The Next Big One

by Derek Des Anges

  The trio at the next table began holding forth loudly on whether or not Gozpel were shit. Ben considered explaining to them that their third album was transcendental but the second was abysmal and giving up after the second one was the practice of the weak and foolish.

  BEN! This is your daily DO YOUR RESEARCH YOU LAZY SCAB email! Send me one back when you get this.

  Taz x

  Ben abandoned the room-temperature coffee and the temptation to educate his fellow-patrons, and went back to reading.

  KBV proves that this country needs to stop being so complacent about reported epidemics in non-EU countries and improve our border controls. Authorities consistently turned a blind eye to SARS until it got on a plane: Ebola was routinely scoffed at until UK nurses brought it home with them. When KBV came to us no one had even heard of it, despite “Koneboget Syndrome” making headlines in Tashkent for months when the first patients died. The only people who took any notice were conspiracy-theorists, and now we all have egg on our faces.

  DeWalt was at any one’s estimation a terrible journalist — there had been a running joke at the BBC that anyone who had misbehaved would be forced to call her for confirmation of quotes — but she was hardly wrong about this.

  At the time, of course, everyone had assumed that there was only a shortish incubation period, like most illnesses, and that although the students had travelled extensively, they’d probably picked it up in Badai-Tugai, near Koneboget. Ben remembered the original story of the mysterious government inspector who’d supposedly appeared out of the mists one morning and attacked them, but he couldn’t remember where he’d first heard it.

  It sounded too much like a zombie film even now, but it had ended up in all the papers anyway. What had seemed strange even at the time was how quickly people had moved on. They didn’t have a personal connection, he supposed, and news cycles moved fast unless there was nothing else holding people’s attention.

  Dutifully, he sent Tasneen back an email telling her to stop fucking about emailing him, and do her bloody work.

  From about a year ago:

  FALSE POSITIVES for HIV should be considered potential KBV cases, the government announced today. Although statistical likelihood of false positives in blood tests for HIV infection being genuine false positives is still moderate, the Secretary of State for Health insists that even a later negative for HIV should not be viewed as the absence of blood-borne, sexually-transmittable disease, and that further testing should be sought. The head of the NHS has said, “We appreciate the Government’s decision to take our advice on this matter.”

  Nailing down any kind of test, as Ben was all too aware, had been difficult. He wasn’t sure of the details — and with a sinking heart he realised he was going to have to be, despite all his attempts to avoid it — but KBV was still proving a hard virus to properly test for.

  Ben inched the cursor over towards the icon for Safari and twitched it gently, trying to convince himself that he wasn’t about to spend another three hours doing nothing but argue about setlists with Molly.

  ‘RAPE VICTIM’ HAS ‘MYSTERY VIRUS’.

  Monica Bow (27) was horrified at first to test positive for HIV after a date with Vincent Shaun (30) allegedly turned into ‘a nightmare of unending sexual assault’, but worse was to come: instead of HIV, she had been infected by an unknown virus, and it was a potential killer. Shahzoda Niyazov, a robotics engineer from Tashkent, and another alleged victim of predatory Shaun, had recently died in a pool of her own blood — from an unknown virus, after being falsely identified as HIV positive!

  Ben closed the tab. The scraper might not have identified the source, but the style pinpointed it as one that wasn’t exactly famed for its accuracy or tact.

  TRIPLE-TEST FOR KBV DEVELOPED ‘LARGELY BY ACCIDENT’

  Dr Natalya Yagoda of HPA Colindale’s BSL-4 laboratories

  [here a sidebar explained the difference between different biosafety levels, but Ben ignored it]

  confirmed today that while she was confident that the triple-test, which requires six to nine vials of blood to produce an accurate result, was “as close as we fundamentally can get to directly testing for KBV”, it was not created systematically.

  “We have had no end of trouble trying to model the virus,” she told our reporter. “Eventually the whole team was frustrated, so we began PCR and serological testing with all sorts of different samples: ‘flu, measles, everything we had to hand. Eventually we got results from lyssavirus [rabies], and ebola. The chances of someone being independently infected with lyssa, ebola, and HIV are astronomically small, and we used that as the basis for our test.”

