The Dane Commission (The Dane Chronicles) (14 page)

In the meantime, he decided to write to
one of his best friends who was a practicing obstetrician in India. He sent an
electronic mail that said only,
‘Dearest Amala - how many babies have you
delivered lately?’

Jim sat in his cubicle staring at his
screens.

He had been looking for any signs that
the system needed a fresh update, and found an odd entry in the hospital
security log. It was a single line of code that shouldn’t be there.

#starEtrySIDnet12B34b61 ‘let Sc3356BBB
9’

It was odd to see it here, because he had deleted it yesterday.

Strings like this weren’t really all
that unusual.

As systems ran, they would collect code
debris from unexpected interactions between systems. They never deleted their
directories, so these entries were never purged. They built up over time. In
the old days, if enough accumulated, they could hamper response times. This
wasn’t as true today, but it was still a good practice to clean them out when
you found them.

Jim had worked on powerful systems like
this before. For several years he’d worked for the International Space Program.
He was part of the team that upgraded the space station so that it shared a
strong safe network with the tiny lunar colony, Haven 1.

He remembered how excited he’d been to
come here. Working on the system that Steve Ranks built was awesome at first,
but the truth was there wasn’t much to do. Occasionally, a project would come
up that was interesting for a while. Inevitably he would end up here again, looking
at screens of virtual flotsam and jetsam for hours.

The truth was that this system didn’t
really need him.

So here he sat, staring at the code bit
he had found, wondering if meant anything.
When he had first started looking through the Hospital logs yesterday, he found
this line with a few others that were nonsensical, and cleaned them out.
Checking his work again today, he found that this one was back.

He called to his team-leader, David.
“Hey Dave, I’m sending you a screen 122, can you take look at something for
just a minute?”

“Sure.”

He and David often had conversations
over the partition wall, and so without getting up Jim sent an invitation to
Dave to see the screen he was looking at on his own monitor. David paused what
he was working on, and opened the invitation from Jim.

“Ok, what am I looking at?”

Jim sighed, “Well, it’s not a new video
game. It’s part of the security log from the Hospital, from last night.”

“Okay, what’s wrong with it?” David
said.
“See that bit in line 1006, the #starEtrySID… thing?”

“Yes.”

“Any idea what that is?” he asked.

“No, why? Who cares? It’s garbage code,
a fragment of a bit string, just delete it.”

“Yeah, that’s the funny part. I deleted
it yesterday and it’s back.”

There was a pause.

“Well delete it again; maybe you made a
mistake yesterday.”

‘Flathead,” he thought.
He wanted to
say, ‘I don’t make those kinds of mistakes,’ but thought better of it.

In his best happy-voice, Jim said,
“Okay, thanks.”

He deleted the line and wondered why
he’d come here.

‘Oh yeah,’ he thought, ‘it was for the
excitement.’

After the weekend, Ryan started his
Monday morning with another look at the Rn186 treatment to see if the number
count had changed again. Sure enough, it went up by a few more.

They were getting around.

He had told Jean to wait to take Alex
to the doctor. Right now there was no pressure to take the inoculation, and
there were no cases reported of Rn186. He wanted to slow down and see what was
going on around IntelliHealth before getting any more shots.

He got a call from Theresa asking if he
had time to visit with Mr. James. He said sure, and headed to Ben’s office.
When he arrived Ben waved him in, as he wrapped up a phone call and said
goodbye.

“Ok Ryan, I’ve thought about it, and I
will approve your request to talk with some of the other facilities. However, I
want you to do a few very important things. First, start with the facility in
London. That’s Jack Spree’s place and he and I are friends. He would call me
before going off to the higher-ups. Second, never refer to this as a
departmental request. You are interested in an anomaly here, and want to talk
with some folks around other facilities on your own initiative.”

Standing up and walking around the
desk, he continued, “It is not my intention to throw you to the wolves if
things get hot, but I do not want to escalate this to a departmental level
request. There are protocols that they will have to follow if we do, and there
will be a lot of subsequent attention. Do you understand?”

Trying to restrain his enthusiasm, Ryan
said, “Yes Ben, I believe I do.”

“Third, do not raise concerns that are
not present. By that I mean do not exaggerate, or embellish anything to make it
sound worse that it is, even accidentally. Choose your words very carefully
when you talk with these people.”

“Yes, I understand.”
“And Ryan, if you do find anything over there, I want to know about it before
anyone else.”

“I understand, Ben.”

Ryan, on his way back to his office,
was eager to get started, and just a little surprised. Judging from Ben’s
previous reaction, Ryan had doubts that he would get the necessary approval to
proceed. Ben must suspect something, or maybe the pressure for answers was
increasing from above. Now he realized he had a new problem, who-in-the-hell
was he going to call in London?

“Janis, you understand how expensive
this machine is, yes?”

