The Next Big One

by Derek Des Anges

  Olivia put her phone away without turning a single blond hair and said, “No, it was just my boyfriend,” as if everyone could understand how this was extremely urgent.

  “Wonderful,” Sherazi said, dryly. “First, about your study diaries: they are study diaries. By all means keep track of your progress, any problems you encounter, how you overcome them, what routes you follow to get to the information you need. That’s good reference. But I don’t want to see you in the text, you’re journalists, not misery memoirists; this isn’t about you.”

  She directed a look at Olivia, who might reasonably be expected to have an entire solar system of her own to go with her self-centredness, but Olivia was smiling at her texts again and missed the point entirely.

  “Also — and I cannot stress this enough, and I am sure you will decide this doesn’t apply to you, every single year someone decides they’re a Maverick Who Doesn’t Play By The Rules, because you are all imbeciles — please, for the love of your bank balance and unblemished criminal record — or slightly spotty criminal record in Mark’s case — please, please refer back to McNae’s when you’re looking for information that might not be publically-available.”

  Jack put his hand up.

  “The definition of works available to the public is in the book, Jack,” Sherazi with considerable weariness. “Ben, I expect you to know all this already.”

  “Th..anks?” Ben hazarded.

  “McNae’s is your bible,” she concluded, finishing off whatever was happening with Moodle. “Any McNatheists will find themselves in court very quickly.”

  A ringing silence followed this, and Olivia covered her mouth to stifle an unrelated snort.

  “That’s not enough people laughing; I spent years on that one.” Sherazi closed her laptop. “Alright. Now that I’ve finished putting the fear of tort and criminal court into you: take risks. You won’t become good journalists if you don’t take risks. You won’t become journalists at all if you don’t take risks. You’ll barely become people.” She pulled out the eternal thermos of coffee from under her desk and stopped with her hand on the lid. “Here endeth the lesson.”

  “Study partners—” Victoria called, from the doorway.

  “You’re doing that, I just finished on a portentous note and I’m not ruining it with admin,” said Sherazi, unscrewing the thermos lid. At least three people were already on their feet, shovelling books into their bags.

  “I’m not even teaching this class!” Victoria complained, poking her head back in the door. “Sit the hell down. It’s your class.”

  “If you’re going to hang around and steal my coffee—”

  “You’re sharing, generously, because you are the soul of kindness,” Victoria corrected.

  Sherazi raised her battered eyebrows so high that they nearly disappeared into her short, salt-and-pepper hair. “That’s an unsupported assumption,” she told her students, “and it will not stand up in court. Victoria is going to pair you up with study partners—” she got to her feet, open Thermos in hand, “—and explain why you need them, and I am going to hide in a supply cupboard and finish my coffee.”

  She vacated the room with her bag banging against her hip and a cloud of very strong coffee scent following her. Victoria returned, empty-handed, and disgruntled.

  “To stop people just buddying up with whoever they like best and then doing no work,” Victoria said, jingling to her favoured spot at the back of the room, “you’re being given study partners. You check in with each other and tell each other to move your arses and finish your work. It’s proven more successful in the past than just letting people flounder.” She bared her teeth in another aggressive smile.

  “Do we have to ha—” began Graham, but Victoria cut him off with a snap of her jaw.

  “The list is on the board,” she said, thwacking a button on the classroom laptop far harder than it needed to be thwacked.

  Ben searched for his name, comfortably sandwiched in the middle of the alphabet. He’d been paired up with Tasneen Ali, who had once come to class wearing Lord of the Rings pyjamas under her abaya. On the whole, Ben thought, catching her eye, it could have been a lot worse. It could have been Jack. Or Olivia.

  “This is a disaster,” said Tasneen, standing next to him in the prison-esque cafeteria. Victoria was allegedly out of earshot at last, although Ben didn’t trust that to continue being the case. “We’ve got to swap.”