  HPA Colindale remains the only laboratory in the country capable of screening for KBV.

  Ben opened a note file on his desktop and wrote, “Natalya Yagoda?” and “HPA Colindale?” and stared at them for a while. The door opened, and soaked-wet, steaming customers complained their way to the counter, brushing past him.

  The note file looked pitifully empty. Ben thought: if I was still working for Auntie I wouldn’t have any problem getting hold of her.

  SALIVA PANIC!

  As ‘Vampire Virus’ KBV is shown to pass in the saliva as well as the blood, the government issues this warning: DON’T KISS.

  He closed that tab quickly. No one was likely to forget that particular announcement.

  QUARANTINE WARDS: MANDATORY OR VOLUNTARY?

  That question had been resolved quickly as well, Ben thought. He frowned at the note file again, and got his phone out of his bag. A couple of girls were staring at him, apparently willing him to get out of his armchair now that the café was full and he clearly wasn’t drinking anything.

  Ben gave them a wan smile.

  DIVISION BETWEEN LATENCY AND SYMPTOMATIC WARDS NECESSARY, claims leading psychologist.

  “No one will submit to a KBV screening if they believe a positive result is going to land them next to someone who is vomiting blood,” Dr Klara Stephens is reported to have said, “and of course in the back of everyone’s mind there’s the question: what if there’s been a mistake, and I don’t have it at all … at least, not when I’m admitted.”

  Dr Bill Greenhill responded to this claim by pointing out that “recent misuse of medical statistics by papers that shall not be named and a journalist who very much shall be, Amanda DeWalt, have misled the public into believing that the NHS makes rather more false diagnoses than it actually does”, and described the articles by Ms DeWalt as “yet another pernicious attack on the idea of universal healthcare”.

  He scrolled through the phone, found Matthew’s number, and called.

  Matthew’s phone rang for a long time, long enough that Ben had already started composing an answerphone message in his head when he picked up; long enough that the two girls (one short and possibly Chinese, the other even shorter and black, both wearing Gozpel t-shirts) glared at him hard enough to burn a hole through concrete.

  “Benjy!” Matthew said, with all the appropriate confusion at being phoned in the middle of the day by someone he hadn’t spoken to in at least four years.

  “Matt,” Ben acknowledged, trying to level a fuck off glare at the girls but only succeeding in making his eyes water. “Long time no speak.”

  “Yeah, I’ve been really busy,” Matthew said, with nothing resembling contrition. “As you’ll discover for yourself when you have kids. How is Maggie, by the way?”

  “Seeing someone else,” Ben said, feeling the familiar constriction engulf his chest at the sound of her name. He picked up a sugar packet and began knotting it.

  “…Oh, mate,” Matthew said, alarmed. “Why didn’t anyone tell me? Did I miss this on Facebook — I swear, I’m sorry, you know how it is—”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Ben said, only succeeding in tearing the sugar packet. “Listen, I didn’t call you to bollock you about having a good life.” He hastily scrubbed the sugar granules out of the keyboard of his laptop, and nearly closed the file with the i
nformation he was supposed to be asking about. “Fuck — oh there it is.”

  “What’s up, my man? You sound tense.”

  “Trying to work out how to give you a bit of background without boring you rigid,” Ben said lightly. “Right. Precis: I left the Beeb, I’m back at college doing a journalism thing—”

  “Oh wow,” said Matthew, who hadn’t dropped out of university and had just gone on and become a lawyer and got married, like a person who had an actual plan for his life, and therefore seemed to think every catastrophe his friends stumbled through was a symptom of courage rather than profound disorganisation. Or at least, he said he did.

