#kill the disease.. think the one i read was specifically for yellow fever

[kinfusion]

the snow makes me wanna see snow in the town on gorkhon

[doctorpariahdax]

Upon the Undine

(I can’t figure out how to indent on Ao3 so until then I’m posting it on tumblr with the hopes that it saves the empty spacing. That being said I’m gonna go through this once and edit and if I see I messed up on spacing and indents I’ll go through it again. I will eventually post a link to the Ao3 version once I figure out indentation. Please read and enjoy. Let me know what you think/if I should do this more often.)      Pollution had an ironic way of beautifying nature.      The water splashing the sides of the Undine was a sour yellow and green. Hundreds of leaking whale vessels had tainted the water with its heavy oil.           The smell of gas and blubber was thick around Lizzy Stride’s ship but the color of the waves reminded Daud of when he was younger, reminded him of the emerald green waters isolating Serkonos.      In between the long minutes that he rubbed at his eyes and drew an aggravated breath from his cigar, Daud could see the cinnamon colored sky and peach tinted clouds against the blinding sundown. Smoke rose from far off chimneys, rising to the beyond in plumes of black that turned to pink. The air smelled of acrylic paint, rust, and bath salts.      Odors from the sea, the ship, and the ports in the horizon at his back from the whales gave the air a strange rankness. It was calming, even alluring to Daud, it reminded him of a younger life, sitting at the ports of Serkonos. He used to be able to tell what kind of ship came to port by the smells they brought in. All the pleasant odors of the spice merchants that passed through Serkonos and Gristol smelled like mint and pepper, those just seemed to cling like death to clothes.      The Undine was a surprisingly quiet vessel, almost gliding on the water without much of a fuss, he wasn’t much of an engineer but he supposed that the Undine’s engine was as outdated as it was unique. You could modify just about any engine coil to make something do a job, but it wouldn’t do it well, not without the original parts. The Undine was like that, through and through. The engine was specific to the ship, as much as the crew was to their captain. He had seen how disorganized, even uneasy the Eels had been without Lizzy at the helm.           Now that she was back the ship was quiet, calm. Much to his delight, the crew was equally silent. Lizzy kept a tight ring around her crew’s neck, although they were rather easy to control, much more complacent than Daud’s own men at times. Much more complacent than Billie ever was, even as a trainee….      Lemmings, Daud thought, Thomas would call them lemmings. Mindless, tactless, afraid, and all scurrying in one direction just for the excuse of their collective lack of responsibility. Daud had to admit he didn’t much care for the crew – they only felt secure because they didn’t know how to take charge, be individuals.       It was understandable though – why they would be so afraid of taking charge of responsibility. Many of the eels Daud had quickly noticed were missing body parts. Fingers, toes, ears, a nose or two had gone rogue, and from the physical aptitude of some of the eels, Daud doubted they had actually come from surviving scraps; they were lessons.        As of late, now that he pondered it, maybe Daud would have preferred ‘lemmings’ like Lizzy’s crew. It was individual ambition that had lead Billie away from him, and Delilah too close. It was not in his nature to encourage submissiveness, not wholly.       Daud remembered having to be severe with disloyalty like Lizzy; at the beginning, those who weren’t serious enough, lost loyalty, those who began measuring their pricks and their importance in his organization – well, they had to be made examples. Particularly the idiots who compromised his plans.      He had killed a few, in the eye of the others to make a point. It wasn’t that they wholly didn’t deserve it either, for some it was a mercy. Daud couldn’t remember the boy’s name for the life of him, but he was blonde, brown eyes, gaps in his teeth, quite young...He contracted the plague before it had become a pandemic. Daud knew the signs, and it was fortuitous enough that the boy didn’t listen to Daud’s instructions before he started weeping blood from the eyes. At least that was one way Daud found himself remembering the situation.       It’s all about timing. Everything was just about timing.       If he had waited the others might have known it was a mercy kill from sickness, if he had waited too long he might not have been able to kill the boy, the plague might have spread through his ranks, if he had done it at any other time they might have thought him mad, too severe, psychotic, too late he would’ve been soft. At least, softer than they expected him to be.        ….Perhaps.        Not that the bar for a hired assassin was exactly high on social etiquette or sensitivity.        He rubbed his eyes again, his thoughts going too fast.        The only time Daud never felt too ‘quick’ was on a job. With aid from the Outsider, Daud felt calm, cold in a methodological fashion, in control. When he had to wait, it was like living a nightmare. It was waiting for the universe, equally as cruel and sardonic as his black eyed friend, to take hold of his plans, his patience, his unsurity and bend him over.         Proverbially, of course.         This insecurity he felt, nearly constantly, was making the wood of the engine room beneath his feet creak. He bobbed his leg up and down, up and down, it was natural, he never thought about it, but when he willingly tried to cease it in the past it was an almost immediate sensation of irritation and anger. He had never been able to sit still for too long, and over the years he had accumulated a near constant bruising on the top of his knees as they hit the bottom of desks.        Fidgeting, his mother had called it. He could feel a trace pinch of discomfort when she would pinch him on the meat of his shoulder and back to get him to stop. ‘Bad posture, poor patience, a jigging foot without music is just a nuisance.’        Daud opened his eyes and stared down at his bare hands, holding his cigar between his teeth, scraping his tongue against the seal between the skin and ash. The tips of his fingers were wrinkled and pale, wet from the sweat that had sank deep into the leather of his gloves, pruning his hands. His hands reeked. They smelled sebacious after hours within the gloves, which he rarely removed. He had to tonight, the mark was numbing his hands, pins and needles in his palms, a burning hiding beneath the surface of the skin.        He had received the mark mostly against his will. He always reflected upon the moment the mark was stained upon his hand, like it was a fever dream. For the first few years he had felt the mark being carved into his skin at night, waking him from dreams good and bad. It was dug into his skin, his bones, like a knife, even though it had a branded look to it. It first hurt years ago, it dulled after a time. He didn’t have a track record of paranoia or victimization with diseases, but ever since he heard the Outsider whisper that name, Delilah, everything began to come back to him in waves. The pain from the mark was less of a dull echo and began to stir him from thoughts and sleep once more.       When the mark first came to him, the sensation alone had left him nauseous for days afterwards, his body and mind adjusting all too suddenly to his connection to the void. It had been long, many many decades since he had been sick from his connection to the void. It must’ve amused the Outsider; Daud’s connection to the void couldn’t even be considered ‘second nature’, it was just natural. To know that he felt repelled in these last few weeks by the mark was ironic if not poetic.        The Outsider had come to him like a friend, when Daud needed someone, nearly anyone. He was in the acedemy. Unknown to him at the time he was about to leave almost as suddenly as he had arrived under the tutelage of Anton Sokolov. Daud was scum and treated as such – in many ways good. He was ignored by the other scholars and beginning students. Left much to his own devices. He was paid like street scum to do as appropriate things. Acquire opium, for recreational use of course, tobacco for the younger students, ask the girls at the Golden Cat who treated Daud like a little brother for nightly favors.        Daud did all of it, and was paid in turn for it.        Daud sooujourned to the Cat for a night on his own in the company of those he felt was the closest to family he would have.        He saw a man from his past, a man who took him from his life. From his mother.        Things got messy after that. And then Daud saw a man close to his own age, who he reckoned he would know for the rest of his life. He offered him security, companionship.        Power.       He offered Daud the security of power. To never be vulnerable and at the will of a predator like the Actor ever again. He gave Daud a way out, a path free from terror and humilation, of self hatred and loathing, of wanting to change the past. He gave Daud a means of escape, the sheer force of will that came at the cost of flicking a finger to help others, to prevent children like Daud having the same life that he did.       And Daud had revelled in that power – initially – he met predators to the girls at the Golden cat with fury and violence, he cut down those who would extort sex and money from starving mothers and children.       But the poor don’t pay well, and they have a tendency to run their mouths when they don’t have the money to protect themselves. Under a great deal of suspicion and proof of ‘occult influence’, Daud was removed from the Academy and nearly condemned to death for treasonous and heretical actions.       Sokolov had money though. Money and a mouth that knew how to curve the truth.       Daud left the academy as a disgraced student, a misguided soul – the next few years were a blur, but he had come out of that trance at some point as a persona. Daud, the assassin, the Knife of Dunwall.       At every turn Daud acquired and lost followers, friends turned to foes and foes turned into quiet sycophants who emptied their purses quite often. Those lost boys who he had helped on the streets, helped their mothers so long ago found a way to reach him. They stood behind him at every turn, shielding him, throwing the Overseers off of his scent, erasing any unforetunate and small trace of him left behind.      The Outsider stayed with him too, even though as of late the voice of the demi-god had been absent. His black eyes still hung over Daud’s every action, creeping like spider’s legs up the back of his neck.       Years ago the Outsider had told him that he was different, that he would change things.       Comments like that over the years from a supernatural entity would make anyone feel important. Give an angry young man with no identity, robbed of sense and home a compliment like that, a compliment that told him he found a place he could belong….that alone felt powerful.      On a job, that’s when he felt calm. He was untouchable.      Daud couldn’t hide vulnerabilities from the Outsider, and there was no use talking to someone – something – like the Outsider. He knows everything that has, is, and will be. Albeit Daud had come to resent the Outsider.      Nevertheless, the void was safe. The void was a place where Daud was understood, his most authentic self.      ….Which seemed lately to be the dilemma.      The Outsider’s comments, his ever perforating voice lurking somewhere in the corners between Daud’s ears and his mind, the Outsider’s whispering gaze, was becoming more and more disappointed.       It wasn’t uncommon of an action for Daud to leave the Geezer rotting next to his drug adled nurse, dosing with his face first into the harsh concrete of the life support room. Daud got what he wanted, pilfered around for some runes and the like.        It was everything else.        Aime’s interrogation, but otherwise unmaiming for his personal gain.        Rothwild sent amusingly off to some corner of the world.        Timsh was spared.        Wakefield was spared.        The Overseers were spared.        Lurk.       ….Even the god damned witches snooping around the sewers and the warf were put at his clemency with a sleep dart instead of at his knife. Lately, his blade felt heavier. He didn’t have the energy.       The wood beneath his bouncing foot started creaking again as he took a long drag from the cigar.

