The Dane Commission (The Dane Chronicles) (16 page)

A huge screen on the wall behind the speaker lit up, and a giant face appeared.
Jeff stood up, clapping almost uncontrollably.
It was the man who had started it all.
No one ever expected to see or hear from him like this. Looking around,
everywhere it was a standing ovation, and the noise was thunderous. Jeff knew
this was an occasion that he’d remember for years to come.

Smiling on the big screen, Dr. Frances
turned slightly, seemingly looking around the room.

After a few moments he said, “Please,
please stop. I have something to say.”

The noise continued. People remained
standing.

This was unprecedented.

After a few more moments, the giant
image of Dr. Frances said, “My friends and colleagues, please stop.” Slowly the
noise began to subside. People began sitting back down, and finally after
everyone was seated, he began.

“Good morning, everyone. Right now I am addressing every IntelliHealth Facility
in the world… and for those of you suffering from the difference in time, I
certainly apologize. I asked for this meeting because of the nature of this
crisis.”

“You are the greatest minds of our
time, and it is my honor to speak with all of you.”

There was another small round of
applause.

“After some consideration, I decided I
would be the one to give you this news. News that is awesome in scope and most
terrible indeed. Today my friends, we face a great challenge.”
Silence fell again over the crowd.
“You see, something has made us sterile.”
“The data we have just received confirms that in the current trend, mankind
will cease to exist on this planet within two generations.”
Over a blanket of murmuring, he continued addressing them all.
“It is up to you to solve this mystery. This problem cannot wait for our
children to face it. We must act now. I am officially re-directing all of our
collective scientific strength to this problem. Every lab in the IntelliHealth
System will direct its people and resources to solving this mystery.
Additionally, I am working with the governments of the world to ensure any
resources you might need will be met.”

“I realize the enormity of this
statement. We, in cooperation with local and federal governments will release a
statement to the public in due time. It will be a measured statement intended
to reduce panic. You have been told first because we simply cannot wait any
longer. We must begin our work now.”

“In closing, I want to say that I have
faith in you, and in this institution. I urge you to work together. I built
this living, breathing collective for just such a crisis. This ‘Fertility
Crisis.’ Your Facilities are the finest in the world. You have the best minds
and resources anyone could ask for; make use of them. The world needs us, and
we shall not fail.”

“Thank you all, Godspeed.”

The screen faded to black, leaving the auditorium
in stunned silence.

Dr. Cohen stepped up to the podium
again.

“I believe that’s all for now. Please watch your mail, pay attention to what’s
going on around you. Do not discuss this outside this forum at this time. It
will be obvious when this is public knowledge. Above all else, it is imperative
that we remain calm, fully organized and cooperative.”
“Thank you,” he said as he stepped down, and walked back to the side of the
floor.

No one moved at first, and the room
remained silent.
Everyone seemed to share a collective shock. Slowly, Jeff could begin to hear
individuals talking in hushed, low voices. A few at a time, they began to stand
up and make their way to the exits.

Only two generations left.
Jeff felt sick to his stomach.

CHAPTER 7

“In skating
over thin ice our safety is in our speed.
”
 
-
Ralph Waldo
Emerson

“If you are in
a spaceship that is traveling at the speed of light, and you turn on the
headlights, does anything happen?
”
-
Steven Wright

“Yes, I am Laura Stems, what do you
know about our mixed-up treatments?”

A woman with long dark hair was
speaking to Ryan on the televid in his office.

Ryan was pleased the way someone might
be at a surprise party, wildly happy and completely speechless. He shifted in
his seat, and took a drink of water.

“Well, I understand that’s why you’ve
called?” she said.

Taking a deep breath, and smiling
hugely he said, “My name is Ryan Dane, and yes that is exactly why I’ve called.
Ms. Stems, may I call you Laura?”
She nodded.
“Laura, it has taken quite a lot to get me to you, please let me explain.”

He began to describe the documented
cases of treatment errors at his Facility. He explained that he had been hired
to investigate these errors. Laura said they had experienced them as well, and
at roughly the same frequency, maybe a fraction less. To date he had tried
without success to compare and contrast data and procedures from both the
research and hospital components. He had also begun to work heavily with
information services creating new and innovative tests on the subject data.

She listened raptly and when he paused,
described what she had tried on her end. She said that they had come to believe
it was happening exclusively from a specific input terminal, but when they
deactivated it, the location changed, coming randomly from anywhere. It was an
interesting idea that hadn’t even come up on his side.

They talked for quite some time,
trading their frustrations, when he finally got to the part of the story where
he had sought approval to talk to some of the other IntelliHealth Facilities.

“I tried that too,” she said, “but I
was not allowed to approach other Facilities. However, there is nothing
inappropriate with me responding to questions from another one.”
 
He wasn’t sure what to do next exactly.

