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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