Chapter 16: Foam Heart

Yoshi picked up the white foam heart and gave it a squeeze. Clutching it in his hand he crossed the corridor and stuck his head through the door of the office opposite. Spying Marshall sitting there with a furrowed brow and the frayed end of a pencil bouncing between his teeth, Yoshi gauged the weight of the heart and sidearmed it at his target. It flashed past Marshall’s back and thudded into the filing cabinet behind. He turned around confused, but not surprised. He raised an eyebrow at his attacker and removed the buds from his ears. He tapped the spacebar.

            “What’s going on?”

            “Got surgery. You said you wanted to sit in?” Yoshi moved towards him and bent to pick up his heart but Marshall blocked him with his chair, spinning around to stamp his foot down on the ball.

            “You going now?”

            Yoshi stood back up. “I’ve got everything ready, yeah.”

            “Can you give a second? I wanna get this sentence right.” Marshall extended his hand and picked up the heart and showed it to Yoshi. “Thanks.” He put it behind his monitor. Yoshi backed slowly out of the room keeping his eyes trained on his friend all the way. Marshall put the buds back in and turned back to the screen. He unpaused his music and tilted his forehead at the text before of him, bathed in the vacuum of noise.

KLF4 binds Cyclin D2. G1/S arrest. KLF4 up at 18h; PC3 and MPP. cc w/draw imp for C.

            He played around with his notes, expanding, contracting, typing, deleting, cutting, inserting, until he was happy with the progression and cadence of the sentence. Finally, after 5 minutes of piercing thought he re-read what he had written.

As the transcription factor KLF4 directly binds the Cyclin D2 promoter to suppress cell cycle progression at the G1/S boundary (Klaewsongkram et al. 2007), increased KLF4 protein within 18 hours of the addition of Phenrododiol to both murine prostate cancer primary cultures and the PC-3 cell line indicates the imperative for cell cycle withdrawal in prostatic tumorigeneisis (Figure 5.4B and C).

Marshall leaned back and wrapped his hands around the back of his head. He saved the document, locked his computer and went to look for Yoshi. He found him loitering over Leigh’s shoulder reading the latest edition of the West.

“Hey Leigh. You ready Yoshi?”

“Hey Mar.” She waved, but didn’t look up from her paper.

“Yeah.” Yoshi stretched up to his full height, such as it was, and stretched, yawned. “Let’s get going.” He picked up his sterilised toolkit from his desk, while Marshall grabbed the rope of the esky and followed close behind.

Yoshi swiped his card against the sensor and opened the door into the gowning room. They pulled blue plastic booties on over the top of their shoes and slipped their arms into scrubs, tying them blind behind their backs. They proceeded through the ante-side of the airlock and into the animal facility to render themselves anonymous behind duck-billed facemasks and surgical gloves.

Marshall started up the bio-cabinet and doused the cold steel with jets of ethanol, wiping the surface dry with a paper towel. Yoshi inspected the cardboard tags on the front of the Perspex boxes, pulled one down from the stack and placed it in the bio-cabinet. He removed the lid and snatched at the tail of an unsuspecting mouse. Lifting it from the cage and onto his sleeve he checked it for signs of injury or weakness, letting it move around on his arm with its tail held between his fingers, gentle yet firm. Judging it to be healthy he set it back into its cage, picked up a littermate by its tail and repeated the process for each mouse. He moved with all the skill afforded by years of practice. Content he placed the cage in a carry box and selected another from the stack. He inspected the animals in kind and added the second cage to the box. Marshall watched intently from the side.

Yoshi placed the box onto a trolley and cleaned up after himself with ethanol, keeping it all as sterile as possible for the next person. Yoshi removed the aluminium mouse barrier from its slots in front of the door, pushed the trolley through and replaced the gate.

