The Dane Commission (The Dane Chronicles) (22 page)

They continued towards the
cafeteria.
   

“And in between all of this are lots of
places where you can relax, sitting, reading, exercising or watching the news.”

They were approaching the entry to the
cafeteria and Ben paused and smiled, “I love it here. Sometimes it’s a real
chore to go back to my office.”

Together they entered the cafeteria.
Ryan was nearly overwhelmed by the number of choices. By the time they got to
the register, he picked the fried fish, macaroni and cheese, french bread and a
piece of chocolate pie with two inches of meringue on top; a feast! He thought
back to the peanut butter and jelly sandwich waiting for him in his office, and
laughed.

Ben picked up both of their tabs, and
headed to a table.

Ryan would have protested, but he was
too slow getting to the register. By the time he pulled his ID chip, the
cashier said it was already taken care of.

Ryan sat with Ben at a table way in the
back. It had a terrific view looking out through the panoramic windows that
filled the whole perimeter of the eating area.
All smiles, he looked at Ben and said, “This is awesome. I can’t believe I’ve
been passing it up. Oh and thanks for lunch, too.”

Ben just laughed and started cutting
some sort of meatloaf.

“Ryan, you’re married right? Have you
got kids?”

“Actually yes to both, my wife’s name
is Jean, and my son, Alex who is a very cool 8-year old.”

“Are you planning to have more?” said
Ben.

Considering what he knew, that was a
loaded question these days.

“No, one was all we were interested
in.”

They ate in silence for a few more
minutes.

“Ryan, I believe there are some
difficult times ahead. I think there will be some sort of statement from
IntelliHealth to the press soon. Maybe very soon.”

“You sound concerned Ben, is there
anything I can do to help?”

“Well, actually you are helping. You
have done some terrific work on the project we hired you to look at. Your
perspective is fresh, and you discovered in a few weeks what we had not
considered. Well done. Very well done.”

Ben held his glass up, and an attendant brought him some more tea.

“I am expecting that your role in the
treatment anomaly will escalate pretty soon.”

“Really, because after my talk with
Dorothy, I’ve been expecting someone high up to call and ask for my files. I’ve
arranged and documented them just in case.”

Ben was picking at some potatoes.
“Well, from the mail that I’ve received, I’m expecting just the opposite to
happen. I wouldn’t even be surprised to see you end up reporting to someone higher
up.”

Ryan took a bite of his chocolate
meringue pie, and it was really,
really
good.

It must have shown on his face, because
Ben started chuckling.

“Yeah, it’s good, but man is it bad for
you.”

Ben continued, “Seriously though, you
have found an issue that extends beyond this facility, beyond London and beyond
Sydney. We’re talking about a problem of a different scope than what my
department is able to handle. It will be interesting to see how it comes back,
once the powers that be have deliberated.”

“Ben, who are the ‘powers-that-be’
anyway?” Ryan asked.

“Well, I imagine that Dorothy had a
meeting with the Directors of Patient Services at both of the other facilities.
Then assuming they all agreed on the veracity of the matter, they all would
have gone to each of their respective Facility Presidents, or in our case the
Facility Director.
 
The Presidents would
then talk together and decide what action to take. I imagine that’s what is
happening right now,” he said.

Ryan wasn’t sure what to expect when he
talked with Dorothy, but Ben’s speculation seemed pretty logical.

Ryan thought about it and said, “Well,
I hope that I have not let you down, and that I can continue to help. And I am
forever indebted to you for hiring me and giving me this chance. Thank you Ben,
very much.”

“Ha, yes of course, Ryan. Whether you
stay with me, or move on, I will look forward to working with you.” Ben’s watch
beeped, “Ah, now, you’ll have to forgive me, I have to get back for a phone
call.” Both men stood, and shook hands.

Ben left Ryan looking out the window
and considering his words.

He hadn’t really considered moving
under a new boss.
He liked Ben.

It was clear that Ben knew about the
fertility crisis and was dealing with a lot of fall-out from it right now. Maybe
personal issues as well, who knew?

Ben was right, there were difficult
times ahead.

He finished his pie.

That night, Ryan made a point to take
inventory of their home.

As discretely as he could, he walked
around with his tablet and made notes of things like batteries, food and pet
supplies. The length of his list showed just how unprepared they were for any
sort of crisis.
‘Man,’ he thought, ‘we’re living day-to-day.’

He vowed to change that.

On his way home tomorrow, he would buy
enough of everything to last two weeks.

‘Two weeks?’ he questioned himself,
‘really?’

Well, it sounded good.
He realized he honestly had no idea how long they would need to last, if riots
turned the city upside down. Well, he rationalized, if he got more than two weeks
worth of supplies, Jean and Alex would certainly notice and start asking
questions.

He admitted that he didn’t have any
answers, and he resolved himself to buying what he could.

Across town, that same night Jim Safe
was taking inventory as well. He opened the liquor cabinet behind the bar, in
his apartment. He surveyed of the bottles present and wrote down, ‘must get
enough tequila for at least two weeks’. Glad that he had checked, he opened a
beer and sat down to watch the vids.

