Introduction

With his work for the Guardians effectively at an end, with the election of the new Keating Labor Government federally, and Bob Carr and the State Labor party well and truly in control in the State (including Cathy Parsons as the newly elected member for the inner-city seat of Bligh), the toxic ‘journalist’ Alan Jones effectively off the air, and Australia still being the accepting, open-minded, and tolerant country that it had been – Pauline Hanson’s ‘One Nation’ party was just a bad memory of the 1990s, John Howard going down in history as a Prime Minister who not only lost government, but also lost his own seat, Will should be able to put his feet up, and enjoy his life with Megan, Michelle, and Lori.

Now that the four of them were married to each other – at least spiritually, if not legally, how would their life proceed? Would Will’s ‘contentment’ remain, or would he still seek out other women? He had a history of attracting other women eager, and willing to sleep with him; would he be strong enough to keep his vows to the three main women in his life? Alexa Ramos, Monica Pecar, and no doubt others still had a strong interest in sleeping with him.

How would he and Michelle handle the restoration of the reputation of the University of New South Wales’s Computer Science School? Would his plans work, and achieve results? And what of his musical career – had the Roberttones finally drifted into retirement? Would being ‘worship pastor’ at St. Johns in Birchgrove, singing in the church choir be enough for him.

Will, Megan, Michelle, and Lori are now approaching middle-age; their parents have retired and have moved – or are planning to move – away from Sydney, many of their friends have children who are in their teenage years. Will the fact that they are childless (Michelle and Will by natural events, Megan, and Lori by choice) cause them regret? How might they handle any serious health problems that might affect them? Is living in the inner-city suburb of Balmain still going to retain its attraction for the four of them, or might greener fields, so to speak, pull them away? Has Will really overcome his fear of flying, and might they travel overseas?

This final book isn’t a full-blown story, as such; rather, I am tying up a few loose ends, and hopefully answer some questions about how life turns out for everyone. Those questions, and more, will be answered in this conclusion. As such, there is little point reading this if you haven’t read the preceding books in the series.

And now the end is here
And so I face that final curtain
My friend I’ll make it clear
I’ll state my case, of which I’m certain
I’ve lived a life that’s full
I traveled each and every highway
And more, much more
I did it, I did it my way.

Regrets, I’ve had a few
But then again too few to mention
I did what I had to do
I saw it through without exemption
I planned each charted course
Each careful step along the byway
And more, much, much more
I did it, I did it my way.

Yes, there were times I’m sure you knew
When I bit off more than I could chew
But through it all, when there was doubt
I ate it up and spit it out
I faced it all and I stood tall and did it my way.

For what is a man, what has he got?
If not himself then he has naught
Not to say the things that he truly feels
And not the words of someone who kneels
Let the record shows I took all the blows and did it my way.

Original Lyrics, Jacques Revaux, revised, Paul Anka

Chapter 1: Our Story Finally Ends

Six Years

Friday, March 30^th, 2007

“Remember, Will, you need to leave in about thirty minutes if you want to make the Premier’s swearing in ceremony in time,” Ann said, sticking her head in my office door.

“I know, I’ll be ready,” I said. “I assume Michelle will be ready as well?”

The state election had been held the previous weekend, and Kaz, as parliamentary leader of the Labor Party, lead the party to another substantial victory, the first where she was party leader, following Bob Carr’s resignation and move to Federal politics. She had been Premier for two years, but she was the first woman to be elected to the position, something that was rightly deserved. It was six years since she had won the inner-city electorate of Bligh, and she had turned what was a marginal independent seat into one of the most solidly Labor seats in the State. Within a few days of her initial election win, back in 2001, Bob Carr appointed her minister assisting him for Regional Development. Following the 2003 State election, she was appointed Treasurer and Deputy Premier, and in 2005, when Bob resigned, she was elected by the party as leader and hence, Premier. Following the passing of the same-sex marriage legislation late last year, following the national plebiscite on whether Australia should allow such marriages, Kaz and Angie got married, as did Jenny and Allison.

