Ben sat up very slowly, with the duvet still plastered to his face.
“Why the fuck did you send me this?” he asked the phone, his heart still pounding.
I take your point, Ben,
“Fucking do you,” said Ben angrily.
I’ve emailed David this as well and asked him to keep making sure she’s okay, he was pretty annoyed with me for thinking he needed reminding.
“You’re a dick,” Ben said, as adrenaline flooded his system again, and he put his phone face-down on the floor in order to get his breath back unimpeded. “Why the fuck couldn’t I have picked someone less of a dick to interview?”
After a little longer he realised he was being phenomenally childish, but he didn’t particularly feel like dealing with that knowledge just yet.
After a little longer than that, he got up and put on a jumper.
“Dick,” he said to the phone, picking it up back up again. “Dicking dickhead.”
He deleted the email.
Having sufficiently cleansed himself of wanting to do something more demonstratively angry, Ben picked up his Macbook, apologised to the cat — who had just decided that the power pack was her personal heater — and looked up the late Simon H. Crawford on Wikipedia.
This page has been fully-protected due to content disputes.
“Huh,” said Ben, as a pop-up appeared over a padlock icon.
He opened a GTalk window to the appropriate address, dragged the Wikipedia page into a corner so he could keep referring back to it, and wrote:
Ben M: You know how you said this afternoon you’d levelled up your nerding to WikiMod?
Rachel K Beanz: Y?
Ben M: Can you do me a favour?
Rachel K Beanz: Assuming it’s legal or not really badly and career-endingly illegal?
Ben M: Is there a way of telling who was editing a Wiki page?
Rachel K Beanz: Yes, Ben, it’s called the edit logs, you idiot.
Ben M: Okay okay but this page http://en.wikipedia.org/[...]/Simon_H._Crawford’s been locked for editing, right?
Rachel K Beanz: Oh yeah, I did that. There was a fucking stupid revert war going on. Why, do you want some stuff putting into it? I’ve got five minutes, if you tell me what you want I can do it.
Ben shook his head to himself, and began tapping his teeth.
Ben M: No, no, I just want to know what the
Ben M: revert war
Ben M: was about specifically.
Rachel K Beanz: you get all kinds of shitnerds posting horrible things on wikipages when someone’s just died, that’s why they’re usually locked as soon as we can confirm the death. Even people you’ve never heard of or really nice people. _Especially_ if it was a suicide. People are cunts.
No argument there, Ben thought. It seemed normal so far, but in the relief of finding out that he hadn’t neglected Natalya to death there was the guilt at feeling relieved: this poor man — Ben scrolled down through the Wikipedia entry — didn’t appear to have done anything particularly terrible and being relieved by his death was a shitty thing.
Rachel K Beanz: Okay since you can’t seem to open edit pages like an intelligent human bean — first someone with a W–M-area IP edited to say he’d been “found dead”, then they — same IP — updated it to “committed suicide”, then that got reverted by someone with rollback because sometimes that happens, malicious or weird edits, and we like to check with something like that, no deaths until confirmed.
Ben M: Makes sense.
Rachel K Beanz: literally five minutes later someone actually logs in as a user, we think the same IP again, has uploaded a photo file and a little quote. In case you’re interested, the IP of those edits and user’s edit records — well, it’s *likely* they’re the same person, we can’t actually see user IPs.
Ben M: What, no one?
Rachel K Beanz: You need to be grand high ninja level mod. Kickhound noticed this, reverted it, deleted the image, and calls the police in Wisconsin–Madison-area — he’s from like forty miles away so it’s not a big deal — and asks if that’s been reported. They say they haven’t heard anything. He has shit to do and gets offline for a bit. The user adds it back — not the image, just the quote. An IP in a really weird fucking place deletes. I’m not going into details but this goes on for *ages* — accounts get banned after three reverts so someone was hitting secondary accounts, or calling other people in.
