up to me. We’ll get along fine. Now what have you done since I saw you on Monday?”

Mike grinned at her. “You know, you might just be my mother or at least you may have been sent by her! Excuse me while I get the sugar.” He rose and went into the kitchen. He decided he was going to like working with Maggie Smith.

Returning and sitting down on the only easy chair in his apartment Mike went over the happenings of the last two days with Maggie. He explained that he had now been retained by the paper to do a follow up article and a further feature for the Sunday spread. He told her the paper had received over a thousand contacts on his article which was unheard of for a non-event issue like Dementia.

Maggie asked what the tone of the comments of the contact emails were about. Mike confessed he hadn’t looked at them yet.

Maggie hid her disapproval that Mike could churn out an article that was still so vague and really not based on any educated research. She didn’t hide it very well which led Mike to defend his work by saying that the Sun readers didn’t want to know all the gory details of dementia.

Maggie went on the attack. “And that’s where your newspaper people are getting it wrong! We actually do want to know more information on anything that intrudes on our own families, thank you very much. However, I’ve been thinking a lot since we spoke on Monday, and I’ve come up with something for you to think about. It’s not damn dementia cases we’re getting snowed under with. It’s something else. Something we haven’t seen before, but we only treat it as dementia because we haven’t got the time or staff or the bloody money to do anything else.”

Mike probed Maggie for something more. “Forgive me, but I can’t go to the editor with a story that there is a new disease that’s affecting people in huge numbers without some documentary evidence. The thoughts or hunches of one nurse are not going to keep me in anyone’s good books.”

For the second time that day Mike was told to get off his backside and do some work. Maggie expressed the sentiment using slightly more colourful tones. “Well get off your arse and do some research then. Ask all those poor buggers who emailed you what they think. If you can work that damn thing (nodding her head towards the computer on Mike’s desk) I’ll tell you what you need to ask. Come on, lad. If you pull finger, you’ll have a worthwhile story for your boss’s Sunday paper.”

Maggie wanted Mike to ask each person who emailed on the dementia case several questions such as the age of the relation when the dementia had onset. What was the length of time between onset and full-blown mental faculty losses? Were there any treatments given by the medical profession outside the usual dementia medication. Was there anything odd in the dementia sufferers’ personality? Finally, had the person died and how long after suffering the full-blown dementia onset.

While Maggie was writing down her questions for Mike to put to the respondents, Mike was sat at the computer converting all the respondents’ addresses into a mailing list. Mike noted that he had received a further 78 emails in the last two hours that had gone into the ‘dementia’ folder. Included in the folder was a reply from Harry Ferguson that his article had been accepted and would be in the Thursday morning edition.

Mike set Maggie’s question into a spreadsheet format. He then inserted them into the email along with a covering note that he was conducting a survey and would be grateful for their assistance in his research.

With the time approaching 6 pm, Mike was happy to call it a day. Two hours of Maggie Smith’s encouragement was more than enough for Mike to handle, and he looked forward to shutting the door on Maggie for the day. Mike’s attitude of doing just enough to get by had served him reasonably well over the years and he found Maggie something of a cross between his loving mother and his nagging ex-wife. On telling Maggie that the work was over for the day he was less than overjoyed to hear Maggie say she finished at lunchtime tomorrow and could be here by 12.30. Would she like him to bring him anything for lunch?

Mike promised to ring her at work in the morning and they would arrange things at that point. Shutting the door behind her he imagined that Maggie was still talking to him as she walked out of the door. Mike didn’t make the mistake of asking what she said. He closed the door and walked over to the couch and put on the evening news.

Just before he went to bed some fours later, he checked his emails and was surprised to find that over 450 replies to his survey had already been received in his inbox. Mike did not have a reputation in the industry of being over inquisitive or over eager to work. Being true to his reputation he shut the computer down and went to bed.

His sleep was disturbed at 8.30 in the morning by a phone call from Maggie Smith asking how the survey was going and had he managed any findings yet. Using the truth as his best defence Mike replied that there over 400 replies so far and he had not yet managed to find any trends developing in the survey. He agreed that Maggie could come to his apartment at 12.30 and yes, she could bring him something warm to eat. Putting the phone down and rolling over in the bed Mike tried to get back to sleep but had to admit to something resembling curiosity as to the email replies. Giving in to a long luxurious stretch he rolled out of bed and stood there in his underwear. He turned the computer on as he walked past it and made himself some breakfast. Sitting in front of the computer eating toast, Mike was still a little surprised to find how long it was taking to download the emails pouring in.

From a glance at the screen, Mike figured he had received another 200 emails overnight on the subject of dementia and a total of somewhere near 800 replies to his survey. Thinking it all looked like a lot of hard work Mike plucked out and read a few random emails. Most of them said the same thing that the mailer’s loved one had gone down with dementia very quickly. Many said it had happened overnight. Mike made a mental note to ask Maggie what usually happened with people getting dementia and then continued opening more of the survey replies.

Trying to be as dispassionate as any journalist should be was easy at the start of the survey replies. As he read more, his attention became more focused. He found himself speed reading the emails looking for ones that stood out as different. It could not escape Mike’s notice that the clear majority of the respondent’s replies were frighteningly similar. All indicated the onset had occurred without warning. Most of the respondents stated their partner or loved one was of above average intelligence. Many of them were in senior positions in their employment. On the basis of the few replies, he had read the average age of onset was 35-40 with a good percentage even younger than that. The greater majority had not suffered a long time with the disease but had died reasonably shortly after the full-blown onset of the dementia. The average life span of the respondent’s loved ones would not have exceeded 2 months.

Mike was fully immersed in the emails when his doorbell rang. Assuming it was Maggie he walked over to the door and opened it.

Maggie’s greeting was short and to the point. “And you can put some clothes on before I walk through this door. Is this how you reporters like to get your girls? Trust me, I’ve been a nurse for twenty-six years and I ‘ve seen bigger and better column inches than you can muster, my lad.”

Mike uttered a brief thought to himself along the lines of “Oh shit, I’m still in my Jama’s” but before he could explain Maggie was past him and heading to the kitchen shouting back over her shoulder that she needed plates and where were they kept.

Mike slipped past her to the bedroom and threw some clothes on. Thinking better of himself he also ducked into the bathroom and washed his face.

Walking back into the lounge Mike saw his visitor had already set the pies she had purchased on plates and along with the coffees was ready to eat.

Pushing a plate towards Mike, Maggie waited until he had taken a bite out of his pie before starting her questioning.

“Right then, what you come up with? All clever people? Young people? Come on lad, we’ve not got all day.”

Mike used the reason that his mouth was full to delay his reply. The delay was really to gather his thoughts.

Reaching behind him he grabbed the paper that Maggie had written her questions down on the previous day. Giving it to Maggie he said.” You write down what the average dementia patient should look like and then we’ll compare notes.”

Maggie carefully considered her replies which gave Mike the chance to finish his food. Then they compared notes

Mike started with “Question 1. The age of the relation when the dementia had onset.”

Maggie thought that the average age should be mid to late fifties. Mike replied that the survey showed mid to late 30’s

Maggie pulled up the next question “Question 2 The length of time between onset and full-blown mental faculty losses. With medication the full symptoms can often be delayed for a few years. I’d say two years as an average.”

Mike replied that the survey indicated an average of one day or less.

Maggie continued. “Question 3. Any treatments given by the medical profession outside the usual dementia medication? My answer would be no. we don’t have the staff or the time or the funds to do much with them other than make them comfortable and make sure they don’t harm themselves.”

Mikes findings from the survey indicated that there was usually little time for the patients to be offered different treatments.

To question 4. Was there anything odd in the dementia sufferer’s personality? Maggie said generally dementia sufferers withdrew inside themselves and became shy and almost reclusive. Mike’s respondents offered more variety on the question, but it didn’t make sense in that many of the respondent’s patients seemed to become different somehow. The word different was used in a lot of the replies.

Replying to the final question Maggie indicated there was no real timeline on the patient dying after suffering the full-blown dementia onset. She assumed an average time would be five years. Some patients would live for twenty or even thirty years with care.

Mike’s summary of the survey respondents indicated that the average life expectancy not more than two months.

Expecting Maggie to be surprised at the findings Mike was taken aback when Maggie asserted, “See! I damn well told you there was something going on!”

Mike’s liking for the easy life was kicking into his psyche and telling him that although there might indeed be something going on, did Mike really want all the hassle of finding what it was that was actually ‘going on’.

Maggie didn’t understand Mike’s psyche and carried on without interruption. “So, what are you going to do about it? This will make a great story for the Sundays. Won’t it?”

Mike agreed it would make a great story but put forward the thought that maybe it was time to talk to the editor to get his views on the story’s newsworthiness.

“Great idea.” said Maggie “Ring him now!”

Mike rang Harry Ferguson at the Sun requesting a meeting saying the story could be much bigger than first visualized. Deep inside him Mike hoped that Harry would think he was just trying to wangle more pay and tell him to forget it. However, editors of a major daily newspaper have a nose for big story, so Harry immediately suggested a meeting the next morning at 10am. Mike heard Maggie whisper behind him that 10 would be fine as she didn’t work on Fridays.

When Mike put the phone down Maggie told him that it was not even 1.30 and they could spend the rest of the day going through the survey and getting some totals and trends and geography and stuff. Inwardly Mike groaned but he sat down with Maggie to sift through the emails.