      “You were so still robbing my ship, like a possum caught in flood lights, why’re ya jittering? Cold Serkonan?” Lizzy Stride’s smug voice cut through the air suddenly, catching Daud admittedly off-guard. He could hear the sharp smile in her voice before he turned and stared at her gruesome teeth with his own eyes.        Thomas had commented a few times that Daud smelled – to be frank – bad. A mixture of garlic, lavender, boot polish, and acrid smoke and whiskey. Not to mention the effervescent aroma of piss and shit that followed all the whalers on their coat sleeves thanks to their ‘moat’ in the Flooded Financial District of Old Rudshore. It was something that they all meakly accepted, it just happens when you live down river from literally every fucking where else in Gristol.        Lizzy leaned down, licking her teeth, a smell of rotten tonsil stones escaping her wide mouth even when she wasn’t breathing.       Suddenly Daud couldn’t smell himself anymore, and paradoxically, uncomfortably relaxed.       “Dancing disease.” He mused finally, quietly, as he pushed out a breath of smoke from between his charred teeth. “Always had it. Used to be worse.”       “Who the hell would name it something like that?” Stride kicked out a chair next to him, wrapping the leg around her ankle and the top of her bare, swollen, fungus ridden foot, planting herself like a wart next to him – mostly unwanted, but not exactly a bother -  at the small table in the upper cabin of the engine room.        Daud wasn’t sure if he had a preference over this, or moments later when she reclined and put her feet up upon the table next to his face.        Neither smell was pleasing, but it at least overpowered his own sweat and assorted filth.       “Mind me askin’ somethin’?” she didn’t quite wait for a hasted response, “Heard yer’ the son of a witch. That true? Always hear about whoresons from the south, that’s just Serkonos babies, all of ‘em ain’t it,” Lizzy’s crooked, rotten smile came back and she jiggled her sparse torso mockingly at Daud before picking between her teeth with a mud covered thumb. “But ah – ye’ hear things. And, not that it’s my business, a favor’s just a favor, we don’t need to act like parlor chatters, but e’goin’ after this ‘Delilah’ is...Well, hope ye’ know what you’re doing with the likes of a witch.”         Daud watched her behind a film of smoke and shrugged, forfeiting the conversation to her.        “I’ll get ye’ to talk one of these days. I think I already know anyways. A shit mucker like us doesn’t learn things like we do without some help. Beyond that of yer’ invisible man friend. Wherever the fuck he is.” Lizzy danced her spindly fingers in front of Daud. “Spooky, is he? My men are talking about ye’. They’re kind of excited, like having an opera star on board. ”        “You’re a regular luxury cruise.” Daud leaned back in the wicker chair and dragged another breath of smoke into his lungs.       “Leave a good review at my agency, won’t ye’ dear?” Lizzy snorted, then banged unexpectedly on the metal siding of the cabin, yelling for whiskey to...someone.         A brutish looking man did arrive, if Daud remembered correctly, earlier that afternoon he asked Daud – indirectly - to sit on his lap...’tough guy’. The man wasn’t looking as bold now as he had been earlier. He retreated without raising his eyes in greeting, even to Lizzy.         “You get extra help,” Lizzy turned some glasses over and popped the bottle loudly, tossing the cork to the floor as she started pouring the liquor, “from your ‘God’, whatever you cultists call him. But I know a few things, know ye’ must feel comfortable ‘round witches, enough to be fine with waltzing straight into their den.”         Daud deadpanned at her.        “You make your own chemicals,” she continued after a breath. “Those uh, those poison darts that put people to sleep. Yer’ quite a bit of a chemist. Doing it on yer’ own. I know ye’ spent a short time at the Academy. Before I was born?” she slid a shot glass towards him. Her rough accent seemed to fall off a bit. “All those years and knowledge doesn’t fall off. Wish I had had some books as a kid. Practice doesn’t seem to wear off on ye’ though eh? Memories do in old age.” “How old do you think I am?” Daud almost felt a tug at his cheek, and threw back his head, swallowing a shot of burning fluid. He grimaced and watched Lizzy do the same, shaking her head with a smile afterwards.        “Well I know yer’ a shit ton older than I. I don’t need to quite worry about preserving my memories yet, but practice matters.” She smiled again. “Look at me, I have the brains for guessing math, not computing it.” Stride poured again.  “Back to point that I get the sense ye’ don’t wanna’ talk ‘bout; I think yer’ mother was a witch. Ye’ smell like it.”        “Like the son of a witch? You’ve met many?”        “No, that’s why I can tell, ye’ smell particular.”        Daud snorted, actually moved with humor. “I didn’t think eels could smell. You certainly don’t seem to mind the lack of laundry on your ship. What does that smell like anyways?”        Lizzy became visibly more comfortable. “It’s a stink. A peculiar stink about ye’.” A brief silence came betweeen them, Lizzy’s smile dropped. “You can tell a lot by how people smell, how they act to smells is more telling though. Smells can lie, the lines in people’s faces don’t.        “I saw ye’ on the warf,” she continued after a moment, “There were witches in one of the back docks, the storages. Ye’ came out looking tense, but the lines in yer’ face looked reminiscent.”        “Have you been browsing a dictionary?” Daud tried to cut the tension in the air.        “People see things,” she brushed it off, “other people that remind them of someone they loved, someone they hated. People are awfully particular about how they think they react to hate and love. How they react to smells.        “It’s rather common for people, boys especially to attach themselves to motherly figures, girls to fathers. That’s what I always hear at least. Ye’ can see it too. A boy’s love for their mother smells like something meaningful to them, they react to it accordingly, they look like it’s meaningful at least. It’s not though. Smells like sadness, happiness, untouched memories because yer’ uncomfortable with what it might stir up in ye’. So when it matters they put on a face like it was meaningful, specific, important to them. That they loved their mother.” Lizzy leaned forwards and grabbed Daud’s cigar, taking a drag from it and claiming it as her own.        “You’re a frustrating talker.” Daud became uneasy becoming aware how flatly he did try to hold his face when he spoke.        “Yer’ mother was a witch, wasn’t she? And it’s uncomfortable because ye’ don’t know much else about her, like most whoresons from the underbelly of personas.”       “That’s none of your business.”       “And ye’ defend her.” She gave a wide shark like grin. Lizzy leaned forward, aggressively, her teeth making her speech hiss at Daud. “Yer’ ass is on my ship, and unless ye’ can pull a steering wheel out yer’ ass and captin it yer’self everything on this tub is my business. Besides, ye’ don’t look like you usually have the time or money for therapy.” She briskly patted the top of his marked hand, “I’m a good listener.”       He grimaced.      “I think it’s a rather good idea, ye’ know? Get everything out on the table before ye’ get hogtied and turned into a human totem by a couple of witches. There’s nothing that charms a girl more than a man bein’ sensitive. Open. Vulnerable. Give me something to sink my teeth into before we part ways.”      “You and I both know you’ve sunk your teeth into men without the prerequisite of emotional sensitivity.”      Lizzy grinned widely. “What’s the worse that could happen? Ye’ get upset? Ye’ worried I’ll spread some rumors to the Gristol papers that aren’t getting published anymore by our dear dead Empress? What are ye’ gonna do, kill me for ruining yer’ image?”      He stared at her for a lengthy amount of time, breathing, thinking. Not contemplating anything threatening, only of what first to say.      There was an awful lot that Daud had wanted to say, wanted to remember, just for himself, for a very long time, but all of it seemed nearly impossible to bring to memory.       