The Dane Commission (The Dane Chronicles) (12 page)

“I’m sorry Ryan, but I’m still not
seeing your point. Wasn’t the idea in the first place to inoculate everyone?
You know protect us from the virus, carrying the virus, spreading it and all
that good stuff?”
What she was saying made perfect sense.
“Yes, that’s right. That was the idea.”

“Ok then, so what’s the problem?”

He was looking out the window,
confused.

“Yeah, you’re right.
 
I don’t know, I guess nothing.”
“I have to go, I’ll see you tonight.”

At the last second, he asked Jean, “Has
Alex been vaccinated yet?”

“No,” she replied, “I haven’t had time
to get him to the doctor’s office yet.”

“Ok, well I’ll see you tonight,” he
said and hung up the phone.

Feeling a little unsettled, he turned
back to his monitor.

Not quite understanding why, he still
felt like there was something wrong about that number.

As he sat there, a message from Jim
came; he finally had access to the test-bed. Eager now, he read the message,
found the file-path, and looked at the research procedure input screens.

This was how the researchers manually
input their prescribed treatments. The first thing he noticed was what a huge
difference there was between looking at it from the front-end versus looking at
it from the back-end. To date, all he had seen were the unformatted fields with
a lot of cryptic ‘X’s masking the information.
This was different.
The layout was beautiful, with plenty of descriptors and intuitive graphics.
Everywhere there were input fields with drop-down options, others with room for
text, and some that had horizontal or vertical sliders. Hovering over any
element of the page produced explanations to assist you.

When he was done looking around he was
forced to admit he couldn’t do any more until he received the example procedure
from Jeff, upstairs in the lab.

‘Still though,’ he thought, ‘this is
cool.’

He sent Jim a quick message to say,
‘Thanks, it seems to be working just fine’.

Just as Ryan was sending his message to
Jim, he received a message from Jeff.
‘I’m sorry for the delay, Ryan. The staff I assigned this to had to leave early
and didn’t get it done. I will make sure that you get it as soon as possible.’

Disappointed but grateful, Ryan
resigned himself to waiting until tomorrow to get started.

Meanwhile, over in Jim’s cubicle, they
were looking at a response from the research lab regarding the disc-array from
China. The lab group was very pleased and grateful that the microscope array
was working now, and wanted to ask if Jim and Dave could set up a second one as
well.

Jim would need David’s approval before
agreeing. David was reading the message, and trying to keep his cool.
“They blew two days of my schedule on this problem, and now they want to do it
again?”
“I can do it. I don’t mind David, really. It won’t be difficult to re-use the
work we’ve already finished.
 
“Ok, fine. But we really need to have a protocol in place about hardware and
foreign languages.”

David went back to his cubicle while
Jim responded to them.

Jim liked their ‘good cop, bad cop’
relationship sometimes.

He smiled and hit send.

Up in the lab, Jeff had just sent a
message to Ryan Dane regarding an example of a simple treatment. As often
happened, the doctors in his lab had proven unresponsive to his request for the
written example. They would do what he asked, but never on time.

Jeff decided to send a student to the
lab across the hall.
He called in one of his better ones.
“Susan, I need an example of a prescribed medical treatment. It needs to have
data sufficient for entering into the system as though it was a real patient.”

“Ok, Dr. Sarin, but this could be quite
lengthy.”

He was pretty sure Ryan didn’t want
that.

“Please try for a simple procedure.
Maybe something like a broken leg?”

“Oh, alright. I’ll find something short
and simple.

He smiled, “Wonderful, thank you very
much, Susan.”

Pleased to help, she walked across the
hall into the neighboring lab suite to find it for him.

Jeff went back to work organizing some
results from Bender.

He thought, ‘Ah very good, another
problem solved again.’

While he was looking for something to
do, Ryan received a call from Theresa.

“Ryan, I show that an electronic tablet
has been returned to our office supplies. Typically, we all carry these for
meetings. Would you like to have it?”
 

“Sure, I’ll be right there.”

He made his way to her desk.
She smiled, “Hey there Ryan, follow me.”
She led him to a room near the back of the floor.

Waving her ID chip at the door, it
opened and she went inside. Together hey stood in what was clearly an office
supply room. It didn’t look very organized; the supplies seemed to be arranged
more by pile-size than functionality.

“Sorry about the mess, usually the room
is in better shape, but the lady responsible has been out on maternity leave.
She’s going to have a fit when she comes back.”

After a few moments, she produced a
tablet. It was silver and black with the IntelliHealth logo across the top.
“Ah here we go, this is it, if you want it.”

“Sure, thanks Theresa. So how do I
actually check it out.”
“First turn it on. Ok, now hold your ID chip over it.”
“Now when you pass through the door, watch the screen, it should read that
you've checked it out.”

As they walked out the door, Ryan read
the message and said, “Hey that was really easy, thanks Theresa.”