There were over 1000 replies to the survey tucked away in Mike’s inbox. It was past 8.30 when he finally eased Maggie out of his apartment. Maggie would have worked until midnight and beyond, but Mike had reached his limit. Yes, he wanted to be a part of a major story. Perhaps even a major government corruption scandal. A journo award in his name would open many doors for a freelancer for the rest of his life. It also indicated a huge amount of work and somewhere deep inside him a gut instinct told him that it would also mean trouble.

Well done,

There are probably around 23 pages for you to enjoy this month. because the book starts with a little explanation as its preface. Make no mistake, Reincarnation is a fact of life, it says it, right there in the bible. This story revolves right up through the corridors of Power in Whitehall. Oh, and it also is in the corridors of the German Parliament. And the USA house of Representatives. Let's just say this is at the seat of most governments and it is being controlled by a secret agency. A Club, if you like. You've probably heard of them in your readings...

Let's get back to the book. It's a three-part thriller although as I write this the fourth and fifth books are being written as well

As always once I get the urge to write, it almost seems like it is being dictated to me.

It's an odd feeling for me. But it's probably something you should be aware of.

Again, the Best I can do is offer the Ebook at half price so for the month of July it will be reduced to $1.99 if you choose to make a purchase in July

Preface

Reincarnation is a fact of life! It even says it, right there in the Bible, if you look closely. You could go a little further and say Reincarnation is a fact of life AND a consequence of death. Think about that for a second. You die and come back in a new body.

But what if you didn’t have to die to take on a new body?

Ask yourself, if you could just take over any individual’s body and lead their life. Would you? Would you choose to live as Beyoncé or Justin Bieber, for the fame and fortune? Perhaps as Obama or as Oprah, for the powerful friends and lavish lifestyle? Maybe it would be as Angela Merkel or Bill Gates? Lots of power and influence and a good income. And when that body got old, you could just hop into another younger or richer or fitter body. You could keep doing that and getting richer and richer and live forever.

A tempting prospect, isn’t it?

Would you call it ‘Body Snatching’?

How do you know it’s not happening already?

Today? Right in front of you?

Read on…….

Introduction

Doctor Peter Emellson was close to finishing his shift at the Hospital. As a highly respected member of the teaching faculty in the field of oncology, his reputation was unsurpassed for being an innovator of new ideas in the treatment of Skin cancer and Basal Cell Melanoma. Currently his work involved research into a variety of some of the more esoteric or old-fashioned treatments for ailments of the skin. In short, he was leading research into the ‘natural medicines’ field. His personal involvement in the research gave some credence to the bringing in or use of colour therapists and naturopaths and similar alternative fields of healing.

For the past eighteen months he had met and talked with all manner of fringe healing practise and its practitioners. On principle, Doctor Emellson declined to use the term ‘medicine’ when researching these alternative beliefs. In his opinion the term ‘Medicine’ involved years of research, testing and development in a clinical environment. What he had been studying in the last year and a half was at best theory or hearsay from a wide variety of well-meaning individuals. None of whom had come even close to providing the definitive results and case studies that he needed to advance his research.

His last appointment of this shift was to meet and interview yet another of these so-called healers whose area of expertise involved something called ‘chakra alignment’.

As always Doctor Emellson went into the appointment with an open mind. He was relieved that the majority of these alternative healers were basically very well meaning. Very few had the desire to earn money from their ‘gifts’ of healing. This attitude made Doctor Emellson a little less suspicious of their motives and made him want to believe the natural healing could be an alternative to the high-priced alternatives that the drug companies were promoting.

He entered his office and sat down at his desk. His secretary ushered in the latest candidate who thought he could revolutionize medicine. The elderly healer smiled at the doctor and introduced himself as Michael Barton, a chakra healer from Wolverhampton. In his mind the good doctor tried to quell the humorous concept of Wolverhampton being a hot bed of natural healing and rose to greet the Healer.

After introductions both men sat down, and Doctor Emellson explained briefly the concept of the study he was undertaking and invited the visitor to explain the idea of his healing method in general terms.

The visitor explained that if he were able to place his hands on the chakra points of the doctor’s body, he might more ably feel the connections. Doctor Emellson agreed, and the Doctor came around the desk to allow the visitor to demonstrate his craft.

As the visitor lightly put his hands on the doctor’s head several things happened. The doctor suddenly felt very lightheaded and was aware only that he was very definitely feeling some energy or influence on his body when the visitor placed his hands softly on the top of the doctor’s head. To an onlooker the situation in the room might have looked odd. Firstly, the healer placed his hands on the Doctors head, then to his own head and finally put his hands back on the Doctors head. Within seconds the visiting healer had slumped to the floor in a state of wild disorientation and passed out. It may only have been a few seconds later, but after recovering his composure the doctor looked at his former self slumped on the floor. He called out to the receptionist asking her to summon help as the visitor had collapsed.

Kneeling down to check the visitor, the ‘new’ soul driving Doctor Emellson smiled and took in his surroundings with satisfaction. The man on the floor was regaining consciousness and dazedly looking around. When he saw the doctor kneeling over him, he stopped and looked at his own hands and then touched his face. Within moments of the doctor’s summons, two nurses arrived and burst through the door. The Doctor was kneeling over the body of the healer. He informed the nurses that his visitor had suddenly collapsed and was incoherent and suggested the visitor be admitted to the hospital. The good Doctor stepped back as the nurse began attending to the patient.

“Lie still, please. You’ve had a fall; can you tell me your name. please?”

“I’m Doctor Emellson. No, my name might be Michael. Michael Barton. I don’t know.”

Perhaps those were the last words of sanity that ever left the body of Michael Barton. The nurses quickly organised a gurney for the patient, and he was wheeled out of the Doctors’ office. As the door of his office closed behind the nurses the new occupier of Doctor Peter Emellson’s body took in its new surroundings. He smiled and sat down at the Doctor’s desk.

Chapter 1

Michael James Doull was a veteran reporter with some 20 years of reporting behind him. He did not however go back in the industry as far as the days of sitting hunched over a typewriter. His arrival in the news media melting pot had coincided with the advent of the desktop computer. With today’s technology advantages he could virtually write any story on his Smartphone, take the pictures on his Smartphone and send it whisking into his employer without ever going near an office. Mike liked that idea. In his own mind Mike knew he was getting lazy, but years of dealing with the filthy circumstances of other peoples’ lives had taken away any youthful enthusiasm.

He had enjoyed a few good paydays covering the personal side of much of the Jubilee celebrations. But that had been nearly a month ago. Now he had to wait for the Olympics to start in August before he could guarantee a few more regular pay checks heading his way.

Today he was perched on the corner of the desk of the editor of the Sun daily newspaper. It could have been any paper in the country for Mike was a freelance reporter who made his living developing any story he could get paid for by one of the national dailies. Today he was annoying the features editor of the Sun, Harry Ferguson, to try and get whatever work he could get his hands on. Times were tough with the recession, but the Sun was probably one of the few dailies that still paid freelance jocks like him to dig up dirt or fluff pieces. Occasionally the leads offered would turn into something big and result in Mike having a good payday. Most of the time he would be offered bits and pieces that he himself would have to develop into something that would make the papers in the front two or three pages. Harry Ferguson was not in a giving mood today. He’d spent most of the morning in a heads of department meeting that was called to tighten belts and budgets.

Mike Doull knew that Harry Ferguson had a temper the equivalent to his namesake in football management, but over the years Mike had managed to stay in Ferguson’s good books. Mike was one of the few in the industry who could get away with calling him ‘Fergie’ to his face. Mike was also aware that he was close to getting the newspaper editors version of the Fergie hairdryer treatment but persisted in his chat as he needed the work and the money.

Fergie had nothing to offer Mike but was willing to give him a start on an article as Mike always delivered in the Sun’s scathing style no matter how trivial the story. From the meeting that morning the editors had been asked to keep all matters relating to the current recession with its own in-house reporting staff. There were a good number of unofficial leaks coming from ‘Number 10’ that were for political gains and these were fed directly to senior reporters as they were less likely to name their sources as would a freelancer with no legal team to support them. Fergie suggested that Mike try and come back to him with some ideas of his own and offered him one day of fees to go and dig out some topics that might make a story.

With that meagre economic lifeline in his hand Mike thanked Fergie and left his office.

Going down to the reporter’s room Mike trawled the staffers who were not out in the field for any suggestions that he could follow up.

The offerings were meagre, but several ideas were forthcoming to him: As always Mike thought about the subject and immediately came up with some angles he could perhaps develop to coin up some intrigue.

There was the forthcoming visit by the Chilean miners to Manchester and a visit to Manchester United. (Perhaps a chance for a few words with the Manchester United insiders, possibly make a few contacts for future use).

There were concerns that dementia numbers were spiralling in all age ranges. (How good was our health system, is the increase due to modern day life pressures? Is there a cure?).

How well could Britain cope if we had another major freeze up (Could the country cope? Had we learned our lessons from the previous big freeze? Is this part of the global warming? Kyoto or not to Kyoto?)

EEC mandarins getting more demanding and more trivial (we can’t sell sausages anymore, have to buy all EEC goods through the EEC head office, any chance of someone in the EEC clipping the ticket and skimming an income?)