It had been a busy six years since Kaz had won her seat in the state parliament and Paul Keating and the Labor party had been returned to government federally. Michelle and I had worked hard at the university, and I now felt the School of Computer Science Engineering, to give it its full name, was now back on the right track. We had completely revamped the undergraduate and postgraduate courses, the research programs were going well, and our reputation was recovering from the damage done during the Hiller years. We worked closely with the other schools in the Engineering Faculty, particularly the School of Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications.

I had only been back at work at the University for two weeks following my open-heart surgery to repair my faulty mitral valve. While my heart was being repaired (a concept that blew my mind), the cardiac surgeon performed what was called a ‘maze procedure’ to create scar tissue in the atria of my heart, to prevent the atrial fibrillation. I was in the hospital – St. Vincent’s cardiology centre – for just under two weeks during January and resting at home for another seven weeks. I was still going back to St. Vincent’s three times a week for cardiac rehab, to get my strength back. For the first two weeks at home, I slept in the family room since I was too weak to climb the stairs to my bedroom. At least I had arranged for all three of my ‘wives’ – Lori, Megan, and Michelle – to visit me in the hospital, there was a recliner chair in my hospital room, and they took turns to spend the night in my room. Not that there was any likelihood of anything taking place between any of us, my body was in no condition for anything sexual. Still, it was comforting to know they were in the room with me. In the last week I had no trouble climbing the stairs to our bedroom, and I had allowed myself some gentle lovemaking a few nights a week, without any apparent problems – much to the enjoyment of the other three.

Before the operation I had asked the Cardiac Surgeon to tell me just what would be done; basically, they would cut open my chest, which involved cracking my sternum so he could peel back the ribs covering my heart, then disconnect the four main blood vessels from my heart, connecting them to the heart / lung machine. That would ensure a constant supply of oxygenated blood to keep my body alive. Once that was done, they would stop my heart, then cut into it, to repair the valve. He was confident that my existing mitral valve could be repaired and wouldn’t need to be replaced; there were several lengths of cartilage that ran the length of each valve leaflet that strengthened it, preventing it from collapsing under the back pressure (‘prolapse’), he would cut these and reinforce them. Then, my heart would be stitched up after the maze procedure, the blood vessels reattached, and my heart restarted. Once I was ‘running smoothly’, as it were, my chest would be closed, and that would be it. Simple, when expressed that way.

Well, of course, nothing is ever simple; before the operation I had to have my body completely shaved – I told Michelle, ‘I look like a plucked chicken!’. She hoped that my chest hair, at least, would grow back, since she found my hairy chest rather sexy. When I woke from the anaesthetic, there was this large plastic breathing tube stuck down my throat, which was incredibly uncomfortable. My chest – where it had been cracked open – was very painful, and I was lying – almost sitting – in a reclining chair. In my half-awake state I heard the ICU nurse brief his replacement, it must have been a shift change, telling her about my operation. ‘It took a while to get him restarted’, I heard him say. Not the most confidence inspiring words, I guess.

Still, the care I received from the nursing staff was excellent. After two days, the emergency leads that had been attached to my heart and were protruding from my chest were removed, as was the urinary catheter. A nurse helped me up and into a shower, that was most welcome, and after ten minutes under the hot water, I was starting to feel human again. There were plenty of breathing exercises with the ‘incentive spirometer’ – a devious torture device, intended to re-expand my lungs to full capacity, physical therapy to get my heart back to full strength, and many EKGs and echocardiograms, just to make sure the repaired heart was working properly. I was pleased when the cardiologist told me the mitral valve was working at a hundred per cent, there was no sign of any blood regurgitation. The heart rhythm behaved itself, the SVT seemed to have been resolved. My ticker was ticking pretty well, thank goodness. There was no way I would want to endure that operation ever again.

