The Dane Commission (The Dane Chronicles) (2 page)

Ryan addressed the disembodied voice,
“So essentially you have a mismatch in two databases that needs to be worked
out, and someone able to speak the language of both departments to identify
it.”
 

“Yes, that’s right,” said Mr. James,
“Your background seems to indicate that you would be very well suited to work
as liaison between our departments. Don’t you agree Dorothy?”
Looking at her electronic tablet, quickly pushing numerous virtual buttons, she
paused and looked up.

“You do seem like a good fit Mr. Dane.
Let's talk about some of the details specific to the software.”

The interview was uneventful with
questions about experience, and hypothetical scenarios intended provoke
insightful responses. But nothing more was heard from SID. Ryan carried on well
enough, and thought the points he made were acceptable. But he couldn’t help
drifting from the conversation occasionally to glance at the giant crystal
screen. He wondered if the artificial voice was still listening.
’W
ould it speak again?’

Very shortly, it ended as they often
do, somewhat anticlimactic. Ryan had known it would be unlikely to receive an
offer today, but couldn’t help but feel a little dejected when he shook hands
to leave.

“Thank you for coming Mr. Dane, you
will hear from us regarding our decision soon. Ms. Holmes will see you out.”
Ryan was ushered from the conference room by the same woman who had met him earlier.
Ms. Holmes led him through the front entry area to the elevators.
“It usually takes them about two weeks to settle on someone, but I know they
are under a lot of pressure to get this position going.”
She smiled, and handed him a business card. “It was nice to meet you Ryan; I
hope we will be seeing more of you around here.”

It was the usual exit talk, maybe a
little nicer than some.

He turned to leave and found the
elevator already open.
He stepped inside and as the doors closed, he found himself the only passenger
again, and again wondered about the lack of buttons inside. And once more, as
he was trying to figure out how to make it work, the doors abruptly opened on
the lobby. Feeling relieved he stepped out, and exited the building to find his
car. As he walked his thoughts turned back to the interview, the conversation
and the questions, and his answers.
He paused just once to look back.

His eyes naturally followed the edges
of the building up and up, and higher still.
The sun peeked around the top and blinded him momentarily.
He cupped his hands around his eyes.
’That’s a tall son-of-a-bitch.’

That night Ryan made dinner for Jean
and Alex.

Jean was a scanner-processor for a
local physicians’ outpatient facility not far from IntelliHealth. In the old
days they would have called her an X-Ray technician. Now, with breakthroughs in
human biology and fast particle arrays, you could scan a person while they sat
and talked with you, yielding information about nearly every system and every state
of the human body.
There were still flaws, though. Jean would say that the scans could reveal
anything, but were useless without knowing where to look, and for what element.
Asking the right question was everything.
 

Jean knew friends and doctors that
worked in the IntelliHealth Facility and thought they seemed happy enough
there. Meanwhile, Alex was happy there would be a new episode of
‘Monsters
Lost and Found’
on the vid later.

Afterwards, Ryan collected the dishes.
Jean asked what the smell on the couch was. Ryan smiled, and pretended not to
hear her, as he rinsed the last of the dishes.
When they finally went to sleep, Ryan dreamed of giants walking the earth.

CHAPTER 2

The brain is a
wonderful organ; it starts working the moment you get up in the morning and
does not stop until you get into the office.
 
-
Robert Frost

It was nearly two weeks to the day,
that Ryan got the call.

It was the IntelliHealth human
resources office calling to speak with him regarding a new position. Mustering
all of his reserves and doing his best not to sound too excited, he answered,
“Hello, this is Ryan Dane.”

“Good morning Mr. Dane, we are pleased
to say that you have been selected to join IntelliHealth as our new Information
Strategist II, and would like to know if you have any questions.”

The rest of the phone call was a blur.

Following a very excited phone call to
his wife, left to pick his son up from school. He was still slapping the dash
and punching the air when he almost ran over a small woman crossing the street.
Waving apologetically while smiling hugely, he realized he would need to set up
after-school care for Alex. Aside from the near miss, things were definitely
looking up.
Ryan pulled into a long line of cars waiting for school to let out.

Like clockwork the students appeared.
Alex got in the car and described details of a confrontation involving some
sort of lizard, a thermos and a girl from class. Still smiling, but not really
hearing, Ryan headed home.

That night there was much celebration
at the Dane’s home.
Even the border collie got a bone.

Following two days of furious
detail-management, Ryan found himself driving to work for the first time in
months. Dressed in a recently cleaned suit, he arrived in the parking lot of the
IntelliHealth tower. The sheer scope of the building was still impressive. Its
overzealous proportions would probably always make people feel small, but today
he didn’t care.

He drove up to the gate leading to the
parking garage, and was allowed entry after showing his identification chip.
The interior was very dark, and the ramp spiraled down instead up. Surprised,
he wondered suddenly how far the building might actually go down; the huge
tower piercing deep below the earth as well as rising high above it.
It was truly a marvel.

After parking, he walked to the central
core where the elevators were located.
Another man waiting as well.
The doors opened and once inside, he saw the gentleman wave his identification
chip in front of the mirrored place where the buttons were usually found. And
instantly the buttons appeared.

Ryan noticed however, that only a few
buttons seemed to appear; floors numbering 1, 3, 4, 18, and 82. The man
selected one, and the elevator closed. At floor 18, the man departed without a
word.