Global warming (yes, it’s an issue but not for the Sun to lead with)

There were no more issues with any initial work done on them that had been pushed to one side, so Mike sat at a free desk and made some phone calls at the Sun’s expense.

The Press office at Manchester United were not interested in dealing with a freelancer. They only spoke to accredited reporters and Mike was invited to submit his credentials from a major daily for inspection. Mike gave his thanks but knew he was far too lazy to go to all that bother.

The Dementia story showed more cooperative sources. He spoke to two hospitals and three age care facilities. All agreed that the dementia numbers were rocketing upwards, and the government should be offering more funding. Many of the people contacted offered to be interviewed and Mike promised to get back to them, in time.

In trying to get somewhere with the freeze-up story Mike was pushed from pillar to post. No one really knew who was responsible for which facet of the freeze, if it was declared an emergency. The guy at the roads board thought they had a few days stock of grit and salt and was maybe a little concerned at the replacement of that stock. He had no idea who supplied that stock, so the tale and Mike’s enthusiasm ended there.

The possible story of the EEC mandarins met with a similar fate in that the PR people Mike spoke to in Brussels were unhelpful to the point of being rude at any suggestion that the EEC was not the source of salvation for the future progress of Europe. On pressing further Mike was put through to three different people, none of whom spoke English.

Mike sat and viewed the sheet of paper in front of him. With the exception of the Dementia story all the others had been crossed out as not worth it or they involved too much effort and travelling to be worth his bother.

With a sigh, Mike picked up the phone again. As he dialed the first number, he wondered how he could jazz up the story, of more old people going loopy, sufficient for the Sun to hand over a decent cheque.

Chapter 2

Mike set up four appointments for the following day. The two morning appointments were at hospitals and were as positive as Mike expected. Yes, there were increased incidents of dementia. The person available at both hospitals for interviewing could best be described as an academic. They both led most of their answers with “interestingly….”. Mike could not get the connection between ‘interestingly’ and the topic of dementia. It appeared that cases of dementia were up quite a bit over the last five years. There were far more cases of younger people entering the hospital with this affliction and obviously the government had done nothing to meet this trend with increased funding etc. Politely making sure he had spelt their names correctly; Mike left and found a pub that served a reasonable pub lunch. Fighting off a strong urge to cancel the two afternoon appointments he sat and ate his meal and tried to jazz up what he had been told so far. He didn’t try for very long as the meal demanded more of his attention than the prospect of the story in hand.

Arriving at the 2 o’clock interview Mike met the interviewee. Maggie Smith was a no-nonsense nurse from Leeds who did not want to be a part of a structured interview. She wanted to express her thoughts and Mike was welcome to make of it what he wanted. Maggie Smith had a thought or two on a lot of things, not least of which were reinforcements of the opinions of the two old bores from the morning interviews. Further to those thoughts she was convinced there was something going on. Probably a government experiment that no one knew about. Most of the new dementia patients were quite young which was almost unheard of in her experience. Maggie wanted to give full vent to her concerns. “And another thing”, this accompanied with a wagging finger, “How come most of these patients have no build-up of symptoms. Dementia is a usually a progressive disease over several years. Lots of my patients are exhibiting full blown dementia almost overnight.” In closing, she again affirmed her belief that the damned government is up to something, and no one is letting on what it is.

Mike took to Maggie straight away. Although she was talking in a similar manner to the many crackpots expressing their views about the government or flying saucers, Mike realised that this was just Maggie’s Yorkshire way of dealing with anything. Despite only allowing twenty minutes for the interview, Mike stayed and talked with Maggie for the better part of an hour. He found her quite observant and much focussed on her patients. Mike promised to get back to her if the paper wanted more info and then he drove to his next appointment.

Appointment number four was really just a senior nurse offering a rehash of the high-minded ideas of the first two interviews. At Mike’s prodding the nurse agreed that yes, there were more cases of dementia occurring. Yes, there was much higher incidence of younger patients. And yes, there were very high numbers of patients going into dementia very rapidly which was unusual.

On his way home Mike called in to talk further with Maggie Smith but she had left for the day. It seemed her shift had finished at midday, but she had felt strongly enough about her patients to stay on and make sure Mike got the full story from her.

When he got home Mike set to and turfed out a 1000-word piece on the dementia issue. It really wasn’t a subject that could be jazzed up or sensationalized. Working the angle of Maggie Smith’s theory of a government cover up into the article was a struggle but Mike had enough years of experience behind him to get the reader to ask themselves the cover up question. Attaching the article to an email he pressed the send button and sent his words across the internet to the features editor with a silent wish that it was a slow news day, and they would be looking for fill in material.

He was surprised that within minutes Harry Ferguson emailed back to say he would use the article as it was indeed a slow news day, but it probably would be tucked away on page 6 or 7. Although it promised a paycheck, its placement in the paper didn’t guarantee much of a read or the chance of a follow up article. Out of politeness, Mike emailed Harry back and worked in a request for some upfront travel expenses to do an article on the EEC mandarins. Mentioning the possibility of a hint of corruption would usually get any editors interested. Harry Ferguson was too experienced to fall for that trick. He emailed back for Mike to come up with more details before he would consider fronting up with the funds. Mike knew there was nothing of substance to offer to Fergie, so he switched off his computer and called it a day.

Across town, in the office of Doctor Peter Emellson there was great consternation in the IT dept. it appeared that all of Doctor Emellson’s research notes for the past year or so had disappeared from his computer memory. Quite rightly, the good Doctor was berating the hospital’s IT dept as his work and study for the last 18 months had disappeared for all time. Without repeating the entire study again there was no possibility of drawing any conclusions or making any recommendations. Doctor Emellson was visibly angered with the IT technician who was at a loss to recover the missing data. The good doctor’s anger was visible to all his staff as he stormed out of the hospital and left work for the day. The anger was still on his face when he arrived home and dutifully kissed his wife. In fact, the doctor’s anger was clear to all who saw him that day. But it disappeared when he sat alone in his study at home. His anger was replaced by a smile of deep contentment as he sat and sipped a fine Malt Whisky. The contentment was for a job well done.

Chapter 3

Mike Doull’s article was reasonably prominent, and it actually made page 4. That’s the page after the Sun’s page 3 girl cover. That’s still a good location to catch the attention of those who tire of the ever smiling but still unattainable page 3 Boob babes. It is understood by most of the industry that readers of the Sun newspaper are not among the highest percentile of intellect. A story on more people going loopy was not going to attract a great audience and those who did read it were probably not of the calibre that would command a royal inquiry into the dementia problem.

As the author of the article Mike had already inwardly acknowledged the story was at an end and had already been on the phone to a couple of other Daily newspapers looking for work. Mike was therefore more than a little surprised when he received an email later in the day from Harry Ferguson asking him to make contact for a follow up article on the dementia story. Mike emailed Harry immediately and made a time to meet in Harry’s office the following day.

On entering Harry’s office, the next day Mike prepared to sit on the corner of Harry’s desk until Harry firmly pointed to a chair for Mike to sit on.

Harry started the conversation with, “We’ve had emails and phone calls from all over the place on your dementia story. So, what’s the angle?”

Mike was at a loss to answer Harry’s question and replied accordingly.

Harry explained his interest. “The Sun has readers everywhere. All the expats across the world go online to the Sun website so they can catch up with what’s happening at home.”

Mike offered the thought that it might be just for the page 3 girls, but Harry knocked that thought aside and went further.

“That’s crap! There’re more boobs, bush and bonking on the internet than you’ll ever get on page 3. The Sun online has the biggest readership of all the dailies. And your article has got them contacting us by the hundreds, make that by the thousand! We’ve had calls and emails from Australia, Italy, Japan, USA, Brazil, Switzerland and more. This dementia story has hit a nerve. I want to know why and I’m guessing you know the answer.”

“Sorry Harry, I haven’t a clue” replied Mike “but I can do a follow up for the right retainer….”

“If I didn’t know you better Mike, I’d say you were lying. Prove me wrong. I’ll put you on retainer for a week. Give me another thousand words for tomorrow and something for the Sundays”.

Mike countered with, “Make it a month’s retainer and expenses and I’ll stir you up a government enquiry.”

Harry’s final offer was two weeks plus expenses with all articles to go through his desk. Mike smiled inwardly and leaned forward to shake hands on the deal. Before shaking on the deal Harry shook his head and stressed that Mike had better get off his backside and be prepared to earn his fee.

Leaving Harry’s office, Mike rode down three floors in the lift, all the while devising his strategy. By the time he arrived at the reporter’s room he had mapped out the first few days work on the story and was ready to start work.

Sitting comfortably at a spare desk he created a new email name and account on the Sun’s domain name. All the emails that had arrived in relation to his initial article were redirected to the new account. They numbered over 400 emails. Mike also gave instructions to the IT guys that all emails with the word Dementia were to be forwarded to his new account. He then set up an automatic forward from his new account to his home email and then left the office to head home. In his mind he was already busy wording an article for the following day, to be based on the worldwide response to his first article. Perhaps he could use the high numbers to disavow the intimation of a British government cover up as he had implied. He couldn’t work in an angle that every government was involved in a cover up. Maybe he could hint that the global warming was to blame. The conspiracy theorists would love that if he could get them to ask themselves the question without him personally posing the question. His route home took him past the aged care home that he had visited the previous day to interview Maggie Smith. He called in on the off chance he could chat with her, but she had finished her shift at 12.00 and left for the day. He left his phone number with the reception and carried on home.