“Laura, I will stay in contact with you
as we move forward. Please help me to forge a communication between our
facilities. I will speak with my supervisor and explain that your side has been
experiencing the same issues. I hope we can create a more formal bridge between
us. In the meantime, I will continue to approach other facilities, albeit
informally, as well.”

Laura smiled for the first time days,
“That sounds wonderful Ryan.”
She leaned towards the camera, “As interesting as this has been Ryan, we still
need answers. Maybe someone out there has them.”

Ryan said goodbye, punched the air and
shouted, “Yeah!”
Finally something had worked!

He stepped out of his office and
striding like a giant across the office floor, got some fresh coffee.

Across the floor, Jim had received his
new assignments, and was reading through them. His first project was to bring
up the information network for floors 210 through 230.
He would need to power up the network switches, test the data ports in the labs
and offices and verify that everything was ready from Information Services for
new occupants. To get started he needed to draft some of the network techs, and
have them make a sweep of the floors. But that would have to wait until after
he powered up the switches.

Before he got started, he wanted to
look at the Hospital Security logs to see if he finally caught his friend, the
code fragment.
Sure enough, the code was back again.
His script failed again to catch the entry; the timestamp read 8:01 AM.
Again it appeared exactly one minute after his script shut down. Whatever was
generating this line, almost seemed to be changing its time of entry to avoid
his monitor script; as if there was someone behind this.
Now he was even more determined to catch them.

He was still reluctant to run a 24-hour
monitor script, and face questions and explanations with David. Instead, he
changed his script to monitor 23 of the next 24 hours. The one-hour gap was
between 8:00 PM and 9:00 PM, and would be as revealing as an actual hit.
He thought to himself, ‘your move my friend.’

David spoke over the partition, “Listen
Jim, I want to talk about the new floors coming up.”

“Sure, go ahead, I’m listening.”

David stood up and looked over the
partition, “Apparently, the groups coming in are going to be bringing a couple
of ‘super’ computers. Not quite on the SID level, and they will be limited in
functionality for users, but they will be resource-greedy all the same. I want
you to set them up.”
”Okay, what are they exactly?” said Jim.

“Not sure. I will send you the specs on them when I get them, probably sometime
this afternoon. I am guessing that the total number of user accounts on them
will be about 8 to 10, and SID of course.”
 

“Do I need to worry about the power
supply?”

“Probably not, but it wouldn’t hurt to
just mention it to facilities. I imagine the people bringing them will have a
whole list of special needs. They will have to go over all of it with
facilities at some point,” he said.

“True, very true. Ok, I’m on it,
anything else?”

David walked around the wall, and
lowered his voice, “Man, I think something happened.”
”What?”

He looked around, and half crouched.
“I don’t know what’s happened, but it’s huge. My friends upstairs are freaked.
They won’t talk either, and that’s even more weird.”

Jim leaned forward, “Do you think it's something biological, like maybe a new
virus or something?”

“I was thinking the same thing. Like
maybe some kind of plague,” Dave whispered.

Jim was at a loss for words. He
remembered how severe Mr. James looked at the last staff meeting.

“Dave, keep after your friends in the
labs.”

“I will. We’re supposed to have a
network party tonight; I’m going to see if he’ll talk then. After work, I’m
going to the grocery store as soon as I get off work, and maybe the hardware
store.”

“I don’t understand Dave, why?”

“I want to stock up on supplies.”

David looked around again and went back
to his cubicle.

Jim turned back to his terminal,
imagining people filling up heaping grocery carts. He shook his head and tried
to focus on setting up the new floors.

Upstairs, Jeff walked back to his
office in a daze, still reeling from the faculty meeting in the auditorium.

‘Well,’ he thought, ‘there it is.’
 
The big mystery that he didn’t even know existed. Not until that damn Ryan Dane
walked into his office, yesterday. It had been there right in front of him the
whole time.

He and his wife, Kali had been trying
to get pregnant for a year. They had been going to a fertility specialist recommended
by a doctor at work. At first he had been reluctant to go at all. Everything
about it was too personal.

He remembered that when they first
walked into the waiting office, it was crowded; so full that they had taken the
only remaining chairs. Seeing so many people waiting for help had actually
comforted him; they weren’t alone.

Now it made sense why there were so
many.

And it scared him.

He stepped into his office, and sat
down. He stared at his computer screen.

What was he going to say to Kali? Should
he even say anything?

How long would this be a secret he
wondered? Ryan had been correct to ask how could such a thing even be secret?
From what he had just heard, it seemed that city and federal governments around
the world knew about the problem. It wouldn’t be long until someone broke the
story to the press.

 
What a mess this was.

He opened his mail, and there was a
response from his friend Amala, it read, “Dear Vignesh, an odd question to be
sure. But perhaps an insightful one too. Fewer than I can ever remember. Is
there something I should know? May we speak tomorrow on the televid?”