by Jim Nisbet
“I know, I know,” Giles interrupted, holding both hands aloft. “Although mother and I lived on a commune in Costa Rica, she had to have her record collection.”
“Oh really? You had electricity?”
“A water wheel in the creek ran the generator, so we could listen to subliminal tapes. Every Saturday night we played records. Wenatchee John said it was all right.”
“Wenatchee John?”
“He was our leader. At least for a while.”
“Isn’t that the guy who got cooked and eaten by some pissed-off splinter group of his own followers? About 1974?”
Giles pulled off his glasses and sucked on a temple bar. “We were gone by then, but, yes. He wasn’t such a bad guy. Just another control freak.”
“A control freak.”
“Have you seen the video?”
“No,” Stanley said tonelessly. “Should I?”
“Mother’s still living off the residuals. At any rate,” said Giles, replacing the glasses, “all my disposable income goes into a balanced portfolio of penny stocks and mutual funds, not records and tapes. But in stocks, as in communal living, diversity is the key to growth.” He cleared his throat and adjusted his chair. “Now where was I?”
“Your password.”
“Oh yes,” he retyped it without thinking.
The computer beeped.
“Oh,” said Giles. “I already did that!”
“Did what,” said Stanley innocently, making a note. The last two letters were n and t—the password was foment.
“Never mind.”
“Say, look…”
“Yes?”
“I can see you’re on a network, here. But do you share information with other facilities?”
Giles typed for a moment before answering.
A logo filled the screen. Stanley made another note. The clinic’s venereal software was called BUGTRAK.
Giles spoke somewhat distractedly as he typed. “Only statistics. We share statistical information with the National AIDS Data Project, also with a network of blood and organ banks, and a couple of other, similar outfits.”
“Really? Blood and organ banks? Just like that? What if I want to be buried in one piece?”
“Then we don’t list you as a donor.”
“No names?”
“No names.”
“What kind of statistics?”
“Every kind. Blood types, age groupings, sex of course, sexual preferences if volunteered, stuff we glean from the workup.”
“Histocompatibility?”
Giles turned and looked at Stanley over his glasses.
“I know what you’re thinking,” said Stanley ingenuously. “What’s an old hippie like me who gets his foot tangled in computer power cords know about the Major Histocompatibility Complex?”
“Yes,” said Giles. “What does he know about it?”
“Nothing,” Stanley shrugged. “He is just curious.”
“In fact, Stanley, we don’t normally do histocompatibility panels here. I mean, so far as I know, nobody ever consulted a histocompatibility panel before having sex—or afterwards. And, let me assure you, we’ve heard it all in here. Besides, we don’t do the actual analyses.”
“You send out to a lab. A subcontractor.”
“Exactly. But the lab we send out to doesn’t work up histocompatibility either.”
“Could they? If you wanted it, I mean?”
“Oh, yes, they’re a full-service medical laboratory. They can do just about anything with a blood sample.”
“There’s just one lab?”
“For us, yes.”
“They work for other people?”
“Sure. Doctors, clinics, hospitals, the police. Say…”
“Yes?”
“You know, just last week another clerk was telling me about this detective who came in, asking questions very like the ones you’re asking.”
“Cops are known to be curious.”
“And old hippies?”
Stanley looked at the clerk. “That’s the second time this month someone has taken me for a cop.”
MacIntosh shrugged. “No offense.”
“The more interesting question would be, has anybody besides a cop been here asking these sorts of questions?”
“That’s another question the detective asked.” Giles studied Stanley. “If he comes back and asks it again, I can tell him yes.”
Stanley shrugged. “I’m just a guy anxious to go to bed with his new girlfriend, and she’s a little nervous about his past.”
“Ah, yes,” said Giles. “The girlfriend.” He returned his attention to his computer screen. “I guess that makes hetero your sexual preference.” He tapped tentatively at a key. “Unless…?”
“Hetero’s fine,” said Stanley.
“Yes,” Giles smiled, hitting the key. “This is now and that was then.”
“And what would you know about it?” Stanley asked archly.
“My mom talks about it all the time. Mom always says there was about a three-year period when she would sleep with anything with buttons on it.”
“She didn’t mention guiros?”
“Not that I recall.”
“A woman doesn’t want to tell her son everything.”
“Not unless she wants to drive him mad with desire.”
Stanley smiled.
“But as we were saying, only the AIDS survey gets your statistics without your permission. The data submitted are anonymous, involving HIV results, gender, sexual preference, income level, age, geodemographic stuff like that. Obviously, in an organ or blood donor database, the information can’t be anonymous. But for that we get your explicit consent.”
“I don’t remember that woman, Ms.…”
Giles glanced at the screen. “Dunkirk. Ms. Dunkirk.”
“I don’t recall her asking my permission to divulge such information.”
“Then it probably wasn’t granted, Mr. Ahearn.”
“Okay,” Stanley agreed thoughtfully. “So it wasn’t granted.”
Giles’ casual glance at his screen became more concentrated. “But it says here, Mr. Ahearn, that it was granted.”
