1 Near and Far

A month earlier...

A series of mysterious deaths happened across the world, the reason was untraceable by any of

the police departments. Preliminary investigation reports showed victims died due to extreme

medication.

Mr. Smith from FBI and I commenced investigating the cases at Sydney, USA and Hyderabad, India.

While investigating, I found that the victims had interpersonal issues with friends, spouse, or

co-workers. The issues had continued for some period.

Victims were using prescribed drugs, but there was no track of combination and dosage

anywhere.I started looking into the personal profiles of the victims at Center for Human Profile and

History (CHPH) at Hyderabad, which maintains details of every human being on Earth.

CHPH was formed with the objective to track and maintain the legacy of human nature and

behaviour and to preserve it for the reference of future generations.

The need to maintain these records was felt by the yesteryear psychologists, humanists,

behaviourists and scientists as technology had slowly started suppressing basic to extraordinary

natural intelligence of human beings and dictating every realm of life.

The personal profile of victims showed as normal till the time they started using any

gadgets or electronic devices. The behaviour of victims started varying only when they started

showing too much dependency on any device.A few of them were psychologically normal till

they started interacting on social media.Thereafter, they showed peculiar behaviour.

Their attention span, memory, visual recognition and other sensory abilities signified something

abnormal.I went into the details of four victims. I could see some commonality between these deaths, or

should I call these murders?

I felt that a bigger group might be involved in these deaths or murders, and they must have a

really strong reason to go about it. We needed some additional support to solve mysteries

behind the deaths. I requested for it from Indian Cyber Psychology Center and International

Drug Consortium. Sekhar from Indian Cyber Psychology Center,Delhi, arrived at the Hyderabad airport and

called me on my mobile phone.

"I have landed at airport and need your help reaching CHPH." I asked Sekhar to take a cab and reach the

center. Sekhar booked a cab and waited for it.He received a call from the cab driver to find

out his location coordinates. He shared his location and the cab arrived.

The driver told Sekhar, "Sir, I have to drop you at the earliest and return home to attend my

wife, will have to give her medication before six in the evening, otherwise she will end up

troubling herself and people around."

This made Sekhar curious, and he therefore asked the driver, "Oh! Sad to hear that. Would

you mind telling me what kind of health problem she has?" The driver seemed uninterested to

answer and in the meantime, Sekhar got a call.

"Sir, we have arrived at the destination point," said the driver, before Sekhar could complete

the call. The driver took the money and desperately left from there, without saying

anything about his wife's illness. Sekhar is an expert cyber psychologist. Cyber

psychology deals with human behaviour and study of mind in the context of human

interaction and communication of both man and machine.

He had previously dealt with many complex cases. He had done a research and submitted

his theory on human dependency on smart devices and loss of innate cognitive capabilities

like memory, logical thinking, and analytical reasoning.

He had initially received a lot of negative criticism for this. However, later, people

recognized the potential of that research and it got wide acceptance.

One of the cases that Sekhar dealt with convinced me that he is definitely the expert in

his field.

The case involved a group of four teenagers, out of whom one went missing for more than a

month. None of the group members knew what had happened to the missing teenager.

Police and investigating department did all they can but were unable to trace. Police department

took Sekhar's help in this case. Sekhar went on to evaluate the behaviour of missing teenager

and others in the group.He found that this group of four teenagers had

a habit of taking selfies in most dangerous places and posting them on social media.

He went onto inspect the selfies and found out that the day before teenager was missing, the

group of four had gone to a forest.

On the same night, the missing teenager had posted his feelings on social media saying that

he was feeling nervous and weak. Sekhar gave a clue to the police department and

told them that the teenager might have died of either heart failure or shock; from a selfie posted

on social media he had learnt that the group had visited a waterfall near the forest.

They searched in the vicinity of the waterfall and found the dead body of the teenager. The

postmortem reports showed that the teenager had died of a heart stroke.

Sekhar later explained to the media that the teenager had undergone the fear of rejection

from his social group, which had prompted him to take risks along with his friends.

This was not the first time he was scared. The comments on the selfies and photographs he

posted on various social-networking platforms frequently hinted to that fact that he had not

been feeling good, both physically and psychologically.

His friends enjoyed the adrenalin rush while doing such risky things, but not him. And so, he

suffered. He could not take the risk of losing out on friends. It brought him a wide acceptance

in the virtual Internet space and made him a hero. Finally, during the last trip to waterfall, he

could not overcome his fear and died of a stroke. His friends didn't notice him collapse

and fall into the waterfall.Sekhar did not go to the places that police and investigation departments went. He solved the case in three days by talking to the teenagers and by accessing their profile content on social

media.Sekhar finally arrived at CHPH. I went to pick him up from the reception.

"Hello Sekhar. How are you?"