Stride raised her head from the back of the chair. “Holy shit yer’ actually gonna try?”      “She was a doctor of sorts.” he finally pushed out a tired breath.      Stride sighed, content with herself, breathing in a deep draw from Daud’s cigar.       “More of a dealer, I suppose.” Daud realized to his chagrin his leg had stopped bouncing. “She helped people deal with pain, psychosis, She helped people. Wanted to.” His eyes became a bit unfocused, staring with concentration at nothing in particular. Daud could smell Her, and he could tell Lizzy could see him smelling. “She was involved in other things as well. I’m sure there was sex. There were men and women that came for drugs, and some and others would stay in our home. She would lock the door and set me with a toy on the steps outside. Tell me to wait, play by the docks, try to catch fish for dinner. When they came out they never looked any different, they just felt better. You could see it.       “We had plants everywhere,” he started again, slowly, “all of them had some sort of use and my mother cared for them dearly, she seemed upset when they wilted instead of just disappointed.” Daud picked up his tired neck from the back of the chair to pour himself another drink. “She smelled like night flowers.”        “And lavender?” Lizzy offered curiously.        Daud met her eyes with a hint of confused anger.       “Ye’ like the smell of lavender. There’s very few men who go out of their way to smell like flowers. And I fucken’ well know ye’ don’t wear it for a woman in yer’ private life. Ye’ wear it for yer’self.”       He squinted at Lizzy as he put back another shot of whiskey. “And lavender.” Daud conceded after a breath. “She used to burn things around the house, bundles of sage and flowers and some sort of oil. She’d warm seawater a lot. I didn’t breathe well as a child. She’d speak in tongues when she burned the sage and flowers, cover my forehead with some tincture and make me breathe over a warm cup of seawater.”        Daud looked back at Lizzy. She stared with a soft smile, bemused, at him. “It did help.”       Stride surprisingly waited in silence for more to be offered.      “She had a capacity for goodness.” Daud tried to stir memories again. “She didn’t advertise it though.”      “So secrecy runs in the family. Good to know. So aside from yer’ social etiquette what else did ye’ get from her?”       Nothing. A muse in the back of Daud’s head mocked. He had been an entrepreneur since he killed the man who kidnapped him. Started my own business. A laugh echoed in his throat.      “She said I got my father’s eyes. For a long time I thought she would hate me because of that.”      Lizzy swished alcohol between her cheeks.      “She was ah, from Pandyssia. She didn’t talk – at all – about her time there. Why she left. But she came to Serkonos with nothing. She was fleeing. Black magic is all too common down there, so it’s curious why she fled. She...” Daud didn’t pause to try and remember. There were few things that his mother told him that he had forgotten over the years. It was Her in large part he had forgotten.      Lizzy smelled pain sitting across from her and she smirked.     “She came aboard a vessel – smuggling vessel. Pirates of sorts. And the captain took her and a few other refugees to Serkonos as they had paid, but he had his way with them during the passage.”      Lizzy’s body language told Daud that she had an inkling of what came next. “He raped several of the women, but my mother had her way with him. There’s a lot of rumors that fly around you when you’re a child in a port village. ‘She turned him inside out.’ ‘Wore him like a mink scarf as she came to dock.’ I don’t know which version was true but my father was very dead by the time she and her crew made it into Serkonos’ docks in Karnaca.”       Lizzy tipped her chair back and sighed. “No fucken’ wonder ye’ like me. I remind ye’ of someone, eh?”       It did bring a smirk to Daud’s weathered mouth. “She raised me without much mention of anything outside of daily life. Didn’t talk much about my father. She worked almost all day.        “I’d wake up in the morning and she’d be lone gone. I had my chores to do, kept an eye out for bugs on her medicinal plants. Locked the door when I went to play. I’d fish, try to trade and sell them on the street at noon. She’d return later in the everning. Her patients would flood in and I’d sit outside, speak to some of them. Occasionally they wouldn’t be able to pay so they would bring things to give us. There was one man who came for opium, nearly every week, but he had nothing to pay with so he brought his son to play with me and would let me borrow his knife as we could carve into driftwood and waited for my mother and his father to finish their business.”       “And where did your quaint romantic life with your single mother take place?” Lizzy’s smarmy voice cut in.      “It was an old shithouse.”      Mere seconds passed before Lizzy realized Daud wasn’t being entirely figurative.      “So she was into decorating and interior design as well? Refugee, becomes the captain of a ship, and raises a boy on her own. She sounds like a talented fucking woman.”      Daud allowed a meek smile to turn one corner of his mouth upwards.      “Is this,” Lizzy waved the air between them with Daud’s cigar between her fingers, “still too premature of a relationship for me to ask to meet yer’ mum’?”      “We had a very isolated lifestyle.”      “I’ll bring fucken’ wine if that’ll help, God.”      Lizzy had a penchant for comedy that Daud hadn’t cared to see before. She had taken one of his last cigars, and with how much muck and greasy water he had shimmied through in the last few days he wasn’t sure his remaining ones were dry, even inside their tin in his breast pocket.      Daud pulled the air towards him, Lizzy letting go of the cigar as it travelled to Daud like there were a string attached to it.      “She didn’t drink wine.” He dragged a breath from his cigar and tapped his nails against the bottle of whiskey between them. “She preferred liquor.”      “Shite.” Lizzy smiled her shark’s smile and leaned forwards. “Ye’ two sound like yer’ were downright poor as street cats.”      Daud didn’t realize he was smiling for a moment, and nodded. “Yes ma’am.” He took another, and one of the last drags from the cigar he could before chewing on the butt of it. “There were few days where we didn’t eat though. Or at least my mother made sure I ate.”       He shook his head, thinking, “I’m not quite sure what she did after those days came to pass, but I knew things were getting rough when the merchants and street vendors who usually spat at my mother’s face and kicked me when I was even just browsed their stands were suddenly pulling at my shirt when I went to go play. They’d offer us vegetables, fish, meat, I even got my hands on a couple toys once.”       “And?” Lizzy drank another shot, the bottle nearly half empty.      “My mother would insist I leave the toys outside, or return them. People were scared of her. They hated her, hated me by proxy to some degree, but she didn’t want to be a charity case. Didn’t want usless things lying around.” Daud shrugged. “I never had toys as a child, I didn’t prefer them much.”        A crash came from below decks and the Dead Eel named ‘Annabelle’ let out a shriek, threatening her crew members with pulling teeth if they dropped another bottle of port.       Stride waved her hand quietly in front of her. “Ugh. Port.” Lizzy looked to the side of the Undine, where Daud’s eyes had fallen earlier. Smoke rose from nearly insivible chimneys in the distance, fog slowly coming to cover the water as they moved through the mist surrounding Gristol, twisting and shielding the waterways from prying eyes. “They hated her.” Lizzy’s voice was unwelcomingly solemn. Daud felt almost dizzy, both from the alcohol and the swell of happiness he found in his chest, thinking of the time he had with his mother. Lizzy’s drop of levity threw him off.        “Why’d they hate her?”        Daud tilted his head down and raised his eyebrows. “Thought you knew?”        “They hated ye’ though, too. Why?”        