They took the mice to the lab and Yoshi set up his implements- forceps, scissors, scalpel, pins, board, scales, saline, paper towels, ethanol- before grabbing the tail of the nearest mouse. He clucked softly at the mouse as he let it relax on his sleeve; it nestled into the crook of his arm. When Yoshi prized it away from the fabric of his sleeve it flattened itself out and flew like superman. When it was lowered onto a metal grill it instinctively gripped tight to the wire and pulled against the force fixing its tail. The ball of Yoshi’s thumb came down onto the back of its neck before it even had time to contemplate its situation. Yoshi pulled the tail straight backwards and rolled his thumb over the neck until his palm faced away. Vertebrae dislocating cracked dully. It all happened so fast. Yoshi, expressionless, pinched the neck to make sure it was properly broken. Both men turned away so as not to watch the convulsive death rattle.

Once it stopped kicking, Yoshi weighed the mouse, announced the readout for Marshall to record in the red notebook, and sprayed its torso with ethanol. He cut off the tail with scissors, then through the skin halfway up its back and tore the skin from the lower half of the body before pinning the animal to the board. He peeled away the fat pads and connective tissue of the abdomen and delicately removed the prostate. After rinsing with saline and weighing it Yoshi cut it in two, placing one piece in a plastic tube and dropping it into the dewar of liquid nitrogen, and mounting the other in a mould of Vectashield and freezing it over a boat of isopentane sailing on a sea of nitrogen.

The ritual was repeated for each animal. For the last two Yoshi offered Marshall the opportunity to gain some experience.

“Guess I’d better learn sometime- pad the CV and all that.”

They switched places- Marshall onto the stool and Yoshi looking on from the side. Marshall replicated Yoshi’s movements as best he could. He felt the crack of the neck, pinched the scruff and felt for the separation of the vertebrae. Feeling no bumps he released the tail. The body twitched a few times, legs kicking frantically at the air, before settling motionless atop the wire mesh.

“That really gives me the creeps, how it keeps kicking.”

“Yeah. I still find it disconcerting. It’s even worse when you manage to unnerve yourself.”

“What. You psyche yourself out?”

“Oh from time to time. Everyone loses their nerve sometimes. It can be weeks before you can do it again. You can’t plan for it. It just happens. I’ve had to get one of the tech’s to step in for me before.”

“Shit. I guess it goes to show that Chinks have feelings too.”

“Still, it’s the best way. The quicker, the better. The mouse doesn’t have time to get unnecessarily stressed. The faster and less handling the better. Sod my feelings.”

“I guess so…”

Marshall adjusted the eyepieces and the torches on the dissecting microscope. Yoshi sat by and instructed him through the surgery and extraction.

“So how are things going with Hazel?”

“Yeah, pretty good.”

“Just pretty good?”

Marshall smiled.

“Your head’s been in the fucking clouds these past few weeks.”

“Has it?”

“Yep. She’s got quite a hold on you, hasn’t she?”

“I guess so. She is pretty great.”

“I’ll say. If you fuck it up I will personally smash you. She’s smokin’.”

Marshall laughed. “I’ll bear that in mind, then.”

“Make sure you do.”

Marshall maneuvered the forceps to expose the posterior of the prostate. Both he and Yoshi held their breath as he lowered the scissors. The sharpened tips trembled lightly. Tentatively he snipped first the vas deferens, ureters and urethra before removing the prostate itself, slicing it in two with a scalpel.

“I’ve got a couple of old breeders that should probably be culled. Do you want to start up an old-age primary?”

“Mmm. I guess I should. Do you have any spare digest medium?”

“In the coolroom. In the yellow rack I think. It’s a couple of weeks old, though,” said Yoshi.

“Meh. It’ll be fine.” Marshall waved a dismissive hand at him. “If you want to go get them I’ll stay and get everything set up.”

“Sure.”

“Have fun.”

“You too.”

