Previous: Chapter 6. Surprise, sometimes, will come around
Chapter 7. I’m relying on your common decency
It’s obvious you hate me, though, I’ve done nothing wrong (Depeche Mode, “People Are People”)
Helensburgh, September 2027
And so the summer rains passed, and the autumn rains began. As I had expected, Li-Zhen had a rough time with the chemo but somehow, much to my surprise, she still managed to keep her research going. To what extent this was thanks to Mirza I never knew. I for my part shepherded the paper on the first phase of the research through the publication process, and so by early October, the official, peer-reviewed version was published in Nature Communications. Although the scientific community had for the most part accepted our results based on the preprint, the publication did not go unnoticed. There was a lot of media interest and even mainstream politicians started to pay attention, as some reporters would quiz them about the contingency planning for the AMOC collapse. Which of course they deflected, but it raised the project profile so much that even the tabloids started running AMOC articles.
Li-Zhen had her surgery almost on the same day the paper was published, and to our unending relief it went very well. The neoadjuvant chemotherapy had been very effective, and the medical team was confident the tumour had been completely removed. There would likely be no need for follow-on chemo or radiation therapy.
Although we had not publicised Li-Zhen’s illness, because of her high profile the media had quickly become aware of it. The result had been an unexpected wave of sympathy, well wishing — and more crowdfunding.
On the strength of the work in the paper, the team leads had once again approached their funding councils, and some of them displayed some unexpected adaptability by providing follow-on funding.
Helensburgh, October 2027
It was purely by chance that I saw the submarine returning on a wet morning in October, with horizontal rain streaking over the Gareloch. I was up a bit earlier than usual, and looking blearily out of the window over the loch at the veils of driving rain. I could barely make out the brutal, dark shape gliding through the choppy water with its twin tugs pushing it towards the Faslane base.
While I watched it pass by, a feeling of apprehension and excitement rose up in me. It could of course be a different submarine but given the timing I thought that highly unlikely. So I would soon know if it had brought any data. I resolved to be patient and to wait until I heard from Eilidh. And for the next few days, waiting was all I did. I felt in limbo. I didn’t accomplish anything. I couldn’t focus at all. When I finally got the call I was so nervous that at first I could hardly pick up the phone. But Eilidh’s warm voice brought me right down to earth. “Hi Sigrid, John is finally back, how about meeting up this weekend?”
I had just the presence of mind to reply “That would be wonderful! It’s my turn this time, isn’t it? How about Saturday night around seven?”
I am not a fancy cook, but there are a few recipes that I learned to make from helping out in the kitchen as a child. I vividly recall the kitchen of our old house in Ketapang, with the intense green light of the tropical sun filtered through the leaves of the almond trees spilling in through the open window, and a delicious smell of frying spices. I could still see myself standing there, barely tall enough to reach the worktop, helping my mum make ayam pansuh. Over the years I had developed my own vegan version of the dish. At least it would be something new and unusual for Eilidh and John.
We had a very pleasant meal and talked about the project and many other things besides. They are both wonderful dinner companions. Of course, not a word about the submarine mission. Almost casually, with just a hint of a wink, John gave me an encrypted memory stick, “Ah, by the way, here’s that file I promised you.”
The stick contained a single dataset combining the observations from both submarines. The next days I ran a comprehensive array of sanity checks on the data, and everything checked out. When I overlaid it on a map of the AMOC, I saw how very cleverly the operation had been carried out. It looked like sets of sequences of points on slightly curved lines, arranged such that they frequently intersected with the current, but reconstructing the trajectory of each submarine was impossible. I also marvelled at the wealth of data. Not just the amount of it, but in particular the depths at which some of the samples had been obtained would be virtually impossible to achieve by any of our survey vessels.
I shared it with a few key people who did their own thorough integrity checks. Once we were all are satisfied, we shared the data with the teams, impressing once more on them that secrecy was of the essence.
Glasgow, February 2028
We agreed to keep a lower profile than before with few official press releases, and when asked about the work, we stuck to the cover story. It seemed to work for a little while.
So far, although the project had received a lot of attention, more than I had ever thought possible, it had mostly come from friendly corners. Even the tabloids, where they had bothered to take notice, seemed to be broadly on the side of us boffins. But with the official publication of the first results, that happy façade started to crumble.
Obviously, the AMOC collapse was going to cause dramatic changes. Very bad things were going to happen and it was therefore in the interest of some to downplay or even deny it. Apparently we had now crossed the line where shadowy actors came to play, and they were clearly well-organised. A disinformation campaign appeared on social media, as well as an attempt at a smear campaign. Some self-styled journalists had been digging into my past and that of Li-Zhen and Mirza, and likely that of the others as well; vague accusations and blatant lies about us started to surface in various places. It was very upsetting. I had been a boring, diligent and honest academic with nothing to hide for my whole career — until now, that is — and yet, to read the stories about me, I was one of the most dishonest opportunists alive, and Li-Zhen was even worse, with hints of embezzlement of funds, and Mirza had backstabbed his way to the top. There was also a huge rise in plain racist, misogynistic and in Mirza’s case homophobic posts. I didn’t have much of a social media presence and I could quite easily lock it down even more, or just leave it for a while; but both Li-Zhen and Mirza were quite active on their social media platforms and for them this sudden and unexpected wave of ad-hominem attacks came as a nasty shock.