In mid-2001, my parents sold their house in Mona Vale, moving up to Coffs Harbour, close to where Lori’s parents were living – and less than an hour’s drive north of where my sister and brother-in-law were living, near Macksville. I don’t know why the sale of that house affected me, I hadn’t lived there since Lori and I first moved to Erskineville in mid-1976, but maybe it was losing an anchor, a place that I subconsciously knew I could always return to. They were very happy living up there, involved in some of the local social and seniors’ groups, my father would play golf with Jack Earle several times a week. My brother, Ian, and his wife, Shane (Allison’s sister) were still living in Canberra, and like my sister, they had two kids of their own – I was (obviously) childless.

The three women in my life – who I had ‘married’ back at the end of 2000 – were still very important to me. Lori, Megan, and Michelle were very much in love with me, and each other, just as I was very much in love with each of them. Our lives in Sedgebrook Terrace were still very satisfying, very rewarding, and there was no way I would change my life for anything. Once or twice some eyebrows might have been raised at church, not that anyone came out and said, ‘the Worship Pastor at St. John’s is living in sin with three women’, but ... We did our best to keep a low profile and not attract any unwarranted attention to our lifestyle.

Musically, things were still relatively quiet, the Roberttones had got together for a few gigs around Sydney, including a gig at the Hordern Pavilion where we played several ‘Legends of Aussie Rock’ concerts, with Cold Chisel, INXS, The Angels, and Midnight Oil. That was a great experience, I really enjoyed catching up with some of the other great musicians, and Alberts – at least George and Fifa – talked us into releasing another album, ‘Alive Again – the Roberttones in a Blast from the Past’. I was a bit dubious about how well it would sell, we were way out of step with what was happening in the music world. I was wrong, the album sold over 50,000 copies, giving us another gold record. Over the summer of 2004 / 5, we did an extended tour of New South Wales, playing some large outdoor venues – several of the places that we had played in our heyday. By the end of January, we were all exhausted, doing a big tour and playing gigs night after night was a hell of a lot harder at forty-six than it was at twenty! After that tour, we decided to officially retire; we felt we had earned the right to hang up our instruments.

Megan continued to put on stage musicals, her tribute to ‘Women of the 60’s’, with the ‘Wall of Sound’ style of production was a huge success, what was originally planned as a three-week season was extended several times. She was then involved in an extended season of ‘Cats’, which was on at the Theatre Royal, underneath the MLC Centre, which was followed by several other major musicals, Phantom of the Opera, Les Misérables, Mamma Mia.

I continued to be involved with the Ramos brothers with property development around the inner-city area, nothing all that large, just a few run-down terrace houses, or the odd derelict factory, just enough to keep money coming into the Sedgebrook Investments account. I would never be able to quit my university job and retire as a property developer, not that I wanted to, I was still enjoying my academic career.

One big development on the academic front, the ‘Internet Appliance’ that we had developed back at WTM Consulting, an Intel processor-based microprocessor board, running Linux, which served as an all-in-one router / firewall / web appliance had garnered a lot of attention, not just here in Australia, but world-wide. It was seen as a competitor to the main router and firewall manufacturers, and I had spent a lot of time redeveloping the management interface. Around the world there was growing resistance to the use of Cisco routers, because of the ‘backdoor’ that had been installed at the behest of the US Government’s NSA. Cisco had little choice about installing that software, it was mandated by their country’s government, and applied to other networking equipment manufacturers. I had been approached by Alonzo Thomas, inquiring whether WTM would consider partnering with a local company to provide ‘backdoorless’ routers, complete with our firewall and other networking software. Since some of the enhancements to the product had been done as research projects here at the School, technically the University ‘owned’ that intellectual property, and we were negotiating a licensing agreement between WTM and Unisearch Ltd, the commercial arm of UNSW.

