FRACTAL

by Tony Ortiz

  You played with fire and didn’t get burned, this time. Quit while you’re ahead. And to your point Charlie, the most important thing is the long term sustainability of this team. So that we can look back at the hundreds or thousands of lives that we’ve saved ... not just the 49 you guys saved on the side. The way to sustain that long term growth is to follow the right processes that are in place so that we’re able to do just that. You didn’t, so we are where we are.

  With that, the meeting was over and all that was left was a cluster-fuck of mixed emotions.

  Jake, I asked as he was about to walk out of the room. What about the potential of the mislabeled impenetrable’s? What if there really are more?

  Listen guys, Jake responded as Charlie listened on. You guys did a bad thing. The fact that the outcome happened to turn out good doesn't change that. We can have a philosophical discussion about the ends justifying the means all day, and I might even side with you on that. But in practical terms? In Miguel terms? - That doesn't change the fact that you didn't stick to the script and follow protocol. He has a salient point, in that being instrumental to the long term sustainability and health of the team.

  Neither of us had anything to say so Jake just walked out. Charlie's body language and facial expression reflected exactly how I felt inside. It was an emotional medley of abandonment and frustration mixed with a sense of knowing what was best for the team, even if they didn't know it themselves.

  Some may call it vindictive, and if I were being objective I'd be inclined to agree, but later that day I decided to look into something Miguel said in the meeting about implementing the teams ideas as evenly as possible. It didn’t take me too long to access the teams historical files. Once you have an internal access log-in, with some minor maneuvering you can pretty much access all the records you want. I was surprised when I saw the numbers. They were pretty one sided. About 98-to-2. Barely 2% of the teams recommendations were ever implemented.

  The rest was all Miguel. Skips that originated via his personal feed, that he ultimately pushed to the top of the priority list while the others fell by the waste-side. I even took a closer look at the impenetrable’s, and you know what ... based on the detailed reports they didn’t seem that damn impenetrable. It was like he was labeling some of the teams doable recommendations as impenetrable and mixing them in with real ones.

  Laura happened to be walking by and I called her over.

  Hey ... can I speak to you for a second?

  No I’m not skipping back alone with you, she said half joking.

  Haha, not that. I responded. Let’s go to the bedroom.

  It’s a little early for that, Casanova.

  I’m serious, come on.

  We walked over and kind of just stood around the doorway entrance to the room.

  Listen, I was just going through some of the historical skips and impenetrable’s.

  Not exactly a thrilling read I bet, she responded.

  Have you ever noticed if the mission plans submitted were really approved at a proportionate rate in relation to the other team members and submission ideas?

  No I never really thought about it that deeply. I just kind of keep my head down, focus on my work and follow the process we’ve had in place forever. From there I trust that the procedures put in place will sort things out as I would expect them to. When one of my missions is considered, it is and when one of them is not considered, then someone else's is.

  That’s the thing. That someone else is almost always Miguel.

  I mean, he has been at this longer than any of us. He built this team up from scratch.

  So he should get first dibs? I asked.

  No, I’m just saying it makes sense that he submits more approvable missions more often. Experience is on his side.

  Like 90% of the time more often though?

  That sounds high, but I don’t know. Maybe. Like I said, I never really looked into it like that.

  Yea well, it’s just something that threw me off a bit when I saw it. Thought I’d ask.

  You might also just be upset about the way things went down in the meeting, no?

  I shrugged and didn't give her a solid response to that.

  No worries. You know you can always ask me stuff. By the way, for the record, what you and Charlie did was really noble. It was stupid and risky as shit, but selfless and caring too. Promise me you guys won’t go at it alone again though.

  I promise, and would like to add that I'm really enjoying seeing you worrying about me.

  It’s not worrying, it’s just that you guys took the most circuitous and dangerous approach at solving a problem.

  It worked though, right? More importantly though, why are you so concerned about my well being all of a sudden?

  She squinted her eyes, pouted her lips and tilted her head in that adorable way that she does and said; “I said you guys, not just you,” and then she walked away and back to her sector.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  It made sense that after that day Charlie fell back into his position and it was business as usual. If I was him I would’ve done the same. I mean, why shake thing up after you achieved what you initially set out to achieve, right? He wanted to right that one wrong. I wanted to right them all. I knew something was off. Something wasn’t adding up. Not within the team necessarily, but just with our approach to skipping. I felt like I was on the same mission as everyone else but on the wrong path towards fulfilling it.