Between Here and the Sky- Chapter 4: The Cellar

Looking at the clock in the bottom corner of his screen for the thousandth time that day Marshall declared it to be time to head to the pub. He shut down the computer for the weekend and checked that his drawers were locked before throwing his satchel over his shoulder and crossing the corridor to Yoshi’s office. Together they did the rounds of the department, picking up those who were keen and a few who were not so keen but didn’t want to create a scene by refusing.

They left the building as a mob, Yoshi skipping ahead while Marshall called Piers to let him know they’d already left. They procured a table in the beer garden under the shade of the oak trees as Marshall went to the bar and bought 2 jugs of Golden Ale to kick things off. Karl and Leigh lambasted him- Karl for not getting Amber Ale, and Leigh for getting beer in the first place. Leigh went to get a bottle of red as Karl and Marshall started pouring out the beer.

By the end of Happy Hour the group was down to its core members of Marshall, Piers, Yoshi, Karl and Leigh, the others making their excuses and heading home for the weekend. Marshall had his arms around Karl’s hulking shoulders at one end of the table, going over the details of his latest breakup, while the others entertained themselves with their plans for the forthcoming Postgraduate Student Association cocktail night.

According to Karl the breakup had been due to his inability to go to Leigh’s mother’s 60^th birthday party, and that if he couldn’t commit to something so small, yet so meaningful to her, then what was the point in staying together? In her mind it meant that Karl was afraid of commitment. He had tried to dissuade her- that he had an important timed experiment that had to be done- but she wasn’t listening. So that was that. Karl stared vacantly into the froth of his beer.

The relationship between Karl and Leigh stretched back some years to their time in student politics, when Karl had been VP of the Student Guild having formed a coalition with the not-quite-as-left-as-him Labor Party. He was loathe to call himself a communist and risk being tarred with the same brush as the campus socialists involved in circular group-think and handing out copies of the Socialist Weekly outside the Reid library. Despite his personal manifesto being in a state of continual flux, like-minded people still seemed to be pulled into his orbit like moons around a planet. If he had the self-confidence to match his formidable intellect he would have been a danger to any impressionable fresher looking to shift their ideology from the right-wing dogma of their middle-class parents. As it was he was tearing himself up with Leigh.

Leigh, an avowed Green had been one of the normal members of the Guild Council. She spent much of her time at these weekly meetings trading glances with this larger-than-life character over the polished wooden table while their peers drafted pressers condemning the actions of Japanese whalers and declaring the campus a safe haven for refugees. They discovered a shared source of amusement trading in underhanded and cynical comments while everyone else seemed too caught up in their own moral seriousness. Before long Leigh found herself in Karl’s flat, naked, after several hours debating the Northern Territory Intervention over a cask of rough red. Even from the start their relationship was built on seismic fault lines. They were both as bad as each other.

The drama Karl and Leigh wrote together was at simultaneously irritating and amusing to those caught up in their web. They were wonderful and engaging people and both thoroughly enjoyed a long night out, but their acquaintances were never quite sure of the status of their relationship and, not wanting to bring the topic up in conversation, would ignore the entire thing until someone informed them of the pendulum’s swing.

The evening had reached the fork in the road. Either they could take the low road and continue in the current quixotic frenzy and be written off by dinner time, or they could take the high road, put the brakes on and make a night of it. In the spirit of democracy they argued the merits of each option before putting it to a vote. Leigh voted for annihilation, but it was all for nought. Piers, Marshall and Yoshi were intent on making it to the gig, while Karl agreed predominantly as a means of pissing Leigh off. She rolled her eyes and poured the final dribble of the wine into her glass.

They finished off the last of their drinks and gathered their bags from underneath the table. The boys tried to convince Leigh to come out with them and enjoy a night out on the town, Karl even lowered his lance in reconciliation, but she offered her excuses and made off into the night. She had designs on going around to her best friend’s house with a couple more bottles of wine to curl up on the couch in front of the heater and bitch about life. All the time being surrounded by the boys had built up so much pressure inside her that she needed to vent.