  “Agreed,” said Ben, staring through the glass at the sad selection of overpriced sandwiches, and wishing he’d taken Kingsley up on the offer of leftovers. There was cheese, cheese and onion, lamb curry for some reason, a variety of hams and fishes, none of which he ate, and hummus, which he hated. Ben wondered if it was possible to just buy bread and butter and then hope no one noticed he was eating like an idiot. “You’d be okay with KBV?”

  “About four hundred percent happier than I’m going to be reading about little girls getting their ladybits sliced up,” Tasneen said. Her tray was buried under cake, pink crisp packets, and two containers of the ubiquitous suspiciously-cheap soup the cafeteria pumped out every day. “I mean, that’s fucked up and everything but at least you don’t have ladybits, right? Imagine you had to read about little boys having their balls turned inside-out or something.”

  Ben made the appropriate face. He’d done his stint on Panorama for enough months to be fully-aware of what child/genital horrors awaited the unwary researcher. It had kept him awake for months.

  “So,” Tasneen said, with an air of finality and her enormous red headphones around her neck, pulling down on her hijab and distorting it at the back, “when we’ve had lunch — wait, you don’t do the Friday Interview Techniques class, do you, you’re Tuesday?”

  Ben nodded, gave in, and took down two packets of ready-salted crisps.

  “So, right, when we’ve had lunch we’re going to go find Sherazi and tell her we’re swapping.”

  “Just tell her?” he asked, trying to dig his cafeteria card out from behind six or seven other cards in his wallet, including two gym memberships he didn’t remember buying.

  “Sure, why not?” Tasneen said, rearranging her cakes. “I mean listen, yeah, she’s not Victoria—” she whispered the name like a curse and Ben snorted at the caution even as he recognised it as sensible, “—she’s not going to call you a dick or anything.”

  Ben wasn’t entirely convinced of this, but happily the failure of the till to function or his card to work absolved him of having to voice an opinion on it for the next five minutes.

  “I’m just going to eat this now,” Tasneen told the cashier, picking up a slice of lemon drizzle cake, “and you can just put it on the card when you’re ready.”

  “No, you can’t eat that until you pay for it—” the cashier said, trying to jam Ben’s cafeteria card into the machine slot and nearly snapping it in half. “You’re not allowed to do that, please.”

  “Too late,” said Tasneen, through a mouthful of cake.

  When they found Sherazi, Tasneen was still picking bits of cake off her Nightbreed t-shirt — no abaya today — and there was a queue for the miniscule staff lounge which stretched past the open study area and round the corner nearly as far as the toilet door. Some of them Ben recognised as second-years, but Kenneth was also there, having apparently received his warning.

  “She’s going to be pissed off by the time she sees us,” Ben muttered, against a background of hastily-repressed, slow-mounting horror.

  Tasneen slapped him in the arm with a print-out. “No,” she said, with a confidence he couldn’t replicate, “they’re all here to see Kyle. No one voluntarily sees Sherazi.”

  By the time they reached the head of the queue it was completely dark outside. The last class, for reasons Ben assumed were to do with administrative headaches, didn’t finish until nine at night.

  “You’ve got five minutes,” Sherazi told them, wedged into a near-throne of bookcases and blue box files which had evidently come over from th
e old building with the move. “And then I’m going to run away and get in my car and lock the doors and you will have to hold onto it until tomorrow, or email me like civilised human beings.”

  “We’re swapping,” Tasneen said, without any preamble.

  “No you’re not,” said Sherazi. Her shirt, as usual, was open to her collarbone. Ben had never noticed her wearing any jewellery, and something about it struck him as fitting. “Is that everything?”

  “No, we’re definitely swapping,” said Tasneen, as if Sherazi hadn’t just stared at her like the sighting mechanism on some terrible warhead.

  “No one is swapping subjects. Either you take what you’re given and learn to make something of it or you give up on being a journalist and go and write fantasy novels instead,” Sherazi said, ignoring Ben.

  “Well I would,” Tasneen said with complete sincerity, “but my uncle says I have to learn a proper career.”

  “Time’s up, get out,” Sherazi suggested. “Any further questions, you have my email address, you’re both constantly carrying iPhones, you don’t need to be in my office, get out.”

