Connections

The world is becoming increasingly interconnected. The Worldwide Internet population is rapidly approaching four billion active users. Facebook™ boasts global monthly users in excess of 1.5 billion. Google™ performs billions of searches daily. Tens of millions of “Tweets” are initiated daily around the planet. The younger generations evaluate their popularity based on the number of online “followers” and “friends” they have; or the number of “Likes” they receive. 


Add to that global, social media interconnectivity, network media outlets such as the Cable News Network (CNN) ™, Al Jeezera™, Univision™, and YouTube™. Traditional mass media now provides real-time statistics regarding what is “Trending” and what topics of interest are going “Viral”. 


When a young, Pakistani, teenage girl was shot three times while traveling by bus to school; or a man was shot and killed in Ferguson, Missouri; or two monuments emblematic of democracy and free enterprise were destroyed by terrorist-controlled aircraft, the entire world was informed about those events instantly and often, bore witness to many of the live events as they unfolded.


It has been estimated that more than 50 million computer servers exist in the world, interconnecting more than one billion personal computers worldwide. Apple™ sells more than 10 million smart phones per month that afford instant, mobile access to information across the globe. 


Perhaps the most amazing statistic of them all is that the human brain is comprised of more than one trillion cells with one hundred trillion unique connections.


In the business world, it has been stated that, “It’s not what you know, but who you know.”


Our daily lives abound with connections…some good…some not so good. 


This is a story about all of those connections…and so much more!


During a single three week period in March of two thousand eighteen, a number of young children are admitted to various hospital emergency rooms around the United States. 


In each situation, the child had supposedly experienced severe trauma as a result of a unique accident. In every case, when the child arrived at the hospital, he or she was in a deep coma. 


None of the children possessed identification of any kind. No one reported any of the children missing. In each case, the Emergency Room staff entered the limited information they had regarding the children, along with a picture of each child, into the interconnected database systems as they were required to do by law. Neither the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children nor the Federal Bureau of Investigation Missing Children Database contained information for any of the children. 


The tragic events befalling each child were seemingly disconnected…or were they?