He took a deep breath in through his nose. To him it was a simple matter from birth. It was just how they had been treated, he and his mother, since he could remember. “She was just a good chemist.” he shrugged. “She was a witch in that regard. Magic means different things to different people. I saw someone who used her knowledge and openess to help others, to experiment, to heal. Serkonos isn’t too unlike Gristol, or Tyvia, with their fear of the unknown. Black magic doesn’t have to hurt. My mother didn’t want it to. The rest of the world thinks of such things rather differently. People look to be hurt, expect it, allow it.”       “But ye’ were a kid. Why’d they try to hurt ye’?”       Daud was surprised by Lizzy’s concern – maybe brought on by the whiskey – and didn’t want to seem too irreverent. It wasn’t as though her concern now was going to make a difference. “I was the son of a witch. That sentence alone doesn’t  reveal any immediate good qualities, does it to you?”        Lizzy hesitated a shrug.       “That’s why. People very rarely need a reason to hate.”       There was another more pressing question on Lizzy’s carved tongue that she didn’t pull out, Daud could see it in her fish like eyes.       “You want to know what happened to her.” It wasn’t a question, he was just confirming he silent request.        Stride nodded, meeting her eyes back with Daud’s in silence.       “She died.”        Daud wasn’t quite sure if he was telling a lie, but it was what he felt he knew, he had known it in this way since he was eight.       “Why?” Lizzy prodded.       Daud breathed. That was the tough question to answer. For years, a child missing his mother with insecurities and anxieties, self loathing and festering hatred of everyone but his mother had driven Daud as a child to blame himself for being taken away from her, for not hearing he anymore. Not being able to feel her. He missed fishing at the docks because they had no money to afford going to market. He missed the sailors who would come into port and ask to see his mother, take turns buying whatever they did buy and playing with him as Daud waited outside. He missed pretending not to wake in the black hours of the morning as his mother’s soft dark skin brushed aside the hair on his forehead as he slept.        He didn’t respond for a long time, he stared at the liquor left in the bottle, then looked toward the front of the Undine. Thomas stood watch at the very edge of the ship, his blue leathered back facing Daud as he stood as a sentry.        “Thomas.” Daud nodded in the masked man’s direction. “He was eight when me and ” Billie, his throat caught “-my second in command went to Tyvia. He was starving. On the street, no clothes, in the dead of winter. His mother screaming at her new husband inside. He just sat there, watching the windows….”         Daud trailed off for a moment. He suddenly felt thirsty and there was something in his eyes that bothered him.       “When I was eight a circus came into Karnaca. I didn’t want to see it, wasn’t interesting. I wanted to stay home, fish while my mother worked, play with the cats that sat at the dock in the afternoons. One of the performers, a girl, one of the acrobats, came up to me, kept bothering me. She even went so far as to pull my arm and tug me around the dock for a few steps. She finally gave up. A few hours later another wave of performers came through, insisting that everyone in the port came to see the circus at least once  before they passed through the rest of the cities on Serkonos.        “Some of the sailors came back into port that night, asked what the noise in the city was for. I told them about the circus and they joked about the women that haunt the hall of mirrors, how they loved the circus, how their wives didn’t quite so much. They joked and asked if me and my mother were going,” Daud briefly smirked. “’You’d fit right in’. They turned down the road and I followed them for a bit.”       Something else caught Daud’s next words off guard, something rising up from his stomach, an uneasiness.      “I didn’t know that someone had been watching. I took money from the sailor’s pants. It was easy, a game I had played with those men several times before. I was eight. I was just asking for attention, I thought they would figure it out and come back to bother me instead of going to the circus.”      Daud’s head suddenly felt heavy, or perhaps it was just the consecutive shots of whiskey Daud had been generous with that were finally toying with his loose tongue and his tired mind.      “The actor,” Daud almost hissed the title, “saw what I had done. Thought I had a talent.”      Daud could barely remember what the man looked like. As a child, afraid of such a man, all of his features seemed permanently stained in shadow and wearing a malicious smile. Over the years Daud had been forced to spend with him he looked in the actor’s eyes less and less every year. He could just feel the man’s gaze eventually. Like hot white knives constantly watching him.       “He insisted I follow him. I had a talent he could use. I didn’t. So he followed me. Every step, walking, running, chasing me nearly back to my home. He grabbed me. Hit me. I woke up and it was morning, and I was very far away from my mother.”       Water splashing on the sides of the Undine was all Lizzy could hear after a deafening quiet that followed Daud’s voice.      “Did he kill her?” Lizzy meant for offense, Daud knew, she was only curious, and at this point he could feel she was invested.      Daud had frightfully returned to Serkonos – once – many, many years ago. No one knew who he was. No one did above ground at least, he certainly had a few contacts in the blackmarket of Karnaca even when he was just getting started as the persona Daud. It was those contacts that Daud had actually asked for their services before coming ‘home’.       A dark skinned woman with large almond brown eyes, a netting of tattoos on the right side of her face, and curled and twisting hair that elegantly rose up and around her shoulders and face, framing her features, like black smoke.        It would have been years….there was so much that could have changed how she looked, but there was a part of Daud that had an inkling of an idea of what had happened to her.        Daud brought his green eyes up to meet Lizzy. “You’ve seen my mark.”        She nodded.        Daud flexed his hand ever so slightly and the mark glowed. At the head of the ship, Thomas, feeling a pull on the invisible string that connected all the whalers to Daud, turned. Lizzy saw. Daud waved his hand, dismissing Thomas. “My mother was marked.” Daud spoke softly. “I can’t hand out that connection with all that follow me, not to the extent that some like Thomas benefit from, where they can draw upon the void as well. Where they can sense my presence, feel my thoughts, come to me. Hear me.” Daud felt the ghost of a hand tugging on his ear.        “She would pinch my cheeks, tug my ear lobes. Tell me not to forget….” he waved his hand. “Things. To shop, to water the plants, to eat. If I stayed out late, sometimes it felt as though she was whispering just behind me to come home. Barely audible, barely there, but I could still hear her.” Daud looked at Thomas as the man slowly turned, cautious, back to looking beyond the front of the Undine.         “When I woke up that morning, I knew I was far away from her, and I knew I kept getting farther and farther from her. I woke up and I could hear her screaming my name.” Daud swallowed and chewed the last bit of the cigar until it was just rancid ash in his mouth, throwing the stub of the cigar overboard. “Her voice faded. I couldn’t hear her. I listened for days but I couldn’t hear her.         “I went back to Serkonos when I was twenty-four. I was on a job but there was another motive. No one remembered me, knew who I was. But there were a few men, some sailors, some merchants, who remembered a ‘Pandyssian witch and her little bastard boy’, but they couldn’t tell anyone much.        “’ After her boy went missing she tore apart the port, questioned everyone, went to the guards for aid. No one would help her, so she left, tearing after the circus. I wonder if she found him.’ another said, ‘she just collapsed in the road after two days of searching and screamed herself to death.’” Daud took a breath. “She wouldn’t do that.” he shook his head.       “There was a fisherman, one of the sailors I had played with as a boy who met with me, heard I had been asking around. I didn’t tell him who I was. A friend of her son, who was alive and well and living in Dunwall. He told me how he used to play with me, throw me over the dock when I bothered him too much, would give me candies from other ports he sailed to. He wanted to tell me good news to carry to that woman’s son in Dunwall, but he swore to me that he had seen her die the night Daud was taken.       “The circus hardly stayed to perform. The guards had heard of suspicious activity revolving around the ringleader of a travelling circus, the actor, regarding kidnapped children. They weren’t allowed to stay the night and as quickly as the circus arrived they were forced to pack up and leave.       “The sailor said people watched the circus leave down the road, all the heavy things went first, the elephants, the tents, the individuals left lastly. Hours after they had left, ‘the witch’ came running down the streets, knocking on doors, screaming for help as she ran down the road after the circus.       “My son.” The sailor’s weathered blue eyes had looked at Daud, unknowing who he spoke to, with such a dry cadence in his voice. “My son, my son, they’ve taken my son!”       Lizzy had been silent for several minutes, and Daud only noticed how tightly she was holding her nails into the arms of her chair when he paused for a breath. He could hear the wood of the Undine creaking solemnly against the waves as they travelled upriver.       “The sailor said he had chased after her and caught up with her out on the mountain roads, half an hour’s walk from the port.” He suddenly had an uneasiness wrestling inside of him, desperately wanting another drink or to light another cigar. “He said he found her with her head split open just above her eyes. A flat line like the heel of a boot and two wide indentations, like a stirrup.” “She came after you.” Lizzy said after a moment, her harsh face conflicting with the softness of her voice. It was unnerving to see Stride show even a modicum of sympathy for someone.       Daud felt rather apathetic after telling her all this. Exhausted was perhaps a more fitting word. His voice was flat, his mouth dry, he sat there in the wicker chair, bouncing his leg, trying to ignore the numbness he felt around the Outsider’s mark as he stared at Lizzy with a furrowed brow.       He hadn’t planned on their conversation going this way. He almost felt a bit repulsed by the whole direction of the past half hour. Daud’s jaw stiffened as he grinded his teeth, taking his eyes away from Lizzy, staring at the floor boards and her knotted toenails.        “She died. A long time ago. It doesn’t really matter who killed her.” he swallowed.         “You killed him though, didn’t you?” Lizzy tried not to act coy. “I heard about it. Twenty eight years ago. You were just starting out. Pick pocketing and such. You were just disbanded from the Academy as a disgraced student. Everyone knew you were gutter shit, you hung out at the Golden Cat. It was your legal sanctuary from the guards. A man came in and you snapped him like a twig in eight different directions.”         Anger boiled quickly inside of him, offended by how much Lizzy seemed to have done her research on him, like she considered him a person of interest, like she was above him.        The woman across from Daud shrugged. “That’s what I heard. Some pedophile that had fallen from grace and you tore him a couple new assholes. That’s how you got into the whole ‘recruiting’ business.” She eyed Thomas in her periphery. “You took in broken kids. Made them criminals.”       No. Daud bristled inside. It wasn’t what he had wanted to do initially. Things – fate – has a habit of inverting purpose.      Daud had wanted to take in children who had been like him, vulnerable, too young to be self sufficient, taken away from the things that kept them children, innocent. He wanted to provide them a way out, a way into a better life. But like whale oil they clung to every fiber of his being, and were insurmountably difficult to wash away from himself after some time.      Daud now looked at Thomas again. When Daud was eight his world came crashing down, torn from the only thing that he had ever known to be safe. When Thomas was eight he had lost that as well, Daud and Billie had only been there to glue the pieces back together, offer him something new.      In hindsight, Daud knew he should had gone about all of it differently. He amassed children as followers that died for him before they reached their thirties, he didn’t set them free from anything like he had wanted, he just gave them a new selfless purpose – selfish for him – to aspire to.       He had been aware of it for a long time. Billie’s….rebellious nature constantly reminded him of that.       Her betrayal hadn’t opened his eyes, merely torn away his eyelids. He couldn’t shut out what he done anymore. Couldn’t turn a blind eye to all those children who had turned into whalers, His whalers, anymore.       He hadn’t given them a better life, just a different one.      The actor had raped Daud and several other children he kidnapped over the years, abused them physically, psychologically, made them dependent on him. Daud had stayed behind longer than he had to, he couldn’t bear the thought of the actor hurting those  younger children in the same way he had hurt Daud, taken everything away from him, so he stayed.       Daud wanted to be a protector.       Daud, in hindsight, only influenced people. He didn’t remedy their trauma, he owned it, manipulated it.       His thoughts were broken as he felt Lizzy’s hand meakly rest on top of his mark. It was for only a brief moment, but Daud snatched his hand away, bringing his head upwards as Lizzy brought his mind back to the Undine.      “Yer’ a lot fucken’ softer than people imagine ye’ to be. Ye’ know that?” Lizzy was smiling, but her mouth was closed. She was softer.      “Ye’ got an image to uphold,” she picked at a splinter on the deck’s floor with her toe nails. “Why Delilah?” she tried to distract him, end the conversation. “She just another contract? Some love lost begotten to an aristocrat?”       “Something of that nature.” he admitted, welcoming the end.       There were faint moments where Daud – over the course of several decades – had felt his relationship with the void – with the Outsider – change. Daud at rare times could feel the void, send himself plummeting into it’s cold and ever expanding darkness, aware of how small he really was, aware he was just a human. It was indescribably strange, foreign, madness inducing.        In the blandest of terms, it felt like when one has too much coffee, too quickly. You can feel the nervousness seep into your muscles, your actions. And one little thing goes wrong, you get upset, paranoid, fuelled by the caffeine and unconscious thoughts that lurk around the corner. For hours on end your insides feel full but weak and dry. You’re hungry but the thought of eating makes you nauseated. Everything is unnatural, uncomfortable, stirs you in the wrong way. Inside you’re warm but outside you’re itching to move because you feel a constant chill up your neck.        Daud could feel the Outsider wave at the hairs on the back of Daud’s neck, as if to remind him Delilah was different. That Daud couldn’t even lie to a criminal in conversation about who he planned to murder out of self interest.        No honor amongst anyone.       “The Outsider warned me of her. I don’t know how his mind works, what worlds or which of all the possibilites he sees are true. But one of us is going to walk out of Brigmore Manor, only one. He’s alluded quite clearly to that.” Daud said flatly after Lizzy had enjoyed another shot.       Lizzy raised one more shot, her dead eyes seeming more like Lizzy Stride’s now, “To yer’ mother.” she drank and dumped the rest of the whiskey overboard. Standing suddenly and hollering down to her crew.      They’d be arriving at the Manor within the next day. Daud decided it was time to figure out how to try and get some sleep after he had left himself so open, like a book without a spine, see if he could sleep through a whiskey hangover.

