CHAPTER 5
A trap is set
The death rattle of the hotel room’s refrigerator provides Agarwal with an unwelcome wakeup call at half-past five. He pushes back the comforter in frustration and rotates carefully into a sitting position on the edge of the bed, but even so, his hip complains. Too much walking last night. He slips into the beige slippers that he has brought from home. In recent years he has become uneasy about placing bare feet on hotel carpets. Who knows what insanitary detritus has been transferred from Bourbon Street by the previous occupants’ shoes?
He begins a few shuffling laps around the room, knowing it will only take a few minutes to alleviate the hip’s painful stiffness. There is no point in opening the curtains yet. Sunrise is still an hour away. Instead, he becomes over-familiar with the indoor scenery: a uselessly small desk, a wall mounted TV, and a couple of black and white photographs of unknown African-American musicians. At least, unknown to him.
A scowl is reserved for the irksome refrigerator as limps past it. The appliance is squeezed into wooden cabinetry, preventing him from accessing the power cord which he desperately wants to yank out of the wall, to guarantee better sleep tomorrow.
His mobility improves, so he detours to the bathroom, and pulls down his boxers (the clothing is a nighttime precaution when traveling: so a fire alarm will not provoke him into running naked from the room). He thinks it is easier to urinate while sitting, but it is a hesitant stream due to an enlarged prostate. A recent 64th birthday is silently scolded. Getting old sucks. Which is a declaration that, in a way, explains why he is here.
This is the first day of the conference. His conference! The assertion of ownership comes from performing more of the work than his two co-organizers. Consequently, he also has no qualms that he awarded himself a speaking slot to publicize the relevance of his studies to this research field.
A trickling urine stream finally runs dry, and he rises from the hotel room's toilet seat to pull the flush lever. It strikes him that the roar of the pressure-assisted toilet tank is a pointedly disproportionate response to his meagre voiding. As he washes his hands, he catches the reflection of his bare torso in the mirror. A sideways turn leaves no doubt as to the unflattering nature of his abdominal profile. After all, he is a doctor – that is, he trained as one before redirecting his career into full-time research. He wonders if he is becoming one of those physicians that ignore their own symptoms. Maybe Myra is right to be concerned?
A thirtysomething pharmaceutical sales rep expresses her appreciation for Nick Robbin’s muscular physique and sexual prowess. Following an eight-hour overnight adventure in his room, she leaves with a polite smile for a morning flight.
Through the window, Robbins hears the occasional truck rumble by on Route 61. It is a Saturday, so traffic is still light. The aircraft engines are louder; Louis Armstrong Airport, less than a mile away, is waking up.
Three weeks ago, he had decided to act on information Agarwal Rakesh had provided to him when they met at Gunn University: Lydia Goode is attending the AAG conference in downtown New Orleans. At such short notice, Robbins had been unable to find a room in decent accommodation within the city, largely due to the popularity of Tulane’s annual book fair. Eventually, he had found a room near the airport. Yesterday's late arrival due to a delayed flight, and the effort he would have to put in to arrange for taxis, had taken away his appetite for venturing into the city. So he had visited the hotel bar instead, whereupon meeting Emily had been a silver lining.
His thoughts return to the journalist who had waltzed into his office a couple of months ago to lecture him on how to do his job, how to manage his staff. And then threated to make up some shit about him, post it on her web site, and send a link to Bryce Miller - the departmental Chair. Robbins cannot allow that. Nothing must stand in the path of succession that Robbins is crafting with the Dean. He must neutralize her.
He checks the bedside clock: almost six am. He decides to spend an hour or so in the hotel gym. He pictures himself as the US Marshal played by George Clooney in Burn After Reading: a guy who works out after sexual encounters. He escapes the twisted sheets and marches to the bathroom. He pees vigorously, brushes his teeth, and gulps down a bottle of water: hydration before exercise.
Agarwal makes what he considers a reasonable attempt to coerce his room's espresso machine into yielding some coffee, but eventually he concedes defeat. He locates his reading glasses on the bedside table, and opens up his laptop. A surge of energy overcomes his early morning’s tiredness. It is the exhilaration he always enjoys prior to a presentation.
He intends to practice his AAG talk again, but first he decides to check emails. So much junk. Fake academic societies awarding him a plenary lecture at a conference located in a desirable tourist destination, provided he agree to the outrageous registration fee. Delete! Other messages – composed in Chinglish with a disregard for a consistent font – heap praise on his latest publication, before encouraging him to follow up this profound accomplishment by reviewing the field, or editing a book on that subject. All without mentioning the article processing charges. Delete! Delete! An email from a journal he does not recognize that has just registered him with an account, so that he can review a paper that is laughably wide of his area of expertise. Delete! That keycap legend on his elderly laptop is almost as faded as the letter ‘A’.
Towards the end of his freshly-cleansed inbox is a message Steve had sent from the lab late the previous evening. It concerns the manuscript that only requires slight revision in order to be accepted for publication. Steve writes that he has performed the work required to satisfy the referee’s requests. The postdoc also explained that he has repeated one of the study's control experiments. Unfortunately, he has obtained results that differ from those in the original manuscript. Their unpublished work is no longer consistent. They cannot return a revised paper to the journal.
