The Terminal Experiment

CHAPTER 29

Getting rid of Hans Larsen had been easy. After all, why worry about covering one’s tracks? Yes, the police would certainly investigate the crime, but they’d soon find that there were dozens of people who might have wanted to see the philandering Hans dead in the same poetic-justice fashion.

For the second elimination, though, the sim knew he would have to be more subtle. Something untraceable was called for — something that didn’t even look like murder.

With health-care costs spiraling ever upward, most developed countries were turning toward inexpensive prevention rather than catastrophic treatment. That required identifying risks particular to each patient, and for that a detailed knowledge of family history was invaluable. But originally not everyone had had access to such information.

In 2004, a group of adults who had been adopted as children successfully lobbied Canada’s provincial and federal governments to establish the nationwide Confidential Medical Records Database, or “MedBase.” The rationale was simple: all health records should be centralized so that any doctor could access information, with the names removed to protect privacy, about relatives of any of their patients — even if, as was frequently true in the case of adoption, the individuals in question didn’t know they were related.

The sim had to try more than twenty times, but it did eventually manage to find a way into MedBase — and, from there, a roundabout way to get the information it wanted:

Login: jdesalle

Password: ellased

Welcome! Bienvenu!

Health and Welfare Canada

Sante et Bien-e’tre social Canada

MEDBASE

[1] for English [2] pour Frangais

> 1

Enter patient’s province or territory of residence (L for list):

> Ontario

Enter patient’s name or Health Card number:

> 33 1834 22 149

Hobson, Catherine R. Correct? (Y/N)

> Y

What would you like to do?

[1] Display patient’s record?

[2] Search patient’s family history?

> 2

Search for? (H for help)

The sim selected H, read the help screens, then formulated his query:

> Familial Risk, Heart Disease

There was a pause while the system searched.

Correlations found.

The computer proceeded to list records for six different relatives of Cathy who had had heart problems over the years. Although no names were given, the sim had no trouble figuring out which one belonged to Rod Churchill, based on the age at which the coronary trouble had first occurred.

The sim asked for the full record for that patient. The computer provided it, again without listing the patient’s name. He studied the medical history minutely. Rod was currently taking heart medication and something called phenelzine. The sim logged onto MedLine, a general medical-information database, and began searching the literature for information on those drugs.

It took some digging, and the sim had to access an online medical dictionary continually to be able to wade through it all, but at last he had what he wanted.

Finally, the long day of interviews at Doowap Advertising was over. Detective Sandra Philo drove slowly back to her empty apartment. On the way, she took advantage of the car’s phone to check a few things. “Carla Wishinski?” she said into the dashboard mike.

“Yes?” said the voice through the speaker.

“This is Inspector Alexandria Philo of the Metro Police. I’ve got a quick question for you.”

Wishinski sounded flustered. “Uh, yes. Yes, of course.”

“Were you by any chance with Catherine Hobson on the morning of November tenth?”

“With Cathy? Let me bring up my scheduler.” The sound of keyclicks. “On the tenth? No, I’m afraid not. Is she in some kind of trouble?”

Sandra turned the car onto Lawrence West. “Did I say the tenth?” she said. “My mistake. I meant the fourteenth.”

“I don’t think — ” More keyclicks. “Oh, wait. That’s the day my car was in for service. Yes, Cathy picked me up and took me to work — she’s a sweetheart about things like that.”

“Thank you,” said Sandra. It was a standard technique — first determine that the person won’t issue a reflex lie to protect her friend, then ask the real question. Cathy Hobson apparently had a valid alibi. Still, if it had been a professional hit, the fact that she’d been somewhere else when the deed was done proved little.

“Is there anything else?” asked Carla Wishinski.

“No, that’s all. Were you planning on leaving town?”

“Umm, yes — I, ah, I’m going to Spain on vacation.”

“Well, then, have a nice trip!” said Sandra.

She never tired of doing that.

Spirit, the life-after-death sim, probed the net, looking for new stimulation. Everything was so static, so unchanging. Oh, he could absorb a book or a newsgroup quickly, but the information itself was passive, and, ultimately, that made it boring.

Spirit also wandered through the computers at Mirror Image. Eventually he found Sarkar’s game bank and tried playing chess and Tetris and Go and Bollix and a thousand others, but they were no better than the interactive games on the net. Peter Hobson had never really liked games, anyway. He much preferred devoting his energies to things that actually made a difference, rather than to silly contests that in the end changed nothing. Spirit continued to search, going through file after file.

And, at last, he came upon a subdirectory called A-LIFE. Here, blue fish were evolving, the ones judged most fit getting to breed. Spirit watched several generations go by, fascinated by the process. Life, he thought.

Life.

Finally, Spirit had found something that intrigued him.