by Dane, Max
Moving back to his desk, Ben continued, “As far as I am aware there are only 144 instances of these disagreements, which my group calls ‘data collisions’. Also, as far as I am aware, our facility is the only instance of this anomaly. Somewhere within this Facility, there seems to be an error that causes, random and infrequent data bits to be scrambled.”
“Our concern is that, when these data collisions do occur, they can create erroneous treatments from the prescribing research scientists resulting in incorrect treatments for the patients. While the percentage of these occurrences is below .3 of a percent, it remains true that if even one person comes to harm, we have failed in our mission.”
Ben leaned back in his chair, making eye contact with Ryan. “So far, all of the treatment errors have been caught in time, and no one has been injured.”
“Ryan,” he said, “having this problem at our facility is an embarrassment, and it could lead to serious attention, especially if someone is harmed. My people can’t seem to get a handle on where the problem lies. From what has been reported, I don’t believe this is a coding problem. That’s why we hired you rather than another programmer. What we need is a detective who can answer the question, ‘Under what circumstances is this glitch going to occur?’ After that I can have my staff scrutinize that bit of the program and make any necessary corrections.”
Smiling again, Ben said, “I realize it must sound overly complex and ambiguous at the same time, but there you have it. Ultimately, I’m hoping that you will be able to reproduce the error, and we can move on from there. Any questions?”
“Not at the moment, I believe I understand. Probably I’ll have thousands after I’ve had a chance to get deeper into it,” he said.
“Sure, sure that’s to be expected,” said Ben as he looked out the window and took a long drink of water.
“I’m sure it will take some digging just to figure out where you should even start your search.”
Glancing at his watch, Ben said, “Let's go over to the programming staff. These are the guys that can answer questions for you and write test queries, that sort of thing.”
With that Ben stood up, walked around the desk, and out the door. Ryan followed as they went back down to the 75th floor and headed to a series of cubicles on the far right-hand side.
This was an area where it looked as if the people, who worked here, might actually live there too. There were lamps, mini-fridges, pillows, a small vid player here, another one there. Cheap headphones lying about, and papers, pencils and raggedy binders were everywhere. There was a doll of some sort pinned to the outside a cubicle wall with a note saying ‘Death to the Pizza Mongers’. Soda cans and pop tarts seemed to be the meal of choice. The waste cans were full to over-flowing as if even the cleaning staff were reluctant to come here.
Ben was unperturbed as he stepped over a guitar that had fallen to the ground. Without hesitating he reached in and squeezed the shoulder of a young man with long hair sitting in front of a multi-screen array. With earpieces playing some sort of techno jam, he appeared to be watching lines of code rapidly moving by. A text editor of some sort was waiting for him on another screen, and the others displayed a series net apps and mail programs. Ignoring the clutter, Ryan thought it was an impressive set-up.
As Ben shook him from his cyber reverie, the young programmer turned and pulled the audio pieces from his ears, “Yes sir, Mr. James what can I help you with?”
“David this is Ryan Dane, the fellow I told you about yesterday. I would like you to introduce him to the rest of your group, and explain how you can help him on the data-collisions project.”
“Yes Sir. I’ll introduce you to the guys right now; they’re all here.”
Ben turned to leave, “Ryan, you’re in good hands. Call me if you need anything. I’ll check in with you later next week to see how you’re coming along.”
“Thanks Ben!” Ryan said.
He wasn’t sure if Ben heard him or not. It looked like he was making a hasty retreat.
Turning back, Ryan saw that David had already stood up and was trying to get around a gap between the cubicles. Turning around in a circle David said, “Hey everyone listen up! This is the guy working on the hospital data collisions. Poke your head out, and say, ‘Hello’.”
With a few groans and at least one muffled curse, the rest of the group stood up. No one made a move to shake hands, or even come out from their cubicles. Ryan got the feeling this wasn’t a project anyone was excited about. Waiting for the deepening silence to end, Ryan took a stab at breaking the ice.
“Well today’s my third day, and I really appreciate all of you taking the time to visit with me. Who here has actually worked on the project?”
“Hi, I’m Chris. I’ve matched over 40,000 data clusters and observed nothing out of the ordinary.”
“I’m Les, same here.”
The man in the cubicle next to David stood up. Ryan thought he looked more like a soap star than a programmer. He shook Ryan’s hand, “I’m Jim and I’ve looked at it too; there’s a lot of data to consider. We should talk about it in more detail when you’re up to speed.”
“I would like that Jim, thank you.”
There were two others, peeking over their cubicle walls that didn’t respond at all.