Ben M: Right
Rachel K Beanz: Which is when Kickhound gets back, notices the revert war, locks the page, and puts in a note about this: Timestamp for two hours later and they call Kickhound back and ask him where he heard this — this is from the mod forum — and he tells them about it and they say they’ve just had a report in from a neighbour.
Ben M: So wait, someone already knew he’d committed suicide and didn’t tell the police?
Rachel K Beanz: Yeah, although, it’s his IP address for the first two edits so we’re guessing he posted it himself and then hanged himself.
Ben M: Is that likely?
Rachel K Beanz: It happens depressingly often. Anyway, we accept the edit that he’s ‘found dead’, and since the photo file appears to be a suicide note we’re pretty sure ‘committed suicide’ isn’t outside the realms of possibility. Reopen the page for edits. Ten minutes later the IP in Stevenage deletes the quote again, and the photo, which we put back up after a *massive* argument about whether it was appropriate and after the Uni who employed him sent us an official thing because Kickhound called them as well. So, Mr Can’t Open Edit Pages: weird.
Ben M: STEVENAGE?
Ben stared at the screen and repositioned his duvet over his knees. Stevenage didn’t make any kind of sense.
Rachel K Beanz: Oh god this edit page is ridiculous. It’s literally hours of a different IP — Wisconsin–Madison University — and this Stevenage IP playing delete/undelete ping-pong with this photo-and-quote combo.
Ben M: did
He scrolled back up.
Ben M: Did Kickhound check with the police that there _was_ a suicide note?
Rachel K Beanz: Course, he’s a massive pedant. Says here he called back and asked, they said there was, he read them the extract from the site and they said that they can’t release details at this time, so he asked them if they could tell him if it was something from the note, and they said yes, yes it was.
Ben tapped his teeth with his thumbnail. It was a little weird, and weirder still for the Stevenage angle. What the fuck was there in Stevenage? He glanced up at the page: Simon H. Crawford had worked on a large variety of projects at Wisconsin–Madison in partnership with blah and so on, in areas related to something called ‘gain of function’ and something else to do with lifespans.
Ben M: The suicide note’s not up there are the moment.
Rachel K Beanz: We thought it was a bit ghoulish and we’re waiting from an okay from the police department there. Do you want it?
Ben M: I’m kind of interested now.
Rachel K Beanz: Is this for college?
Ben M: It might be?
Rachel K Beanz: Okay, trigger warning etc for suicide note excerpt: “I’ve been naïve. Maybe there is a god who will forgive me for what I have allowed, but I cannot forgive myself. I kept thinking this was a coincidence. Latency was supposed to open scope for study and prevention”.
Ben M: That doesn’t make sense.
Rachel K Beanz: I hear people aren’t always very coherent when they’re about to kill themselves.
I think, thought Ben, checking the time, I should find out what his projects have been.
With this in mind he opened a new email and pretended that the last one he’d had from this address hadn’t been the start of a near cardiac arrest. The sun had set, and the street outside was grimy orange.
To: Khoo, Daniel
From: Ben M
Subj: gain of function?
There’s a whole list of things this guy did and I get most of them, in a very dull and arts-
not-graduate way but what is “gain of function”? Someone’s been off on a revert war on his Wikipedia page trying to keep off a bit of his suicide note and they’re not from Wisconsin; I’m guessing some of his work is to do with it but I don’t know what it all is.
Also, perhaps you could think before you send out an email about a virologist committing suicide next time?
Ben didn’t think that this quite conveyed the full chest-pounding, throat-tightening horror of the situation, but he also thought that part was none of Daniel’s business. If he wanted every mildly interested arsehole he ran into to know that he’d got mental health problems, Ben thought sourly, he’d employ Sherazi to walk around in front of him with a megaphone, handing out leaflets.
