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Water-cooler talk
Jan. 27th, 2006 09:57 amThey turned out to have rented a floor in a half-empty office park in Billerica. It was ramshackle, security-through-obscurity. When I went at the window with the cutting attachment, it didn't even set off an alarm. Simplex locks on the inside doors. In the end, the people at the top were too cocky.
They didn't think I'd get past the ample charms of Kodirovka Volapük. I'm a married man and I take it seriously.
It reeked to high heaven. Most of the people in there evidently had no idea what they were handling, except for the obvious: Half of the floor was piled high with sacks of cat poop.
"You're not even wearing masks?" I said, once I'd secured the machine room and hit the big red cutoff button. "You didn't wonder why you're running cat feces through a state-of-the art nanoimplantation transjector? I'll tell you."
They stared at me mutely. Alienated labor.
"The machine seeks out oocysts of Toxoplasma gondii in the cat feces, then introduces the hitchhiker in powdered form. Then the modified cysts go into office water coolers," I said, pointing to the clear plastic tanks lined up on the far wall. "Did you wonder why you were doing that?... In its natural state, the organism is capable of infecting humans and other mammals who come into contact with cat poop, taking up residence in the central nervous system. In rats and mice, it changes their behavior to make them less fearful of cats. In humans, the indications are ambiguous. It may change behavior, may not.
"But the hitchhiker can change behavior. Your Bentley Slade is a clever man, no doubt about it. Naughty, but clever. He's cracked the code. He can introduce memeplexes of his choosing."
I could hear my backup arriving outside. A little late, but I wasn't complaining. They'd have the building surrounded in a minute, then the helicopters with the neutralizing 'bots would come in.
"His failing was that, in the end, he was too predictable. Planting the same memes in the staff of major newspapers and magazines every six months... did he think nobody would wonder? It got to the point that when somebody decided to write a space-filling think-piece, it was more than likely to be one of Slade's memes. That Loophole in Relativity Found piece that shows up in New Scientist once every two years and gets physicists chatting confusedly about nonsense for a couple of weeks. New Generation of Young Conservatives Shed Stuffy Image. Even in the style pages: Bell-Bottoms are Back! The biggie, More Scientists Turning to God as Explanation... all right, that one was around before he started, but he turned it into clockwork, with a six-month cycle in every major paper in the country. And folding it into the mania for Dan Brown that he'd planted a year earlier... that was really beyond the pale."
The helicopters were landing.
"But why? What's his game? I admit, I don't have all the puzzle pieces. You're going to lead me to Slade, and I'm going to ask him..."
They didn't think I'd get past the ample charms of Kodirovka Volapük. I'm a married man and I take it seriously.
It reeked to high heaven. Most of the people in there evidently had no idea what they were handling, except for the obvious: Half of the floor was piled high with sacks of cat poop.
"You're not even wearing masks?" I said, once I'd secured the machine room and hit the big red cutoff button. "You didn't wonder why you're running cat feces through a state-of-the art nanoimplantation transjector? I'll tell you."
They stared at me mutely. Alienated labor.
"The machine seeks out oocysts of Toxoplasma gondii in the cat feces, then introduces the hitchhiker in powdered form. Then the modified cysts go into office water coolers," I said, pointing to the clear plastic tanks lined up on the far wall. "Did you wonder why you were doing that?... In its natural state, the organism is capable of infecting humans and other mammals who come into contact with cat poop, taking up residence in the central nervous system. In rats and mice, it changes their behavior to make them less fearful of cats. In humans, the indications are ambiguous. It may change behavior, may not.
"But the hitchhiker can change behavior. Your Bentley Slade is a clever man, no doubt about it. Naughty, but clever. He's cracked the code. He can introduce memeplexes of his choosing."
I could hear my backup arriving outside. A little late, but I wasn't complaining. They'd have the building surrounded in a minute, then the helicopters with the neutralizing 'bots would come in.
"His failing was that, in the end, he was too predictable. Planting the same memes in the staff of major newspapers and magazines every six months... did he think nobody would wonder? It got to the point that when somebody decided to write a space-filling think-piece, it was more than likely to be one of Slade's memes. That Loophole in Relativity Found piece that shows up in New Scientist once every two years and gets physicists chatting confusedly about nonsense for a couple of weeks. New Generation of Young Conservatives Shed Stuffy Image. Even in the style pages: Bell-Bottoms are Back! The biggie, More Scientists Turning to God as Explanation... all right, that one was around before he started, but he turned it into clockwork, with a six-month cycle in every major paper in the country. And folding it into the mania for Dan Brown that he'd planted a year earlier... that was really beyond the pale."
The helicopters were landing.
"But why? What's his game? I admit, I don't have all the puzzle pieces. You're going to lead me to Slade, and I'm going to ask him..."