The doors closed, leaving Ryan still
slightly flustered with the elevator. Without any direction, the elevator took
him appropriately to the 75
^th
floor, where surprisingly, he was
greeted by an enthusiastic Ms. Holmes.
“Hello Mr. Dane, it’s so good to see you again!”

“Good morning, it is very good to be
here, Ms. Holmes is it?”
“Yes, but you’re working here now, please call me Theresa.”

“Ok, but call me Ryan,” he said
smiling.

“Well, Ryan, you have a lot of
paperwork to fill out before getting started,” she said, “paperwork and scans.”

“I have scans?” he asked.

As they spoke Theresa led him through a
maze of cubicle walls.
“Yes, its policy for each new employee to be scanned and inoculated for
anything we might come into contact with while here at the facility. It also
provides a baseline for employee health which can be used for comparison should
you be injured, or become ill.”

Ryan wasn’t really sure about the need
for that level of ‘intimacy’ with his employer. It must have shown on his face,
because Theresa quickly said, “It doesn’t hurt, and it has actually helped a
few of us who were long-timers with age-specific degenerative problems.”

She added under her breath, “And a few that picked up things while they were on
vacation.” She smiled and nodded at him as they rounded the corner.

They arrived at a small, but reasonably
clean-looking office. He noticed there was a small window on the far side.
“Ryan, just wait here a bit and an HR person will be down to get you started
shortly. If you need anything, you can use the phone on your desk to call me,
just dial 001.”
And with that she turned and left.

Ryan performed a quick inventory of the
room. A non-descript metal desk with two ‘visitor’ chairs in front, one lamp
and two file cabinets. Not bad really, he had worked in worse places to be
sure. Not exactly what he had on his previous job, but it would do.

He stood and looked out the window.
The window was small, but at 75 floors up, there were no other buildings
blocking the way, and he could see across the city.
The view was spectacular.
Smiling, he thought this might work out pretty well. Returning to his desk, he
opened his drawers to find the typical assortment of pens, highlighters,
post-its, etc.

Yes, this would do quite nicely.

Within about half an hour, Ryan had
been visited by just less than all of his new co-workers. He could barely
remember any of their names, but the friendly people who came brought him not
one, but two coffee cups, a handful of pencils and an extra light bulb for his
lamp. It was refreshing to suddenly feel connected to a group again.
A knock on his door frame revealed a man holding an armful of thick binders and
smiling broadly.
 

“Good morning Mr. Ryan Dane, I am Jon
Schnell from the IntelliHealth Human Resources Office, and I would like to help
you get oriented here at IntelliHealth.”
The man walked in and set the stack of binders and documents on Ryan’s new
desk. The stack swayed slightly, only to be caught and meticulously re-stacked
by Mr. Schnell.

“Thank you Mr. Schnell, I am very
pleased to be here. How do we start?” said Ryan.

“I always begin by giving a bit of
history about IntelliHealth. I believe it’s good to first gain perspective on
the reason why we’re all here,” he said. After shaking hands, Mr. Schnell sat
down opposite Ryan, and with enthusiasm to spare he began describing
IntelliHealth.
“You see Ryan, to really understand where we are today, we must look back at
the turn of the millennium. In the year 2000, the human genome was successfully
mapped, but what did it mean? Research scientists of the time made a great ado
over projects that held no real advancements. Research funds were mostly
distributed by bureaucrats; men more interested in hiring big names than
supporting younger, forward thinkers. Other projects were funded by
corporations who spent most of their time changing existing drugs just enough
to generate new patents, and new profits.

“Basic research scientists were
devalued and overshadowed by so-called ‘project-builders’. These were
quasi-scientists who made careers by grouping names together, and going after
the bureaucratic program funds. Lasting for 50 years, consuming billions of
dollars and producing nothing new, many researchers became disillusioned and left
the field.

“Then about twenty-five years ago, Dr.
Sid Frances assembled and led a group of young researchers in an effort to
address their common frustration. They looked at the advances in physics,
engineering and computer technology and agreed they should capitalize on these
new tools to leverage real change in biotechnology. So Dr. Frances proposed a
very ambitious undertaking, to design the ultimate research-support system. And
with help from his friends, he set out to find the world’s best programmers to
help.”

Ryan shifted in his seat. It was
obvious his new friend across the desk, had told this story many times. Some of
this he already knew, but it was interesting to see how the company viewed
itself. As far as he knew, there was no denying that IntelliHealth had upgraded
the health of everyone on the planet. He reached for his coffee and took
another sip.

Mr. Schnell began again, “What
parameters would suffice?”

“They imagined their work occurring
simultaneously around the world with access by scientists in every country.
They needed to be able to hold and compare research data across the entire
planet. This mechanism must be so accurate and efficient that queries,
searches, comparisons, performing experiments, and adding or removing data sets
could be done instantly, and from anywhere. Nothing on this scale had been
attempted before.
”The work began and within a few years the SID program, or Scientific
Intelligence Deployment program, was created. The program turned out to be more
than a simple database manager. SID assisted our world’s scientists by running
their experiments in automated labs day and night, providing accurate results
for study and comparison around the clock. Researchers from around the world
worked together seamlessly. For the first time in history, laboratories could
define experiments that SID would perform, every hour of every day, in every
country of the world. And the results were stunning.