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Narrative

Getting Pinged

All day long, Spruance Del Curtin kept thinking about what Dr. Doorne had said. Sprue was not entirely unfamiliar with growth curves, since they’d gone over them in stats, and they’d been touched upon in a biology class he’d taken a while back.

What he really wanted to know was the nature of the growth that was being measured. Especially with the wild rumors going around about the situation in Schirrasburg, Sprue wondered if Dr. Doorne had been discussing statistics on the spread of the diablovirus.

Except there was no good way to find out. He couldn’t ask because that would be admitting that he’d listened in on a conversation in which he had no part. And since he’d so little, and that quite vague, he had nothing to go on for making discreet inquiries around the settlement.

Face it, you’re out of options. Sprue didn’t like that conclusion. He was a Shep, and part of that geneset’s intense competitiveness was a ferocious determination.

But with nothing to go on, there was no real place to start. Unless he got a lucky break and happened upon something that pointed him in the right direction, he was out of the running.

Which meant he needed to get his mind on something more productive. He had more than enough work to do, between Dr. Doorne pushing him to do some of the most difficult statistical analysis with real data, as opposed to the standard teaching datasets the other students were getting, and his teaching responsibility becoming steadily heavier as his senior teacher pushed more and more onto him.

He was just starting on his latest lesson plan for that when his phone chimed incoming text. He pulled it up, discovered it was from Drew. Found anything yet?

Sprue considered how to answer that one. If it had been Ken Redmond asking, there would’ve been no question of admitting that he’d been listening in on Dr. Doorne’s telephone conversation. But Drew was a fellow Shep, and he’d take a more relaxed view of such things, especially when it might benefit him.

I’ve heard a few things around Science, but so far I haven’t been able to get any hard facts to back them with. But if you want some speculation, I’m thinking they’re looking at Schirrasburg as a test case in the limits of contagion in a closed population.

He paused for a moment before actually hitting the send button. It was just evasive enough about his sources that even if someone in authority were to go through his SMS logs, they wouldn’t be able to say that he’d been eavesdropping.

Drew must’ve needed to think about it too, because it was several minutes before he responded. Long enough for Sprue to decide it was time to dig back in on his work.

He was just getting back into that mindset when the text chime pulled him back out of his thoughts. Which indicates that they had something going around there, although not definite proof that it was the diablovirus.

But if it were just an ordinary bug, why would they be so hush-hush about it that we’ve got rumors all over the place? All they’d have to say is someone’s picked up a case of the flu and it’s spreading, so they’re taking some extra precautions to make sure it doesn’t spread in the middle of a crisis. Then everybody could stop worrying.

Once again Drew took a long time to reply, which left Sprue wondering if that last observation hadn’t been a wise move. Finally the writing message icon showed up, and then the text appeared. You underestimate the bureaucratic mind.

The whole knowledge is power thing?

More than just that. You never want to let information get out that makes you look bad if you can avoid it. That’s why so much embarrassing information gets classified as secret, even when there’s no national security reason.

And why people keep covering things up, never mind that it’s usually the coverup that gets them in trouble, not the actual thing they were covering up.

Exactly. Which is why I’m thinking that it was a diablovirus outbreak, and it was seriously bad.

I’d believe it. But I sure don’t know how to go about confirming it.

Keep thinking about it, but whatever you do, be careful about it.

Sprue promised he would, which seemed to satisfy Drew. Now to get some serious work done on that lesson plan. Maybe he’d get some ideas while his mind was off the problem.