On a dark, dreich night when February was at its most depressing, I was having a quiet dinner with John and Eilidh and near the end I mentioned this state of affairs to them. John got a very grave look on his face, quite unusual for him. “I think, Sigrid,” he said thoughtfully, “that you should move somewhere else until your paper is published, and your team mates as well.”
“But John,” I retorted, “it’s not as serious as all that, it’s just very annoying.”
John shook his head. “I can’t agree with you there. From what you’re saying, this looks orchestrated, and I fear it will get far worse. Are you on the electoral roll?”
I nodded.
“There you are then, you must assume that any time now, people will be showing up on your doorstep to harass you.” He looked at Eilidh, and she nodded. I somehow got the impression that they had discussed all this before. “We’d like to propose that you move in with us a while. And at the very least your friends Li-Zhen and Mirza should move somewhere safe too.”
I was really taken aback. John was right, and I realised now that I had known this for a while but refused to acknowledge it. The situation was not simply a minor annoyance.
“But if you are right,” I protested, “then I don’t want to get both of you involved in all this. Would it not be better if I go somewhere on my own?”
Eilidh wasn’t having this. “Don’t worry about us. It’s you they’re after, and your friends. Also, the idea is that nobody will know that you are staying with us. So nobody will come and knock on our door.”
I wasn’t convinced, “What if I’m being followed?”
John said, “With a little care, it’s easy to get in here unobserved. You may have noticed the lane behind the house. It has a continuous wall running along all the properties in the street, with a separate back gate for each of them. There is no way to hide there, and without seeing exactly which gate you enter, no way to know in which house you are staying. And it’s shared with the parallel street below us. I’ll arrange with a neighbour that you can go through their garden. Nobody can follow you there.”
“Unless of course there are many of them,” I objected, but I realised I had now started to treat this as a kind of a game.
John replied, “That is true, if the opponent is powerful enough, they would find you anyway. If things would get that bad, you’d have to apply for police protection. But my assessment is that it’s not on that level. These are people attempting to discredit your results, not terrorists or organised criminals.”
Still, this was an unprecedented step, and not just for me, so we agreed I would discuss it with the team the next day and let them know.
“Call me tomorrow when you’ve decided,” Eilidh said when I was leaving. I felt thoroughly chastened and shaken as I made my way back home through the dark winter night. With shadows everywhere, the deserted streets where I had loved to walk at night were all of a sudden no longer friendly, and even the safety of my own home now seemed an illusion. I couldn’t help but glance around surreptitiously before opening the front door. But there was nobody there, no lurkers in the shadows, no suspicious cars.
I sat down with a cup of herbal infusion and thought the matter over. Looking at it with a sober eye, it wasn’t I who was in any real danger, only the project; and actually, the prospect of living for a while with Eilidh was rather appealing.
It was just after midnight. I didn’t think I would be able to sleep before settling this so I set up an emergency meeting for 3am. If nothing else, that should show the others it was something extraordinary. Nothing but an emergency could move me to forego my sleep like that.
And so, a few hours later, we were all there, three slightly worried or puzzled faces, or maybe just bemused. “It’s like this. A friend of mine who I respect a lot in such matters has advised that we all move to a safe place until the paper is out. Eza, for you it might be less of an issue as you have been largely left alone until now, haven’t you?”
“Mostly, yes,” Eza agreed. “The only thing so far is that I got an anonymous phone call at work, somebody harassing me, although it wasn’t clear why or what about. I’ve alerted University security but of course they couldn’t trace the call. From now on I will have all my calls routed through a secretary who’ll do some screening.”
“I’m very sorry to hear that, Eza, “ I said, “I hope that will put a stop to it.”
“Well, I’m not taking any calls from numbers I don’t know on my own phone, and on social media nothing bad has happened yet. Here in Malaysia the whole thing is not much in the news.”
“I really hope for you it stays that way. So what do you all think of this proposal?”
Mirza replied without any hesitation, “I agree with it. I was discussing something like that with my partner yesterday. The way this is going, it won’t take long before someone doxxes us and that would make our life really hell. We’ve already been thinking where we could go.”
Li-Zhen agreed, “I hadn’t really considered it until now but I think what you propose is wise. My social media is awful right now, and I had been worrying where this would lead to. I think I will make this an opportunity to do something I’ve wanted to do for a long time: to go and live on a boat.”
I smiled, “You got the sailing bug from our brave teams?”
Li-Zhen answered quite seriously but with a bright smile, “Not really, I’ve wanted to do this for ages, but their adventures made me want it a lot more.” Her smile faded “Not that I think I’ll have time for any actual sailing.”
