In a small room, the important rock musician is sitting with her guitar. She has long blond hair and green eyes, a devastating combination which led her parents to throw her out of the house as soon as legally possible. The important rock musician has never yet written a rock song. In some quarters this would be seen as making her not so very important. At least as a rock musician - having never written a song as never yet stopped any number of people being important, usually because they were very good with figures. Or at least, had a good figure to go around being important in. This rock musician has a tolerable figure, but regrettably she will never be famous because of it. It's just one of those things. Some people have important figures in one way or another. The rest of us are too fat. Remarkably, her willingness to sing nude, if the song requires it, has yet to land the important rock musician a contract. She can't quite understand why this is the case, though it is of course true that she was never involved in an Australian soap opera of any kind. Not even Play School.

The important rock musician, shall we call her Claire?, begins to gently strum a G chord, before moving to a rapidly alternating Em D pattern. Claire smiles.

Claire is important because she is destined to write a song. It will not be a particularly famous song, because only one person will ever get to hear it. What makes this song important is not fame or money or even nudity, though all these things are clearly important in many ways. This song is important because it is the song that finally creates a cascade in Peter-Bowman's mind, leading him to complete his work of life with a quiet dignity and a smile. This is a very important thing indeed. Poignantly enough, this is the only thing that makes Claire an important rock musician. Due to a wrong number, it becomes the only song she will ever write, sung to an audience of one via a misplaced digit and a very long piece of wire. The length of the wire is moderately important.

Wire is an often misunderstood machine. Most people assume that a wire works by acting as a conduit for some sort of magical liquid, transporting messages in little boats (sometimes sails are involved, but most of these boats are powered by diesel - a bad connection of any sort when a wire is doing the connecting is simply caused by too many sailing boats and not enough diesel powered motor cruisers on the wire. Too slow, you see, though far more romantic. The telegraph, when there was such a thing, was powered almost entirely by sailing boats. The Internet, on the other hand, is generally powered by gondoliers of the Venetian variety. Much can be explained by this).

Saying that most people assume this is of course wrong. Most people don't think about it at all, and just assume that a wire is a wire. A wire is a piece of wire that you can use to connect other pieces of wire together. When the connections of wire have reached sufficient density, you have a telephone. Very few people are silly enough of course to believe that a computer is made in the same manner. As well as the necessary wire density, you also need to put the smoke in. This is the problem with assumptions. They're usually completely wrong.

The wire that will eventually carry Claire's song to Peter-Bowman's phone box due to a mistaken incident of dialling was a perfectly ordinary wire. It has no magically ability to transport miniature ocean going vessels, nor even the option of being turned into a telephone if sufficiently entangled. It's just a piece of wire. I think it works using electrons in some way or another. I've always assumed that what you do is flag down a passing electron and ask it if it's going somewhere useful to you, then (provided it replies positively), bung your message on its back and hope it doesn't stop off in the pub on the way. Luckily, the drudgery of conversing directly with electrons has largely been done away with in this more enlightened age. I'm certain that Mr Bell quickly realised that his invention would have limited use if people had to use some sort of microscope and investigate each passing electron to see if it had a message for them. On the other hand, it's probably all done with mirrors these days.

Claire begins some complicated finger picking that I really wish I was able to accomplish. Her song can now be regarded as begun.