The Dane Commission (The Dane Chronicles) (29 page)

Jeff tensed up
again, his voice rising slightly.

“The problem
with this method is that unexpected results can occur, because sometimes a
single receptor can trigger multiple transduction pathways, often unnoticed.
The consequences are unpredictable, and usually only through observation and
repeated testing will the process become reliable.”
“In other words, by affecting one receptor, it may affect another and then
another, and so on. The end result may be something very different from what
one intends. Proteins can change and re-form to create unexpected and sometimes
very harmful effects.”

“Okay, I think
I understand. You’re saying that cell signaling can be a dangerous technique in
a patient treatment, until it has been thoroughly tested.”

“That’s right
Ryan, it is complex, and because this communication instigates the activity of
our cells, it can be deadly.”

Jeff handed
Ryan a piece of paper with the following breakdown, listed as:

64%
 
=
 
Reproduction

16%
 
=
 
Immune system

8%
   
=
 
Various diseases

4%
   
=
 
Growing new cells

4%
   
=
 
Creating bioengineered
proteins

2%
   
=
 
Rejuvenating cells

2%
   
=
 
unknown

“What is this
Jeff?”

“I couldn’t
see it, until you gave me the 16
^th
set of data; you know the 16
^th
Facility, Seoul. I thought I must be making some sort of mistake, so I ran the
same tests over again last night. The twins confirmed what I found.”

“I’m sorry,
I’m still not following you, Jeff”
He could see that Jeff was trying to pick his words very carefully.

“The
treatments that were changed.” He paused, his face was drawn tight, the veins
across his forehead were visible.

“When I
categorized them by their results, I could see their breakdown. It took all
sixteen sets of data, because the treatments were not the same in each Facility
Hospital. Some facilities had more of one category, some had more of another.
It wasn’t until I could see all sixteen, that these ratios became apparent.”

Ryan looked at
the page again.

“You're saying
this breakdown is completely accurate.”
“Yes, that is correct.”

Jeff reached
over and put his hand over the page Ryan was looking at.

“Ryan, no
random variable could cause proportions so perfect. This is not random. I have
seen breakdowns like these my whole career.”

Jeff took a
deep breath, and then through gritted teeth, he said, “This is directed
research, spread carefully over sixteen hospitals to be invisible.”

Leaning close,
he looked Ryan directly in the eye.

“Ryan, someone
is experimenting in these areas of research on living patients, and most of
their focus is in stopping the reproduction process.”

Jeff was
sweaty and shaking, he was furious.

“Try to
understand Ryan, they aren’t picking a specific way to stop the reproductive
process. They aren’t looking for a unique signal to turn specific cells
dormant. They seem to be searching for any random throwing of switches that
will make our reproductive cells cease to act as they should.
It’s more like using a shotgun than a rifle.
Random signals blanketing cells, which signal other cells, and ultimately cause
our reproductive cells to ignore any activity whatsoever. The interactions
arising as the fallout, are what harmed the patients.”
He continued, ”We identified these as treatment errors, but that’s not what
they are.”

Jeff stood up
abruptly, and threw his folders and papers across the floor.

“Someone is
learning how to kill us.”

He walked to
the window and rubbed his hands through his hair.

Ryan was
stunned.

He wasn’t sure
what he thought Jeff would find, but this was so calculated it made him shiver,
and made the hairs on his arms stand.

Jeff, visibly
trying to regain his composure, said, “And this may actually be connected to
the world’s fertility crisis. The observations I’ve made are consistent. All we
have to do is figure out the delivery system.”

Ryan walked
over and put his hands on Jeff’s shoulders.

“Sit down. I
need you, and you have to be calm.”

Suddenly Jim
spoke from behind them; he was holding papers in both hands, partially folded
and crushed.

“I think I
know why it took sixteen facilities.”

Ryan helped
Jeff back to the table, and Jim joined them.

Jim was angry
and seemed to be shaking. He looked every bit as bad as Jeff.

Holding his
voice level, he began.

“As you know,
I’ve been checking each day to see if my ‘intruder’ reappeared on the Hospital
Network. Once I activated my monitoring program ‘Snoopy,’ the daily visits
stopped cold.”

“Today,
actually just a little while ago, I decided I might re-write Snoopy to make it
a little smarter. I opened the script, and started looking through the code.
And that’s when I found it.”

Jim, obviously
angry, was trying to hold it together.

“I don’t
understand Jim, what did you find?” said Ryan.

Jim tossed a
crunched up paper out on the table.

It was hard to
read, but Ryan could see there were lines of code with red circles drawn
hastily around different bits.

“That’s not
all my code; someone re-wrote my script.” Jim leaned back in his chair, his
face was red.

“Whoever did
this broke into my administrator account, and they cracked my passwords, which
were each 32 characters long. Then they changed my script so it would not
reveal they were getting onto the network, and they added a call to another
routine that removed the line fragment from my logs and reports.”

