Today is the last day I will be working for the Company. Not that they know – God forbid!
In retrospective, everything seemed so unreal, almost surrealistic. The recruitment approach was like a highly traditional, formalized dance. Cautious feelers were extended, testing the waters. How about working for a different company, hm? Higher pay, a better position and a nice bonus if it’s not only you that is transferred…
Standard procedures were to report such occurrences at once to upper management. Right. Like I was going to miss this chance to get out from under their thumb.
Now, three days later, I didn’t feel so confident anymore. Standing in the laboratory for the last time, something didn’t feel right. There was a cold, wet feeling under my armpits, and the last coffee I had (how many was it? - three, four?) seemed to slowly burn through my stomach lining. I felt like biting my nails, a habit I had kicked pretty quickly when I took up the lab work in the biohazard tract. When you work with mutagens and retroviral vector systems, you tend to keep your hands away from your mouth.
I looked around.
The lab was deserted at the moment, everyone else having left for their cosy little homes, going to their well-adjusted families. I moved over to the containment unit, since that was the only place not covered by the closed-circuit surveillance cameras.
There was no chance of getting at the locked cell cultures kept in the Bio-Safety Level 3 (BSL3) laboratory. But someone has to sterilize the germ-swamped sewer effluents and change the pathogen-saturated air filters on those containment units.
Yeah, that’s me. As the good little lab technician, I get to go through these bio-bug infested labs, fixing equipment, cleaning up, and generally making sure that their royal highnesses have optimal working conditions. Not a job that has people standing in line for it, but nevertheless an immensely lucrative opportunity for someone with upwardly mobile tendencies (well… in a different company, that is).
I got out the clear adhesive tape that I had deposited in my lab coat and started to wrap a thin strip around every finger, with the non-sticky side facing the skin. Going about my normal clean-up routine, I systematically used a different finger to unobtrusively wipe over the work surfaces, picking up stray micro-organisms which literally got stuck on me.
Any decent lab would be able to isolate the bugs from the adhesive and culture them… thus bringing my new employer up to the cutting edge of biotech research, at a fraction of the investment costs. Not years of research for two or three lucky success stories. No, instant hits at the price of paying off just on disgruntled employee. Bugs for bucks, as I would call it.
Flipping one of the air filters, I finished off by pressing the back of my last finger to the filter. I left it reversed. Maybe their royal highnesses would catch a nice flu, or maybe even diarrhoea. One can still hope.
I wrapped up my standard clean-up routine, neglecting however the ritual washing of the hands. Hanging up my lab coat in my locker, I changed to street clothes and headed for the security gate at ground level.
Twice I had to force myself to slow down. Panic, just barely subdued, was fighting it’s way to the surface of my mind. In the darkened entrance hall, the desk of the night watchman was sitting in a pool of light.
I squinted at his name badge, which was dangling from the left breast pocket of a very tight-fitting uniform.
”Good evening, Bob.”
My voice sounded a bit too raspy, and I felt like I was grinning like an idiot. Damn, he’s going to get suspicious. The guard looked up.
“Everything quiet today?”
Now why did I say that?
In the war, they used to shoot spies. I wonder if the rules of industrial espionage had similar policies – probably unwritten ones. I fought down the urge to lick my lips, which suddenly seemed to be parched.
The fat security guard gave me a cursory glimpse. He pressed a button, and a buzzer indicated that the main door was unlocked. I pushed against it, maybe a bit too enthusiastically, and stepped into the street; the fortunes of one company resting in the palms of my hands and travelling to the next at the tips of my fingers.
“Have a nice evening.”