by Hammond, Ray
Every diagnostic report from the satellites, from the traffic management centres and from the ground controllers was negative. There were no faults and no log records of unauthorized communications. Air traffic communications over Northern California had returned to normal and in the South-Western Pacific the ground controllers had only had to override the orbiting traffic management system, and order the two data communications satellites to fire their thrusters again to return them to their original orientation. When their on-board computers were rebooted, laser-borne data had been once again routed back to them and they functioned perfectly. Their on-board diagnostic systems reported one hundred per cent performance, so there was no explaining the mysterious malfunctions. Chomoi Ltupicho, Liu’s opposite number at the Soyuz FreePlanet network, had confirmed a similar outcome to his investigation. Short of sending a recovery shuttle to launch two replacement satellites and bring home the offending units, there was little more Liu could do from the ground. Also, as the suspect units were now functioning perfectly, he knew Tom would never divert launch capacity from the much-whispered-about Phoebus Project.
But despite this, Tom was pressing – screaming – for an answer. No data had been lost during the Pacific network outage so Tye Networks had not suffered any contingent liabilities, but it had seemed very close. Even an hour’s failure of a backbone data network could cost the corporation billions in compensation payments. The world’s economies could no longer function without the networks.
Liu had searched the global archives for information about other unusual communication-system failures occurring at around the same time. At first he had searched for unusual system events happening an hour on either side of his Australasian satellite failures. There had been nothing, however. Then, in desperation, he had gathered the hourly logs of every orbiting router in the Tye-LaserNet satellite networks for a week either side of the mysterious failures. There were over 8,000 of them and he had been forced to write a script to automate the transfer of those data to his three-dimensional spreadsheet.
He now clicked the display back on. The central Holo-Theater in the Network Control Center was filled with light, and Liu was looking into the square box of cells he had created. He switched the display to graphic mode and pushed himself up from the well-upholstered control chair. He walked right into the display and put his hand into one of the beams of red holo-light that represented a failure that had occurred and been automatically corrected.
There had been a 300 per cent increase in such minor failures in the previous six weeks and there was serious and startling degradation in performance across all the networks. Until these problems were identified and eliminated he couldn’t even begin to deploy the much-needed multiplexing software the corporation had recently acquired from a Brazilian software company. He debated whether he should send a warning message to Thomas Tye but decided against that course of action almost immediately. If you alerted Tom to a problem you had to have a solution ready at the same time. Liu knew he was going to have to design a system that could measure data flow and integrity across every public network in the world.
*
The senior executives, software engineers, medical consultants and off-duty bereavement counsellors of LifeLines Inc., the majority-owned subsidiary of Tye Life Sciences Inc., stood in little huddles, talking nervously as they waited for their VIP guest to arrive and perform the official opening ceremony.
In physical terms there was little he could open. The large sunken room was divided longitudinally by a floor-to-ceiling glass partition. In the administration area, where he would be welcomed, there were only a dozen desks and six large wall screens. On the other side of the soundproof glass, those on duty were huddled in their booths, monitoring their screens or speaking quietly with next of kin all over the world.
Zachary Zorzi, the chief systems designer, Multi-Linnux IV magus and technical inspiration of the LifeLines sales resource (‘Zee’ to his friends and favoured staff ‘Easy Zee’ to those who knew of his herbal and chemical indulgences) had thought it would be cool to invite the great man to cut a white ribbon, which was now strung limply between two potted plants. Even though the entire enterprise had been the boss’s idea, the team had still been surprised when Thomas Tye had reversed his original decision and, with only four hours’ notice, agreed to make time in his frantic schedule to accept their invitation to open the operations centre formally. Then it had taken them all morning to locate suitable pot plants to decorate the bare office.
Zorzi was looking forward to becoming rich. He had been lured away from his role as systems director at one of the world’s great auction houses by a serious salary increase and generous stock options in the new company. He was nearly twenty-eight and most of the fellow students who had been on his systems-design course at Stanford were already multimillionaires. He knew he had been leaving his own attempt at a financial home run dangerously late in his career. But when the HR Director of the Tye Corporation had made contact, Zorzi had sensed that his opportunity had finally arrived.