The manuscript is not the only problem. Agarwal has built today’s presentation around these new and exciting data. The talk has been rehearsed multiple times. He has anticipated impressing those in the audience who are probably going to review his next grant submission. He is even ready to amuse the audience with a little self-deprecation: "When Steve proposed this experiment, I told him it wouldn't work. But he went ahead and did it anyway. Look how he proved me wrong . . . ”
An adrenaline crash leaves Agarwal with an acute sense of dissatisfaction. He knows he cannot present the unpublished results, now that they have been besmirched by irreproducibility. For the next hour, he reworks the talk. He removes all of the new and exciting information. In its place, Agarwal inserts PowerPoint slides that summarize his group's older work that has been published during the last three years. Agarwal accepts the price he pays is a rather staid and unoriginal presentation – and poor feedback from the AAG conference attendees. He predicts their critique, their groupthink over lunch: one individual’s opinion will spread around the table like a contagious virus. Disappointing, wasn’t it? There were no new data. I saw him give the same talk two years ago.
But he has no choice.
He takes a long, hot shower. He hopes the heat and the rhythmic water flow will stimulate endorphin release, and reduce levels of his stress hormones. It doesn’t work. Dressing becomes a chore. A light blue shirt that feels too tight. A plain navy tie that only falls right at the third attempt. The charcoal suit that he had worn at his last conference, and only now does he see the food stain on his pants.
He sacrifices breakfast in order to practice the new version of his talk, one last time. The delivery might as well be polished, even if the content is dull. He is not in a rush; it is only a couple of minutes’ walk to the conference ballroom.
Robbins finishes his workout, he takes fruit, yogurt and scrambled eggs from the buffet, and returns to his room to eat breakfast. Along with two StaySmarts, his daily D-serine supplement.
He sits at a desk that conveniently faces a mirror. He puts on newly purchased GigaGlasses and wraps a human-computer interaction device around his wrist. A ten megapixel camera, hidden within the frame, is operated by hand gestures that are sensed through surface electrodes within the wristband. Robbins practices switching the video recording on and off with a subtle wave of his hand, and checks the recordings are transferred to his cell phone. He is confident that anyone being monitored in this manner would not notice. An LED illuminates when the camera is in use, but it is tiny. The frame of the glasses is a little thicker than normal, but not enough to attract attention. More covert than waving around a smart phone.
GigantoPharm acquired a manufacturing facility for their glasses by buying up an innovative microelectronics startup. The company considers that this eyewear represents a giant leap forward in electronic record keeping. Corporate research scientists are required to maintain secure and accurate, time-stamped records of all of their actions. The glasses will assist with this statutory requirement, by tracking the hands-on activities of the lab staff, through videos which automatically upload to the company mainframe.
The general public were first alerted to GigaGlasses through extensive TV advertising during the 2023 Thanksgiving football games. Privacy concerns did not spoil the company’s Christmas profit margin. During the same period GigaSleuth was also launched, albeit with much less fanfare. Robbins is two weeks into his subscription. Upload a digital headshot to the GigaSleuth website, and their AI will slither through the internet searching for matches. Such images may have been posted by the actual quarry, or may innocently languish in the background of a stranger’s snaps, at a restaurant, or a sporting event. Or in Lydia Goode’s case, maybe among members of a lab get-together from her student days, or in an obscure archive hosting an academic yearbook. Naturally, this website requires its users to promise they will just search for themselves, or others who have first provided their agreement. It is a technology regulated only by lip service.
He thinks again of Goode’s audacity. Undermining his authority at work. Threatening him! He is going to make her rue the day. Establishing her identity is just the first step. Robbins is confident that nobody hides behind anonymity to cover up a good deed. She has history. He is sure of it: she has tried to bury an embarrassment. He will exhume it, to ruin her reputation as an honest journalist, to poison her stream of advertising revenue.
He is prepared to gatecrash the AAG meeting. The first part of this scheme is already in progress: being pissed at Agarwal for the need to gain access surreptitiously. He regrets the hours he has previously wasted in tolerating Agarwal’s company and his tortuous narratives, just in case he might eventually prove useful – like, for example, allowing him to attend this meeting. Agarwal’s refusal betrayed that he had not previously organized a symposium. The giveaway was the manner of the declaration that “registration is full”. In Robbins’ eyes, this was the exaggerated confidence of a small man handling his first big responsibility. Rules are rules.
Robbins has compensated by memorizing the layout of the conference facility from the information that the hotel conveniently posted on-line. He has obtained the symposium schedule from the sponsor’s website. He can just stroll into the meeting. From his previous experiences participating in small meetings, Robbins anticipates lax security. Or even none at all, because the organizers will be focused on maximizing attendance, not keeping out uninvited guests.
He is still in his workout clothes. But he has plenty of time to get ready. A taxi will pick him up in forty-five minutes.