On arriving home Mike carried out his usual routine of grabbing a beer from the fridge, sitting at his computer and downloading emails. While the emails were coming through, he checked his phone for messages. The routine was automatic to Mike. Usually, he had finished the beer before the emails had finished coming through. Today he wondered if he had drunk his beer too hastily as the emails were only a quarter downloaded as he examined the empty beer bottle.

Leaving the emails continuing their downloading, he made himself a somewhat belated lunch. When he returned to the computer, he still had time to eat a sandwich before the emails stopped coming through. He checked the feeds and with some surprise noted he had 988 new emails. Okay, he thought, maybe 400 were forwarded from the Sun account. He separated the new emails with a search word of Dementia, so that any emails with that word were pushed into a separate folder. This left him with just 49 emails to answer. Discounting the 20 or so that were offering cheap medications or Nigerian scam merchants, he went through the 20 odd remaining emails. One of the emails was from Maggie Smith and he opened that one first. She requested another chance to talk with him about the illness he had covered in his article. Strangely, she had not used the word dementia in her email, so it had not been filtered into a side folder on his computer. Maggie had given three phone numbers in her email. With his curiosity piqued, Mike reached out to pick up his phone to call her. As he did, the phone rang. When that happens it usually gives the recipient a shock. Mike was a little startled and the fact he was eating at the time caused him to choke a little. Picking up the phone, still coughing, a recognisable flat Yorkshire voice asked him if he was alright, told him that his cough didn’t sound too healthy and confirmed that it was all the traffic pollution that made Manchester an unhealthy environment. Ending with a suggestion that he should see his doctor about the cough, the caller introduced herself as Maggie Smith and reminded Mike he’d called to the aged care home to see her.

Mike grinned to himself as he recognised the no nonsense approach of his caller. He responded to her concern, “Hi Maggie and thanks for calling, No I’m not sick, I’m just choking on a sandwich, and yes, I did call you to do a follow up on our talk the other day.”

Maggie interrupted,” Well that’s good because I wanted to speak to you. I can come round and see you today if you like, where do you live? I have a car and can be there soon.”

Mike didn’t usually reveal his address to any one he met in the course of his professional life, but Maggie seemed different, so he relented and told her, and they made a time to meet at 4.00pm.

Putting the phone down, Mike grinned. Maggie Smith was a determined lady, but she seemed keen to give some more input and he quite liked her no-nonsense attitude. He felt moved to tidy up the living area of his apartment in preparation for his visitor.

Having an hour to kill before Maggie Smith’s arrival Mike sat down at his computer and wrote the follow up article for Harry Ferguson. The article was heavy on generalities and light on specifics, leaving the conspiracy theorists to draw their own conclusions as to what was happening. Opening up his email to send the article through to the editor’s desk Mike was surprised to see that he had received a further 60 emails into the dementia folder in the hour or so since lunch. Beyond thinking that was unusual, Mike shut down his computer and prepared for Maggie Smith’s arrival.

Punctually at four o’clock Maggie knocked on his door. Mike opened his front door and Maggie walked in carrying two cups of coffee. By the time she had reached the couch some 12 feet from the door Maggie had already covered the fact that she hoped Mike liked coffee, she hadn’t put sugar in his but assumed he would have some at home if he took sugar, Was he a smoker, if so then he was a silly bugger and told Mike he needed a woman round here to sort his flat out for him.

Mike was still closing the door, reeling slightly at the verbal overload. He turned to see Maggie already sat down on his couch and looking at him expectantly.

Mike mentally shook himself at the verbal onslaught.” Yes, I drink coffee, and yes, I do have sugar in the kitchen, and yes, I smoke and you’re not my mother and yes, a woman would keep the place tidy and please say you aren’t applying for the position because I’d probably kill you within the first week to get some peace. Other than that, thank you for coming here this afternoon.”

Maggie did not appear shocked at Mikes reply. “Right, I like a bloke who’s not scared to stand up to me. We’ll get along fine. Now what have you done since I saw you on Monday?”

Mike grinned at her. “You know, you might just be my mother or at least you may have been sent by her! Excuse me while I get the sugar.” He rose and went into the kitchen. He decided he was going to like working with Maggie Smith.

Returning and sitting down on the only easy chair in his apartment Mike went over the happenings of the last two days with Maggie. He explained that he had now been retained by the paper to do a follow up article and a further feature for the Sunday spread. He told her the paper had received over a thousand contacts on his article which was unheard of for a non-event issue like Dementia.

Maggie asked what the tone of the comments of the contact emails were about. Mike confessed he hadn’t looked at them yet.

Maggie hid her disapproval that Mike could churn out an article that was still so vague and really not based on any educated research. She didn’t hide it very well which led Mike to defend his work by saying that the Sun readers didn’t want to know all the gory details of dementia.

Maggie went on the attack. “And that’s where your newspaper people are getting it wrong! We actually do want to know more information on anything that intrudes on our own families, thank you very much. However, I’ve been thinking a lot since we spoke on Monday, and I’ve come up with something for you to think about. It’s not damn dementia cases we’re getting snowed under with. It’s something else. Something we haven’t seen before, but we only treat it as dementia because we haven’t got the time or staff or the bloody money to do anything else.”

Mike probed Maggie for something more. “Forgive me, but I can’t go to the editor with a story that there is a new disease that’s affecting people in huge numbers without some documentary evidence. The thoughts or hunches of one nurse are not going to keep me in anyone’s good books.”

For the second time that day Mike was told to get off his backside and do some work. Maggie expressed the sentiment using slightly more colourful tones. “Well get off your arse and do some research then. Ask all those poor buggers who emailed you what they think. If you can work that damn thing (nodding her head towards the computer on Mike’s desk) I’ll tell you what you need to ask. Come on, lad. If you pull finger, you’ll have a worthwhile story for your boss’s Sunday paper.”

Maggie wanted Mike to ask each person who emailed on the dementia case several questions such as the age of the relation when the dementia had onset. What was the length of time between onset and full-blown mental faculty losses? Were there any treatments given by the medical profession outside the usual dementia medication. Was there anything odd in the dementia sufferers’ personality? Finally, had the person died and how long after suffering the full-blown dementia onset.

While Maggie was writing down her questions for Mike to put to the respondents, Mike was sat at the computer converting all the respondents’ addresses into a mailing list. Mike noted that he had received a further 78 emails in the last two hours that had gone into the ‘dementia’ folder. Included in the folder was a reply from Harry Ferguson that his article had been accepted and would be in the Thursday morning edition.

Mike set Maggie’s question into a spreadsheet format. He then inserted them into the email along with a covering note that he was conducting a survey and would be grateful for their assistance in his research.

With the time approaching 6 pm, Mike was happy to call it a day. Two hours of Maggie Smith’s encouragement was more than enough for Mike to handle, and he looked forward to shutting the door on Maggie for the day. Mike’s attitude of doing just enough to get by had served him reasonably well over the years and he found Maggie something of a cross between his loving mother and his nagging ex-wife. On telling Maggie that the work was over for the day he was less than overjoyed to hear Maggie say she finished at lunchtime tomorrow and could be here by 12.30. Would she like him to bring him anything for lunch?

Mike promised to ring her at work in the morning and they would arrange things at that point. Shutting the door behind her he imagined that Maggie was still talking to him as she walked out of the door. Mike didn’t make the mistake of asking what she said. He closed the door and walked over to the couch and put on the evening news.

Just before he went to bed some fours later, he checked his emails and was surprised to find that over 450 replies to his survey had already been received in his inbox. Mike did not have a reputation in the industry of being over inquisitive or over eager to work. Being true to his reputation he shut the computer down and went to bed.

His sleep was disturbed at 8.30 in the morning by a phone call from Maggie Smith asking how the survey was going and had he managed any findings yet. Using the truth as his best defence Mike replied that there over 400 replies so far and he had not yet managed to find any trends developing in the survey. He agreed that Maggie could come to his apartment at 12.30 and yes, she could bring him something warm to eat. Putting the phone down and rolling over in the bed Mike tried to get back to sleep but had to admit to something resembling curiosity as to the email replies. Giving in to a long luxurious stretch he rolled out of bed and stood there in his underwear. He turned the computer on as he walked past it and made himself some breakfast. Sitting in front of the computer eating toast, Mike was still a little surprised to find how long it was taking to download the emails pouring in.

From a glance at the screen, Mike figured he had received another 200 emails overnight on the subject of dementia and a total of somewhere near 800 replies to his survey. Thinking it all looked like a lot of hard work Mike plucked out and read a few random emails. Most of them said the same thing that the mailer’s loved one had gone down with dementia very quickly. Many said it had happened overnight. Mike made a mental note to ask Maggie what usually happened with people getting dementia and then continued opening more of the survey replies.

Trying to be as dispassionate as any journalist should be was easy at the start of the survey replies. As he read more, his attention became more focused. He found himself speed reading the emails looking for ones that stood out as different. It could not escape Mike’s notice that the clear majority of the respondent’s replies were frighteningly similar. All indicated the onset had occurred without warning. Most of the respondents stated their partner or loved one was of above average intelligence. Many of them were in senior positions in their employment. On the basis of the few replies, he had read the average age of onset was 35-40 with a good percentage even younger than that. The greater majority had not suffered a long time with the disease but had died reasonably shortly after the full-blown onset of the dementia. The average life span of the respondent’s loved ones would not have exceeded 2 months.

