Fiction: Cassandra

It was a rather bleak and dreary morning, and I was just enjoying my first cup of coffee of the morning when I came across it. “It” was the blog called “Ghosting time”. Hosted at an unimaginative address of bloggydablog.blogging.com. 

I was at once hooked.  

The author was writing about historical events, but not in the way that I would normally expect. The author was using such vivid and lively descriptions that it really felt like the stories being told were coming to life. For me, someone who was never really that interested in history, it was a completely new and unexpected experience. The blog provided me with a window to extraordinary events, showing how fascinating history can be. What was truly remarkable about the posts was the details the author was able to convey, while the flow of the text felt totally natural and easy to follow. This was most definitely someone who knew inside and out the topics about which they were writing. A scholar, surely, someone who had been studying history and historical events for years. 

My interest well and truly piqued I spent the whole morning and well into the afternoon reading post after post, occasionally searching the internet for details I’d seen in the posts to see if they checked out. I just couldn't get enough of it. The author wrote about events big and small, always with great attention to details that seemed uncanny. 

There was the premier of Shakespeare’s first play. The Sacking of Rome. The crucifixion of Jesus. The building of the pyramids. The arrival of the pilgrims. The moon landing. Almost anything I could think of in the history, there was a post about it. 

Some details or information seemed to be unverified speculation, controversial even, but the author wrote with such certainty and clarity that it seemed to take away any doubts. Even the small details that appeared to have no backing anywhere in the existing research seemed completely believable and I just took it all as a truth, without any need to doubt anything that the author was telling me. At the same time, the author was connecting the events to the lives of ordinary people, through whose eyes the stories were often told, and that brought the events to life in a way that I had never experienced with anything I had ever read.  

Eventually I ran out of posts to read, and I wanted to see if the author had published anything outside of the blog, which they had started just over five years ago, writing a new post every few weeks. Surely such a productive writer and undoubtedly a successful scholar would have published something somewhere. But I couldn't even find out who they were. There were no clues as to the identity of the author. The bio only said that the author enjoys documenting historical events. I thought that seemed a funny way of saying it, as to me ‘documenting’ makes it sound as if they were a first-hand witness to the events but one could hardly expect someone to have personally seen both Napoleon’s inauguration and the sinking of the Titanic as well as the shooting of JFK. 

The posts supplied no clues either, no references to any other publications, not even to any publications from anyone else. Which of course seems like the author was neglecting to give credit where credit was due. How did they know all this stuff, surely at least some of the information would originate in something someone else had wrote at some point. 

There was however a link to send an email to the author. I was somewhat hesitant to bother the author, as I wasn’t quite sure what I would say. And it’s just who I am, never bother anyone. But I just wanted to know more about everything. For a few weeks, I would every now and then click the link to open the window to write an email, perhaps dabble at a few words or sentences, and then in the end remove everything I had typed and close the window without sending anything.  

Then one morning I once again settled in front of my computer with a cup of coffee in my hand and clicked open the blog. It had been a few weeks since there had been any new posts, so I had been expecting one for some days now. Sure enough, there it was. A new post. 

I couldn’t wait to dive straight into it. The post was about the French revolution, told from the perspective of group of youngsters who had seen the mayhem and murder in the streets, and even the execution of the king. And who it turns out were then killed themselves when they were caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was perhaps the best post yet. Taking one of the biggest single events in world history and turning it into one of the most human stories I had ever read. I had to find out who the author was, if only to let them know that I was truly appreciating their work and that if they’d publish a book or anything I would be the first in line to buy it. 

Now I was determined to send the email, but to my surprise the link to do so was not to be found anymore. I was dismayed. I had squandered my chance to contact the author and now I was left with a burning need to find out who it was that was able to write in such a way that was entirely captivating my attention. And how did they know so much about all these historical events? 

Then I had an idea. I pulled through my browsing history to find the page where the link still existed. I’m not very skilled with computers, but with some help from a search engine and an AI assistant I was able to pull out the link and clicked on it. The window opened and I wrote a quick message and sent it. The response was an almost immediate notification of a failure to send the email being sent back to my inbox. My heart sank. The link didn’t work anymore. If it ever had. 