“Just now,
when I re-ran the security logs for the last few weeks, the code fragment I’ve
been following was there, every single day, and are you ready for the kicker?
They named the script ‘JmNoC’,
it’s short for ‘Jim No See’.”

Jim looked
like he could hit someone. Ryan could sense the adrenaline coursing through him
at that moment. His hands were shaking.

“You need to
understand that my security was built in a layered architecture; I’ve been
around, and I know what I’m doing. Whoever did this, blew through everything I
had in place in less that 24 hours of when I began. Believe me, I’ve seen a
lot, and there is no one, not even Steve Ranks that could do this.”

Jim dropped
the other paper he was holding on the table. It was the security log printout
from the Hospital network revealing the code fragment there, every day.
Whatever it was, it had played Jim well; it got his interest, and then let him
think he’d won.

It played
right to his ego.

They sat in
silence for a few minutes trying to absorb everything.

A few minutes
later Jeff said, “Why sixteen? You said you knew why it took sixteen facilities
to make the ratios appear.”

“Because SID
operates on a hexadecimal number system.”

“Oh please,
you are not going to blame this on a damn computer program. This is the work of
a sick individual, on par with the greatest, most evil minds in history,” said
Jeff.

With a low,
cool voice Ryan said, “Lara has checked off every single user who could have
had high enough access to the hospital network to make the treatment changes,
and they all cleared. There is simply no one left to be a suspect.”

Ryan
continued, “Jim, you said that whoever
‘they’
were, they would have to
intercept treatments prescribed day and night, from facilities around the
world. Isn’t that exactly what SID was designed for, and capable of doing?”

Ryan turned to Jeff, “The research you have found in the altered treatments is
intelligent and calculated in a way that could very well be consistent with how
SID might organize it. If you are going to be objective, you should at least
consider the possibility.”

Shaking his
head Jeff said, “But, are you saying that SID is alive, aware? It’s a program,
that’s all. I’ve worked with the SID program in our lab for years.”

Ryan was not
so sure about how ‘alive’ SID might or might not be. The acts described by Jeff
and Jim made him think of someone akin to a ‘Lex Luthor’ from the comics.

A super
villain.

Could a cold,
automaton, a program, do these things?

Whatever had
played with Jeff sure smacked of pride.

Could a
program emulate emotions? Could it contemplate plans for genocide?

Ryan could see
how angry and fragile Jeff was right then, the wrong words now could cause him
to walk out, maybe even severing him from the project.

He took a deep
breath.
“No, not alive, but maybe malfunctioning.”

“Malfunctioning
in a way that has coalesced over the last two decades, resulting in something
unimagined by its authors.”
 

It was an idea
Jeff didn’t want to hear. He believed a madman was behind these heinous
experiments, and he desperately needed to exact his anger on that man. It was
personal; a broken piece of software would not suffice.

Then there was
Jim.

He had been
out-smarted.

It was a first
in a lifetime of success. And he had not even mentioned the quality of the code
he found amidst his own. It was years ahead. The person or entity that wrote it
was better than him, a lot better.

How was he
going to tell David and Ben? How would he document how he’d been made such a
fool?

Ryan thought
it was time to stop and get some perspective.
He stood up and looked around the table.
“No one does anything. No one says anything.”
He walked to his desk and arranged his things.

“We will get
some rest, and meet back here in the morning to discuss which are the
appropriate steps to take. I will remind you that this committee reports to me,
and through me to Dr. Cohen. Whatever our conclusions might be, however
conservative or outlandish, we will conduct ourselves as professionals and act
through appropriate channels.”
He looked across the room at his friends.
“Is that understood gentlemen?”

They nodded.

The
emotionally wracked, and weary trio locked their offices and went home.

No one spoke
as they went to their cars.

CHAPTER 13

“It was like
when you make a move in chess and just as you take your finger off the piece,
you see the mistake you've made. You feel an instant of panic because you don't
know yet the scale of the disaster you've left yourself open to.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

It was Friday.

Driving
through a drizzling, misty rain three men were arriving at the IntelliHealth
Tower.

Today it
looked ugly.

It seemed as
if giants from Mount Olympus might have put it there as a warning.
‘
Do not trespass here- past these doors there be monsters.’

Yesterday’s
startling revelations had left them angry. With precious little rest, they
would need to face their demons and beat them back today. There was no way
around; they would have to plow through and hope the far side might turn out
better than they imagined. Ryan hoped he could keep them together. The affronts
against Jim and Jeff were personal, and had struck to their core. A man that
angry is likely to do anything.

Hatred lay
bare across an itchy trigger finger.

He would do
his best to satisfy them, if turned out to be true, this cancer at the core of
IntelliHealth would have to be exposed.