Mike was fully immersed in the emails when his doorbell rang. Assuming it was Maggie he walked over to the door and opened it.

Maggie’s greeting was short and to the point. “And you can put some clothes on before I walk through this door. Is this how you reporters like to get your girls? Trust me, I’ve been a nurse for twenty-six years and I ‘ve seen bigger and better column inches than you can muster, my lad.”

Mike uttered a brief thought to himself along the lines of “Oh shit, I’m still in my Jama’s” but before he could explain Maggie was past him and heading to the kitchen shouting back over her shoulder that she needed plates and where were they kept.

Mike slipped past her to the bedroom and threw some clothes on. Thinking better of himself he also ducked into the bathroom and washed his face.

Walking back into the lounge Mike saw his visitor had already set the pies she had purchased on plates and along with the coffees was ready to eat.

Pushing a plate towards Mike, Maggie waited until he had taken a bite out of his pie before starting her questioning.

“Right then, what you come up with? All clever people? Young people? Come on lad, we’ve not got all day.”

Mike used the reason that his mouth was full to delay his reply. The delay was really to gather his thoughts.

Reaching behind him he grabbed the paper that Maggie had written her questions down on the previous day. Giving it to Maggie he said.” You write down what the average dementia patient should look like and then we’ll compare notes.”

Maggie carefully considered her replies which gave Mike the chance to finish his food. Then they compared notes

Mike started with “Question 1. The age of the relation when the dementia had onset.”

Maggie thought that the average age should be mid to late fifties. Mike replied that the survey showed mid to late 30’s

Maggie pulled up the next question “Question 2 The length of time between onset and full-blown mental faculty losses. With medication the full symptoms can often be delayed for a few years. I’d say two years as an average.”

Mike replied that the survey indicated an average of one day or less.

Maggie continued. “Question 3. Any treatments given by the medical profession outside the usual dementia medication? My answer would be no. we don’t have the staff or the time or the funds to do much with them other than make them comfortable and make sure they don’t harm themselves.”

Mikes findings from the survey indicated that there was usually little time for the patients to be offered different treatments.

To question 4. Was there anything odd in the dementia sufferer’s personality? Maggie said generally dementia sufferers withdrew inside themselves and became shy and almost reclusive. Mike’s respondents offered more variety on the question, but it didn’t make sense in that many of the respondent’s patients seemed to become different somehow. The word different was used in a lot of the replies.

Replying to the final question Maggie indicated there was no real timeline on the patient dying after suffering the full-blown dementia onset. She assumed an average time would be five years. Some patients would live for twenty or even thirty years with care.

Mike’s summary of the survey respondents indicated that the average life expectancy not more than two months.

Expecting Maggie to be surprised at the findings Mike was taken aback when Maggie asserted, “See! I damn well told you there was something going on!”

Mike’s liking for the easy life was kicking into his psyche and telling him that although there might indeed be something going on, did Mike really want all the hassle of finding what it was that was actually ‘going on’.

Maggie didn’t understand Mike’s psyche and carried on without interruption. “So, what are you going to do about it? This will make a great story for the Sundays. Won’t it?”

Mike agreed it would make a great story but put forward the thought that maybe it was time to talk to the editor to get his views on the story’s newsworthiness.

“Great idea.” said Maggie “Ring him now!”

Mike rang Harry Ferguson at the Sun requesting a meeting saying the story could be much bigger than first visualized. Deep inside him Mike hoped that Harry would think he was just trying to wangle more pay and tell him to forget it. However, editors of a major daily newspaper have a nose for big story, so Harry immediately suggested a meeting the next morning at 10am. Mike heard Maggie whisper behind him that 10 would be fine as she didn’t work on Fridays.

When Mike put the phone down Maggie told him that it was not even 1.30 and they could spend the rest of the day going through the survey and getting some totals and trends and geography and stuff. Inwardly Mike groaned but he sat down with Maggie to sift through the emails.

There were over 1000 replies to the survey tucked away in Mike’s inbox. It was past 8.30 when he finally eased Maggie out of his apartment. Maggie would have worked until midnight and beyond, but Mike had reached his limit. Yes, he wanted to be a part of a major story. Perhaps even a major government corruption scandal. A journo award in his name would open many doors for a freelancer for the rest of his life. It also indicated a huge amount of work and somewhere deep inside him a gut instinct told him that it would also mean trouble.

Well done,

There are probably around 23 pages for you to enjoy this month. because the book starts with a little explanation as its preface. Make no mistake, Reincarnation is a fact of life, it says it, right there in the bible. This story revolves right up through the corridors of Power in Whitehall. Oh, and it also is in the corridors of the German Parliament. And the USA house of Representatives. Let's just say this is at the seat of most governments and it is being controlled by a secret agency. A Club, if you like. You've probably heard of them in your readings...

Let's get back to the book. It's a three-part thriller although as I write this the fourth and fifth books are being written as well

As always once I get the urge to write, it almost seems like it is being dictated to me.

It's an odd feeling for me. But it's probably something you should be aware of.

Again, the Best I can do is offer the Ebook at half price so for the month of July it will be reduced to $1.99 if you choose to make a purchase in July

Preface

Reincarnation is a fact of life! It even says it, right there in the Bible, if you look closely. You could go a little further and say Reincarnation is a fact of life AND a consequence of death. Think about that for a second. You die and come back in a new body.

But what if you didn’t have to die to take on a new body?

Ask yourself, if you could just take over any individual’s body and lead their life. Would you? Would you choose to live as Beyoncé or Justin Bieber, for the fame and fortune? Perhaps as Obama or as Oprah, for the powerful friends and lavish lifestyle? Maybe it would be as Angela Merkel or Bill Gates? Lots of power and influence and a good income. And when that body got old, you could just hop into another younger or richer or fitter body. You could keep doing that and getting richer and richer and live forever.

A tempting prospect, isn’t it?

Would you call it ‘Body Snatching’?

How do you know it’s not happening already?

Today? Right in front of you?

Read on…….

Introduction

Doctor Peter Emellson was close to finishing his shift at the Hospital. As a highly respected member of the teaching faculty in the field of oncology, his reputation was unsurpassed for being an innovator of new ideas in the treatment of Skin cancer and Basal Cell Melanoma. Currently his work involved research into a variety of some of the more esoteric or old-fashioned treatments for ailments of the skin. In short, he was leading research into the ‘natural medicines’ field. His personal involvement in the research gave some credence to the bringing in or use of colour therapists and naturopaths and similar alternative fields of healing.

For the past eighteen months he had met and talked with all manner of fringe healing practise and its practitioners. On principle, Doctor Emellson declined to use the term ‘medicine’ when researching these alternative beliefs. In his opinion the term ‘Medicine’ involved years of research, testing and development in a clinical environment. What he had been studying in the last year and a half was at best theory or hearsay from a wide variety of well-meaning individuals. None of whom had come even close to providing the definitive results and case studies that he needed to advance his research.

His last appointment of this shift was to meet and interview yet another of these so-called healers whose area of expertise involved something called ‘chakra alignment’.

As always Doctor Emellson went into the appointment with an open mind. He was relieved that the majority of these alternative healers were basically very well meaning. Very few had the desire to earn money from their ‘gifts’ of healing. This attitude made Doctor Emellson a little less suspicious of their motives and made him want to believe the natural healing could be an alternative to the high-priced alternatives that the drug companies were promoting.

He entered his office and sat down at his desk. His secretary ushered in the latest candidate who thought he could revolutionize medicine. The elderly healer smiled at the doctor and introduced himself as Michael Barton, a chakra healer from Wolverhampton. In his mind the good doctor tried to quell the humorous concept of Wolverhampton being a hot bed of natural healing and rose to greet the Healer.

After introductions both men sat down, and Doctor Emellson explained briefly the concept of the study he was undertaking and invited the visitor to explain the idea of his healing method in general terms.

The visitor explained that if he were able to place his hands on the chakra points of the doctor’s body, he might more ably feel the connections. Doctor Emellson agreed, and the Doctor came around the desk to allow the visitor to demonstrate his craft.

As the visitor lightly put his hands on the doctor’s head several things happened. The doctor suddenly felt very lightheaded and was aware only that he was very definitely feeling some energy or influence on his body when the visitor placed his hands softly on the top of the doctor’s head. To an onlooker the situation in the room might have looked odd. Firstly, the healer placed his hands on the Doctors head, then to his own head and finally put his hands back on the Doctors head. Within seconds the visiting healer had slumped to the floor in a state of wild disorientation and passed out. It may only have been a few seconds later, but after recovering his composure the doctor looked at his former self slumped on the floor. He called out to the receptionist asking her to summon help as the visitor had collapsed.

Kneeling down to check the visitor, the ‘new’ soul driving Doctor Emellson smiled and took in his surroundings with satisfaction. The man on the floor was regaining consciousness and dazedly looking around. When he saw the doctor kneeling over him, he stopped and looked at his own hands and then touched his face. Within moments of the doctor’s summons, two nurses arrived and burst through the door. The Doctor was kneeling over the body of the healer. He informed the nurses that his visitor had suddenly collapsed and was incoherent and suggested the visitor be admitted to the hospital. The good Doctor stepped back as the nurse began attending to the patient.