Piers called his brother and got him to reserve another couple of tickets on the door. The four of them would split the cost of the fourth. They caught a taxi into Northbridge and after paying wandered through a back alley into the heart of what passed as the local version of Chinatown. A young spruiker, probably the daughter of the owner, welcomed them into a room where the tables were wedged tightly around each other and the walkways were choked with a gridlock of food trolleys. They approached the maitre de with the number of people to be seated, took a number and loitered out the front trying to topple each other into piles of rubbish bags that lined the redbrick wall.

At the call of their number they slid back inside and around a plastic-covered table and steeled themselves for the onslaught ahead. As the gleaming metallic carts came around they selected an array of baskets filled with various steamed and fried dumplings and giant plates of deep fried squid tentacles battered in garlic they took glee in calling ‘curly fries’. A couple of pots of complimentary green tea were delivered to their table to help wash it all down, rehydrating and preparing them for the night ahead.

It only took them 20 minutes to gorge themselves to the brink of coma. Their eyes glazed over and their jaws hung slack from the mountains of MSG now lining their stomachs. They loosened their belts, slouched in their chairs, stared at the ceiling and smiled contentedly, blissed with the state of the world.

While they were in their fugue the staff bustled around them like birds, clearing away empty bowls, cups, baskets, napkins and plates. A freshly printed white bill was placed deliberately in the middle of the table, a message to ‘pay up and get out so we can do another sitting’. They each put in $15 for the pleasure of the experience and, groaning their appreciation, slid back out into the aisle and waddled out the door.

Hit by the blare of the shouts and noise of James Street a sudden fear overcame them. The fog of MSG lifting from their eyes and they looked out of terrified eyes. Their urge was to dart back the way they came and regain their composure before figuring out a plan to skirt around the sinister heart of Northbridge. Instead they steeled themselves and lifted a façade of nonchalance so as not to let their illusions of masculinity be perceived. Not uttering a word of the fear each was silently battling, they strode purposefully up the street weaving in and out of traffic intent on not making eye contact with strangers, and making it to the other end undamaged.

They were headed towards a regular haunt on the fringes of the city. Nights at The Cellar were typically filled in equal measures by magical musical gems- those that shine so bright you think they will explode- and miscarriages- trashed equipment and bandmates turning on each other mid-song. It acted as a lone beacon to those youths disenchanted with the shiny lights and plastic sounds, the drunken brawlers, the smeared skanks and the strip clubs that pass as popular entertainment. It offered the opportunity to immerse oneself in a counter-culture amongst the painfully cool kids with their tattoos, piercings and avant-garde fashions. But more than that, a place to go to forget yourself, to forget your inhibitions and just act as though you are the only person left in the universe. A place of freedom. To dance without worrying about the eyes of others judging your every move. Because no one was there to care about what anybody else did, so long as there was a spirit and mood created to carry them through the dark of night.

Nightclub bouncers lay in wait for the disorderly teens to descend from the suburbs. They hurried past and made it to The Cellar as the queue was dwindling and people were filing into the outer courtyard. An unorganised line had spread out across the bar as patrons waited impatiently for the staff to tend to their whims. A couple of guys were plugging cords into their synthesisers on the stage inside. Marshall, Piers and Karl got beers with which to recommence their drinking, while Yoshi rued his ancestry and got a pint of water. Small clumps of people randomly dotted the floor of the room, some sitting, some standing, a couple dancing. They assumed their positions towards the back of the dance floor nodding and shifting their weight almost in time with the beat. After a couple of songs they grew restless and returned to the concrete garden to perch on stacks of wooden pallets while they waited for Alby’s turn to take the stage.

An interval between the acts gave the fashionable latecomers a chance to arrive and lean nonchalantly against the walls of the club. Finally the MC summonsed everyone to crush into the dimly lit room. The scientists were washed forwards to end up around the paisley-printed pillar in the centre of the room by the tide of people eager to secure a good vantage point. By the time the house lights went down the room was full, with barely room for the small women to squeeze through to the front and they clutched their beers close to their chests.

