The lecturer drones into my headphones. I click on a link that shows a loop of an atomic bomb exploding.
A request for chat pops up. It’s a kid I know online. He, she, or it goes by the name FerryRat7734.
FerryRat7734: What’s vertical?
SnakePlissken: You could just say, “What’s up?”
I don’t know if FerryRat actually meant to write FurryRat. I don’t ask questions of people I meet online. I figure they have a right to be whoever or whatever they want to be.
My online name is SnakePlissken. There’s a reason for that. It’s the only character I’ve ever come across who shares my last name. Plissken. Google just the word “Plissken” and that’s who you come up with. I don’t appear in Google. I am invisible. That’s deliberate.
FerryRat7734: Is it just me or are they teaching us how to make an atomic bomb?
SnakePlissken: The science is easy enough. The engineering’s a bitch.
FerryRat7734: So can you do me a favor? Send me your notes on the next week’s lectures?
SnakePlissken: You going on vacay?
FerryRat7734: I wish. I have a procedure.
I sit back. The teacher is droning on. A second dialog box opens up with someone saying “How do you spell Openhimer?” I should answer that question, not ask FerryRat one of my own. I can sense I’m opening a can of worms. But how do you not follow up on something like that?
SnakePlissken: What procedure?
FerryRat7734: You don’t want to know. Trust me.
I say that’s not true, although it is. And I repeat the question.
Lung transplant. FerryRat has cystic fibrosis, a genetic disease. Lung transplant is the final, desperation move.
SnakePlissken: Damn.
FerryRat7734: Exactly. So take notes, okay? I’m not dead yet.
SnakePlissken: Will do.
What else am I going to say? Someone tells you they’re dying, what do you say? You say yes, I’ll take notes.
It dawns on me for the first time that a lot of these online students that I know only by their handles, only from pop-up chat boxes, may be sick in one way or another.
It embarrasses me that I’ve never even considered this before.
“Slightly self-absorbed are you, Solo?” I mutter.
I sit through the rest of the lecture and then the natural history lesson after that.
Then I have work. Today I’m helping to prep visitors’ suites for a conference. We have those about once a month. A bunch of Big Brains and Even Bigger Bucks fly in and we wine and dine and lecture them about the wonders of biotech and what a great investment Spiker is.
I’m distributing cut flowers to the rooms, checking the minibars, that kind of thing. Then I’ve got to fill in for the coffee cart guy for a few hours while he attends a wedding in Monterey.
I don’t have to do this kind of work. Terra would let me stay here, keep a low profile, whatever. But the grunt work gives me access, and access is what I’m after.
When I’m done, I get into the system, mask my identity, and start looking around for cystic fibrosis. Because as full of crap as Terra might be, and as much of a criminal as she might be, Spiker does do some amazing work.
There are lots of hits for CF. The company has done some research on it. But all files have been moved. They’ve all been transferred to Project 88715.
I Google “genetic diseases” and get a list.