The Dane Commission (The Dane Chronicles) (11 page)

Lisa answered, “When a person is
admitted to the facility, they are assigned a bed number.”
 
Ryan thought about that as Marty went back
to work.

“Lisa, do you never find patients in
the wrong beds?” he asked.

“Sometimes we do,” she said, “but look
closely and you’ll see that the patient is wearing a hospital wristband. It is
linked to the specific bed he’s been assigned, and only the hospital registrar
can remove it.”

She leaned closer to Ryan, “If the
patient is out of his bed it sends a signal to the nurses’ desk. If the signal
remains active for more than a few minutes, the staff will run an automated
sweep of the floor. Then they locate the patient and help them back to their
own bed.”

He considered the logic in their
security, and couldn’t find any flaws.

“Really Ryan, it’s foolproof.”

He was getting tired of hearing people
tell him that.

“It certainly seems so.”

He looked at the time and said, “Thank
you Lisa, this has been very helpful. May I call you if I have more questions?”
“Absolutely, it was my pleasure,” she said.

Ryan made his way back to the elevator,
and then to his office.

It was a solid system. It was simple
and clear, too. The possibility of human error had been eliminated. At least it
certainly seemed so, and clearly they thought so.

Feeling a little frustrated, he put his
notes away, retrieved his things and headed home. The words
‘fool proof’
were still ringing in his ears when he sat down to dinner.

Meanwhile in Dr. Bender’s labs, it was
another late night for Jeff.
He’d been able to get his grad students back to work, but now he was stuck with
a supply issue regarding some much-needed tissue samples.

Working within his personal network of
lab administrators, he had finally tracked down acceptable samples, but could not
come up with the proper medium to perform the experiment. Speaking to a small
image of someone who looked equally tired, on his computer display, Jeff
thought he was near to success.

“Look Mark, if you will let me have the
samples and the medium, I will let you use our buckets for one full week.”
“Jeff, I’m going to need two weeks, and they will need to be cleaned first. I’m
not putting those things in our centrifuge as they are now.”
Damn.
He was right.

They were a mess, and it would take a
day or two of soaking in a solvent to clean them properly. Then he remembered
he had a second set still in the boxes. He’d been saving them for another
experiment, but he needed those samples now.

With a grimace he said, “Ok Mark, I’ll
send one of my grad students by in the morning to bring you the buckets. Just
make sure to have the samples ready.”

The man on the screen nodded; problem
solved.

He looked through his lab storeroom and
found the centrifuge buckets his friend Mark wanted to borrow. After removing them
from their boxes, he placed them on a counter outside and left a note for one
his students.

Looking at the clock, he sighed. He
still had to shut everything down before he could go home. He would be late for
dinner again, and his wife would not be pleased.

He began turning off his lights and
powering down their microscopes.
At least he’d been able to find the tissue samples for Bender.

Not too bad for a Monday.

For Ryan, Tuesday passed with little or
no change.
Ryan continued to review his findings. Each day he would take a new set of ID
information for another couple of fields to Jim, to run more field comparisons.
They began calling it simply, ‘Jim’s Test’. Each afternoon he would get the
results back from the ‘Jim’s Test’ of the previous day.
Always the results were negative.

Wednesday came, and he was still
waiting to try the data-entry interface David and Jim were working on. They
were having some difficulty arranging this, but they seemed confident they
could prepare it for him soon.
Ryan had not visited them yet today and was going to head over there in just a
few minutes. He was still looking for more field ID information for today’s
‘Jim’s test’.

He had decided to look for a very
recent treatment, and sorted them by date. He then decided to search by the
most widely used treatment. The search yielded a treatment that was as recent
as within a couple of weeks, and apparently used many times. Picking a specific
field, he sent Jim the ID information and headed over to their area.

“Hey guys, how are you doing today?” he
said.

Both David and Jim looked a little
fatigued.

“We’re trying to write a new test program for a small disc array in a lab.
Apparently, they need it to measure data recorded when some sort of particles
pass through their cell samples,” said David, “No problem right?”

He pointed to a Chinese operating
manual on his desk.
”Well the operating system was written in Chinese and it isn’t talking to any
of our terminals.”

Jim looked up at Ryan, rubbing his
temples.

“Ryan, I’m sorry about the delay. I
finished your data input test-bed. I can have it ready for you to pound on,
shortly.”

David said, “Assuming we get the
Chinese hardware problem fixed today.”
”I think it’s done Dave, take a look,” said Jim as he turned back to Ryan,
“When I send you the path, just log in as usual, and try it out. If it doesn’t
make sense, come and get me.”

Excited, Ryan said, “Wonderful, thanks
Jim. I’m really eager to try it out. By the way, I sent you the field ID stuff
for today’s ‘Jim’s test’.”

“Oh sure, and I sent you the results from yesterday’s test just a few minutes
ago, still nothing to report.” Jim continued, “Hold on just a second and let me
check the data you sent me today.”