Now, two years since initial systems development had started, the resource was live on the networks and had been operating for six weeks without any downtime. LifeLines had already served over 5,000 successful bidders and the company was forty per cent ahead of its projected target for recipient registrations. Zorzi was delighted but, other than monitoring data produced by the automated transactions, there was now little for him to do. The real action was in bereavement counselling and that wasn’t an occupation for him. He was already getting bored with life on Hope Island and with the company he privately referred to as ‘White Lines’.
‘He’s coming,’ hissed a young female interface designer whom Zorzi had stationed at the door. Everybody straightened. No one there except Zee had met the superstar tycoon before.
Connie walked into the room first, followed by her boss. She was wearing a beige linen trouser suit with a terracotta-coloured blouse, the epitome of professional elegance. Tom wore his blue chinos with a white open-necked shirt. His long dark hair was tied back in a ponytail. Easy Zee approved of his boss’s casual style.
‘Good morning,’ said Tye to the assembled company.
Zorzi stepped forward. He wasn’t quite sure what to do. He knew his chairman didn’t like to shake hands.
‘Welcome, Mr Tye,’ he responded involuntarily before he corrected himself. ‘Welcome, Tom. Welcome, Miss Law. Coffee, mineral water?’
Tom smiled and shook his head for both of them. Connie cracked the seal of a packet and Tye sprayed his mouth. He slipped on the face mask Connie handed him.
‘I heard you’ve made a good start,’ Tye said through the mask. ‘Let’s see it, then.’
The guests were guided to two new upright chairs placed in the centre of the room from where they could best see the wall screens. Off-duty members of the team pulled chairs from behind desks and arranged them in a group behind the visitors, marvelling that the rumours about Tye and his face masks were true. Zorzi pulled his chair up next to Tye and Connie as the overhead lights were turned off.
‘We’ll start with a global display of all seventh-generation LifeWatch locations.’
A Mercator projection of a world map appeared on the centre screen, the continental masses outlined in red on a black background. As they watched, minute white dots appeared as concentrations in and around the major cities of North America, Europe, Asia, Australasia and South America. On the Russian land mass, only Moscow and St Petersburg showed much illumination.
‘So far there are about eight hundred million units of the GenSeven LifeWatch registered and active on the world’s networks,’ explained Zorzi, even though he guessed that his exalted business partner would already know those figures. ‘But there are still large gaps in distribution in most of Russia, middle China and Africa.’ Zorzi pointed to the darker areas of the map.
Tye nodded. ‘The Foundation is upping distribution of free units to a hundred and fifty thousand a month,�
� he announced. ‘We’re concentrating on areas of high mortality, for obvious reasons – Africa especially. We’ve got new teams starting in Ethiopia and Somalia.’
Zorzi scratched his goatee beard. ‘Well, we’re getting a higher percentage of DNA matches than we projected, so getting more GenSevens distributed isn’t so urgent as we thought it would be. Anyway, let’s look at the US situation.’
The map changed suddenly to display an outline view of North America. Every urban centre showed up as a large, dense cluster of white light. Myriad strings of light across the rural areas revealed how ubiquitous LifeWatches had become for the American people.
‘Those data derive from routine uploads from LifeWatches and VideoMates over the last week,’ explained Zorzi. ‘There’s only been a point zero zero two failure rate on GenSevens, which is very impressive.’
‘Can we go real-time?’ asked Tye.
Zorzi nodded at the display controller and the screen refreshed to show less dense concentrations across the country.
‘These are the LifeWatches that are uploading to us right now. If we take out the routine periodic uploads . . . Yes, here are the distress calls, and the uploads from those whose vital signs have ceased or are suspect.’
‘Show me the deaths occurring in the last hour,’ requested Tye. The screen refreshed to show a higher density of white dots.