Daniel didn’t reply, and Rachel had her busy sign up now, so Ben assumed it was time to put his best foot forward and work on some of his overdue summaries for Kyle, right after he’d done a load of laundry and spent ten minutes searching through the website for Wisconsin-Madison University, trying to find the correct number to call.
With the washing machine bouncing and growling under the work surface and Minnie hiding under the chair with her ears against her head, Ben got to grips with the online phone book for the university and isolated a possible candidate.
By the time he’d done this Daniel had finally deigned to answer him.
To: Ben M
From: Khoo, Daniel
Subj: re: gain of function?
I’m not Google, and I’m not psychic, so I have no idea what you’re talking about, and I’m not spitting out ten thousand answers in idiot-speak about gain of function research when Google is right in front of you and I’m in the pub. I don’t understand what this has to do with KBV, Natalya, or me, or why you literally only ever speak to me when you want something.
And okay, I’m sorry I didn’t plaster a great big warning label on the thing reading “THIS IS NOT NATALYA” but the whole point was that you were right and it could have been, for fuck’s sake, and I was in a hurry. I do have a job.
In between the scolding Ben got the distinct impression of a guilty conscience, but rather than go in and deal with it, he took Daniel’s advice and poked around on Google for a bit.
Gain of function: Modification of a protein (evolutionarily or otherwise) to function in a way that it did not previously.
Gain-of-function studies in virus research: Modification of code for any of viral proteins to give in a new or enhanced role.
Gain-of-function in experimental research: Controversial form of virus research involving the modification of viral genes to make them more or less easily transmitted, for research purposes. Dr Kawaoko of Wisconsin-Madison University was recently widely condemned for using this method in influenza virus research; this university has a tradition of experimental viral research, and Dr Kawaoko has defended his work as ‘necessary and potentially life-altering’.
This, to Ben, sounded like a recipe for a flu pandemic, and he wasn’t wholly surprised that more cautious and less mad-scientist members of the community hadn’t been impressed with that particular experiment. There wasn’t any mention of Dr Crawford on the list of people involved in the flu work, and it was quite recent — Ben suspected that whatever had driven Dr Crawford into a state of distraction had been festering for a long time.
“Or he was just off his meds,” Ben said, out loud.
To: Khoo, Daniel
From: Ben M
Subj: re: re: gain of function
Not entirely true, I also email you when other people want something from you as well. Sorry to have interrupted your pub time, I’ve found someone explaining the thing in something approaching normal English so you’re off the hook.
He continued to poke the internet for a while, one leg trailing off the side of the futon until it developed pins and needles.
Crawford was mentioned in a couple of articles on gain-of-function in passing but none of them were very clear on what his involvement was, precisely — most of them were much more interested in Dr Kawaoko’s reckless tampering with flu viruses and ethical questions of whether, really, people ought to be allowed to engineer super-strains of avian flu for “experimentation” purposes when lab safety wasn’t perfect and terrorists existed.
As far as Ben was concerned, this was a fairly straightforward question.
After some further poking he concluded that he wasn’t going to find anything. Everything that looked promising either went a long way over his head or didn’t mention the scientist, or both.
The words “Dr Crawford has not published any work relating to gain of function research” actively appeared in one article; he was more closely-linked with the application for a patent on behalf of the university for something to do with altering the length of asymptomatic viral loads — or — Ben wasn’t entirely sure about this — something else involving the immune system and possibly signals, or possibly something to do with semaphore, which he doubted.
Having apparently exhausted Daniel’s patience for the evening, he decided to check the time in Wisconsin relative to his own.
To: Ben M
From: Khoo, Daniel
Subj: Just got your other email
The idea wasn’t for you to retreat up your own arse, it was to suggest having a conversation that isn’t about a) work b) people committing suicide c) whether or not I am a hideous human being with no consideration for marginalised sexual identities or d) your abysmal taste in music; do you want to
Never mind
Ben regarded this email for quite a long time, his hands raised over the keyboard. He considered it from a number of angles, and then closed his laptop.