  For the next month I regressed into keeping to myself even more than usual. I still went to most of the meetings, team dinners and such but I wasn’t as engaged with everyone as I used to be. I was doing the bare minimum on all required tasks, and I spent every ounce of extra time that I got, focusing on other impenetrable’s.

  My suspicions quickly proved true. Two of the first five impenetrable’s that I worked on within my simulation were missions that were able to be done. Three more in the next two weeks thereafter. They just seemed to have perspective issues, just like the mine. Miguel wasn't seeing the right angles, and if anyone else was, they weren't speaking up. They were just looking at the problems in the wrong way. They weren’t going back to first principles. I of course couldn’t share any of these insights and ideas with anyone based on how the last meeting went, so I decided to go at them alone.

  I skipped back to make some changes myself. The first two were such easy fixes that I couldn't reconcile why they would be labeled impenetrable’s in the first place. One had to do with a rigged school board election that put someone that was on the take by private school beneficiaries, in charge of dozens of public schools in the tri-state area.

  Their goal was to devalue them, defund them and drop graduation rates to a point where privatization was the only viable option. Think hostile takeover but in the context of education. They misreported the election results in favor of the corrupt official and then sped up the inauguration proceedings citing a necessity to overhaul and help the school system immediately. By the time the other side caught on, she was already sworn in.

  All I had to do was anonymously file a recount request with the board, prior to the swearing in. The request was filed the day the election results were reported and the recount began the morning after. The results were overwhelmingly in favor of the candidate that had both grown up through the public school system and studied at privates. He was a long time school board member in the past and preached a best-of-breed approach to bettering the system. He was sworn in with two thirds of the vote on his side.

  The next one baffled me just as much. I came across the mission submission notes for an old impenetrable from when Jake used to man the Health sector. It was very thorough and had reference to even denser materials like medical journals and government policy. Bills that were written into law, others that were introduced and never voted on, etc. It broke down and proposed that there was a through-line between the FDA and big Pharma. I hadn't heard this before, but I couldn’t find any flaws within his argument.<
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  He showed that pharmaceutical corporations, aka big Pharma, functioned as enabling influencers to certain segments of the FDA. The same way that lobbyists in Washington, do for Politicians. In this case, it's even more prevalent however because of the transparent nature of it. He explained for example, that the Office of Medical Policy, specifically the division of Prescription Drug Promotion, has a mission “To protect the public health by ensuring that prescription drug information is truthful, balanced and accurately communicated.” They achieve this through comprehensive enforcement, education programs, communication, etc. Like many organizations, when it comes to the education portion, which often steers the narrative, entities like the FDA turn to experts. These experts come from the very pharmaceutical corporations that are being regulated. Therein lies the problem.

  There’s an inherent window of corruptibility created by this dynamic. That’s not to say that all experts are corrupt, but it is accurate to say that there are a non-zero number of corrupt experts which have a clear open line of communication to their regulators, and vice-a-versa. Instead of employing and developing their own experts, we’re forced to rely on possibly biased ones.

  When you factor in that the experts incentives are completely aligned with the profit mandate of the corporation they represent, the possibility of that bias is exponentially greater. Also, since there are so many of these so-called experts to choose from, the cherry-picking of information allows for the skewing of results in any direction that the narrative is intentionally crafted to take.

  The team wasn't able to correct the systemic corruption of this setup. Instead they resulted to blocking certain really egregious drugs that had virtually no benefit to humanity other than lining the pockets of the pharmaceutical fat cats. For every one that they were able to block by raising public awareness and support against it, half a dozen more sprang up in its place. It became an exercise in futility. Their last attempt at blocking a drug was completely unsuccessful. Shortly thereafter Miguel scrapped the project as a whole and labeled it an impenetrable. I guess it was just a matter of time, given the way things were going. At that point something about that last drug resonated with me and I wasn't sure why. I took a deep dive into researching it and what I found is what eventually brought the house of cards tumbling down.

  The drug was Trancetol. There were many generic versions at this point since the patent expired, but none as potent as the original. It was prescribed for increased mental clarity and a slew of mental illnesses including dissociative identity disorder and depersonalization disorder.

  What made it popular within the addict community was its sedative-like effects rivaled only by drugs like oxycontin or fentanyl which was traditionally used for pain management in horses. The deeper I went into its history, the more questions I had. I was vaguely familiar with the name. It's what my mother was prescribed and what my step-father never forgot to remind her to take, after my Dad passed.