‘The average mortality rate throughout the world is around eleven thousand an hour at this time of year. In the United States it is just over eight hundred an hour,’ explained Zorzi. ‘It’s mid-morning on the East Coast so we’re down on that by thirty per cent but, if you look at California, it’s the early hours and we’re getting a peak loading.’
‘What percentage of mortalities are we registering overall?’ asked Tye.
‘It’s a very good proportion,’ smiled Zorzi. ‘Your marketing people in Consumer Electronics have done well. Even allowing for those who haven’t upgraded their LifeWatch units to a GenSeven, and for those freaks who won’t wear any sort of LifeWatch, we’re getting data from about forty-six point two per cent of the adult American population.’
Tye turned to Connie. ‘I want to talk to Randall from CE later – remind me. Penetration still needs to be better.’
He turned back to Zorzi. ‘How good has the matching system proved?’
Zorzi swung round in his chair to face one of the female medics. ‘Do you want to take this, Irene?’
*
Haley hated jogging, but there was no getting away from it: she could feel a distinct pinch of fat where there should be none. It happened during the writing of every book and during relationships in which she had too much control. She didn’t like herself for this behaviour, but she would let herself go to seed a little when a romance didn’t stimulate her.
Battersea Park was filled with joggers, t’ai chi enthusiasts and dog walkers. It was five p.m. and the river was almost at its lowest, the grey mud of Chelsea Reach drying within minutes of its exposure.
Haley rubbed her side to banish a trace of stitch, took another deep breath and set off again, in the direction of Albert Bridge. She doubted whether she would achieve much physical improvement in just a week, but she needed to make a good impression in New York.
She’d also been thinking a lot about Jack Hendriksen and why she hadn’t heard from him. He had warned her not to contact him at the Tye Corporation and, although she understood his reasons, it was frustrating to have to wait for his call. He’d promised to get in contact over a month ago.
Haley put on a short burst of speed to arrive at the gradient leading up to the park gate and the beautiful old suspension bridge beyond. She stopped again to lean against the embankment railings opposite Cadogan Pier. When she had found her second wind she would run back around the park, take a shower, and go over to Ladbroke Grove to spend the evening with Flick and Toby. There was little she could do on the biography until she knew more about what Sloan Press expected.
*
Dr Irene Desmond, thin and nervous in a black jersey dress, stood up and walked round to face her exclusive audience. She swallowed nervously and then looked directly at the distinguished visitor.
‘The system for matching donors to recipients has proved remarkably accurate, Mr Ty– Tom. A GenSeven LifeWatch sends us the wearer’s DNA profile in its first routine upload after it is initially strapped on. We compare and couple that to the wearer’s digital ident from the World Certification Authority and, once confirmed, the information goes into the data warehouse until it’s needed – and, of course, so that Tye Agriceuticals, Pharmaceuticals and the insurance companies can extract the genetic profiles of each individual. When a customer registers to become a recycling recipient, we upload his or her DNA profile and we store it in the same format for constant comparison with the profiles of those who pass away. That’s the module that Zee Zee – Zach – developed. When we get a match above sixty per cent we alert the customer. Let me show you.’
She nodded at the display controller and a DNA profile appeared on the left-hand screen.
‘This profile was provided by a forty-one-year-old male in Melbourne, Australia. He is waiting for at least one kidney, since he’s lost both and is on permanent, but unsustainable, dialysis. He therefore can’t wait for Tye Life Sciences to grow him replacements. Now, if we could see our current pool of donors whose organs have not yet been reallocated . . .’
The map display refreshed yet again, to show a whole world view. Those watching saw a low cluster of lights in the main urban centres and lights stringing out across the rural open spaces. Despite the relatively low overall penetration of the seventh generation of LifeWatches in Africa and Russia, a surprisingly large number of individual dots and clusters showed across those territories.