“Lie still, please. You’ve had a fall; can you tell me your name. please?”

“I’m Doctor Emellson. No, my name might be Michael. Michael Barton. I don’t know.”

Perhaps those were the last words of sanity that ever left the body of Michael Barton. The nurses quickly organised a gurney for the patient, and he was wheeled out of the Doctors’ office. As the door of his office closed behind the nurses the new occupier of Doctor Peter Emellson’s body took in its new surroundings. He smiled and sat down at the Doctor’s desk.

Chapter 1

Michael James Doull was a veteran reporter with some 20 years of reporting behind him. He did not however go back in the industry as far as the days of sitting hunched over a typewriter. His arrival in the news media melting pot had coincided with the advent of the desktop computer. With today’s technology advantages he could virtually write any story on his Smartphone, take the pictures on his Smartphone and send it whisking into his employer without ever going near an office. Mike liked that idea. In his own mind Mike knew he was getting lazy, but years of dealing with the filthy circumstances of other peoples’ lives had taken away any youthful enthusiasm.

He had enjoyed a few good paydays covering the personal side of much of the Jubilee celebrations. But that had been nearly a month ago. Now he had to wait for the Olympics to start in August before he could guarantee a few more regular pay checks heading his way.

Today he was perched on the corner of the desk of the editor of the Sun daily newspaper. It could have been any paper in the country for Mike was a freelance reporter who made his living developing any story he could get paid for by one of the national dailies. Today he was annoying the features editor of the Sun, Harry Ferguson, to try and get whatever work he could get his hands on. Times were tough with the recession, but the Sun was probably one of the few dailies that still paid freelance jocks like him to dig up dirt or fluff pieces. Occasionally the leads offered would turn into something big and result in Mike having a good payday. Most of the time he would be offered bits and pieces that he himself would have to develop into something that would make the papers in the front two or three pages. Harry Ferguson was not in a giving mood today. He’d spent most of the morning in a heads of department meeting that was called to tighten belts and budgets.

Mike Doull knew that Harry Ferguson had a temper the equivalent to his namesake in football management, but over the years Mike had managed to stay in Ferguson’s good books. Mike was one of the few in the industry who could get away with calling him ‘Fergie’ to his face. Mike was also aware that he was close to getting the newspaper editors version of the Fergie hairdryer treatment but persisted in his chat as he needed the work and the money.

Fergie had nothing to offer Mike but was willing to give him a start on an article as Mike always delivered in the Sun’s scathing style no matter how trivial the story. From the meeting that morning the editors had been asked to keep all matters relating to the current recession with its own in-house reporting staff. There were a good number of unofficial leaks coming from ‘Number 10’ that were for political gains and these were fed directly to senior reporters as they were less likely to name their sources as would a freelancer with no legal team to support them. Fergie suggested that Mike try and come back to him with some ideas of his own and offered him one day of fees to go and dig out some topics that might make a story.

With that meagre economic lifeline in his hand Mike thanked Fergie and left his office.

Going down to the reporter’s room Mike trawled the staffers who were not out in the field for any suggestions that he could follow up.

The offerings were meagre, but several ideas were forthcoming to him: As always Mike thought about the subject and immediately came up with some angles he could perhaps develop to coin up some intrigue.

There was the forthcoming visit by the Chilean miners to Manchester and a visit to Manchester United. (Perhaps a chance for a few words with the Manchester United insiders, possibly make a few contacts for future use).

There were concerns that dementia numbers were spiralling in all age ranges. (How good was our health system, is the increase due to modern day life pressures? Is there a cure?).

How well could Britain cope if we had another major freeze up (Could the country cope? Had we learned our lessons from the previous big freeze? Is this part of the global warming? Kyoto or not to Kyoto?)

EEC mandarins getting more demanding and more trivial (we can’t sell sausages anymore, have to buy all EEC goods through the EEC head office, any chance of someone in the EEC clipping the ticket and skimming an income?)

Global warming (yes, it’s an issue but not for the Sun to lead with)

There were no more issues with any initial work done on them that had been pushed to one side, so Mike sat at a free desk and made some phone calls at the Sun’s expense.

The Press office at Manchester United were not interested in dealing with a freelancer. They only spoke to accredited reporters and Mike was invited to submit his credentials from a major daily for inspection. Mike gave his thanks but knew he was far too lazy to go to all that bother.

The Dementia story showed more cooperative sources. He spoke to two hospitals and three age care facilities. All agreed that the dementia numbers were rocketing upwards, and the government should be offering more funding. Many of the people contacted offered to be interviewed and Mike promised to get back to them, in time.

In trying to get somewhere with the freeze-up story Mike was pushed from pillar to post. No one really knew who was responsible for which facet of the freeze, if it was declared an emergency. The guy at the roads board thought they had a few days stock of grit and salt and was maybe a little concerned at the replacement of that stock. He had no idea who supplied that stock, so the tale and Mike’s enthusiasm ended there.

The possible story of the EEC mandarins met with a similar fate in that the PR people Mike spoke to in Brussels were unhelpful to the point of being rude at any suggestion that the EEC was not the source of salvation for the future progress of Europe. On pressing further Mike was put through to three different people, none of whom spoke English.

Mike sat and viewed the sheet of paper in front of him. With the exception of the Dementia story all the others had been crossed out as not worth it or they involved too much effort and travelling to be worth his bother.

With a sigh, Mike picked up the phone again. As he dialed the first number, he wondered how he could jazz up the story, of more old people going loopy, sufficient for the Sun to hand over a decent cheque.

Chapter 2

Mike set up four appointments for the following day. The two morning appointments were at hospitals and were as positive as Mike expected. Yes, there were increased incidents of dementia. The person available at both hospitals for interviewing could best be described as an academic. They both led most of their answers with “interestingly….”. Mike could not get the connection between ‘interestingly’ and the topic of dementia. It appeared that cases of dementia were up quite a bit over the last five years. There were far more cases of younger people entering the hospital with this affliction and obviously the government had done nothing to meet this trend with increased funding etc. Politely making sure he had spelt their names correctly; Mike left and found a pub that served a reasonable pub lunch. Fighting off a strong urge to cancel the two afternoon appointments he sat and ate his meal and tried to jazz up what he had been told so far. He didn’t try for very long as the meal demanded more of his attention than the prospect of the story in hand.

Arriving at the 2 o’clock interview Mike met the interviewee. Maggie Smith was a no-nonsense nurse from Leeds who did not want to be a part of a structured interview. She wanted to express her thoughts and Mike was welcome to make of it what he wanted. Maggie Smith had a thought or two on a lot of things, not least of which were reinforcements of the opinions of the two old bores from the morning interviews. Further to those thoughts she was convinced there was something going on. Probably a government experiment that no one knew about. Most of the new dementia patients were quite young which was almost unheard of in her experience. Maggie wanted to give full vent to her concerns. “And another thing”, this accompanied with a wagging finger, “How come most of these patients have no build-up of symptoms. Dementia is a usually a progressive disease over several years. Lots of my patients are exhibiting full blown dementia almost overnight.” In closing, she again affirmed her belief that the damned government is up to something, and no one is letting on what it is.

Mike took to Maggie straight away. Although she was talking in a similar manner to the many crackpots expressing their views about the government or flying saucers, Mike realised that this was just Maggie’s Yorkshire way of dealing with anything. Despite only allowing twenty minutes for the interview, Mike stayed and talked with Maggie for the better part of an hour. He found her quite observant and much focussed on her patients. Mike promised to get back to her if the paper wanted more info and then he drove to his next appointment.

Appointment number four was really just a senior nurse offering a rehash of the high-minded ideas of the first two interviews. At Mike’s prodding the nurse agreed that yes, there were more cases of dementia occurring. Yes, there was much higher incidence of younger patients. And yes, there were very high numbers of patients going into dementia very rapidly which was unusual.

On his way home Mike called in to talk further with Maggie Smith but she had left for the day. It seemed her shift had finished at midday, but she had felt strongly enough about her patients to stay on and make sure Mike got the full story from her.

When he got home Mike set to and turfed out a 1000-word piece on the dementia issue. It really wasn’t a subject that could be jazzed up or sensationalized. Working the angle of Maggie Smith’s theory of a government cover up into the article was a struggle but Mike had enough years of experience behind him to get the reader to ask themselves the cover up question. Attaching the article to an email he pressed the send button and sent his words across the internet to the features editor with a silent wish that it was a slow news day, and they would be looking for fill in material.

He was surprised that within minutes Harry Ferguson emailed back to say he would use the article as it was indeed a slow news day, but it probably would be tucked away on page 6 or 7. Although it promised a paycheck, its placement in the paper didn’t guarantee much of a read or the chance of a follow up article. Out of politeness, Mike emailed Harry back and worked in a request for some upfront travel expenses to do an article on the EEC mandarins. Mentioning the possibility of a hint of corruption would usually get any editors interested. Harry Ferguson was too experienced to fall for that trick. He emailed back for Mike to come up with more details before he would consider fronting up with the funds. Mike knew there was nothing of substance to offer to Fergie, so he switched off his computer and called it a day.