A cheer rose to greet Eye’s Quittin’ as they strode through the black velvet curtain to the stage. They shouldered arm and scrunched up their sleeves nervously while they awaiting the drummers signal to begin. The drummer, decked in only Wayfarers and torn denim shorts attacked the snare with a machine gun staccato attack before launching into a relentlessly complex pattern of toms, bass and snare. The bass joined and swirled intricately around the drum rolls. The guitars fed around each other and through all manner of effects pedals- one buzzing and sawing a rhythm, the other trilling and picking out a melody. Jarring counterpoints melted into slick harmony and back again. Timings morphed and stretched the rhythms, melodies and counter-melodies seamlessly. Breath was paused. The banter at the bar surrendered to the intensity on stage. Those closest leaned in to breathe the music; smiles splitting their faces in half. The room was on the brink of falling apart into a billion tiny fragments, held together only by the collective strength of those on stage and the rapturous and glowing faces hanging on their every sound.

Alby and his co-vocalist Zach stalked and preened out in front as though this was what they had been put on this earth to do. They traded front-man duties, the other taking up station at either at the series of pedals and switches on the floor, or beating the second drum kit on the side of the stage to within an inch of its life. They were loud and relentless, pushing the music forward into new and vital places. Feet were moved, hearts were raced, limbs were flailed, brows were wiped. Eyes from every direction burned and illuminated the stage.

The drummer appeared as though overcome by some unseen force that would launch him through the bass drum, across the stage, through the crowd and out the door at any moment, tracks smouldering in his wake. The audience dared not look away for fear of missing the offer of enlightenment radiating from the stage. They were statues during the eerie, woozy troughs, and flailed as though decapitated through the soaring crescendos. They would do anything the music commanded them.

They played the album straight through from start to finish, intricately weaving one song into the next without pause to create a single, overwhelming symphony. They left the stage bathed in layers of reverb, the lights softly breathing through the smoke to the instruments flung haphazardly across the floor. The audience roared their appreciation, and as the drone of feedback subsided Alby and Zach returned to stage. Zach plugged in the acoustic guitar strapped over his shoulder and Alby bent and picked up a trumpet from between the drums. Zach elicited the nostalgic sound of crackling vinyl from an effects pedal and began to pick out a simple two bar melody, and Alby coaxed an achingly pretty sustained note from his muted horn. The three other band members calmly walked on stage, huddled around a microphone and together softly began to breathe the chant ‘it’s all alright’. One by one their voices broke away from the central line, folding harmonies around each other and enveloping the silenced audience in a cloud of bliss. Marshall closed his eyes and soared above the room, swooping and soaring with the music. A perfect dénouement; a cool rain after a hot day.

The band took their bows and sustained applause escorted them from the stage. Out back they were quiet, smiling blissfully and patting each other on the arms for a job well done. Out the front, Marshall’s chest burst with pride over what he had just witnessed, Karl joined the line for merchandise, and Yoshi continued to nod his head in dazed appreciation well after the floor had been cleared. Electric murmurs swept through those in line as they waited to pick up a copy of the album, before dispersing into the night to bury it in their stereos in a desperate attempt to relive the night. 

Between Here and the Sky- Chapter 2: Primers

As he neared the end of his candidature the amount of work still needing to be done loomed in front of Marshall like an angry hydra- each head a different branch of the project that somehow had to be coaxed and cajoled into a smooth and consistent thesis. Time was running out. The days were lengthening with the coming of summer and with a determination brought about by the fear of failure he forced his mind to burn from sunrise to sunset.

By now he was used being the first in the lab. Well, it was either he or his lab mate Yoshi. They had started their PhD’s at more-or-less the same time, albeit from different directions, and had worked together quite a lot, helping out with the more time consuming and repetitive elements of their experiments. Both thought it was a good thing to have some companionship through the ups and downs of their candidature, even if working that closely with another person for so long inevitably led to squabbling, bickering, the odd fight. In effect they were like brothers forced together by fate or whatever grand design there is in the world, if indeed there is any.