But my idea to investigate the history remained and I thought I could probably do the same on the internet in general as I had just done with my own browser and its history. I briefly thought of making a witty joke about it as the blog itself was about history and I was diving through the history of my browser and now the internet itself to find out who had written it, but then I remember that my sense of humour typically left other people looking at me with a blank expression on their faces, so I thought better of it. I decided I’d ask AI to come up with a witty comment later, for when I would recount these events at some future dinner party with my friends. I made another mental note at this point to investigate the possibilities of having some friends someday. 

Then I turned to look for a way to access earlier versions of web pages and found some resources. I tried to look through various archives to see if there were earlier versions of the blog that might have revealed more about the author. Sometimes people can be a bit more relaxed about sharing information about themselves on the internet when they are new to it, and maybe the author had just later removed any references that might give away their identity. 

At first, I wasn’t having much luck. While the bio and some descriptions had been changed a few times over the years, there was no further information available in any earlier versions going back to the start of the blog. 

Or was that the start? I suddenly realised one of the resources I was checking into was indicating I could go even further back in time. But how could that be? Why does Wayback machine show there is a version of the blog dating older than the first post, older than the start date of the blog? I clicked on the link and was faced with a greyed-out page saying access to the page was blocked. But clearly it seemed that the page had existed back then. Why had it been blocked? This was getting even more curious. 

I looked for even earlier versions, and after going through a few iterations of the blocked page, there they were. The original blog that was called “Time of buildings”. 

The blog had originally been different from how I had first found it. The name was different, and instead of writing about historical events, it had been about design and architecture through the times. The object of the blog was the building, the design, the furniture that was passing through time unchanged, or changed very little, far longer than the humans by whom it had been designed, built, inhabited. I got lost reading what was probably the last version of the blog by that content, before apparently it had been blocked and then reopened with a different title and purpose. The address was the same though. 

It did not make much sense though. Had the author simply had a change of interest? But why completely remove the old blog instead of just starting another? Or had someone else somehow taken over, and then replaced the whole original blog with something different? But the writing in the posts was every bit as engaging as the earlier – or later, as actually happened to be the case – posts I had been reading. I thought I recognized the style and to me there was no question about it. It was the same author. It had to be. Nobody else could turn the phrase like that, nobody else could keep me hanging to every next word as if it was the only lifeline that I had to keep me afloat in this world. Even when they were writing about something as mundane as the local buildings, which is what a large percentage of the posts were covering. But there was also always a historical connection, even if on a lesser scale than the word changing events of the later version of the blog. 

But who was it? Who was the author? Finding an answer to that question was turning into an obsession for me. 

This version gave no further insights into who might have been behind the blog. I went through earlier versions of the blog, back to its real original start more than ten years before the change in content. There were some pieces of information I could find; I knew now that the author was a female because there had been a bio where she had referred to herself as ‘she’. I knew that she had at least at one point been living in Boston, in one of the posts about some harbour building in Boston she referred to Boston as her place of domicile. And knowing that I realised that quite a few of the posts covered buildings or locations in Boston. 

In general, the earlier posts had a bit more references to her life, and I started to collect everything together in the hopes that in doing so I’d be able to start piecing things together and crack the mystery of her identity. She had made a few references to enjoying the night life as a single person, so presumably she was not married or even seeing anyone. 

She did not have pets, and she thought anything other than a dog or maybe a cat was just being pretentious and looking for individuality by following fads which is an obvious contradiction but oh so accurately describing how many people go through their lives. A chinchilla? A minipig? An iguana? All the same to her. And the dog, or maybe a cat, was something for a family with a father, a mother and two or more kids. Her family had had a dog when she was growing up and she was grateful for the experience but did not want to be taking care of one by herself. 

I was starting to feel I was getting to know her. I still did not have even a clue of a name though. And then suddenly I came across a post that had a photograph of her.  

There was a photograph of her.  

So far, all the pictures had been stock photos or photos of furniture or buildings, but this was her. It said so in the caption. “This is me, holding the award I just won for having the most knowledge of useless things,” the caption said. She ended that sentence with a winking smiley. She was holding up some kind of plaque. I quickly read the post, which was perhaps uncharacteristically short, but then it was just an update on something that had just happened rather than a deep dive into the use of geometric shapes in the decoration of the inner-city building facades. The post was her sharing the information that she had been given an award for her work in documenting the history of Boston’s architecture. This was it. This was the chance I had been looking for. 