‘There’s a higher ratio of donor wearers in the undeveloped areas, where there are fewer medical facilities,’ broke in Zorzi by way of explanation. ‘It’s the people who think they’re most at risk health-wise who go out of their way to get a GenSeven model. So the deaths we miss out on in these areas tend to be the accidental and unanticipated mortalities. Unfortunately, they are often the best source for recycling opportunities.’
Dr Desmond looked up at the screen, then turned back to resume her explanation.
‘Of those with organs still uncommitted, we currently have eleven hundred deceased up to an hour old, just under six thousand up to three hours, twenty-two thousand, three hundred up to six hours and thirty-four thousand, seven hundred up to twelve hours. Unfortunately, none of them has a good enough DNA profile match to be of interest to our Melbourne customer.’
‘How many of those uncommitteds matched a customer’s needs well enough to be in auction?’ asked Tye.
‘Zee?’ prompted the doctor.
‘Can we see the current bidding status?’ asked Zorzi.
The left-hand screen refreshed to a show a transaction-analysis page.
‘You may not be able to read all of the small type,’ said Zorzi. He stood up and walked closer to the screen. ‘There are four hundred and twenty-seven auctions in progress at the moment. The longest duration is nearly eleven hours.’
‘Is that normal?’ asked Tye. ‘I thought our business plan suggested three hours of bidding would be the max. Don’t we want to keep bidding excitement high?’
Zorzi nodded. ‘Yeah, that’s what we thought. But sometimes it gets protracted when there are late entrants, or somebody asks for a pause when they need to raise more capital. We allow each bidder one break of fifteen minutes for that.’
He nodded to the system controller again and a new display appeared.
‘We’re running two auction models to see which one produces the highest yields,’ he explained as he looked at the screen. ‘This one here is a straightforward highest bid, the other is a sealed bid that’s intended to elicit high pre-emptive offers. As you suggested, I chose an upper-class English accent for the auctioneer interface. It does seem to reassure customers and maxim
ize the bidding.’
He stepped back to take in more of the data. ‘This auction’s for a liver that’s available in Cape Town and is already safely in a MatchBox and certified by the removing surgeon. The next of kin have agreed to a twenty per cent cut of the net receipts and we’ve given them an estimate of one point seven million US as their share.’
‘What’s the reserve?’
‘Eight million US. This particular recycle opportunity is in A-One Condition and the database has shown eleven DNA profiles that match over ninety-five per cent of the donor’s genome – that’s from our database of patients who have registered with us and are waiting for a well-matched liver. A ninety-five per cent match means that there will be many common genes on the sixth chromosome and many common antigens. It’s almost a perfect match of tissue types – as good as if it were an isograft from an identical twin. That’s why this auction is going on so long. It’ll be a fierce contest and will probably reach twenty million’
‘Are all eleven bidding?’ asked Tye.
Zorzi glanced at the controller and the screen refreshed again. ‘No, seven have now dropped out,’ he reported. ‘We’re at sixteen point five million dollars, that’s from a customer in Memphis. The other three have ten minutes to improve their bids. The next round drops to five minutes, then one minute, thirty seconds, and that’s it. The whole process is automated. Once a NOK – sorry, a next of kin – has agreed, we get a copy of his or her digital ident as approval, then a contract is printed out at their end in their local language and in a format that embodies any peculiarities of local laws and taxation. Where there’s a spot tax on removal we undertake to pay that.’
‘How can we be sure of getting our payment from the bidders?’
‘Well, we’ve had no problems so far. Most of the customers who sign on are too late for POB – they can’t wait while a replacement organ or tissue part is grown. We charge everybody who registers three hundred thousand dollars as a joining fee. That isn’t a lot of money but it’s enough to keep out the jokers and those who aren’t wholly responsible for their actions. When bidding for a recycled resource begins we ask everybody who wants to bid to deposit the reserve in escrow, as bankers’ drafts or in digital cash, before the auction starts. Our registered customers are warned of likely reserve figures in advance. The actual reserve depends on the closeness of the DNA profile match of the recycled component and this is displayed for the bidders as they enter.