Marshall threw the switches to the fluorescent lights to revel the usual white starkness of the laboratory. Bottles of clear liquids labelled with autoclave tape lined the shelves; the air-conditioning sprang to life with the lights. Overnight the lab had developed the fetid stench of mouse shit and piss, a consequence of the renovations being done in the animal house below disrupting the extraction and conditioning of the surrounding rooms. Marshall screwed his nose up in disgust. He knew he would take half an hour before the smell would clear. In the meantime he would have to suck it up.

He slipped the starched lab coat over his shoulders and pressed the studs closed at the front before slouching around the bench. In a well-practised motion he ferreted out some gloves- large- from their cardboard box. He cursed as the latex band around the wrist tore and he had to put on another. Once his hands were secured and the polystyrene box filled with crushed ice Marshall delved into the freezer to collect his reagents. The laminar flow hood started its familiar rumble as he turned it on and leaned its metal sash against the bench. The radio noise was lost in the din. Marshall grabbed a plastic bottle and sprayed ethanol over the metallic interior of the hood and wiped it down with a paper towel. He placed the frozen tubes of reagents to thaw on the grill over the rush of filtered air. He stuck a yellow post-it to the glass panel separating him from the hood and placed 72 tiny plastic tubes into their holes in the frozen metal rack and selected a yellow-tip pipette. Following the recipe he’d scrawled onto the post-it he set to work.

16 samples, duplicate; 4 standards;  p53 and GAPDH ((16x2)+4)x2
	1x	36x (+8%)
Sybr	5	194.4
Primer-F	1	38.88
Primer-R	1	38.88
H2O	2	77.76
cDNA	1

Without really thinking about it, Marshall aliquoted nine microlitres of the cocktail into each of the tiny tubes. He reflected with wonder at the number of such pipette motions he’d done over the course of his PhD, and how many more he would do before he finished. Millions. A new robot had recently been installed in the department to do such tasks for them, but both Marshall and Yoshi preferred the absolute control of doing the entire procedure themselves. Now that they were nearing the end neither wanted to start messing with a system that they both knew worked. Of course, if something went wrong with their system there was no one to blame but themselves, but to their minds this was a small price to pay for absolute confidence in their results. Marshall sighed and kept pipetting as cramp started to set in to thumb and wrist.

Yoshi walked through the doorway as though searching for something. Marshall looked in his direction and Yoshi idly waved and entered the cool room. A moment later he stepped out and called across the room.

“I’m gonna run a gel. Do you have any samples you want run?”

Marshall pondered at the ceiling a while. “Nah.”

“I’ve only doing two samples. It seems such a waste, but it beats trying to write.”

Marshall laughed, then as Yoshi turned away, returned to work. He’d lost his place. Lifting tubes out of their slots he found where he was up to and continued in his precise but absent-minded way. Once each tube had been filled he turned on the next hood, removing its sash in one practised movement and transferred the rack into it. He lined up the 16 experimental samples and the 8 standards in order on the grill to thaw and, taking in a deep breath started add the cDNA in careful sequence. He did everything in duplicate to control for any error in his pipetting. All checks and balances must be in place and accounted for. He had to be meticulous. Despite having done this procedure a hundred times, he still had to stay focussed, particularly on this step. Any slip up- putting the cDNA into the wrong tube, forgetting to change tips between each action, losing his place- would mean he would have to start the entire process all over again. He held his breath involuntarily with each motion of his arm and thumb.

He capped the tubes and moved everything into the PCR room, sterilising and shutting down the hoods as he did so. As he turned his back a noise like a gunshot ricocheted off the walls, splinters of plastic thwacked off his jeans. Marshall flinched and turned to be struck in the face by a pair of gloves. Yoshi appeared in the space vacated by the falling gloves.

“Jesus! Motherfucker!”

Yoshi leant against the bench, pointing and laughing.

