There's room at the top
They are telling you still
But first you must learn
How to smile as you kill
If you want to be
Like the folks on the hill
- John Lennon
* * *
I read a novel The Ax by Donald E. Westlake. In this crazy book, an aging middle-age guy is laid off from a technical management position at a paper manufacturing firm. He can't find any other job in his industry because the jobs are vanishing all over and there are too many guys just as qualified as him. He finally identifies a dream job, but it's currently filled, so he decides to kill the present occupant, opening a vacancy to which he can then apply. But then he realizes that there are a bunch of other guys with pretty much his same exact skills and resume, so to make sure they can't compete with him for the dream job that the murder will open up, he decides to kill all these potential competitors first, then easily get hired into the vacancy he himself creates.
(Hey I didn't write it)
Anyway, my point here is not to talk about the paper industry. My point here is another apparently unrelated fact, the large number of suspicious and unexplained deaths of young or healthy middle-aged microbiologists in recent years. Dozens of apparently healthy, happy, productive and very senior and/or brilliant academic, governmental, and industrial microbiologists and researchers in related areas have been found shot multiple times in the head (suicides); cars wrapped around trees or phone poles (accidents); abandoned cars and no body ever found (missing persons); sure you can say its all coincidence. But saying that marks you as an amateur. Professionals know the truth - there's no such thing as a coincidence.
So here's the thing. I figure somebody read Westlake's book in the first year or two when it had just come out in 1997, and decided to apply the idea to his own field. Timeline fits as this killing spree kicked off about year 2000, 2001 or so. This perp must then be some very senior scientist or research manager type and he's probably got a long term goal to be head of one of the most prestigious science institutions out there - maybe NIH or CDC or WHO. Gotta be, right? So before he launches his bid for the slot, he's paving the road for himself with the blood and bone of these potential competitors. It's a classic case of life imitating art!
Now you yourself probably hold to some stupid, paranoid, and basically treasonous explanation - that the mil.gov itself is killing these scientists so nobody can gum up the upcoming rollout of their big bioweapon killoff and population cull. But really now. Isn't that a bit ... far-fetched?
As for me, I'm just pointing this out as a public service. I have no other involvement, and I did not write that crazy paper industry middle manager novel either. This blog's byword is ahimsa (nonharmfulness and nonviolence) so I leave all that killing and bloodthirsty grubbing to you humans, who've always been so good with it.
But I will say this: if the cops or the press or any damn body were to take a serious interest in this wave of anti-researcher violence - to the wise, a single word is sufficient.