To bring this to fruition, a new company would be set up, incorporated here in Australia, to develop more products along the same line. Alonzo Thomas would be the ‘Chief Technical Officer’, he and Ros would be moving back to Sydney in a few months once the legalities had been set up. Staffing had yet to be sorted out, some people from WTM would be moving to the new company; Mary Beth was involved, since the new company would be a subsidiary of WTM.

As well, I had been involved with several others in the development of the ‘Classless Inter-Domain Routing’ set of protocols, particularly its use in IPv6 networks, and the necessary changes to the Domain Name System to support it. As such, I was heavily involved in work with the Internet Engineering Task Force, the Internet Society, and the World Wide Web Consortium, working on Internet standards for interoperability and the long-term growth of the Internet and the World Wide Web. As such, I had been nominated for the Jonathan B. Postel Service Award earlier this year. The award is presented annually to “honour a person who has made outstanding contributions in service to the data communications community”, and my nomination was “in recognition of my contribution to the development of the Internet in Australia, the formulation of Internet standards, and the design and implementation of robust routing techniques”. To me, this was a huge honour, and when I was advised of the award – which was announced at an Engineering Faculty meeting – I said how this would reflect positively on the University, not just on me.

The presentation would be at the 70th meeting of the Internet Engineering Task Force, which would be held in Vancouver, Canada, later this year in December. The four of us would fly over there and spend an extra two weeks enjoying the scenery around British Columbia. At least I had got over my fear of flying; not that it was the first long flight that I would be taking, during the winter of 2001, the four of us took a three-week vacation to Palm Cove, in far north Queensland, just north of Cairns. We called it our ‘belated honeymoon’, we stayed in a small resort, right on the beach. Our room had two queen-sized beds, there was a large pool, and the dining area was right next to the pool. For breakfast each morning, we would sit out next to the water, some of the birds – lorikeets, of course – would fly up and sit on the railing next to us, squawking and demanding to be fed bits of fruit. There were lots of opportunities for us to explore the surrounding area, finding isolated beaches where we lay naked in the sun, making love in the warm water, relaxing, and enjoying our lives together.

Our involvement at the Anglican Church of St. John the Evangelist, at Birchgrove, continued; the word about the quality of the music that Megan coordinated spread, and we would regularly fill the church to capacity every Sunday. Following my initial article on ways that churches could increase their attendance – hint: it’s not about the style, having modern ‘praise bands’ or trying to emulate the big non-denominational churches, but its substance, making people feel welcome, loved, and wanting to be a part of a loving community. Several of the dioceses in other states asked me if I could present my talk to them, running workshops on how to increase and retain attendances in their churches. I felt the message I had was simple, all it required was a change in attitude from the church hierarchy away from a judgemental approach to an accepting approach. It should have been blindingly obvious that if you tell people that their behaviour / lifestyle / choices are sinful and you are on a fast train to Hell, unless they repent ... they are not going to be interested in attending where they will get criticism and verbal abuse. Still, there was a sizable number of the church hierarchy who were more concerned with telling people what rules they needed to comply with, rather than concentrating on the Gospel message.

Now, time to have a quick shower and get changed for Kaz’s ceremony; having my own private shower and toilet had been something I had always appreciated about my office here. Since it was a formal – a VERY formal occasion, I would have my academic robes on over my suit; I rarely work my academic dress in public, I felt it was rather pretentious, but since this was for Kaz, I made an exception this time.

A Final Report

Early Friday Afternoon, March 30^th, 2007

I had got changed into the suit that I would be wearing for Kaz’s swearing in, and I was sitting at my desk, just reviewing my speaking notes, when I heard someone enter.

“Professor Morris – Will – it’s good to see you again, after all this time,” he said.

As soon as he spoke, I recognized him, Thomas Peel, the leader of the local Guardians, who had somehow used me to make sure Australia didn’t turn into some awful Fascist state. He had been my Grandfather’s company commander from the first World War, and he had been running a project – ever since the early 1970s – where ostensibly I would somehow prevent extremists from taking Australia down a rather dark and worrying path. Jillian Winters, who had died after suffering a massive stroke at the end of 1979, was involved in it well, along with Murray Allen, one of my mentors and the first head of the Computer Science Department at the university. While I had some understanding of the role these ‘Guardians’ fitted into the world, essentially as agents and messengers for the Ruling Council of spirits – what most humans would call ‘God’ – I really didn’t understand how they did their jobs, what abilities they had, and how they influenced events in the world.