“You’re a pest.”

“Yep. What are you in so early for?”

“To be hassled by you, whadya think? PCR.”

“Yeah? What are you doing?”

 “p53.” Marshall’s face fell into a pout.

“Haha! p-fucking-53. Sucks to be you.”

 “Tell me about it.” Marshall grimaced. It had been an ongoing pact between the two of them that they would never look at p53. Papers were coming out all the time implicating it in this disease or that pathway, but to their minds it was mostly a load of hot air. They refused to believe that life hinged on one single gene, that if that one gene were to go bung then the whole system would collapse. To them it defied the fundamentals of evolution. Instead they preferred to toil away within their own little obscure niche trying to make a contribution to science without getting caught up in the flashing lights of scientific fads.

“What the hell are you doing that for?”

“I’m just making sure it’s not altered after knockdown of PGC-1α. Just validation, really.”

“You realise you’ll have to dive down that rabbit hole for your lit review, you know.”

“I know...” Marshall looked downtrodden. “Any better ideas?”

“Pfff. You’re on your own. I’m not touching that. Let’s just hope for your sake it’s not changed.” He laughed and Marshall grinned wryly. If it turned out badly he could just write it off as outside the scope of the study and not include it in his thesis. Just a mild case of fraud by omission, really. He turned back towards the PCR machine and loaded the samples into the rotor, being careful to place them in their specified order, and started the run.

95°C for 5 minutes
60°C for 5 seconds
72°C for 5 seconds	-- 45 cycles
95°C for 1 second
55°C à 95°C (0.5°C stepwise)

It would take just over an hour.

Satisfied that the machine could take care of things without his supervision Marshall returned all his reagents and samples to their respective boxes in the freezer, disposed of his gloves and coat and returned to his office. As he switched his computer on he grabbed his jar of coffee and heaped 2 spoonfuls into his oversized mug. Before trotting downstairs he logged on to his computer so it would be primed for his return.

            The screen was brightly lit with a photograph from the farm, but the laptop was still chugging away loading all the settings. “Fucking Vista,” he muttered under his breath. He clicked on the taskbar icon for the internet and the page loaded to the image of three elderly and very naked men in the act of performing an array of sexual acts with each other. “YOSHI!” he yelled as he jabbed at the esc button at the top left of the keyboard.

Giggling could be heard down the corridor. All of the occupants of the third floor were meticulously vigilant about locking their computers when Yoshi was in the vicinity, but for whatever reason- he blamed it on the early hour and lack of caffeine- Marshall had failed to follow protocol. He withdrew his ruler and a handful of elastic bands from his drawer and stuffed a couple of stress balls down his pants to ferment amongst his junk and, locking his computer, set forth to hunt.

It hadn’t been the best of days. To start with it was a Friday, and really nothing potentially momentous should be started on a Friday. That was his first mistake. The second was to take a shortcut. Rather than first testing and optimising the primers and experimental conditions Marshall had skipped ahead and gone straight to running the unvalidated primers directly on his samples. If it had worked it would have saved maybe a weeks work. But as it stood he had instead wasted time, not to mention effort, his precious samples, and the hundreds of dollars in costs. He couldn’t get them back now. Having looked at the computer read-out 40 minutes after it started he’d marched straight back to his desk, unlocked his computer, and sent an email around to his usual accomplices stating that he was heading to the pub early and wasn’t planning on leaving without a security escort at closing time. Until then he had 4 hours to kill.

            He did the usual whip-around of the major news sites to keep up to speed with the world, and tried to at least be productive in his time wasting by cataloguing all the chemicals and machinery he’d used during his project for his Methods chapter, but had instead become caught up chatting with anyone he ran into, anyone that would stop and talk to him of their weekend plans and dreams. He even cornered the head of department to discuss the weekends football tipping and to taunt him over his team’s poor league position. What should have been a half hour task was stretched out to an hour and a half. Impressed with his efforts he rewarded himself with an early lunch.