It was a moment before Stanley answered. He recalled the other case worker asking the question. If, in case of an accident, do you wish your intact organs to be put to best use? No, Stanley had replied, I don’t. He’d been assuming, at the time, that by the time he died he’d either be HIV positive from messing around with hookers or too pickled in alcohol for his organs to benefit anyone.
“Negative, Giles. Permission was not granted.”
Giles was silent for a moment while he studied his screen. He typed a key. He tried another. “Hello…,” he muttered softly.
Stanley waited a bit before he said, “The computer says that my permission was given, doesn’t it. Giles?”
“Permission for what?” Giles asked nervously.
“Permission to share information.”
Giles looked up from the screen. “Yessir, Mr. Ahearn. According to your file, sir, you gave your permission to share organ donor information.”
Stanley watched Giles for a moment.
“Oh, well,” he said suddenly, breaking eye contact with Giles as he did so. He sat back in his chair, heaved a sigh and looked up at the ceiling. “This Ms. Dunkirk, or somebody else, must have slipped up. Maybe the computer burped.” He allowed his eyes to find Giles’ again. “Right?”
Frowning, Giles turned to his screen. “Right,” he said.
“Still, I refused it.”
“Yes sir, you said that.”
“It didn’t have to be her mistake, did it?”
“Pardon?”
“Ms. Dunkirk. She didn’t have to be the one making the mistake, did she? Somebody else could have made it. No? What’s the matter?”
Giles stared at Stanley for a moment, then looked back at the screen. “I don’t like mistakes,” he said simply.
“Oh, a perfectionist, eh? Wel
l my boy, I’m with you there. Used to be quite a perfectionist myself when I was your age. Had to give all that up, of course. I saw a bit of the world and gave up on perfection. Now it’s your turn. Welcome to the club. Perfection isn’t how it works. Perfection isn’t what the world produces. Perfection is only something it eats, not what it shits out. Get my meaning? Give up on perfection, Giles. Perfection will only stick to your shoes and bring you heartache. See?”
“I never had a father,” said Giles, staring at his screen.
“Besides,” Stanley said, ignoring this remark. “Was this Ms. Dunkirk the only one with access to this file? Obviously not. You’re sitting here and looking at it. Let’s suppose, if she didn’t make the mistake, maybe somebody else made it. Then we’ll get on with our current business.”
Giles remained silent, tapping a key thoughtfully.
“Is there a record of accesses?”
Giles brightened. “As a matter of fact, Mr. Ahearn, there is a record kept of something like the thirty-two most recent accesses to a given file.”
“Thirty-two? Why thirty-two?”
Giles shrugged. “It’s the fifth power of two. Binary computer stuff. They have to put some limit on these little conveniences or risk a drain on memory, which could lead to a crash…”
“So? Look them up.”
“I don’t have access to that information…” Giles shook himself again, as if out of a reverie, and frowned at the screen, renewing his concentration. “Besides, it might not make any difference.”
“How’s that?”
Now Giles studied Stanley for a moment. Stanley studied him back. Giles looked like a nice kid, raised by a mother of Stanley’s age. A nice kid with something bothering him. What bothers a kid who grew up swaddled in a rebozo hanging from a tree limb on a commune in Costa Rica?
“Ordinarily, Mr. Ahearn,” Giles said thoughtfully, “I shouldn’t be exposing internal procedure to the scrutiny of a client. But this is a public agency. And, as my mother taught me to believe, most of what public agencies do and how they do it, especially the information they accrue, should always be accessible to the public. Moreover, since that police officer was here, I’ve been fooling around with the computer.”
“So?”
“So I’ve noticed a little… anomaly.”
“A what?”
Giles cleared his throat. “A glitch.”
“A glitch.”
“I remind myself that these are your data we’re talking about here, Mr. Ahearn. Not belonging exclusively, as some people would like to think, to the clinic, but to you as well.”
“That’s an admirable sentiment, Giles. Easily worth a cup of coffee, along with a buck.”
Giles smiled. “Yes. Well, step around my desk for a moment, if you don’t mind.”
Stanley limped around the desk.
“Is your hip bothering you?” Giles asked solicitously. “Mom had a hip replacement just last—.”
“I stepped on a nail,” Stanley said coldly.
“Oh,” said Giles. He turned back to his monitor. “Okay. Take a look at this.”
Giles’ computer screen showed the agency’s computerized form, requesting the client’s name, address, phone number, age and sex, along with considerable additional information. The data in this particular form were Stanley’s from his previous visit. Up in the right-hand corner was a long alphanumeric case number.
“You don’t mind if I make a few notes,” Stanley said, jotting down the number.
“I think it’s your right to have any and all information involving your own case file,” said Giles. “Most of the people who work here agree with me, although not all of them. And conditions being such, I’d appreciate your treating this matter in full confidence.”
“Mum’s the word, Giles.”
“See that box holding the cursor?”
“Yeah.”
“How’s it labeled?”
“Share info (Y/N)?”
“That’s right.”