“Thomas,” I said, standing up. “It’s great to see you, it’s been ... how long ... six years?”

“It has, almost to the day,” he said. “If you recall, at that meeting with your grandfather and Jillian, I thanked you for your service to us, and to your country. What I want to do today, is to show you what may very well have transpired had you not done what you did so effectively. The last meeting was to thank you for what you had done, today it’s to show you why it was important that you did what you did, if that makes sense. I promise you that I’ll have you back here in plenty of time, no one will even notice your absence.”

“I guess I don’t have much choice, do I?” I replied. “I’ve always trusted you, so I assume we are going ‘Somewhere Else’?”

“Of course,” he replied. “Come here and stand next to me.”

I moved across my office, he placed his hands on my shoulders, told me to close my eyes, and as I did, I felt a strange jolting, and I opened my eyes to find I was, in fact, ‘Somewhere Else’. While that might sound blindingly obvious, ‘Somewhere Else’ was the name the Guardians gave to their interdimensional ‘home’. As one of them had explained to me at one stage, ‘It’s not Heaven, it’s not earth, it’s somewhere else’. I was in what I took was a representation of a late Victorian Era ‘gentlemen’s club’; dark timber wall panelling, deep rich red leather easy chairs, bookcases, liveried waiters moving around with silver trays of drinks. Thomas motioned me to one of the chairs, I sat down, and he sat opposite me.

“Consider this as an end of mission debrief,” he said. “At least, I wanted the opportunity to tell you exactly what impact you’ve had on Australia, and in other parts of the world. What might have happened had you not been able to affect the country, where we would be now. I believe you understand that back in the early 1970s we conducted one of our regular data gathering and analysis exercises, we had been conducting them – not just us, but the different groups did around the world – for several decades. We have been doing these ever since the disaster that people call ‘World War Two’, where there was death and genocide on such a scale, that the Ruling Council were horrified. They set things in motion to ensure something like that would never happen again, and we would attempt to identify potential events, people and situations that might arise in the medium-term future that could cause something like that to reoccur. That’s where your Grandfather came in, he had an uncanny ability to look at a person, and see their potential, discern what they might be capable of. We worked with him, enhancing his natural abilities, and we could predict, at least with a reasonable degree of confidence, how society might evolve, what changes could develop in the future.

“At the start of the 1970s, we had a rather bleak prediction for Australia, there would be a reaction to the changes in society during the 1960s and early 1970s, which would undo much of the good work the incoming Whitlam government would do; the neo-conservatives would take control, and by the 1990s, the conservative parties would be back in control – but nothing like the gentle conservatism of the Menzies era, these would be unashamedly nationalistic, pushing very hard-line conservative policies. Many of these would be unrecognizable as ‘Australian’ to many of the people of the country, very racist, anti-woman, anti-anything that didn’t fit their very narrow world view. As your Grandfather put it, the characteristics of the Australian way of life that made Australia such a desirable place in the world would disappear.

“Sid had identified you as the person – not as a political leader, not as a powerful public figure – but as someone who could galvanize, organize, direct the Australian Labor Party to combat the reactionary forces that would be arising. Your innate sense of right and wrong, your ability to stand up for the underdog, the way you could inspire people to follow your lead, all of those made you a person that we had to nurture and encourage to fulfil that potential. We made sure you met the right people, established contacts, got involved where you needed to be, so that you would be able to work behind the scenes with the Labor Party.