  When Ben got home from his set, tired and damp from night bus sweat, his shirt sticking in places shirts shouldn’t, he picked up the covered plate from the futon and tried to compose a respectful email with one hand while eating leftover jerk chicken with the other. Assuming that Sherazi’s fuck-off notice had been an almost-invitation, and that Tasneen’s approach was at fault, he stared at his Macbook, and the muted TV screen behind it, and made an attempt at forking cold rice-and-peas into his mouth.

  “Shit,” Ben added, about five minutes into the operation, as it cascaded into his shirt.

  He laid the fork down and made a solemn vow to do one thing at a time in future.

  Sherazi;

  Tasneen and I have discussed the implications of our assignments and feel both of us would produce better work if we were able to tackle each other’s topics. Would it be acceptable under these circumstances to exchange subjects?

  Ben.

  It read more formally than he’d have liked, but Ben reasoned that he couldn’t be expected to make perfect sense at three in the morning, and sent it, immediately returning to his plate.

  He’d had about four mouthfuls of Kingsley’s heavenly repast when, to his surprise, he received a reply. Sherazi’s coffee habit apparently gave her the same hours as a jobbing DJ.

  Ben:

  There are no circumstances under which you are exchanging subjects with anyone.

  Sherazi

  Ben laid his fork down and tried again, the plate balanced on one knee and the Macbook on the other.

  Sherazi,

  Including personal circumstances? I think both of us would be extremely uncomfortable with things the way they are.

  Ben.

  He returned his gaze to the TV. 24 Hour rolling news had, temporarily, moved away from the nascent epidemic and was ticker-taping something about German Finance Ministers underneath footage of someone moderately famous either going into or coming out of court.

  His Macbook made the already-annoying bong of incoming mail.

  Ben

  If you have a personal reason for being uncomfortable so much the better. It lends depth and emotional charge to the work which if I’m honest you’ve shown no aptitude for so far.

  Both of you need to grasp that journalism involves handling difficult topics. Often things which are damaging to the psyche. Toughen up. You can’t get far if you fall at the first hurdle.

  Sherazi.

  PS: 3.10AM is not my office hours.

  Ben thought about this, closed the Macbook, and laid back on his futon, the largely-untouched plate of leftovers balanced on his chest, his heart thumping uncomfortably. At least he could say he’d given it his best shot.

  He reached for the remote to turn down the brightness on the screen and steal a couple of hours of sleep — or possibly just continue eating in the dimmer light — when the landline rang.

  “JESUS FUCKING WHAT,” Kingsley shouted, from the other side of the bathroom.

  “I got it,” Ben lied, overturning the plate in his haste to find the handset, and nearly treading on the bloody cat. “I got—”

  He hit the right button, and crammed the phone against his ear. His socked foot slid slowly through fragments of jerk chicken, and Minnie climbed casually over his leg, purring, to investigate.

  “Hello—”

  “You’ve got to get me out,” Leah said, in a fierce, horrible whisper.

  Ben’s stomach tied itself into an abrupt knot. His heart transformed immediately into a bowling ball, and he fell back onto the futon, narrowly missing Minnie. The cat didn’t pay any attention to this, already face-down in spilled food, making obscene noises as she tried to breathe through her squashed-in face.

  “Get me out,” Leah said, with more urgency. There was a clattering noise on the other end of the line, and footsteps. A distance voice, indistinct but authoritative. “They’re going to kill me.”

  Ben squeezed his eyes shut and tried to remember how to continue breathing. Minnie purred, and her unwise rice intake turned it into the surge of cement in a mixer as her vast, soft, cloud-like tail brushed against his arm.

  “GET ME OUT—” Leah shrieked. The background voices were louder.

  Leah was replaced by a calmer, more apologetic voice that sounded as if it were broadcasting from the bottom of the sea. “I’m sorry,” it said, watery and distorted by a motor running nearby. “I’m very sorry for the interruption.”

  “It’s—” Ben began, but they’d already hung up.