  “Yeah, anyway,” Ben reached for a second sugar packet, having apparently not learned from the first, “I have to do a research thing on KBV and one of the people I need to talk to is Dr…Yag-odda? Ya-goder? At HPA Colindale, and I was wondering if you or Steph had done any work with them, maybe, if you could—”

  “Oh man, I’m sorry,” said Matthew, and Ben sighed internally. Matthew was not a world-beater at sounding like he gave a shit when it was evident that he didn’t. “Listen, you’re not going to get hold of anyone there. But Steph did some contract stuff for UCLH, and they’ve got a whole big virology department just off Goodge Street, I’m sure someone there would be able to talk to you about it.”

  “…Right,” said Ben, writing this down dubiously. “So who do I talk to?”

  “I’ll get Steph to give someone a poke and call you back tomorrow?” Matthew suggested. “Only I’m mega, mega busy right now.”

  “Of course,” said Ben, “thanks. So. What are you up to?”

  He stared through the irate Gozpel fans, who’d found another table and forgotten all about him, as Matthew launched into a lengthy and detailed explanation about why fatherhood was so great, so exhausting, but so great, and how he and Steph had almost, almost saved up enough for a deposit on a house, only they weren’t sure if they really wanted to live in Walthamstow or Forest Gate, but there didn’t seem to be many other places they could afford, not without going to somewhere like SE23, and that was just outrageous, really, wasn’t it?

  While Matthew shared this priceless information from the frontlines of domestic happiness, Ben fiddled around with the manual for his latest extravagance.

  Since taking voluntary redundancy, as opposed to taking a flat in Salford and the prospect of still seeing Maggie every single day whether he could stomach it or not, Ben had made a manful effort not to buy every single album release, every single new invention, and every single subscription to events apps that caught his eye. The Kapture, he’d told himself, when he observed his overdraft, was different. It was a work expense. Or at very least, it was a not having to sign out four hundred year old Dictaphones from college expense, which was if anything even more valuable.

  Continual recording in 60 second loops.

  Matthew began to wind down. Ben could see the approaching offer of a drink like the headlights of an oncoming car.

  Bluetooth connection means easy backing-up to any of your devices.

  “You should drop by some evening — next month, perhaps, I think we’re pretty much full up this month—” Matthew went on, “and meet her. She’s incredible. Babies are so small. You never think about it.”

  Editing software included.

  Ben agreed that he never thought about the size of babies.

  Battery lasts for a month between charges.

  “It’s been great talking to you again,” said Matthew, with a characteristic brazen lack of sincerity. “We should do this more often. Don’t leave it so long, next time.”

  “See you,” said Ben, who had remembered a good five minutes ago exactly why he’d left it four years since he last spoke to him.

  The café had begun to empty out again as the rain stopped. The sun, coming in at a low angle, lit up every dirty drop clinging to the glass and turned the seats nearest the wall-length windows into a disco strewn with tiny fractured rainbows: Ben closed his Macbook. There wasn’t anything he could reasonably do now besides wait for Steph to call him, he thought.

  There was a puddle every three feet outside.

  Two days later, armed with a contact name and a red dot on Google Maps positioned over Whitfield Street, deliberately missing Kyle’s class on Law for Journalists, Ben set out for his first interview on KBV.

  Kyle, who wore t-shirts from PS4 releases and drank protein shakes the way Sherazi drank coffee and who was the only person Ben had ever witnessed call her “Marmar”, who was fat and forty and white and balding and married and incapable of not scrutinising the female students like meat, would probably have something to say about him missing the class, but of all of them Ben was least afraid of annoying him, even if he was the course director.

  Also, he hadn’t finished last week’s assignment yet.

  The sky was a deep, ominous grey when he turned onto Whitfield Street, and the air was like an armpit. He pocketed his phone, squeezed into reception, and tried to undo the damage the walk had done to his hair.

  “Hello,” said the receptionist, who looked as if she was watching a TV show being broadcast from the next galaxy over, and also as if she would be capable of breaking his spine if he said anything she didn’t like.

  “Hi,” said Ben, working a smile onto his face with difficulty. “I’m looking for…Rebecca Lordes?”

  “Right,” said the receptionist. “One moment.”

  Ben let his arms flop uselessly to his sides, and wondered if he should have worn a tie. He didn’t own a tie. Kingsley’s one and only tie was for funerals and explicitly not for being borrowed.

