Blood Money by K. J. Janssen

clock would need to be running during the processing so that they had an early warning. Waiting until the processing was complete, which was what they were doing now, was totally inadequate. An override would have to be included that only he, Robby Acheson or John Portman could activate. That was for the future, however, and he was more concerned with the problem at hand. Paul drummed his fingers on his desk while he waited, looked at his watch twice and took a mouthful of water from the bottle on his side table. Eventually, he would have to contact his boss to appraise him of what happened. Paul reported directly to the new National Director, Dr. Thomas Orwell, who had been next in line to succeed Dr. Cartwright. This would be Orwell’s first “incident.” He would, no doubt, be very concerned with results and appearances. With the lockdown already in effect, the clock was slowly ticking. He had to get answers quickly.
    John stuck his head in the door. He was waved in.
    â€œWhat’ve you got?”
    â€œWell, everything looks okay internally. We only had one visitor today, a Professor Dwyer from M.I.T. He got the courtesy tour we give to all academics. One of our customer service managers was with him the entire time. He was never near any operations, and was out of here around ten after nine. As for employees, only one of the laboratory technicians is absent today. He had a death in the family. Human Resources confirms that his mother was in hospice and expected to live only a few days. Aside from that, everyone seems to be where they should be. So as far as I can see, the extra run time must be because a blood bank sent more transactions than they noted on their control record. Input for that run originated from six blood banks. One in Burbank, California, one in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, two in Dallas, Texas, another in Miami, Florida and the last in Mansfield, Ohio. They have all been participating members for at least three years and generate input at least once a week, but not necessarily on the same day.”
    The frustration began to show on Paul’s face as he said, “Get someone to contact each of the blood banks and have them check their records. I want them to resubmit their control records right away to check with ours. Make sure they verify by fax or e-mail. No verbal messages. We’ll need a paper trail in case we do have a problem. I need that information quickly. Thanks for your help, John.”
    John used Paul’s telephone to contact Customer Service. After he communicated what they needed to do, he continued his update. “I have an operator printing out a summary record of the input and output files for the run. It’ll take a while. They’ll bring it up when it’s done. I expect it to be voluminous, but at least we’ll be able to see in print exactly what took the extra time.” He thought for a minute, then added, “In fact, Paul, why don’t I run down there myself and see if I can speed things up.”
    â€œI’d really appreciate that, John.”
    â€œNo problem, glad to help,” he said leaving the office. So far, this was still what John would have done on his own. He came back in about eight minutes struggling with the weight of a stack of computer paper over a foot high. His face was without expression. “You’re not going to like this, Paul.”
    â€œWhy? What did you find?”
    â€œThe listing shows that disbursement records for the past two years were set up to be output. That’s what took the extra processing time. This is only a partial printout. That is one of our larger files. Apparently, the records were processed along with the normal outputs for the six blood banks. The reports to the six banks went out as usual. But here’s the weird thing. Even though we did not have an output address record for the file, somehow an address was created for it within the system, and it was sent to, of all