To the very end, Otto remained ambivalent about what he had discovered and its rapid spread. “I was overjoyed when we did the Alzheimer’s study and found what we found,” he wrote in his journal. “The idea that we could cure this disease that had ravaged so many families, the idea that we could prevent people’s memories from being erased—that was wonderful. And certainly, I was excited at the financial prospect of the cure, the kind of money it could generate for the university, as well as me and my family. I’m not immune to that part of it. That was all very exciting. But when I heard about David Spitz, and what he had done with it, I realized that we had triggered a kind of frenzy we were totally unprepared to deal with. You know, science is usually agony. You conduct millions of experiments just to move the world forward a millimeter. But in a way, that’s a good thing. Science usually gives us time to adjust. But the cure hasn’t been like that. I discovered it too quickly, odd as that may sound. That’s why, from the outset, I agreed with the president’s decision to ban it. I was glad someone was willing to step back and declare outright that we needed to know everything about this treatment before we unleashed it upon every citizen. Obviously, that didn’t stop it from spreading. But I’m glad someone stood up and took that stance. It needed to be done. A lot of the world fell in line quickly after that. And that’s good. Just because I benefited from sloppy handiwork doesn’t mean the rest of us will. Because we still don’t know what future effects this cure will have. Think about how many treatments have been fast-tracked for approval by the FDA that eventually needed to be recalled. This cure could end up not working. And that might be the very best case scenario! Heaven help us all if it really does work.”
Graham Otto would never get to find out.
It was another late night in the lab. Despite his astonishing success, Otto had yet to realize any of the potential financial gain from his breakthrough. He dedicated himself to making sure the cure was 100 percent bulletproof, so that it might one day gain legitimate FDA approval and prompt the president to overturn the ban; that is, to overturn it at the right time, not when people found it most convenient or profitable. Otto was monitoring over a half-dozen species that night, comparing their statuses against control groups, trying to detect the slightest sign of aging: the first gray hair, any paunchiness around the middle, anything. The Hair Bears were with him: Dr. Peter Madden, Dr. Brian Lo, Dr. Sidney Brown and three other PhD candidates (Candace Malkin, Dinesh Ganji, and Michael Duggan) in his now-growing department.
The University of Oregon has a security infrastructure that is the envy of most other colleges. Every building requires hologram identification worn on a lanyard. Every entrance is covered by surveillance cameras. The campus is extremely well lit, and hundreds of emergency phones dot the area, for easy access by students and staff who feel immediately threatened.
But the Hair Bears’ lab was no longer located on the Oregon campus. Due to the success of Otto’s program, the university had agreed to build a new lab for him and his cohorts—a facility they hoped would rival that of any genetics lab in America. But, while that was being built, the team was forced to work out of a makeshift lab in a nearby office park.
The Shelby Office Park looks very much like any other office park in the nation. It’s located on Shelby Circle, right near a strip of chain restaurants and home improvement stores. It’s a poorly lit complex—even now, after what happened. A walk from the Shelby parking lot to one of the main buildings in the dead of night is enough to jangle even the toughest nerves. A card-key is needed to enter any of the buildings on the park’s campus. But the parking lot has no such requirement. Parking is free, and there’s no gate to check into. Anyone can drive up to the main buildings. And on the night of August 7, 2016, someone did.
An unmarked van pulled up to the curb in front of Building D, where the Hair Bears made their temporary home. The team typically finished up work at the same time, but Otto was known to tell everyone to go home and get their rest, while staying on alone in the lab—sometimes for a little while, sometimes for hours. (Although he enjoyed the company of his coworkers, Otto claimed to focus better when undisturbed.) From what police have been able to reconstruct, it seems that night he bade his colleagues goodbye and stayed in the lab for a scant ten extra minutes. After he closed up shop, he grabbed his briefcase and made his way down to the lobby.
As he exited the building, he saw the van. He likely also noticed that there were still four bikes parked in the rack next to the building entrance. Many of the team members used bikes, instead of cars, to get around town. The rack should have been empty. In the time it took Otto to recognize that something was amiss, three men had exited the van and accosted him.
They wore black from head to toe, with black hoods covering their heads. They had guns. They forced Otto to the ground and bound his legs, arms, and mouth with duct tape.
They dragged Otto to the van and opened the back. There Otto saw, to his horror, all six of his colleagues similarly bound and thrown in the back on top of each other—a writhing tangle of bodies. They threw Otto in with the rest, doused them and the rest of the van with gasoline, and set it on fire. The three assailants then fled the scene as the van burst into flames. Only one of them, Casey Jarrett of Tacoma, has been identified and charged. Jarrett, who belonged to a pro-death evangelical sect known as Terminal Earth, defended his actions only by saying, “A little bit of bloodshed now, or a lot later on.” Otto, Madden, Lo, Brown, Malkin, Ganji, and Duggan all perished in the blaze. Just hours later, David Spitz was gunned down outside of his home in Seattle.
President Lack still has trouble accepting that his friend and colleague died in such a horrifying manner. “It’s inconceivable to me,” he says. “If there was anyone you wanted to invent this cure, it was Graham. He wasn’t some power-mad scientist hell-bent on destroying the world. He had real integrity, and he rarely acted without considering all the consequences of his behavior. The cure was safe in his hands. I don’t think he even gave it to himself. That someone would stalk him down and murder him and six other bright, wonderful minds like that is just… It takes away my faith in humanity, a faith that people like Graham helped build in me. He’s not here to guide us through this anymore, and we’re so much poorer for it.”
Two floors above where the van burned and burned, a window from Otto’s lab looks out over the parking lot. Perched on the windowsill is a very small glass case containing five fruit flies, five very special fruit flies that turned Graham Otto from a desperate redhead into perhaps the most important scientist in human history. They were the first creatures on earth to be cured of death by Otto, and they were among the last creatures on earth to see him alive.
Date Modified: 7/5/2019, 9:17PM
“How Could You Be So Dumb?”
I had to get out of Manhattan. Katy merrily haunts me in this space, which I more than deserve. I see visions of her all around: in the kitchen, by the television, lunging out the window. Soon there are so many ghosts of her crowding me that I feel engulfed. Sound reason told me I risked insanity to stay around much longer. I had to go see my sister.
I have the good fortune of not having to deal with Penn Station on a daily basis. I’m amazed that current events have managed to create an environment in which dealing with Penn Station is somehow even worse than before. I did not know it could get worse. It already seemed to operate at maximum awfulness. Oh, but I was wrong.
This was an exodus. There was a line just to get in the station. I’d never seen that before. A fire marshal was stationed outside every entrance, holding back travelers until a certain number had exited. They let a handful of people in, then held the line again. It was like trying to get into a nightclub—which is perfect in its symmetry. My goal was the six-thirty train. They ran every half an hour, so I figured if I missed the six-thirty, I could just hop on the seven with a tall boy of Budweiser, and off I’d go. I just barely made the ten-thirty train.
It