[visitationrpg]

                                  —    PRESTON    CASTLE    —

“Perched atop a hill overlooking the town of Ione, California lies a 46,000 square foot castle. With a quaint 77 rooms and 43 fireplaces, this was once a well established boys reform school. Today, the entire place is run-down -- walls torn down to reveal support beams, fireplaces trashed, floors destroyed and dirtied -- and has become the dwelling of many a spirit. Welcome to Preston Castle.”

LEO’s voice is low, deep and ominous, as he explains the location of this week’s episode. As the first shot of the castle emerges — tall, elongated towers covered in moss, windows boarded up, and a sign that says trespassers beware — the camera shows the first shot of the Visitation team as they approach the entrance. The viewer leans in closer to observe, their computer screen the only light in their darkened dorm room. With earbuds in, the only sound to be heard is the musical styling of SOFIA, meant to elicit goosebumps, prey on one’s fear of the paranormal, of the unknown.

“A retired reform school, the sight of a tragic ending for some, and for others, endless torture. From daily abuse to murder to discrimination, Preston Castle has seen all things gruesome and it has clearly lingered all these years. Horrific disease took the lives of most of the boys who attended the reform school, commonly caused by Yellow Fever and Tuberculosis. This castle is no stranger to death. -- even murder. A young man, twenty-years-old, was shot and killed by a guard for attempting to escape a third time. He is buried in an unmarked grave along with countless others.”

The voice has changed now, not as domineering but still spooky. OWEN details the horrifying history of Preston Castle while also striving to honor those who lost their lives. He doesn’t shy away from the gruesome details, but still places a disclaimer before he analyzes the facts. Cinematography has been left up to JUDE, who strategically filmed locations to match up with the words spoken during the scene, hoping to reel in the viewer and leave them wanting more.

"It is known that Anna Corbin, a housekeeper and cook at Preston Castle in the 1940s, was bludgeoned to death in the very kitchen where she prepared meals. Her body was found the morning of February 23rd, 1950 wrapped up in a piece of carpet in a nearby storage room. A young man who was attending the reform school at the time was charged twice for her murder, but was never convicted. It is said that Anna haunts the castle to this day.”  

The transition is quick, the screen fills from color to black and white. A blonde is seen from back, chopping something atop the counter. A young man enters, quick and silent. He strikes her head. Once, twice, three times and she falls to the floor. The only color in the frame is the red of blood. MARCO holds the camera, panning up from her feet slowly until the gruesome scene is centered in the frame. He’d take credit for the camera work, but really, it was all JESSE’s idea. At least that’s what he says. Who can keep track with the two of them? All we know, is the episode is the grisliest one yet.

                                     —    THE    ARRIVAL    —

DATE: December 28th, 2017 TIME: 5:47 PM PST

Eleven hours. That’s how long they spent packed inside their cars, two 2013 mini-vans rented by Lilian just for this occasion. It wasn’t the best mode of transportation , but a budget is a budget and if they wanted to eat while they were in California, driving was the only way they were going to get there. After three days, ten stops, countless energy drinks, four playlists by SOFIA, and more than a few arguments, they finally arrived at the castle. 