Ryan looked at David and said, “Well, thank you very much David. I’m looking forward to working with all of you, and I’m sure we’ll be seeing a lot of each other soon. As Jim said, I need to look at what’s involved and get more information before I can even start to ask the right questions. Thanks everyone!”
Ryan took David’s hand and gave it a hearty shake before leaving.
Walking back to his own desk, he knew he would have to build a relationship with this group if he was going to make any progress. He didn’t think this would present any problems. They reminded him of some of the smart and quirky information techs that he’d worked with for years.
Later that the afternoon, he went to the 82nd floor for his meeting with Dorothy Allen. It was the executive portion of the Hospital Patient Research Division. Ms. Allen’s office was near the center, not far from the front lobby area. As he approached, a secretary with a stern expression appeared to bar the way.
“Excuse me, may I help you?” she said in an overly dry voice. Older than Ryan, she still looked wiry and springy and ready to wrestle him to the ground if need be. He didn’t want to test her.
“Yes of course, my name is Ryan Dane. I’m a new hire, and I believe I am scheduled to meet with Ms. Allen at two o’clock,” he said.
“Please have a seat while I check.”
She led Ryan to a reception area not far from the elevators. She began aggressively pressing buttons on the keyboard at the edge of her desk.
“Ah yes Mr. Dane, I have your appointment,” she said, “I’ll let her know you are here.”
Not a fan of this overly formal atmosphere, he surveyed the floor. The detailed arrangement of furniture and plants obsessively wanted one to feel comfortable, but the result was a rigid stiffness that made you afraid to touch anything. A Zen garden made of broken glass and barbwire. Restless, he looked forward to returning downstairs.
A few minutes later, Cynthia returned, “Ms. Allen will see you now, right this way.”
Ryan followed her to Ms. Allen’s office, where they found her pouring water from a large crystal pitcher into an intricately cut glass. He could hear the slight tink as they came into contact.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Dane, may I call you Ryan?” she said as she put the pitcher down and approached to shake hands.
“Yes please do, it’s really wonderful to see you again. I wanted to thank you for this opportunity.”
“Well, please call me Dorothy, and it’s very nice to have you here. I understand you met with Ben James this morning. I sincerely hope he was helpful in getting you started.”
He could hear the urgency in her voice.
“That’s correct, I’ve met with Mr. James, and
with the team of programmers he has made available.”
“And what do you understand of the problem now?” she said.
Ryan had years of experience reading personalities, and he knew when to take someone seriously. Ryan was an excellent communicator because he had always been able to gauge what the other person needed to hear. Right now, Dorothy needed to perceive that he shared her perspective on the problem. It was important that he understood the level of severity she associated with it. Pausing only for a second, he responded, choosing his words carefully.
“I believe patients of this facility are at risk from their treatments due to a random mix-up of research data that ultimately derives their treatment. The frequencies of such instances are incredibly low, somewhere much less than 1%. However, because the result may cause harm to our patients, it violates the mission of the IntelliHealth Facility, and is therefore unacceptable,” he said in a single breath.
She sat down on a couch in front of her desk, and indicated he should sit as well.
“Very good Ryan, well said. Perhaps you are the right man for the job.”
After joining her, she continued.
“My problem is that the help I have received from Information Services has achieved nothing. I am the person who has borne the responsibility of the research and treatment applied to our patients, and I am stymied by a computer glitch. I am frustrated and concerned with what might happen… or might never happen. I need to know that our patients are not at risk from misapplied treatments.”
He listened to her without blinking.
When she paused, he waited the exact amount of time to show a measured response.
“I understand the scope of the problem and share your concern. I will bring you some answers as quickly as possible.”
“Thank you, Ryan. Please let me know if you need anything, and if anyone tries to slow you down, do not hesitate to contact me. I look forward to hearing your first report.”
He understood that she was dismissing him, and stood to leave. With a quick nod, he headed out the door, and without a word made his way back to his office. The meeting with Dorothy Allen had served to put this project in perspective. He believed Dorothy was genuinely worried; why wasn’t Ben’s reaction similar? He knew one thing for sure; he seemed to have two bosses, each with their own agenda.
This was going to be a bitch.
Meanwhile, over in the programmers’ area, Jim was just putting the finishing touches on a sweet piece of code. It was designed to support a new set of automated microscopes for a scientist named Dr. Leonard Bender. The problem was sticky, but his script worked well and now he wanted to show it off to David, his team-leader.
“Hey David, do you remember that code issue with the Bender microscope array?”
No response. He began launching rubber bands over the wall.
“Hey Dave, I finished the Bender script,” he said firing another one and watching it ricochet satisfyingly off the ceiling tiles over David’s desk.
David, who had been concentrating on a problem of his own, finally gave up and answered.