“Of course, it wasn’t just you that we were working with, others in your group were key to you turning into the sort of man you would have to be. We helped to develop your musical skills, which lead to you joining Phil and Paul’s band, Cathy – Kaz – would be key to the development of your political knowledge, and Lori would be very important to your life. You know all of that, at least you should, you have visited us, and we – Jillian in particular – have visited you several times. What I did want to do is show you something of what might have happened if you hadn’t done your work. Now, what I’ve got to show you, it’s one of our latest technology breakthroughs, it allows us to generate a video image of certain events that might have happened, had history panned out differently.

“The first thing, while not directly happening in Australia, and you were only very loosely connected to it, was the US Presidential Election in 2000, which was won by Al Gore.”

“I remember that, wasn’t he up against someone ... I forget his name, but Lori hated the guy, said he was a war monger or something,” I replied.

“George W. Bush,” Thomas said. “Another group saw how the election could suffer all sorts of problems with voting, and we worked to prevent the misleading ballot papers from being used, and thus, Gore won. As well as a focus on climate change, he – his advisers, actually – saw the real threat to the United States was from fanatics in the Middle East, not Russia, Now, I don’t know if you recall when your friend Alexa Ramos conducted her vendetta against the man who raped and killed her cousin – you were involved, with her and Lori Earle, in the ‘punishment’ of Frank O’Rourke, of course. She then took revenge against others in that paedophile ring, including the car bombing of one of the Saudi princes.”

“I do remember that, it was made to look like one of the many Islamist terrorist cells took the prince out. Weren’t there two others in the car who were killed at the same time?

“Your memory serves you well, one of the other Saudis – also related to the Royal Family there – was a person called ‘Osama bin Laden’; actually, he was the leader of another terrorist group, al-Qaeda. They were in the final stages of planning a terrorist attack on the United States. They were developing a plot to fly passenger planes into major buildings. The Twin Towers of the New York World Trade Center would be destroyed, with the loss of some three thousand lives, plus the Pentagon and the US Capitol Building. The US would, of course, respond, starting major conflicts in the Middle East, and casting world-wide suspicion, distrust, and even outright hatred of the Islamic people.

“Australia would be caught up with that, and there would be ethnic unrest, inflamed by none other than your ‘friend’ – I say that loosely – Alan Jones. Watch this, he would fire up racial tensions, culminating in a huge race riot between middle eastern men and others on Cronulla Beach. Watch.”

He pushed open the top of a large writing desk to reveal a flat screen TV, and adjusted some controls, before an image appeared. There was a large mob of young men in their twenties, most of them with ‘Australian Flag’ beach towels around their shoulders, at a beachfront – the camera panned around, and I could recognize Cronulla Beach, where there were a similarly sized group of men – all of middle eastern appearance. It wasn’t difficult to see what was going to happen, a large-scale riot between the two groups.

“Alan Jones would take credit for getting the white Australian locals fired up against the middle eastern ‘visitors’ from the western suburbs,” he said. “Of course, Alan Jones was no longer working in the media, thanks to you. And much of the animosity had been built up by the Australian ultra-nationalism of first Pauline Hanson, which was then taken up by John Howard. Had he not been voted out of politics in early 2001, Australia would have taken a far different path. That beach riot would be the first of many such incidents, all flamed by Alan Jones, and others of his ilk. The Federal Government of the day, the Liberal / National coalition government, led by John Howard – remember, you wouldn’t have got copies of those documents from the Navy, which lead to Howard’s downfall – his government refused to condemn the rioters, saying, ‘they are concerned about the direction that some people are trying to take this country’, and ‘they are patriotic Australians defending our culture’. That would have led to one of the most disturbing periods in recent Australian history, something that every Australian should be ashamed of. But, thanks to your work, we avoided that.

“Now, let’s look at a high-altitude aerial view of the State.”

The image changed, it was easy to recognize New South Wales, but the Sydney metropolitan area was much larger that it was, all the rural lands to the northwest and southwest of the area were a vast sea of suburbia. Conversely, some of the major regional towns were much smaller, almost ghost towns.