He found the handset for the landline, tried to coax Minnie out from under the chair, and realised he hadn’t written down the number he was meant to be calling.
Back on screen, the message returned:
do you want to
Never mind
He made a note of the number and closed the Macbook more decisively.
“Hello,” he said, when the call had connected and he’d finally stopped getting ‘this number is not recognised, please hang up and try again’ because he’d forgotten to put in the international dialling code, “hi. I’m trying to get through to someone who might know about virology research projects at the university?”
Minnie thrashed her tail miserably under the chair. The voice on the transatlantic end of the line had a surprisingly pleasant accent: Ben hadn’t been sure what he was expecting, as his general knowledge of America between New York, New Orleans, Los Angeles, and Seattle was “probably farms”, but it was a lot less grating than he’d been bracing himself for.
“No,” he said eventually, “I don’t want to apply for a research grant, I’m looking for a list of faculty and the projects they are-stroke-have been involved in.”
The washing machine reached the part of its cycle that made it sound like Satan was trying to break through the kitchen wall, and Ben put his finger in his ear.
“No,” he said, “no, I’ve looked on the website. Unless I’m missing something, it’s not on there.”
Wow-wow-wow, complained Minnie, bracing herself against chair legs for the coming of the dark lord of laundry.
“I completely understand,” he said at last, “is there anyone I can talk to who might know? Wh—? Oh, thank you, that would be very helpful.”
He sat in silence as the washing machine cut out to the “filling up with alarming amounts of dirty-looking water” stage, which was less noisy and likely to interfere with conversation, just as there was no conversation happening.
“Hi,” he said, when the next voice took up the call. “I’m trying to get hold of a list of faculty research projects for the department of virology?”
There was some conferring at the end of the line.
“No, not all of them,” he assured his new conversational partner. “I imagine that would use up a lot of your time. I’m looking for Dr Crawford’s work in particular?”
>
There was a pause.
“Well if his assistant can spare five minutes I would really, really appreciate her time, thank you so much,” Ben assured them, and was handed over to someone else.
“Hello there?” asked a voice, which luxuriated in an accent like the previous few speakers had abducted an Australian and begun to brainwash them but not quite finished. “I’m Lisa Kroup? I am — was — Dr Crawford’s assistant?”
“I’m sorry to bother you at what must be a very difficult time,” said Ben, realigning his mental processes after so long of repeating himself with different turns of phrase, “but I was wondering if you happened to have somewhere to hand some details of Dr Crawford’s research work at the university? Pertaining to er, gain of function or asymptomatic periods.”
He tacked the latter on in the hope of disguising the former, but he wasn’t sure it had quite worked.
“Ohw,” said Lisa Kroup, “I’m really sorry but we’ve been told not to release any of that information right now?”
“Totally understandable,” said Ben, who thought it was bizarre and ludicrous. “I mean, with circumstances being what they are I think the university definitely has a right to want to keep things close to their chest.”
“Ohw yeah,” said Lisa Kroup, and added in a lower voice, “but it’s not the university, it’d be weird if they were trying to hold back faculty information like that — most of it’s in the promo packages, or it used to be? ‘We’re proud of our Dr Crawford’s work’, y’know?” It was increasingly difficult to determine what Ben was and wasn’t supposed to be responding to, but he was faced with an actual question soon enough: “So where are you calling from?”
“Well, home, currently,” said Ben, looking about for something with the time on it and only able to find the TV. “Since it’s a bit late, but I’m calling on behalf of Dr Natalya Yagoda.”
“Ohw right,” said Lisa Kroup. “I’m just gonna talk to someone for you. Hold on.”
Ben was treated to the strange, dead air sound of a phone network that has no hold music but has a hold function. It was punctuated with a robotic voice repeating, at long intervals, “please hold. Someone will be with you shortly”, which did not make the experience any less eerie.
The Next Big One Page 18