Surely there would be a mention somewhere else of this award being given. I dove back to internet. Year was 1999, place Boston, the topic an award for documenting the architecture of Boston. I was prepared the search to still be quite cumbersome, but then I saw the first result. 

Cassandra Piel has received the 1999 Boston Open University scholars’ award for her work in documenting the old and new architecture of the city.  

That was her name. Cassandra Piel. 

Where is she now? Even if she wasn’t the author of the new version of the blog, maybe she knew who was. And in any case, I had truly enjoyed her posts as well, as different as they were from the ones to which I had first taken a fascination. 

I started to type her name into the search field and then I thought, what am I doing? Isn’t this a little bit creepy, if I really think about it? If she wanted to be reached by people reading her blog, she probably would have made it a little bit easier to do so. Maybe she wants to be left alone, maybe she enjoys the outlet of the blog to put her knowledge and thoughts out there for the world to see but wants to keep herself out of the spotlight. I also realised the original blog no longer even existed, and she might not have anything to do with the current version. 

Then I thought to myself that she had posted her photograph and made a reference to the award she had been given, so she wasn’t entirely shutting her private self away from the readers. She had also shared quite some details and information about herself. Not her name or address or anything like that, but perhaps she wouldn’t be totally unwelcoming of a reader reaching out to her. 

As a final way of convincing myself, I decided I would say I am following up on past winners of the Boston Open University Scholars’ award and would like to have a few words with her if she was open to it. 

So, I pressed enter and started going through the search results. I found out she did not have a rare name. Ok, I needed to limit the results. She lived in Boston, was writing a blog, interested in history of architecture, design of buildings and furniture, and their development and preservation through history. I started to make progress. I found out she had a university degree in history and architecture. I found out she had published some articles in a few magazines. She had briefly been a guest columnist at a local newspaper. She had given some lectures in her area of expertise in a few mid-level universities and had held a guest lecturer’s spot at Boston Open University for a couple of years. And she had died in a tragic accident in 2010. 

My heart sank again. That cannot be right. It cannot be her. But there was no denying the fact. The person who had been writing the blog about the architecture, furniture, interior and exterior design, Boston’s transformation through history and how it was affecting the people living in it and how it was affecting the people, was dead. Now it was obvious that there were two different authors. I had gone through the whole search for Cassandra’s identity only to find out that she along with her brilliance was no longer with us. And I was no closer to finding out who the author of the new version of the blog was. I had exhausted all the possible avenues of research, and I simply did not know what to do next but to give up. 

Then I saw a message from an unknown contact coming in on my instant messaging app. 

I accepted it, and the message popped up. “Hi,” it said. 

“Hi,” I replied. “Who is this?” 

“It’s Cassandra.” 

What a joke, I thought angrily. 

“I think you have been looking for me,” they continued. 

I felt angry, who was making such a joke? The woman was dead, and they wanted to somehow make fun of my obsession? 

“It really is me,” the person at the other end was trying to convince me. 

Thoughts were racing through my mind. Who was it? Who had I told about my obsession? And it started to dawn on me. I had not told anyone. Not a single soul. Nobody knew that I had been obsessing about finding her. Even if I had mentioned the blog and the author that I wanted to find to someone, nobody else knew that I had found a name for her. I had not had time to tell anyone. 

The contact had gone quiet. 

It couldn’t be. Dead people do not send instant messages. Maybe someone else had gone through the same research as I had, to the point they had found the name. That must be it. But even then, how could they know to be contacting me? Had a left a trail somewhere? Had I put a question to some discussion group at some point in my research that someone else could have picked up on? 

I hesitated, bit my lip, and then brought my fingers to my keyboard. 

“Who is this really?” 

“It really, really is me. I’m Cassandra.” 

“Very funny,” I wrote and closed the app. 

Then I saw a note that there was a new post in the blog. That was unusual, it had been only a couple of days since the last one. I opened the blog to read it, perhaps it would help to take my mind of the disappointment about the result of my search, and the anger about whoever was trying to mess with me. 

I look at the latest post, in disbelief. I read it out loud. “This is a message to someone who has been looking for me. Trust me, it really is me.” 

That was it, that was the whole post. My mind was racing, trying to make sense of what was happening. Then my instant message app flashed again to let me know of a new message. 

I opened it and read the message. 

“Let’s try that introduction again,” it said. 

Then, after a few moments pause, a new line appeared. 

“Hi, I’m Cassandra and I’m a time traveling ghost.”