Eza joined in, “At least not until the paper is out, but afterwards you should really do it, Li-Zhen! It sounds wonderful!”
“What about you, Eza?” I asked.
“I’m not sure, Sigrid,” she said. “With Nur in school it’s hard to see how we could move, and even if we did, I think it would be easy to trace us. I think I’ll wait and see. It’s you three who are the real targets, you have become quite high-profile. There’s really not much point in discrediting me, I’m not important enough.”
After the meeting I went to bed much easier in my mind. Luckily it was winter, and it wouldn’t be light for hours yet; and I didn’t have to go to the Institute the next day. I slept soundly until 10am, had a slow breakfast and phoned Eilidh.
Less than a week later, I was ready to move in with them.
I told my neighbours I would be travelling for a few months and put a “No Vacancies” sign in my window, which would lead most people to believe that this was a B&B closed for the winter and explain why the place was empty.
As it turned out, John had been right and events soon took a more serious turn. We started receiving multiple Freedom of Information requests about the project, in particular about the observational data. They were all rejected as a matter of course as research in progress is exempt, but it showed we had appeared on somebody’s radar. For every refused request, a volley of posts appeared on social media, inveigling that these refusals meant we must have something to hide. That this was true didn’t make it any easier for us. What made it even worse was that some of the requests came from proper gutter press journalists, so our project was now duly dragged through the mud in the tabloids, and some of these were the same tabloids that had been on our side barely a few months ago.
Early April there was an attempt to hack into the research machines of several of the teams. This appeared to be a concerted attack: several sites across the globe got hacked at roughly the same time. Some of the more cybersecurity-savvy postdocs in our teams had somehow detected the intrusion and alerted the other teams before any of our institutions had noticed. A forensic analysis by the experts clearly showed that several of the machines had been compromised.
Apart from the distraction in having to deal with the fall-out (including talking to the police, as our respective institutions took such cyber attacks very seriously), the break-ins did not cause much harm. It seemed that the intruders had been looking for data, not trying to sabotage our systems. And they had had little luck — not because our data was so secure, rather because the research was not very organised. Saved by messiness. But it was a real wake-up call: we clearly needed to be more security-conscious. Another thing for my checklist. Luckily, the postdocs were already on to it.
Also, it was most disconcerting. Somebody must have gotten suspicious about our data and tried to find some signs of irregularities. And it was a somebody with the wherewithal to carry out a concerted cyber attack. It seemed only a small step from having our homes and offices burgled. I was very glad I had moved, and when travelling to and from the office I tried at least to make sure I wasn’t followed. I probably wasn’t.
As expected, there had been a few leaks of the actual provenance, but they had been vague and, paradoxically, the internet seemed to consider those claims as fabrications. No wonder, because the truth was indeed hardly credible. So speculations about the “real” provenance had started to crop up. And as I had halfway expected, and rather dreaded, soon after a rumour started circulating that our data had been faked. Luckily, the FoI exemption meant the University did not have to give access to the data or even discuss its origins, and the University’s data protection team seemed to take some grim relish in fending off the queries. But this was something that could really damage the public perception of the project. I didn’t want to dwell on it as there was no point. It was quite simple: people who wanted the research to be wrong would hold on to their conviction that it was all fake, and there was nothing we could do about it. People who actually doubted would be convinced by our evidence. And for our growing number of true believers, it made no difference anyway. They would probably still believe us even if we’d faked the results. I vaguely recalled some rather dubious character in a novel saying that it was OK to believe the right things for the wrong reasons. Not that I liked it but it was what people did.
Meanwhile we continued to stick to our cover story of a survey funded by an anonymous benefactor. There was of course no evidence of such a survey in the public domain, but that was hardly surprising. What our opponents would need was the evidence that there had not been a survey, which was a much harder problem. Without knowing the port of departure it was practically impossible to identify the survey ship. The only way to work it out would be to find all private survey ships and trace their activity in the last years, and find out who commissioned these. I was a bit worried that someone might attempt that task, but then again it would likely take longer than we needed to publish the new results: even considering only Yachts For Science, there were over a thousand vessels, and there were many shipping companies where you could lease a survey vessel. At least a few of them were bound to have covered some relevant part of the Atlantic. The probability of someone taking the military provenance seriously might very well be higher.
It was all very vexing and distracting, not to mention exhausting on a personal and emotional level. We simply weren’t used to people being so nasty. But the bright side was that, assuming we could hold out until publication, the disclosure of the real source of the data would be all the more impactful. And for me, sneaking into Eilidh and John’s garden after darkness had quickly become routine, and living with them was, at least for the time being, even more pleasant than living on my own. Meanwhile, another spring had come to Helensburgh, the cherry trees were blooming, the weather was lovely and somehow I couldn’t take all that dark dread seriously anymore. My mood lifted and I decided to enjoy the Scottish spring and summer as much as I could (if it would let me).
Next: Chapter 8. Celebrate the day a better world was won