  He let the handset fall down beside Minnie, who registered it with a myaorg and went on eating his dinner. For a moment he lay in the dim light of the TV, contemplating the ceiling, stuffing the phonecall down into the black recesses of his mind where it could be more easily forgotten.

  Then he got up, and went to the bathroom to take out his contact lenses.

  “Morning, studybuddy,” Tasneen said, one headphone still on her ear and an Ugg knock-off poking out from under her abaya. “Did you sleep in a bin? You look shitty.”

  “Are you wearing pyjamas again?” Ben asked, readjusting the strap of his bag before it could strangle him any further.

  “Guilty,” said Tasneen with a wide-eyed smile that made her look mad. “I got up way too late to do anything. My hair looks like the devil’s own shit.”

  “Good thing you have your — is that a unicorn?” Ben frowned at her hijab.

  “No,” said Tasneen. “It’s seven unicorns and a dwarf with a massive axe. You know what, digital printing is the best fucking thing. I’ve got a Frank Franzetta painting hijab but my mum’s not allowed to know about it.” She tapped her nose. “Also, do not pretend you don’t know who that is. I know you’re a nerd.”

  Ben decided to neither confirm nor deny this accusation. “I tried emailing Sherazi last night,” he said, as they staggered into the crush of students waiting for their classroom to be opened. “No luck.”

  “No way?” Tasneen blinked, and took an expressive slurp from a Starbucks cup of something dubious and light-brown. “I emailed her and just went listen, I’m not doing this shit, it’s fucked up and it’s an imposition and if I can refuse at a real newspaper I can refuse her and my uncle used to be a political cartoonist, okay, you know you can turn stuff down if it’s too fucked up and don’t lie about that.”

  “Oh,” said Ben, with a sinking feeling in his stomach. He looked at his phone. Molly had posted last night’s playlist and eighteen people had sent him friend requests.

  “You just have to keep pushing,” Tasneen said, very airily for someone who was still about 45% asleep and carrying an Adventure Time rucksack. “She’s not even that scary. You just give up too easily.”

  The one good side of having resigned himself to this topic, Ben thought as he settled into an armchair and juggled Macbook and latte between his hands in an effort to get comfortable, was that it was recent
. He could just as well research it from anywhere with wifi as from some miserable, dust-filled records room, as he’d been accustomed.

  Admittedly, he thought three hours later, the wifi also provided a lot of distraction.

  He closed the entire browser, cutting off Phil Jacy in mid-joke, opened a different instance, and started again.

  A MISSING GOVERNMENT INSPECTOR found dead in Badai-Tugai Nature Reserve in Uzbekistan is believed to be “patient zero” in the KBV epidemic. A group of graduate students from the University of Tashkent, on a reunion vacation in the area, are believed to have encountered, and been attacked by the late-stage KBV-sufferer shortly before her death in the wilderness approximately four and a half years ago.

  “At present we cannot say with any certainty what her cause of death was,” says local police chief Sattar Hamrayev. “Her body has been badly damaged by long exposure, and of course the students infected are no longer alive to confirm her identity.”

  Ben frowned. Speculation about the source probably didn’t constitute proper research.

  At the table next to him, two men with enviable beards and a girl with dyed-red hair down to her waist got into an argument about song structure. Outside, the rain came down in sheets but failed to diminish the heat.

  It was a pity it didn’t count, Ben thought. Reading about the symptoms was a great way to ensure he didn’t want lunch ever again.

  (CONT FROM PAGE 2): unfortunately, when those students went on to travel abroad they infected others. Not just their families at home, or their boyfriends and girlfriends, but outside of Uzbekistan they spread their unwitting infection: some by sharing innocent kisses, some by giving blood, some by getting into accidents, some through unwise sexual decisions, and in the case of the unlucky Shahzoda Niyazov, who came to Manchester to work, by being raped.

  Of course, Ben reflected, trying to finish stone-cold latte without looking like he was drinking a cup of pee, there were all of the other elements which killed the appetite in this story as well. He wondered what Tasneen had been given in exchange for her disturbing topic, and who’d ended up with FGM now.