“Sure, if you need help to sync it to
your terminal, just call me.”

Like a kid with a new toy, he headed
back to his desk and sync’d the tablet to his terminal.

At the end of the day, Ryan gathered
his things and headed home.

While he was driving home, he started
going over what he would do tomorrow.

He had the test-bed interface from Jim,
hopefully tomorrow he would get the sample procedure from Jeff.

It had been kind of slow today, but
hopefully tomorrow would pick up.

That night after Alex went to bed, Jean
asked him about his phone call that morning.

“So did you get it all figured out?”

“Not really, that number still bothers
me.”
He sat down next to her on the couch. She was watching the news.

Suddenly he realized why he was
surprised at the number.

”Jean, why would they have the whole
number?”
”What?”

“How could IntelliHealth have
vaccination information for the whole city population? Wouldn’t some people go
to their own doctors, their own clinics, and schools?”

“Yeah, I guess so. The shot I got at
work was from some paramedics that work for the city.”

“So why would IntelliHealth have
records for everyone that had been vaccinated?” he said excited.

Ryan thought about it, “I had to swipe my ID chip to get the shot. Did you
Jean?”

“Yes, it was the first time they’ve
requested it that I can remember.” she said.

She could see that he was focused on
this.

It didn’t seem that important to her,
but she knew he would be stuck on this idea for the rest of the night, if they
didn’t talk it through.

“What information did you find exactly?” she asked.

“What I saw showed that IntelliHealth
has information on everyone who was vaccinated including their name, age,
address,
everything
.”

She frowned, that was a little odd.

“So, you’re saying the city must have
shared its data with IntelliHealth,” she said.

“Yeah, maybe,” he said slowly, feeling
very much as if there was a clue here he was still missing.

“But if it’s true, why would the city do that?” he said, “IntelliHealth just
provides the inoculations for the city to use, right? It would make more sense
for the city health department to keep tabs on the people inoculated.”

She shrugged, “I don’t know. It does
seem a little intrusive.”
He paused and changed the channel, still perturbed.

“I’m sorry Ryan, but why is that so
important?”
He put the remote down, and turned to her.
“If you believe it’s the same in all cities, then IntelliHealth must have the
most accurate census records anywhere, for the entire world.”

“Now, I think I see your point. That
does seem a little odd.”
He turned back to the story on the news, and raised the volume.

Rubbing his neck, she said, “Well, if
you wanted to see how close the numbers really are, I suppose you could search
the web for the official government census, and find the real number for
comparison.”

“That’s a good idea,” he said getting
up immediately.
He went to their computer on the bar, and began searching.
He pulled up information from the local federal government website on the city
census. What he found, confirmed that the total number of people was about 2.3
million, and that apparently IntelliHealth had records for nearly all of them.

“Jean, you had a good idea, and it
looks like it’s true. So why would IntelliHealth have that much information on
the city population? And, if it’s true, and it’s the same in any city, why
would IntelliHealth have that much information on the whole world population?”

“OK, seriously Ryan, you sound a little
paranoid, baby.”
He sat back down next to her, “I know. My project at work is frustrating me.
Maybe it’s starting to get to me a little.”

“Well,” she said, “I’m tired and I’m
going to bed. I’m sure it will make more sense in the morning.”
With a quick kiss, Jean went to bed and left Ryan still thinking about the
census numbers.

After she left, he went back to his
computer.
With the data in front of him, he glanced back over the last several years. The
census for the city seemed to have slowed and leveled off. The data for the
current year wasn’t in yet apparently, but the trend he was looking at seemed
to suggest that the next entry would actually go down.

Could that be true?

He was confused.

People were living longer, so at least
in the short run, the ‘death’ rate might seem to be falling. That should mean
more people were alive at the same time. If the birth rate was stable, and as
long as people weren’t fleeing the city in droves, then the census would
definitely go up.
So why would the census level off, or even fall?

It had to be the birth rate.

He began searching hospitals for public
data on deliveries for the last two years. He wasn’t coming up with much
information. There had been a flood of new fertility services. From
commercials, to electronic mail, to digital billboards, everywhere one looked
one could see a happy couple holding a new baby. It never occurred to him that
the opposite could be true.

‘I must try not to sound paranoid,’ he
thought, and laughed out loud.

The next morning was Friday, and Ryan
was back at work and excited to see Jeff’s sample treatment waiting for him in
the mail.

With the language ready, he began
filling out the input form. The treatment was calling for a scan of a broken
limb, which would be handled by one technician, and an injection of something
called cod-L122 ‘for relief of pain’, that would be handled by another
technician. It was perfect, very short, and very simple.

Ryan entered the data and hit ‘submit’.

There were no complaints, everything
seemed to work, and he even got confirming messages indicating that the
treatment was submitted to Patient Services.

Now he entered the information again,
but mistyped the name of the drug.