After a short pause, he said, “Wow, Ryan you hit the mother lode on this one.”

Ryan didn’t understand, “What do you
mean
‘the mother lode’
?”

“Hold on just a sec,” Jim said as he
typed furiously, “…yep, it looks like this treatment, whatever it was, was
repeated over two million times; 2,329,005 to be exact.”

“That’s odd; are you sure you’re
reading that right? I picked one that was very recent, from within the last two
weeks, in fact. How could it have been performed that many times in just two
weeks?” said Ryan.

Jim pointed to a number-counter field on
the data input form. It was in the margin on the screen and seemed to be
nothing more than an innocuous string of numbers.
”That’s the number of times the treatment has been performed.”

“Hmm, wow that is a lot isn’t it. I
guess I could pick another one if it causes a problem with the test.”

Turning back to his terminal, Jim said,
“Oh no, that won’t be a problem at all. I’ll just let it run tonight, and send
you the results tomorrow.”

“Thanks guys. As always, I really do
appreciate your help.”

Ryan thought about the ‘test-bed’
program on the way back to his office.

He suddenly remembered he still needed
to have a treatment to input, but didn’t have a clue what to use. Jim and Dave
were stretched pretty thin. He decided to try his new friend Jeff Sarin, in
Bender’s lab. Even if he couldn’t help, maybe he could tell Ryan who to call.
It was certainly worth a try.

Sitting at his desk, Ryan activated his
televid.

After a moment, Jeff’s face appeared on
the screen.
“Dr. Sarin, I mean Jeff, this is Ryan Dane, you helped me the other day with-”
Ryan heard a lot of thumping, and wondered if Jeff had dropped the phone.

On the other end, Jeff was signing for
some supplies and had to set the phone down.

After a short pause he said, “Ryan, I’m
here. Sorry about that. Yes, I remember you, what can I do for you?”

“Well, the programmers here have put
together a test-bed version of the same manual interface some of your
prescribing research faculty are using. I’m going to experiment with it and
look for any sign of the errors, like what we’ve seen. I could use your help
with a procedure. Could you send me a short simple procedure, with the
necessary medical language that I could enter and test?”

“Yes, that shouldn’t be a problem. Look
for something from me later this afternoon or tomorrow morning,” said Jeff.

“Wonderful, thank you very much Jeff, I
appreciate your time.” Ryan was excited to get started.

Smiling now, he realized he was finally
getting somewhere.

That night Ryan put Alex in bed, and
went back downstairs to watch the news. The weather was going to be dry for the
rest of the week. He heard another story about new energy available for
housing. This time it was on the edge of the south side of the city, leading
towards the coast. He was about to change the channel when he heard someone
mention that the city’s population of 2,359,215 now had free energy for their
homes.
He said to Jean, “That’s weird, did you hear that?”

“No, what are you talking about?”

“That number, they just said for the
census of the city. It was 2 million something.”

Grabbing the remote he re-wound the
program and listened again, “… 2,359,215 now have free energy for their
homes.”
 

“I don’t understand, what’s weird about
that?”

“Well, it’s probably just a
coincidence, but that’s almost the same exact number of trials on a particular
treatment I found, while I was working at IntelliHealth today.”

Jean didn’t respond, she was
concentrating on a website she was browsing for some information on agility
training for the dog.

Ryan changed the channel and found an
old episode of Star Trek. Something about Picard, Worf and some Klingons. He
always liked the Klingons when he was a kid.
And that was the last thing he remembered before being poked by Jean.

“Ryan wake up and come to bed. Wake up.
You fell asleep on the couch again.”

He managed to make it to the bedroom
and fell into bed.

The next day was Thursday, and Ryan was
back at work and still waiting for Jim’s data-entry program. He received the
results from yesterday’s ‘Jim’s test,’ and saw that there were again no
discrepancies found. Frustrated, he went back to that treatment with the huge
number count, to look at it again. Pulling it up, he began to scroll through
the screens as he had done yesterday.

Going further than before, he came upon
something that stopped him.

A single short field read, ‘Rn186’; he
stared at the identifier.

This treatment was the vaccination
against the virus Rn186.

And the number of trials was nearly the
same as the total population of the city.
Something didn’t feel right.

‘Why is this weird to me?’ he thought.

He called Jean at work, “Jean, can you
talk?”

“Yes, but only for a few minutes.
What’s up?”

Jean had two patients undergoing scans in separate rooms, and apparently there
was an angry woman with some sort of complaint at the front desk.
They would be calling her to help any minute.

“The census number of the city last
night, do you remember it?”

“Ryan, this is why you are calling me.
Really?
”
Jean looked annoyed.

“2,359,215. That was the number. It was
almost the same as the number of trials for a procedure I was looking at, at
work.”
“Yeah, so?” she was getting impatient.

“It’s the number of vaccinations for
Rn186. The treatment I was looking at was the vaccination.”