“Ok, Jim let me see.”
Jim sent the data on his screen over to David’s terminal.
“Oh, yeah; that was a great idea. I see what you did with the results storage, and access area. Very cool.”
Dave had been working on this problem for several days before assigning it to him. He had read Dave’s code, and could see the flaw was in the approach. It was clear he was the better programmer, but Dave had been there since the beginning, working his way up.
He liked David well enough, and enjoyed his job at IntelliHealth, but would always prefer to work outside the ‘team’. They only slowed him down. He imagined himself as the ‘hired gun’ of the department, and more or less he was treated that way. So he let Dave take the lead, but he took the spotlight, solving the hardest of their problems.
’And doing it with style,’ he might say.
Years ago, Jim attended MIT but had found himself expelled when he hacked into the Dean’s files to get his daughter’s phone number. She was outstanding. They had only dated briefly, but long enough for him to brag about getting her number, and it caught up to him when they broke up.
After that he transferred to Stanford, and kept a low profile.
His first real job was with the International Space Program.
Respectable, but dry. Then he got his chance to join IntelliHealth.
Now in his thirties, he was single and powering though life on a rocket bike that ran on virtual testosterone.
He was enjoying his life a lot.
He shot another rubber band over the wall.
“Jim!”
CHAPTER 4
“Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them.”
- Alfred North Whitehead
The following morning Ryan proved again to be quicker than the elevator.
Faster now for two days running.
He owned that silvery bastard.
Working at his desk he quickly found his way around the files on the network, and began actually looking into the data.
To get started, he focused on the data associated with the treatment errors, the ‘data collisions’.
There were gobs of it.
He wasn’t sure how much was in a gob exactly, but he knew it was far too much for a single person to explore. He wanted to narrow his interest. He was confronted with a theme that seemed to be growing here, the answer is here, but what is the question?
So far he understood that sometimes a patient received an erroneous treatment, completely inconsistent with their condition. He wondered if the treatment was a valid treatment, or just a random string of treatment vocabulary. It might be something indicating a hiccup in the software.
Within the collection of recorded data errors, he searched for research applications used in current treatments.
The results returned were in the thousands.
He shortened the time frame to the last six months, and he got back over 800 instances to choose from. He randomly picked one that sounded interesting, ‘Reverse Gene Sequencing for Predicted Correction of Hereditary Color Blindness’.
His screen filled with hundreds of records, each record having enormous numbers of information fields.
Selecting just one record, he scrolled to the right, and then down. As he moved about, he found some fields were filled in with readable information, but most were masked with a lot of odd ‘X’s.
Ryan backed up, and selected another treatment, this one titled, ‘Common Cell Signaling and Deactivation for Hemophilia.’ He thought he’d read about this; it had something to do with the correction of blood clotting issues in children.
He performed the same steps and found himself again staring at a screen with fields upon fields of masked data.
After several more attempts he began to conclude that the information was simply protected. He needed to talk to David, and get the skinny on why he couldn’t see what was in the fields.
Ryan got up and headed over to the programmers’ area.
When he arrived, he still couldn’t get over what a wreck it was. He was guessing that the culture over there was intended to be sensitive to comfort with an emphasis on promoting creativity. A lot of companies were trying this now. The world of programming and art were merging.
’Maybe it worked, maybe not’, he thought.
Smiling, he remembered how Mr. James had quickly retreated from this spot.
He stepped over a pillow, which must have fallen from inside a cubicle where a girl lay face down on her keyboard. Ryan picked it up from the walkway and carefully placed it on her desk.
Moving onward, he saw that David was not in his cubicle, and nowhere to be seen. Ryan felt stuck, but as he turned to leave he heard a voice say, “Hey Ryan, how’s it going?”
It was Jim from yesterday.
“Hey Jim, I was looking for David, is
he around?”
“Yeah, but I think he’s in with Ben right now,” he said, “Can I help?”
Ryan smiled.
“Yes, maybe so,” he said, “I’ve started looking at some data in the data collision directories, but I don’t really understand what I’m seeing. Everything seems to censored with a lot of big ‘X’s.”
“Ah, are you’re looking at the data in the research side, or the hospital side?” Jim asked.
“The research side.”
“Come here to my terminal, and show me.”
Ryan followed Jim into his cubicle, and watched as he logged on to his terminal. Jim had six monitors of varying sizes in front of him. They were clustered together with data alive and moving on each one.
Jim moved the data he had on his main screen to another, and opened up the file directories Ryan had been talking about. Ryan pointed to a file he recognized. The screen suddenly showed a database filled with records that pertained to a recent treatment. Each record populated with fields upon fields, and most of them were hidden by the ‘X’s.