  The receptionist looked up, phone balanced against her face, and said, “Name?”

  “Oh, I’m, I’m Ben Martin,” he said, trapped suddenly in panic. “A friend of Steph Coetzee. She’s expecting me. Or she should be.”

  “Right,” said the receptionist without conviction. “Ben Martin. A friend of — who was it?”

  “Steph Coeztee.”

  “Steph Coatsie,” said the receptionist. “Right.” She put the receiver down and gave Ben an appraising look. “Stay there,” she said, as if he was going to go somewhere else. “She’s just coming.”

  Scientists, Ben learned over the next twenty-five minutes, had a very different idea of ‘just coming’ to, say, club promoters, or venue owners, who were perpetually in motion and therefore always on their way already when asked about it. He took the time to stare at the extremely small reception area — they clearly hadn’t expected anyone to want to visit this particular section of the university — and then to pull out his phone and try to organise his notes, of which he had one.

  After that, he sent Ina six messages about her love life, and its likely effect on her rehearsals. He began to wonder if Steph had actually just pulled a name out of thin air without talking to anyone at all.

  Rebecca Lordes was in her early forties and slightly shorter than him: she had dark brown hair, large blue eyes, a nose that could have cut through a shark’s hide, and the kind of tooth/chin combination that usually marked people out as either American or Canadian. She wore a pair of grey suit trousers which didn’t fit her properly, a purple polo shirt which didn’t suit her, and an expression of malicious glee.

  “Uhm, hello,” Ben said, holding out his hand. “I’m Ben…Steph’s friend…”

  “This way,” said Rebecca, leading him through a security door, then another, then a turnstile which had to be held open by a short, female security guard. “I’ve found someone who’ll talk to you about it,” she added, over her shoulder. “Normally you’d really have to go through the press office somewhere, and we don’t handle KBV here — don’t have the secure facilities for it—” She was some distance ahead of him now, heading up the stairs.

  “Oh, thanks,” said Ben, taking the stairs two at a time to keep up.

  “But you’re in luck,” Rebecca went on, leading him down a corridor with no natural light in it. “He’s working on
BDV, which has a certain similarity to lyssa, which is kind of similar to KBV if you believe what’s come out of Colindale, and you can’t really afford to be picky about virologists at the moment, and—” she stopped by an open door, and added in a lower voice, “and he’s been dying to talk to a journalist.”

  “I’m n—” Ben cut himself off, said, “Thanks,” and peered through the door.

  “You’re not a real journalist, right?” Rebecca said, under her breath.

  “Student,” Ben said, too preoccupied to be offended.

  Natural light flooded the room and across the corridor. Half of the scene was a chaos of papers, discarded equipment, and a printed paper sign reading “DO NOT” in emphatic black letters: the other half was filled with brushed steel desks with endless plastic trays on them in a variety of colours, a couple of what Ben assumed were microscopes, and a stack of nitrile glove boxes so high it almost touched the ceiling. In the wall at the direction from which he had just come there was a door with about ten warning signs on it, and from this emerged his supposed source.

  “That’s Dr Daniel Khoo,” said Rebecca, hanging back.

  Daniel Khoo was slightly taller than Ben. He was wearing bright red skinny jeans and a black t-shirt reading:

  cytosine

  adenosine

  guanine &

  thymine

  under a lab coat. He was also wearing sunglasses over his hair and a pair of iPod headphones, and he was half-dancing.

  He threw a pair of nitrile gloves into a bin, put on a fresh pair, and shoved something into a metal drawer. These gloves then went into the bin too.

  “Straaaaaangers…waaaaaiting…” Dr Khoo sang under his breath, “up and down the…”

  Next to Ben, Rebecca started to snigger. “Dr Khoo,” she said quietly, “will answer all your questions. I have to…I have to be somewhere…slightly further away.”

  Ben noticed that two or three of the other doors on the corridor had opened, and a couple more heads hovering over white coats had been thrust into the light with expressions of not so much curiosity as amusement.