            He rustled up a group of like-minded postgrads and headed down to Broadway to grab takeaways to eat on the departmental balcony overlooking the med students on the grass below. They sat and ate and shot idle thoughts into the wind for what didn’t seem long enough, until their sense of duty and habit gnawed at their conscience and they burst apart to their own desks or benches within the corridors of the building. Behind their eyes was the Tav later in the afternoon, when all of the week’s troubles and disappointments could be put aside as they toasted each other, the weekend, the world, but until then there was work to be done.

A pile of journal papers was fanned out over Marshall’s keyboard when he returned, evidence of supervisor surveillance. He blew out his cheeks and quickly skimmed the titles- p53 presented a common theme. Fuck. An early finish was wiped from the table.

He unlocked his computer and checked the availability of the PCR machines. His favourite was booked up for the afternoon, but there was a 2-hour slot available on the cantankerous old beast. He shrugged. He was only running optimisation. The beast would suffice. He wrote in his booking, and set about drafting the conditions and settings he’d trial.

“What’s up?” Piers walked into the room through the door at the other end of the office. He wiped at a lock of black hair that had shaken loose and fallen over an eye.

“I’ve just created a whole heap more work for myself.”

“Fuck.”

“Have you knocked off for the day?”

“Nah. Not yet. I’m delivering some documents to the Dean’s office.”

“Isn’t that up your end of campus?”

“Yep.” Piers grinned like a child knowingly doing wrong. “I’ve got a simulation running anyway. Nothing much else for me to do. Just wait.” He sat and spun around on a chair with his feet tucked in to his chest. Marshall watched idly. Piers stopped, facing his friend. “You guys going to the Tav later?”

“Planning on it. I need a fucking drink.”

Piers laughed. “That’s not all you need. Alby’s band is playing at the Cellar tonight. Got their album launch. Wanna come?”

“Sure.” He thought for a moment into dead air space. “Reckon you could get us on the door? I’m running a bit low on cash.”

“I can see what I can do. I’m on the list. Don’t know how many other spots he’s got free.”

“Cheers.”

“They’ve improved a hell of a lot in the past couple of months. Some of their new stuff is fucking immense.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Apparently they’ve got some record labels sniffing around. Like, big ones.”

“Shit, good on ‘em.”

“He’s pretty exciting. And you know how excitable he can be.”

Marshall laughed. He’d met Piers in their first year Chemistry labs, and had straight away had clung to him. He’d only just moved to the city and aside from a few schoolmates in other courses he knew no one. He had to grab hold of whoever would tolerate him. Luckily, Piers had turned out to be just the type of person Marshall had been looking for, and they quickly became close friends.

Whenever he’d gone around to Piers’ house, his younger brother Alby would be hanging around wanting to get involved in whatever they were up to. He could get enthusiastic about anything; even the act of sharing a joint around the table on the patio would impart a wide-mouthed grin on Alby’s face. He always seemed to be excited about everything. He certainly wasn’t like all those 16 year olds he had seen loitering around Forrest Place- all frowns, attitude and eyeliner.

“Have you caught up with that girl from Tuesday night?”

Piers smiled sardonically. “Nah. I messaged, but she didn’t message back. I guess I’ll leave it as a once off.”

“Better than nothing I s’pose.”

“I guess. Well there’ll no doubt be some girls there tonight, and you never know your luck- Alby’s friends are all a little mad.”

“Mad and single?”

“Dunno. Probably?”

“Well I guess I’ll come then. Let me know if you can get more comps.” Marshall turned back to his pencil and paper. “Now if you don’t mind, I have to get some calculations done, and then there are some Flash games that won’t play themselves.”

Piers stood and slapped him on the back. “I’ll be back at 3:30 to collect you for the Tav.”

“No worries. I’ll let you know if we go earlier.”

Piers wandered out the door and down the corridor to Yoshi’s office. Marshall pushed the buds into his ears.