The next morning Ryan was back at his
desk. He had finished documenting his files, and had organized them in a box
for delivery if the request came. When he finished, he went over to see what
Jim was up to. When he got there Jim was working, but David was gone.

“Hey Jim, where’s David?”

Ryan noticed that Jim was typing
furiously in machine-gun style bursts.
He looked very annoyed.

“Hey Ryan, I didn’t see you there. David is at some meeting with people that
Ben brought in this morning. Honestly, I really don’t know what it’s about.”

“Well, I just came over to say hello, I
won’t interrupt you,” Ryan said.

“Wait, stay. Do you want to see
something weird?”

“Well that’s a loaded question, yes,
maybe?”

Jim reached around Ryan and pulled
another chair up to his desk.

“Have a seat Ryan, and take a look at
this,” he said.

Using his motion sensor interface, Jim
waved his hands at the screens above his desk, and cleared away much of the
data displayed there. What remained was a long list of commands in date/time
order, and 2 or 3 different scripts. Ryan had some light training in scripting
computer code, enough to know what he was looking at, albeit not enough to
understand the detail.

“Okay, what’s up?” said Ryan.

Jim pointed to the list of commands.
There were six entries highlighted, and all identical.

3:01 PM
           
#starEtrySIDnet12B34b61
‘let Sc3356BBB 9’

6:01 PM
           
#starEtrySIDnet12B34b61
‘let Sc3356BBB 9’

9:01 PM
           
#starEtrySIDnet12B34b61
‘let Sc3356BBB 9’

1:01 AM
           
#starEtrySIDnet12B34b61
‘let Sc3356BBB 9’

4:01 AM
           
#starEtrySIDnet12B34b61
‘let Sc3356BBB 9’

7:01 AM
           
#starEtrySIDnet12B34b61
‘let Sc3356BBB 9’

 
Ryan saw that Jim was staring, totally engrossed.

“Jim, I don’t understand. Why are these
entries important.”

Jim pushed backwards in his chair, and
turned towards Ryan.

“Someone is playing with me.”

“What? Slow down, explain.”

“Ryan, I’ve been looking for whatever
program is generating this entry. I noticed it about two weeks ago. It’s a code
fragment. Usually, they are generated by accident when systems are integrated.
Sometimes there are too many arguments being passed from one program to
another, and the result is a truncated string left behind, just like this.”

Jim pointed to the lines on the
screen.
 
“When I found this one, I deleted it as we always do.”

“Ok, so what are these?” Ryan said.

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I
deleted it, but it came back the next day. Since then I have found and deleted
it every day since. In fact, I wrote a monitoring script, uploaded it to the
Hospital network servers, and have been trying ever since to identify which
program is causing this line to reappear,” said Jim excitedly.

Not understanding, but trying his best
to look thoughtful, Ryan said, “Hmm,” in his best ‘thoughtful voice’. It
must’ve worked because Jim kept going.

“You see, whatever is causing this to
appear seems to be eluding my searches. As though it is acting intelligently.
I’ve been telling myself that I’m reading too much into it. Then this happened,
starting yesterday afternoon, and running through the night.”
 

Again, Jim was staring at the entries.

“Keep going Jim, what happened
exactly?”

“Yesterday, I had a bit of a hangover,
and I wasn’t thinking very clearly. I changed my monitor script to have 6
windows of about 10 minutes each. During these 6 windows my monitor program
would stop watching.”
“Why would you do that, Jim? It sounds kind of crazy.”

“I know, I know. It doesn’t make sense.
It was a stupid thing to do.”

Jim pointed to the entries.

“But look Ryan. Look what happened.”

Then he got it.

Whoever did this, added an entry
exactly one minute after each time Jim’s monitor-script stopped watching. It
perfectly repeated six times.

“This is no random act,” said Ryan.

“That’s what I’m saying,” said Jim.

“What system is this anyway?”

“Oh, it’s the security log from the
hospital network.”

“You mean someone is hacking into the
hospital network, and playing with you?”

Now Jim could see that Ryan understood.

“Well, it’s not someone from the
outside. If it was, all kinds of alarms would have gone off. And I have only,
just this morning, confirmed that this is anything more than a broken string
left behind.”

“So what's your next move?” asked Ryan.

It was a good question.

Jim leaned back and rubbed his eyes.

“Well, I’ll have to write a report and
give it to David, and Ben. I imagine we will run my monitor program twenty-four
hours a day from now on.”

Ryan stood up. “It’s a good find Jim,
let me know how it comes out. I like a good mystery too.”

With barely a nod, Jim said goodbye to
Ryan.
Jim stared at the log entries.

‘Man that’s weird,’ thought Jim, ‘I
swear it’s taunting me.’

 
Upstairs, Dr. Bender visited Jeff in his
office. And at that moment he heard something he had never expected to hear
from Dr. Bender.
“Jeff, we are going to get our sperm!”