Across town, in the office of Doctor Peter Emellson there was great consternation in the IT dept. it appeared that all of Doctor Emellson’s research notes for the past year or so had disappeared from his computer memory. Quite rightly, the good Doctor was berating the hospital’s IT dept as his work and study for the last 18 months had disappeared for all time. Without repeating the entire study again there was no possibility of drawing any conclusions or making any recommendations. Doctor Emellson was visibly angered with the IT technician who was at a loss to recover the missing data. The good doctor’s anger was visible to all his staff as he stormed out of the hospital and left work for the day. The anger was still on his face when he arrived home and dutifully kissed his wife. In fact, the doctor’s anger was clear to all who saw him that day. But it disappeared when he sat alone in his study at home. His anger was replaced by a smile of deep contentment as he sat and sipped a fine Malt Whisky. The contentment was for a job well done.

Chapter 3

Mike Doull’s article was reasonably prominent, and it actually made page 4. That’s the page after the Sun’s page 3 girl cover. That’s still a good location to catch the attention of those who tire of the ever smiling but still unattainable page 3 Boob babes. It is understood by most of the industry that readers of the Sun newspaper are not among the highest percentile of intellect. A story on more people going loopy was not going to attract a great audience and those who did read it were probably not of the calibre that would command a royal inquiry into the dementia problem.

As the author of the article Mike had already inwardly acknowledged the story was at an end and had already been on the phone to a couple of other Daily newspapers looking for work. Mike was therefore more than a little surprised when he received an email later in the day from Harry Ferguson asking him to make contact for a follow up article on the dementia story. Mike emailed Harry immediately and made a time to meet in Harry’s office the following day.

On entering Harry’s office, the next day Mike prepared to sit on the corner of Harry’s desk until Harry firmly pointed to a chair for Mike to sit on.

Harry started the conversation with, “We’ve had emails and phone calls from all over the place on your dementia story. So, what’s the angle?”

Mike was at a loss to answer Harry’s question and replied accordingly.

Harry explained his interest. “The Sun has readers everywhere. All the expats across the world go online to the Sun website so they can catch up with what’s happening at home.”

Mike offered the thought that it might be just for the page 3 girls, but Harry knocked that thought aside and went further.

“That’s crap! There’re more boobs, bush and bonking on the internet than you’ll ever get on page 3. The Sun online has the biggest readership of all the dailies. And your article has got them contacting us by the hundreds, make that by the thousand! We’ve had calls and emails from Australia, Italy, Japan, USA, Brazil, Switzerland and more. This dementia story has hit a nerve. I want to know why and I’m guessing you know the answer.”

“Sorry Harry, I haven’t a clue” replied Mike “but I can do a follow up for the right retainer….”

“If I didn’t know you better Mike, I’d say you were lying. Prove me wrong. I’ll put you on retainer for a week. Give me another thousand words for tomorrow and something for the Sundays”.

Mike countered with, “Make it a month’s retainer and expenses and I’ll stir you up a government enquiry.”

Harry’s final offer was two weeks plus expenses with all articles to go through his desk. Mike smiled inwardly and leaned forward to shake hands on the deal. Before shaking on the deal Harry shook his head and stressed that Mike had better get off his backside and be prepared to earn his fee.

Leaving Harry’s office, Mike rode down three floors in the lift, all the while devising his strategy. By the time he arrived at the reporter’s room he had mapped out the first few days work on the story and was ready to start work.

Sitting comfortably at a spare desk he created a new email name and account on the Sun’s domain name. All the emails that had arrived in relation to his initial article were redirected to the new account. They numbered over 400 emails. Mike also gave instructions to the IT guys that all emails with the word Dementia were to be forwarded to his new account. He then set up an automatic forward from his new account to his home email and then left the office to head home. In his mind he was already busy wording an article for the following day, to be based on the worldwide response to his first article. Perhaps he could use the high numbers to disavow the intimation of a British government cover up as he had implied. He couldn’t work in an angle that every government was involved in a cover up. Maybe he could hint that the global warming was to blame. The conspiracy theorists would love that if he could get them to ask themselves the question without him personally posing the question. His route home took him past the aged care home that he had visited the previous day to interview Maggie Smith. He called in on the off chance he could chat with her, but she had finished her shift at 12.00 and left for the day. He left his phone number with the reception and carried on home.

On arriving home Mike carried out his usual routine of grabbing a beer from the fridge, sitting at his computer and downloading emails. While the emails were coming through, he checked his phone for messages. The routine was automatic to Mike. Usually, he had finished the beer before the emails had finished coming through. Today he wondered if he had drunk his beer too hastily as the emails were only a quarter downloaded as he examined the empty beer bottle.

Leaving the emails continuing their downloading, he made himself a somewhat belated lunch. When he returned to the computer, he still had time to eat a sandwich before the emails stopped coming through. He checked the feeds and with some surprise noted he had 988 new emails. Okay, he thought, maybe 400 were forwarded from the Sun account. He separated the new emails with a search word of Dementia, so that any emails with that word were pushed into a separate folder. This left him with just 49 emails to answer. Discounting the 20 or so that were offering cheap medications or Nigerian scam merchants, he went through the 20 odd remaining emails. One of the emails was from Maggie Smith and he opened that one first. She requested another chance to talk with him about the illness he had covered in his article. Strangely, she had not used the word dementia in her email, so it had not been filtered into a side folder on his computer. Maggie had given three phone numbers in her email. With his curiosity piqued, Mike reached out to pick up his phone to call her. As he did, the phone rang. When that happens it usually gives the recipient a shock. Mike was a little startled and the fact he was eating at the time caused him to choke a little. Picking up the phone, still coughing, a recognisable flat Yorkshire voice asked him if he was alright, told him that his cough didn’t sound too healthy and confirmed that it was all the traffic pollution that made Manchester an unhealthy environment. Ending with a suggestion that he should see his doctor about the cough, the caller introduced herself as Maggie Smith and reminded Mike he’d called to the aged care home to see her.

Mike grinned to himself as he recognised the no nonsense approach of his caller. He responded to her concern, “Hi Maggie and thanks for calling, No I’m not sick, I’m just choking on a sandwich, and yes, I did call you to do a follow up on our talk the other day.”

Maggie interrupted,” Well that’s good because I wanted to speak to you. I can come round and see you today if you like, where do you live? I have a car and can be there soon.”

Mike didn’t usually reveal his address to any one he met in the course of his professional life, but Maggie seemed different, so he relented and told her, and they made a time to meet at 4.00pm.

Putting the phone down, Mike grinned. Maggie Smith was a determined lady, but she seemed keen to give some more input and he quite liked her no-nonsense attitude. He felt moved to tidy up the living area of his apartment in preparation for his visitor.

Having an hour to kill before Maggie Smith’s arrival Mike sat down at his computer and wrote the follow up article for Harry Ferguson. The article was heavy on generalities and light on specifics, leaving the conspiracy theorists to draw their own conclusions as to what was happening. Opening up his email to send the article through to the editor’s desk Mike was surprised to see that he had received a further 60 emails into the dementia folder in the hour or so since lunch. Beyond thinking that was unusual, Mike shut down his computer and prepared for Maggie Smith’s arrival.

Punctually at four o’clock Maggie knocked on his door. Mike opened his front door and Maggie walked in carrying two cups of coffee. By the time she had reached the couch some 12 feet from the door Maggie had already covered the fact that she hoped Mike liked coffee, she hadn’t put sugar in his but assumed he would have some at home if he took sugar, Was he a smoker, if so then he was a silly bugger and told Mike he needed a woman round here to sort his flat out for him.

Mike was still closing the door, reeling slightly at the verbal overload. He turned to see Maggie already sat down on his couch and looking at him expectantly.

Mike mentally shook himself at the verbal onslaught.” Yes, I drink coffee, and yes, I do have sugar in the kitchen, and yes, I smoke and you’re not my mother and yes, a woman would keep the place tidy and please say you aren’t applying for the position because I’d probably kill you within the first week to get some peace. Other than that, thank you for coming here this afternoon.”

Maggie did not appear shocked at Mikes reply. “Right, I like a bloke who’s not scared to stand up to me. We’ll get along fine. Now what have you done since I saw you on Monday?”

Mike grinned at her. “You know, you might just be my mother or at least you may have been sent by her! Excuse me while I get the sugar.” He rose and went into the kitchen. He decided he was going to like working with Maggie Smith.

Returning and sitting down on the only easy chair in his apartment Mike went over the happenings of the last two days with Maggie. He explained that he had now been retained by the paper to do a follow up article and a further feature for the Sunday spread. He told her the paper had received over a thousand contacts on his article which was unheard of for a non-event issue like Dementia.

Maggie asked what the tone of the comments of the contact emails were about. Mike confessed he hadn’t looked at them yet.

Maggie hid her disapproval that Mike could churn out an article that was still so vague and really not based on any educated research. She didn’t hide it very well which led Mike to defend his work by saying that the Sun readers didn’t want to know all the gory details of dementia.

Maggie went on the attack. “And that’s where your newspaper people are getting it wrong! We actually do want to know more information on anything that intrudes on our own families, thank you very much. However, I’ve been thinking a lot since we spoke on Monday, and I’ve come up with something for you to think about. It’s not damn dementia cases we’re getting snowed under with. It’s something else. Something we haven’t seen before, but we only treat it as dementia because we haven’t got the time or staff or the bloody money to do anything else.”