"Hi Jai, I am good."

He seemed a bit dull. I asked him, "What makes you dull?" He just smiled.

We walked towards the cafeteria. I gave him a cup of coffee; Sekhar was so preoccupied that

he didn't even notice the cup in my hand.I asked him to share what he had been thinking.

He replied, "I came across a person on the flight, who is suffering from an illness and it is linked

to the cases we are investigating right now." That immediately startled me. "What? Linked

to our cases? Can you please explain what you mean?" I asked him.

"He is suffering from NEAR syndrome. Null Emotions and Reactions syndrome." Sekhar clarified.

"NEAR syndrome? Yes, I have seen that term used in the investigation reports of the victims.

But can you please explain what this NEAR syndrome is?" I asked him.

"The new-era sickness syndrome. People diagnosed with NEAR can't express what they

feel emotionally and psychologically. They will be unable to react normally to any situation.

The root cause of this is the addiction to electronic gadgets like smart phones, laptops,

the Internet, social media, and lack of interpersonal interaction – whether face-to-face

or in groups. A person with NEAR syndrome will be unable express their emotions. They will

either have the same reaction or no reaction to any event in life. Their facial expressions will

remain numb. The reason for this is people stopped talking face-to-face and nowadays

interact by chatting via a smart phone or a social networking platform. In this process,

they only get to see what the other person has sent in the form of text, but don't see what the

other person may be feeling, i.e. whether he is happy, angry, sad, etc. At the same time, if the

person responds via text, it will not carry the weight of their emotions. There is no provision

to show what they really feel when they text,unless they chat over a video call. In this

way, they degrade psychologically and all their innate abilities start depleting over a period

of time. Physically, their motor abilities are limited and they are prone to muscle and bone

degeneration. For me, this is an acquired sickness; each individual unwittingly acquires

this by depending too much on technology."

"That sounds a little scary. At least, I am not addicted. Neither am I addicted to gadgets, nor

do I use any social media platforms." I heaved a sigh of relief. "My job doesn't allow to

communicate using such platforms."

"All the four cases shared by you showed that the victims were undergoing some turbulence in

their personal or work lives. And they underwent medication for NEAR syndrome," concluded

Sekhar.While we were busy talking, I received a text from Cathie saying she has arrived at CHPH

and is waiting at the reception.Cathie is the specialist from International Drug

Consortium, a consortium that deals with drug research, formulation, development, and is a

consortium formed by all the nations across the world. Sekhar and I walk towards the reception to

receive Cathie. This is the fourth consecutive year I have been working with her for resolving

cases that involve drug abuse.

She is very calm always has the same expression on her face, irrespective of the situation she

is in.Is she also suffering from NEAR syndrome?

I thought to myself. Maybe I am thinking too much. We received her at the reception and I

took both of them straight to the meeting lobby.

We started looking into all four of the case files.I explained the case details to them.

"Case One, victim 'Vicky' is a software professional.

Case Two, victim 'Bobby' is a school-going kid.

Case Three, victim 'Jennifer'is the wife of a businessman.

Case four, victim is a teenage boy."

"Case One, victim is software professional.This person had a lot of turbulence in work

life and underwent extreme medication for NEAR syndrome. What is to be suspected here

is the combination of drugs and the dosage which seems to be inappropriate. The way the

treatment was done also seems to be incorrect.

Cathie, we need your help here to understand if the drugs prescribed are correct and dosage is

as per the norm," concluded Sekhar."I have gone through the reports, the drugs

prescribed are as per the norms. However, these are prescribed only under adverse conditions,

when the patient is in advanced stages of illness, i.e. they are to be administered only for extreme

cases. The dosage seems to be a little high in two of these cases. I don't think this is done by

any professional doctor, seems to be done by some an individual with a thorough knowledge

of drugs," concluded Cathie.

"Yes, preliminary investigation reports concluded the same, saying the medication is not supervised

by a professional doctor. Anyway, let's look into Case Two which is quite surprising. Saying this, I

opened Case Two details."

"Case Two victim is Bobby, a school-going kid.His medical records show that he had been

diagnosed with autism, but it was very late."Very late?" asked Sekhar. "Yes," I replied and continued, "The symptoms of autism appear when the kid is around one and-a-half to two years. They show a disinterest

in engaging with others and try to be in their own world." "What took so long for his parent to recognize

this?" asked Cathie.

"We need to find out from his parents. I have informed them that we will come and meet

them tomorrow." I replied.

The discussion continued for two hours. "It is time to disperse. Let's break for now and

go and see the kid's parents tomorrow." I started packing and asked them to do the same.

"I want to look into these reports again, not convinced with preliminary investigation

reports. Let me look into all these case files,"

said Sekhar. I dropped both of them to the hotel and went home.