Through wet eyes, and a lot of
sniffing, she said, “Yes, sir.”

Jeff put on his lab coat and stared at
the broken centrifuge.

The grad student next to him was in
tears.

She had been running experiments, and
had forgotten to re-balance the machine. It happened all the time with
students. Truth was, it might happen to the senior investigators too, but they
relied on SID to perform these actions. However, it was the job of the lab
director to sufficiently drive home the point that they could not tolerate
sloppy practices. He had inherited the responsibility with his last promotion,
and had to admit it was more fun to be on
this
side of the conversation.

“You understand that your sloppy
actions could have seriously hurt another person in our lab?”
“Yes, sir.”

This was a total myth, perpetuated by
lab directors going back to the beginning. However the picture of a broken
bucket sending fragments bursting through the centrifuge case and spraying
shrapnel around the room was a powerful one.

“You understand that everyone’s work
will be slowed down until we can get a new one here?”

“Yes, sir.”

This was also a myth. There were
countless centrifuges around the building. But again, it was part of the
age-old speech given by lab administrators everywhere.

“As penance, you will arrive early
every morning for two weeks, and clean the lab benches, yes?”

“Yes, sir.”

And with that, she was off.

It was over and the only thing left was
to send in a requisition for a new one.

He didn’t notice that his supervisor
Dr. Bender had stepped up, and was waiting quietly behind him.

“You know Dr. Sarin,” he said with a
grin, “I seem to remember giving you that exact same speech, and almost in this
exact same spot.”

Startled, Jeff turned around to see Dr.
Bender smiling at him.

“Ah yes, and I recall you made me clean
your lab benches for a month.”

“It’s possible; I don’t really remember
that part.”

They both laughed as they walked
towards Jeff’s office.

Bender walked in, and sat down, “Jeff,
I got your message, and so here I am.”

Jeff shut his door, and sat down too.

“Dr. Bender, I know you don’t like to
waste time, so I’m just going to ask, is there something happening to the birth
rate?”

Bender instantly took on a very somber
look.

He hesitated before answering, as if he
was weighing what could, or maybe
should
be said.
“Jeff, you have been a valuable person on my team. I watched you grow up into
the excellent scientist you are today. I won’t lie to you, but I will caution
you on what you might say afterwards. I imagine that this is more than
educational, this is a personal matter as well, isn’t it?”
 
Suddenly Jeff was uncomfortable in his chair, and the room felt warmer than it
should. Jeff and his wife were married a year ago, and had been trying to get
pregnant, so far without much luck.

Bender continued, “The truth is birth
rates across the world have dropped significantly. And even more so in the last
couple of years. In our faculty meetings, this subject is now our greatest
concern. Nearly all of the IntelliHealth research is focused on fertility, and
the human condition.”

Jeff was stunned, “What is causing it?
How is this not known?”

 
“We don’t know the cause. Some are suggesting that it is a natural
biological reaction to our longer lifetimes. For example, it is known that
longer-lived animals such as elephants, whales and some sea turtles produce
less offspring than shorter-lived animals.”

Bender knew Jeff and his wife had been
trying to get pregnant unsuccessfully for quite a while now. He could see the
stress building in his friend.

In a calm voice he continued, “Some
believe it is an environmental factor of a kind we simply have not been able to
isolate, maybe even something to do with our new particle-smashers.”

He took a deep breath and continued,
“Other more radical views suggest that our tampering with human cell-signaling
has turned off something necessary to reproduce. Flipped a switch in our
genetic make-up. But I stress that there is no evidence to support this idea.”

Jeff said, “What do you believe Dr.
Bender?”

“I don’t know, and I won’t pretend to.
You asked why this isn’t known. It’s because this has come upon us so quickly.
We still don’t have all the numbers. I believe we were fairly quick to react
when the first data was collected and submitted. Our work now is not completely
different from identifying a sort of plague. Right now our best minds are
driving SID with new tests around the clock.”

“Currently, more than anything else, we
need more information, more concrete data. The next round of census numbers
will be gathered shortly. We took steps to work with our government officials
to access their vaccination numbers. Because of this, we’ll have a more
accurate update on the census soon,” he said.

Bender stood up and leaned towards
Jeff, putting his hand on his shoulder. “Jeff above all else, we must remain
calm. We simply do not have any facts and there is nothing to gain from these
rumors right now. We do not know enough at this time to react in any other
way.”

“Thank you, Dr. Bender, I understand.”

Bender left Jeff, still sitting at his
desk.

He reached for his in-box again, and
pulled out that paper on infertility.

Jim was still between projects, when he
found himself back at the Hospital Security Log looking for the code fragment
again. Opening a fresh bottled water, and a bag of chips he scrolled down the
entries from last night. And there it was, the little string of characters was
back.