Upon approach, they’re greeted by the groundskeeper. A tall, slender man who goes by nothing other than Rusty. His lips are coated in tobacco, black and rotten along the edges, and his hands are rough and calloused, but a smile still spreads across his face. As if he hasn’t seen another living soul in nearly a decade. He doesn’t match the picturesque drive up to the wrought iron gate nor does he fit in with the landscape behind him. If one were to listen close enough, sounds of young boys playing along the front field can be heard. Whispers about escape between supposed delinquents, cries of anguish bellowed from punished children. There’s pain here, tragedy and death, and AMNA is the first to feel it.

“Something bad happened here,” pipes TAMSIN, clutching a hand to her chest, but it’s clear she took notice to her fellow investigator’s change in disposition.  

“Well, you’re right on that note, little lady,” says Rusty right before he spits out another glop of tobacco and tips his hat in her direction. “A lady was killed right down there,” he turns and points to the castle, “in the basement.” He leans in on that calamitous note, as if he’s going to wink at the most inappropriate time. 

“Have you ever seen this woman?” asks LEO, whipping out his notebook and pencil. “Ever interacted with her? Heard her? Has she talked to you?” 

“Leo, let’s give the man a chance to answer just one question,” LILIAN interjects, stepping forward from the group and extending a cautious hand toward the groundskeeper. “Any sightings or experiences you’ve had, we’d love to hear them — even record them, if you don’t mind being on camera.” She turns and looks over her shoulder, narrowing her eyes onto JUDE, a silent look to begin setting up the interview equipment. 

“There was woman,” TAMSIN echoed as if it was new information, feigning strong emotions, “she was murdered; I can feel her.” 

“Yeah, we all read the wikipedia link Owen sent out before we left,” chimed in JESSE, patience wearing thin. 

“I never seen her, no, but there’s a little boy who loves to play fetch on the third floor,” said Rusty, turning on his heel and waving everyone forward. “Ya’ll should talk to Marian, though. She’s seen some things, sounds like nightmares.” At the notion of this, LEO’s ears perk up and he begins writing furiously in his notebook. 

“Is she here?” he asks. “We definitely need to interview her.” 

“Agreed,” says MARCO, readjusting the camera atop his shoulder. “Let’s get her in the frame where it happened.” 

“There’s a graveyard, isn’t there?” COOPER asked, looking to OWEN first before looking to Rusty. Stopping dead in his tracks, the groundkeeper turns back and nods. 

“Forty paces behind the shed, but I wouldn’t recommend going out there alone, heh,” he laughs and it puts CHARLIE on edge. 

“Count me out,” says CHARLIE. “I’m not trying to die IN a graveyard. I want to get there in a hearse like everyone else,” he lets out a sardonic laugh, looking to the camera on MARCO’s shoulder and winking.

“Yeah, same goes for me. I’m not getting these shoes muddy,” THEA whines. “I got these downtown at Blaise, they’re vintage and cannot be replaced.” 

With that, LILIAN rounds up the group, offering them words of encouragement while also setting her very familiar high standards. This may be their first episode of 2018, but the budget has never been bigger so there’s no excuse for mistakes. 

“Teddy, are you listening?” she asks, and his head peeks up from his phone. 

“Yes, mom, I was tweeting our arrival, but there’s no goddamn signal out here,” says TEDDY, thumbs clacking away atop his keyboard. “I don’t know if we’ll be able to live-tweet this one, Prof.” 

“I think you can live without your phone for one night, man,” says SOFIA, giving him a light punch in the shoulder before brushing past him with her sound equipment in tow.

“All right, Rusty,” says LILIAN, “lead the way.”

                             —    THE    INVESTIGATION    —

TIME: 9:53 PM PST LOCATION: Nerve Center command, main castle hallway

They sit atop plastic folding chairs, the only light is a red bulb behind LILIAN’s head as she talks, clipboard in hand. Interviews have been conducted, the property has been toured, and all audio/visual equipment is up all running. The time has come. Reading off of a list, she separates all investigators into teams, giving them specific locations to inspect. 

“Okay, people. Let’s do this.”

TEAM ONE: Leo, Thea, Owen and Jude — assigned to cottages behind the castle where the more well-behaved boys were allowed to stay. Reports of loud bangs, spheres of light in the woods, and shadow figures are said to inhabit this area.

TEAM TWO: Marco, Jesse and Tamsin — assigned to basement/kitchen in the bowels of the castle. It is known that the body of Anna Corbin was found bloody and beaten here, and it is rumored that her spirit still lurks the corridor where she was discovered.

TEAM THREE: Teddy, Sofia, Amna and Charlie — assigned to second floor dormitories and staff apartments, reportedly where Anna Corbin resided. There have been multiple accounts of disembodied voices, shadow apparitions, and reports of seeing Anna herself.  

TEAM FOUR: Cooper and Lilian — not assigned to any specific location, the most seasoned investigators will float from location to location, assisting any team that needs a little extra help.

* OTHER LOCATIONS OF NOTE * Any and all dormitories, the library, the dining room, the graveyard, and the attic. All investigators are encouraged to explore, but remember, safety first.

WELCOME TO VISITATIONRPG’S FIRST EVENT: This is the first episode of the second season of Visitation, and it is doubly special because it is the first episode to be filmed outside of Oregon. The cast and crew has ventured all the way to California to investigate Preston Castle, a historic boys reformatory school. The entire team has been cooped up in cars for nearly three days, so quite a few of them are on edge and in desperate need of some alone time, so of course, that’s the perfect time to start an investigation! Most of the crew has been split in to teams. This is where your task for this event comes into play. Up above are assigned teams in which we’d love to see a group thread of your investigation! Get creative, but no solid evidence (not counting small personal experiences or fears) has been discovered yet. This task, however, is not required, but encouraged. This doesn’t mean it will be your only thread; please feel free to visit any place with any character seeing as the entire team will be in the castle ALL NIGHT. 

Please tag any starters pertaining to this event with visitpreston, and all starters with visitationstarter, but do not venture past 6AM PST on December 29th in game.

[landrydestiny95]

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Gene drives and Trojan horses: A tale of two metaphor uses

I was reading a recent article on gene drive entitled “Engineering bugs, resurrecting species: The wild world of synthetic biology for conservation” and came across this sentence about a so-called ‘Medea drive’: “This genetic Trojan Horse could then be used to spread elements that confer susceptibility to certain environmental factors, such as triggering the death of the modified fruit flies at a certain temperature.”

This reminded me of two things: the strong presence of Greek myths in biology/genomics and the frequent use of ‘Trojan horse’ in discourses about gene editing and gene drive (also cancer research and elsewhere). Think about Pandora, Prometheus, Icarus, not to speak of biological nomenclature! In our case, a Medea drive is named after “the character in Greek mythology that killed her offspring”. In this blog post I’ll focus on the Trojan horse metaphor, which, interestingly, is not explained or paraphrased in the article.