  One of the odd things was that the patent was only filed to protect it for a 2 year period. Traditionally companies are granted a 20 year period. This is where they maximize profits in order to increase R&D for future medicines. While it's within the patent window, generic versions of it, could not legally exist. Why would they willingly want to cut that period by more than half? Was the pervasive mass consumption that we’re seeing today their goal all along? But why? It's not a cancer pill. There's no altruistic motive at play. It's completely out of character for any corporation to willingly forgo profits. Let alone for a pharmaceutical company whose period for maximizing those profits are essentially protected by law.

  The Director of the manufacturing plant that created Trancetal was Wilfred Vale. I poured into the research documentation over the next couple of days. I looked into all the published side effects like headaches and drowsiness, and also the unintentional side effects which weren't publicly published, because at the recommended doses those results were not measurable in the double blind placebo studies. These were things like temporary and/or permanent memory loss, inducing catatonic states and liver failure. The next one stood out to me like a sore thumb and validated my initial suspicions; curbs time travel related hallucinations.

  I couldn't believe what I was reading. Were they on to skipping back then? And if so, why were they trying to curb it? I thought skipping was known to only a fringe subculture. Was it more main stream than I was told? Does the team know this? If they do, why was I left out in the dark about it? More and more questions couched in paranoia swirled around my mind. I couldn't really go to the team with this, I'm on the outs with them as is. So i'm right back to square one in terms of going to any authorities. Who would I be able to trust?

  I decided to play it cool, and gather more information. More intel. I went on one more solo mission, to research this at a deeper level. At a primary principle level. I don't think I would have been able to find out all that I did otherwise.

  After a handful of mini skips that I made strictly for research purposes, I learned that Trancetol was patented, went through its double blind placebo study and obtained a FDA approval faster than any other comparable drug in history. It felt as if this drug maneuvered flawlessly through every obstacle it encountered. Never a wrong turn. It got past the initial trial stages, FDA approval, special patent requests and generic proliferation. All without a single hiccup. That never happens so why did it in this case? What was behind the push for this drug?

  I traced its history back to before trials began and staked out the home of the medicinal chemist on record; Dr. Lloyd Michaels. I monitored his home day and night and followed him around for 8 days to get a good sense of his routines. He woke up daily at 5:30am. Jogged approximately a quarter mile around his neighborhood, then went back to shower while his timed coffee pot brewed on queue. He left home and drove to the Plant in his ‘89 aquamarine colored Chrysler LeBaron. There he would work on his all consuming project that later became known as Trancetol.

  I needed to get closer. I needed to listen and witness the goings on of that Plant, but I was too young to pass myself off as a chemist, biologist, or even a resident researcher. My lucky break came when I was walking by the manufacturing plant and a young kid was giving out flyers: “Trancetol, get some free Trancetol.” He handed me a Flyer as I walked by.

  What is this, I asked?

  A flyer man. Take it, it’s free.

  Yea but why are you giving these out?

  Some scientist dude in a white coat gave me twenty bucks to stand out here and give these out.

  How do I get the actual Trancetol pills?

  I don’t know man, and don’t care. The guy said if anyone is interested that all the info is on the flyer.

  Ok, thanks. Have a good one.

  Yup, he responded and then continued shouting; Trancetol, get some free Trancetol.

  They publicly announced that they would be conducting a double blind placebo study that was open to the public, but spots were limited. Anyone could go in for a free review and if qualified they’d be admitted into the study.

  I knew what they were looking for so I’m sure I could get myself qualified. I went into the Lab, flyer in hand and was escorted to a room that was lined with desks, similar to a school classroom. I was instructed to grab a 25 question survey, fill it out and turn it in once completed. As expected there were a bunch of mental illness related questions like #3. Do you ever hear other voices inside your head? And #14. Have you ever remembered something, that never really happened? Then there were filler questions like #5. Do you suffer from chronic headaches or migraines? And #22. Are you allergic to any types of medication? I handed in my responses and was told to wait in the other room while they tabulated the results. There was one other person filling out the survey while I was in there and from what I could see, it didn’t seem like people were exactly pouring in to be part of this, so I thought that I’d get into the trial easily.

  Aubrey Martinski, the proctor stated.

  That’
s the first fake name that came to mind while filling out the survey.

  Is there an Aubrey Martinski here? He repeated while staring at me.