Mike probed Maggie for something more. “Forgive me, but I can’t go to the editor with a story that there is a new disease that’s affecting people in huge numbers without some documentary evidence. The thoughts or hunches of one nurse are not going to keep me in anyone’s good books.”

For the second time that day Mike was told to get off his backside and do some work. Maggie expressed the sentiment using slightly more colourful tones. “Well get off your arse and do some research then. Ask all those poor buggers who emailed you what they think. If you can work that damn thing (nodding her head towards the computer on Mike’s desk) I’ll tell you what you need to ask. Come on, lad. If you pull finger, you’ll have a worthwhile story for your boss’s Sunday paper.”

Maggie wanted Mike to ask each person who emailed on the dementia case several questions such as the age of the relation when the dementia had onset. What was the length of time between onset and full-blown mental faculty losses? Were there any treatments given by the medical profession outside the usual dementia medication. Was there anything odd in the dementia sufferers’ personality? Finally, had the person died and how long after suffering the full-blown dementia onset.

While Maggie was writing down her questions for Mike to put to the respondents, Mike was sat at the computer converting all the respondents’ addresses into a mailing list. Mike noted that he had received a further 78 emails in the last two hours that had gone into the ‘dementia’ folder. Included in the folder was a reply from Harry Ferguson that his article had been accepted and would be in the Thursday morning edition.

Mike set Maggie’s question into a spreadsheet format. He then inserted them into the email along with a covering note that he was conducting a survey and would be grateful for their assistance in his research.

With the time approaching 6 pm, Mike was happy to call it a day. Two hours of Maggie Smith’s encouragement was more than enough for Mike to handle, and he looked forward to shutting the door on Maggie for the day. Mike’s attitude of doing just enough to get by had served him reasonably well over the years and he found Maggie something of a cross between his loving mother and his nagging ex-wife. On telling Maggie that the work was over for the day he was less than overjoyed to hear Maggie say she finished at lunchtime tomorrow and could be here by 12.30. Would she like him to bring him anything for lunch?

Mike promised to ring her at work in the morning and they would arrange things at that point. Shutting the door behind her he imagined that Maggie was still talking to him as she walked out of the door. Mike didn’t make the mistake of asking what she said. He closed the door and walked over to the couch and put on the evening news.

Just before he went to bed some fours later, he checked his emails and was surprised to find that over 450 replies to his survey had already been received in his inbox. Mike did not have a reputation in the industry of being over inquisitive or over eager to work. Being true to his reputation he shut the computer down and went to bed.

His sleep was disturbed at 8.30 in the morning by a phone call from Maggie Smith asking how the survey was going and had he managed any findings yet. Using the truth as his best defence Mike replied that there over 400 replies so far and he had not yet managed to find any trends developing in the survey. He agreed that Maggie could come to his apartment at 12.30 and yes, she could bring him something warm to eat. Putting the phone down and rolling over in the bed Mike tried to get back to sleep but had to admit to something resembling curiosity as to the email replies. Giving in to a long luxurious stretch he rolled out of bed and stood there in his underwear. He turned the computer on as he walked past it and made himself some breakfast. Sitting in front of the computer eating toast, Mike was still a little surprised to find how long it was taking to download the emails pouring in.

From a glance at the screen, Mike figured he had received another 200 emails overnight on the subject of dementia and a total of somewhere near 800 replies to his survey. Thinking it all looked like a lot of hard work Mike plucked out and read a few random emails. Most of them said the same thing that the mailer’s loved one had gone down with dementia very quickly. Many said it had happened overnight. Mike made a mental note to ask Maggie what usually happened with people getting dementia and then continued opening more of the survey replies.

Trying to be as dispassionate as any journalist should be was easy at the start of the survey replies. As he read more, his attention became more focused. He found himself speed reading the emails looking for ones that stood out as different. It could not escape Mike’s notice that the clear majority of the respondent’s replies were frighteningly similar. All indicated the onset had occurred without warning. Most of the respondents stated their partner or loved one was of above average intelligence. Many of them were in senior positions in their employment. On the basis of the few replies, he had read the average age of onset was 35-40 with a good percentage even younger than that. The greater majority had not suffered a long time with the disease but had died reasonably shortly after the full-blown onset of the dementia. The average life span of the respondent’s loved ones would not have exceeded 2 months.

Mike was fully immersed in the emails when his doorbell rang. Assuming it was Maggie he walked over to the door and opened it.

Maggie’s greeting was short and to the point. “And you can put some clothes on before I walk through this door. Is this how you reporters like to get your girls? Trust me, I’ve been a nurse for twenty-six years and I ‘ve seen bigger and better column inches than you can muster, my lad.”

Mike uttered a brief thought to himself along the lines of “Oh shit, I’m still in my Jama’s” but before he could explain Maggie was past him and heading to the kitchen shouting back over her shoulder that she needed plates and where were they kept.

Mike slipped past her to the bedroom and threw some clothes on. Thinking better of himself he also ducked into the bathroom and washed his face.

Walking back into the lounge Mike saw his visitor had already set the pies she had purchased on plates and along with the coffees was ready to eat.

Pushing a plate towards Mike, Maggie waited until he had taken a bite out of his pie before starting her questioning.

“Right then, what you come up with? All clever people? Young people? Come on lad, we’ve not got all day.”

Mike used the reason that his mouth was full to delay his reply. The delay was really to gather his thoughts.

Reaching behind him he grabbed the paper that Maggie had written her questions down on the previous day. Giving it to Maggie he said.” You write down what the average dementia patient should look like and then we’ll compare notes.”

Maggie carefully considered her replies which gave Mike the chance to finish his food. Then they compared notes

Mike started with “Question 1. The age of the relation when the dementia had onset.”

Maggie thought that the average age should be mid to late fifties. Mike replied that the survey showed mid to late 30’s

Maggie pulled up the next question “Question 2 The length of time between onset and full-blown mental faculty losses. With medication the full symptoms can often be delayed for a few years. I’d say two years as an average.”

Mike replied that the survey indicated an average of one day or less.

Maggie continued. “Question 3. Any treatments given by the medical profession outside the usual dementia medication? My answer would be no. we don’t have the staff or the time or the funds to do much with them other than make them comfortable and make sure they don’t harm themselves.”

Mikes findings from the survey indicated that there was usually little time for the patients to be offered different treatments.

To question 4. Was there anything odd in the dementia sufferer’s personality? Maggie said generally dementia sufferers withdrew inside themselves and became shy and almost reclusive. Mike’s respondents offered more variety on the question, but it didn’t make sense in that many of the respondent’s patients seemed to become different somehow. The word different was used in a lot of the replies.

Replying to the final question Maggie indicated there was no real timeline on the patient dying after suffering the full-blown dementia onset. She assumed an average time would be five years. Some patients would live for twenty or even thirty years with care.

Mike’s summary of the survey respondents indicated that the average life expectancy not more than two months.

Expecting Maggie to be surprised at the findings Mike was taken aback when Maggie asserted, “See! I damn well told you there was something going on!”

Mike’s liking for the easy life was kicking into his psyche and telling him that although there might indeed be something going on, did Mike really want all the hassle of finding what it was that was actually ‘going on’.

Maggie didn’t understand Mike’s psyche and carried on without interruption. “So, what are you going to do about it? This will make a great story for the Sundays. Won’t it?”

Mike agreed it would make a great story but put forward the thought that maybe it was time to talk to the editor to get his views on the story’s newsworthiness.

“Great idea.” said Maggie “Ring him now!”

Mike rang Harry Ferguson at the Sun requesting a meeting saying the story could be much bigger than first visualized. Deep inside him Mike hoped that Harry would think he was just trying to wangle more pay and tell him to forget it. However, editors of a major daily newspaper have a nose for big story, so Harry immediately suggested a meeting the next morning at 10am. Mike heard Maggie whisper behind him that 10 would be fine as she didn’t work on Fridays.

When Mike put the phone down Maggie told him that it was not even 1.30 and they could spend the rest of the day going through the survey and getting some totals and trends and geography and stuff. Inwardly Mike groaned but he sat down with Maggie to sift through the emails.

There were over 1000 replies to the survey tucked away in Mike’s inbox. It was past 8.30 when he finally eased Maggie out of his apartment. Maggie would have worked until midnight and beyond, but Mike had reached his limit. Yes, he wanted to be a part of a major story. Perhaps even a major government corruption scandal. A journo award in his name would open many doors for a freelancer for the rest of his life. It also indicated a huge amount of work and somewhere deep inside him a gut instinct told him that it would also mean trouble.

Well done,

There are probably around 23 pages for you to enjoy this month. because the book starts with a little explanation as its preface. Make no mistake, Reincarnation is a fact of life, it says it, right there in the bible. This story revolves right up through the corridors of Power in Whitehall. Oh, and it also is in the corridors of the German Parliament. And the USA house of Representatives. Let's just say this is at the seat of most governments and it is being controlled by a secret agency. A Club, if you like. You've probably heard of them in your readings...

Let's get back to the book. It's a three-part thriller although as I write this the fourth and fifth books are being written as well

As always once I get the urge to write, it almost seems like it is being dictated to me.

It's an odd feeling for me. But it's probably something you should be aware of.