“Meaning, I take it, has this client given his or her permission to share his case information with other agencies?”
“That’s correct.”
“So?”
“What’s it say under the cursor?”
“Y, meaning Yes, which is a damnable lie.”
“That’s true. Ms. Dunkirk asked you whether you were interested in getting on a national list of blood or organ or bone marrow donors. That’s her job, she’s supposed to ask you that, all of us ask our clients that. And you said NO.”
“Okay. So far so good.”
“Watch this.”
Giles typed a y on his keyboard. “You get an upper-case Y no matter which y you input.”
“So great,” said Stanley. “But Y isn’t my answer.”
“Precisely,” said Giles. “Your answer is N, for No.”
“That’s right.”
“So type it in.”
“Me?”
Giles slid his chair away from the desk. “Go ahead. Upper or lower case.”
Stanley searched the keyboard until he found the N key, and tapped it.
“What’s it say now in the answer box?”
“It says… It still says Y.”
“Precisely. Try an upper-case N. Hold down the shift key and hit the N.”
Stanley tried an upper-case N.
“It’s still comes up as Y.”
“That’s right. Still a Y,” said Giles. “No matter what the input your answer is positively Yes: you want to be on national lists of organ donors.”
“Nobody’s noticed this before?”
Giles looked evasive. “It’s the first I’ve heard of it.”
“What are you guys, asleep around here?”
Giles ignored this. “A typical case worker would be asking the questions rapidly and filling in the answers as he or she watched the keyboard. Not only that, the blood type and test results are filled in weeks later, after the report has come back, and not by the interview clerk but by data-entry personnel. The latter are all touch typists: they watch the data sheet they’re recording from, and only occasionally glance at the screen to make sure they’re on the right page. What I’m trying to say is, it’s entirely possible that nobody’s ever noticed this quirk before.”
“Quirk? You call this a quirk?”
“If anybody else has noticed it, they haven’t told me.”
“Skip it. Somebody wants my info in their database.”
“If you rule out a quirk, that’s an interesting idea.”
Stanley looked at Giles. “I’m ruling out quirks.”
“Okay.” Giles shrugged. “Somebody wants your info in their database.”
“Or some part of me.”
“Beg pardon?”
“Nothing.”
“But why?”
“More to the point, who?”
“Maybe it’s a cabal of intergalactic hippies, trying to stay in touch with their ever-fewer brothers on earth.”
Stanley looked at Giles a moment, tried not to smile, then looked back at the screen, which he now read in its entirety. A lot of medical stuff.
He put a finger on the screen. “Giles, my man, you see that blood category, there?”
“Sure.”
“See the blood type?”
“It says you’re type O-Negative.”
“So I’ve been told. Change it.”
“Change it? What for?”
“Just change it. You can change it, can’t you?”
“Sure.” Giles rolled his chair back under the keyboard. “Change it to what?”
“How should I know? What’s your blood type?”
“AB-Negative.”
“So type in AB-Negative.”
Giles changed the blood type to AB-Negative.
“Now Giles,” said Stanley, “go back up to the consent box and put in a positive answer.”
Giles arrowed the cursor back up the screen to the consent box and typed a Y.
“Now l
ook…”
“It says Y. I just typed Y.”
“Put in a negative answer.”
Giles typed an N.
“Look at that!”
“It says N.”
“Yes…?”
“Works just like it’s supposed to work. That is interesting, isn’t it.
"Now how about changing the blood type back to O-Negative?”
Giles arrowed back down the screen and changed the blood type.
“Look at that, Giles…”
“The N changed back to a Y!”
Just to check, Giles arrowed up to the consent box and typed in a lower-case n. The upper-case Y remained unchanged.
“It’s keyed to the blood type!”
“Which is filled in after the tests come back. Right?”
“That’s correct. No less than two weeks later. Usually three.”
“So the case worker filling in the form wouldn’t even notice the wrong answer appearing in the consent box. The Y only appears in the consent box after a blood type O-Negative is entered two or three weeks later by other personnel. The clerk’s got no reason even to look at the consent category.”
Giles considered the screen. “But what does this mean?”
“Giles,” Stanley said, standing up straight and scratching his shirt over his scar. “It means that somebody is interested in people with a certain blood type.”
“I guess so. Say, are you sure you’re not a policeman?”
“Yes.”
“What exactly is your interest in this?”
Stanley considered Giles for a moment, then countered with a question of his own. “Could you get me a list of the accesses to this file?”
Giles nodded thoughtfully. “The sysop is a friend of mine. Tommy’s the only one I could go to who would have enough security clearance to read the list. In fact the reason I haven’t mentioned this Yes/No anomaly to anybody is that I figured it was some little game that Tommy was up to.”
“Well?”
“Well, but now I see that it’s keyed to the blood type.…”
Stanley waited.
Giles tapped the keyboard. “It couldn’t be Tommy. It’s not his style. Anybody with enough programming know-how to finagle this information form would be able to access the results without leaving a trace.”
Stanley considered this. “How well do you know this sysop guy?”