It is assumed that people know the backstory to this metaphor, that is to say, the Trojan war, the siege of Troy, the ‘gift’ of a wooden horse, which was let into the besieged town but turned out to be full of soldiers, who then conquered Troy. They also are supposed to know that metaphorically a ‘Trojan horse’ “has come to mean any trick or stratagem that causes a target to invite a foe into a securely protected bastion or place”, and to have probably come across or be fearful of a computer virus called a Trojan horse. It should be stressed that knowledge of Troy and the horse is rather culture specific. So this metaphor only works against the backdrop of a certain type of cultural knowledge.

The explanatory use of the Trojan horse metaphor

The use of the Trojan horse metaphor in biology/genomics is less well known but seems to have become quite popular in recent years, especially in the context of CRISPR, genome editing and gene drive research.

Genomes can be edited (modified, changed) in many ways. The most recent and most easy way is to use CRISPR. This is a tool based on a natural process used by bacteria to protect themselves against viruses, which can now be used by humans to identify, cut and modify specific DNA sequences in genomes. In this process harmless viruses can be used as ‘Trojan horses’.

As an ethical review of genome editing by the Wellcome Trust explained: “it may be possible to use a vector (e.g. a virus) as a kind of Trojan Horse to introduce genome editing tools to make the necessary repairs within the patient’s body”. And here is a passage from an article on CRISPR that uses this metaphor, detailing the use of a “small, harmless helper virus called AAV, well-suited for carrying genetic instructions into a living cell. AAV won’t make you sick, but it can still sneak into your cells and hijack their machinery, making them a perfect Trojan horse in which to put good stuff—like a correct copy of a gene”…

Now, gene drives sneak more into a cell than normal gene editing tools. A gene drive doesn’t just edit a DNA sequence using CRISPR trickery; it hijacks the way inheritance functions. It is a genetic modification designed to spread through a population at higher-than-normal rates of inheritance. As one article said, referring to the pioneering work of Austin Burt at Imperial College London, one can “use these ‘super-Mendelian’ genes as a Trojan horse, to rapidly distribute altered DNA, and thus ‘to genetically engineer natural populations’”. Exploiting this super-Trojan-horse trickery, gene drives can be used not only to treat individuals but to manipulate (in effect eradicate) whole populations, of, for example, mosquitoes transmitting malaria.

In this context, two of the most quoted passages are perhaps these ones (more research needed!): “Researchers from London’s Imperial College have employed a Trojan Horse-like form of genetic engineering in a lab setting to wipe out a population of malaria-transmitting mosquitoes in less than 11 generations.” And: “’We want to build a Trojan horse in the mosquito,’ says [Omar] Akbari [UC San Diego]. “When a mosquito is infected by a virus — whether it’s dengue, Zika, chikungunya, yellow fever, whatever — it activates our system, which kills the mosquito.’”

Here the Trojan horse metaphor is used as an explanatory device, to explain how a cell is ‘tricked’ into doing things it would normally not do, such as eliminating disease carrying insects, agricultural pests or invasive species.

However, the Trojan horse metaphor is also used to talk about another sort of trickery. And here we come to a political, rather than scientific, use of the Trojan horse metaphor.

The accusatory use of the Trojan horse metaphor

In November 2018 a UN Convention on Biological Diversity conference took place in Egypt. This was just the time when gene drives were being discussed more widely in the press.

The ETC Group, a civil society group that monitors the impact of emerging technologies, participated in this conference. As they pointed out before the conference, 20 years ago they protested against genetically modified seeds they called ‘Terminator’ or ‘suicide’ seeds. In 2018 they protested against what they called ‘child of Terminator’ or an ‘Exterminator’ technology, namely the new genetic tool that is ‘gene drive’.

In this context they used the Trojan horse metaphor: “The biotechnology industry has learned from their first attempt to foist the terminator on the world. In Egypt, they will not speak out, but present instead their Trojan horse, called Target Malaria – a $100 million project from Imperial College in London, UK”. (The ETC Group also uses the Trojan Horse metaphor in their critique of geoengineering; a comparison between geoengineering and gene drive metaphors might be interesting in general….)

Friends of the Earth also took this conference as an opportunity to draw attention to what they called an ‘extinction technology’ and said about Target Malaria: “This Trojan horse project is exploiting a public health crisis in Africa, despite the lack of underlying science to support its efficacy as a sound medical intervention”.

This was quoted in one of only three articles I could find in the news data base Nexis talking about gene drive and Trojan horse. The other two say that “a coalition of activist groups compared gene drives to the atomic bomb and accused researchers of using malaria as a Trojan horse to cover up the development of agricultural gene drives for corporate profit”.

There is a fear then that saying gene drive will be used for the benefit of people (eliminate malaria), is an underhand ploy or trick to do other things: sideline better approaches to dealing with malaria or, on the back of this use of what one can call ‘medical gene drive’, introduce ‘agricultural gene drive’ that will only profit large corporations not the people on the ground, similar to past GMOs.

While the accusatory metaphor ways made it into the mainstream media, the explanatory Trojan horse metaphor did not, it seems. This might be indicative of what Dietram Scheufele said in one of the articles referring to activists’ use of the Trojan Horse metaphor: “scientists are generally much worse than activist groups at shaping public opinion, in part because they tend to rely on logical reasoning and facts, while activist groups are more likely to tap into unconscious values and emotions”.

This means that the explanatory metaphor seems to lose out to the accusatory metaphor in the context of wider gene drive communication activities.

The analytical use of the Trojan horse metaphor

So far, social scientist, like the mainstream media, have not really picked up on the explanatory use of the Trojan horse metaphor, focusing instead on the accusatory one.

Phil Macnaghten and others have studied seminal narratives used by people to form views and attitudes towards emerging technologies. Such narratives are, for example, the ‘slippery slope’ narrative, which implies, they say, “that technological advances that seem beneficial now will inevitably evoke further technological steps and applications that are morally doubtful”, and the ‘Trojan Horse’ narrative, which implies “that innovations developed for progressive purposes will in the long term have unforeseen and potentially irreversible effects”. Gene drive discourses seem to draw on this narrative.

Another use of the Trojan horse metaphor highlighted by social scientists is that of legitimising problematic uses of gene drives. One article published last year (referencing another published in 2017) points out that “the use of this technology to control certain invasive species, if successful, could become a Trojan horse to legitimize the eradication of other species without questioning to whom or what they are harmful”. As we have seen, some critics of gene drive use this narrative.

Conclusion

The Trojan horse metaphor seems to have two uses when communicating gene drive. It is used to explain one aspect of the science of gene drive (here the metaphor is quite neutral in terms of evoking emotions),  and it is used to criticise the potential uses of gene drive in society (here it is negatively charged); it has what I called an explanatory and an accusatory function. Both metaphor uses rely on the story of ‘trickery’. In one use, a cell is framed as being tricked into doing things, which might be good or bad. In the other use, people are framed as being tricked into doing bad things or bad things are legitimised or seen as creeping in under the radar.

Is this a metaphor with a split personality? On the one hand being used in the context of the public understanding of gene drive science and on the other in the context of the public understanding of gene drive applications and implications? Can this lead to confusion? Or are the contexts sufficiently different for this not to happen?

Image: Trojan horse, Wikimedia Commons

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