This is an Internet-age tale; acronyms and things alike won't be explained next to them, between parentheses, but rather using <acronym> tags -- in case of doubt, hover your mouse over the dot-underlined words. João.
Once upon a time,
- I -
Year: 2069. Imagine a world where paper was considered a primitive chinese invention, a mere museum part; every document was now digitally transmitted, whether it was the daily news (TV is abbolished, and every newsbreak was issued by the central governement), a birth certificate, a death certificate, an arrest warrant … or a medical perscription. That world is now called Digitalia – the name Earth was deprecated.
In Digitalia, you will go to the doctor, he will examine you, and, at the moment of issuing you a medical perscription, he will pass your DID card in a specific reader everyone must have, and a digitally signed perscription would be directly sent to your ODI. When you go to the pharmacy, you just present your DID card and your perscription will be instantly retrieved from your ODI. Every person’s ODI was available from any scanner in any part of Digitalia, provided that specific person’s DID card – you could even check out your own ODI at home, using your scanner and a standard IMAP e-mail client.
-
II -
About 3147249600, Unixtime. Special Agent Halfidoo was in charge of the case of a massive number of possible murders by negligence – massive as in 2 and half million casualties. The facts: despite the public warnings – obviously directed to every doctor’s ODI – that Viagra was discovered to cause death to underweighted people when taken along with Xanax, doctors kept perscribing them without having the care due to the situation. Canada, Uganda, Norway, Thailand, Switzerland, … – the whole world was being killed by doctors. So far, 200 thousand doctors all over the world have been preventively arrested, although all of them denied any knowledge of the issue with those two medications.
Special Agent Messiah, who was previously assigned to that case – until he died himself of having taken Viagra and Xanax together, before the public warning – was investigating driven by his intuition that there was a congregation of doctors around the world, which were decided not to stop earning some illegal shares on Viagra perscriptions because of the warning. To Halfidoo, on the other hand, that theory just didn’t smell good; we’re talking of two hundred thousand corrupt professionals around the world, for Christ’s sake! He wouldn’t deny that there were some doctors here and there receiving some extra money for perscribing Viagra, as well as maybe for other medications, but 200 thousand doctors all over the world conspiring together with no reagard for life or death was way far from rational! -
III -
Halfidoo was a computer expert, fact which, combined with his age (85, but still alive and kicking, with the bonus of knowing of technologies and applications that those new-school rookies don’t even dream existed), granted him an almost unanimous choice from above for replacing Messiah on leading this case – exception was Lieutenant Rhuminoo, who thought there was someone much suitable for such an intrincate case: himself.
And God was Lt. Rhuminoo wrong; Halfiddo spent 9 weeks travelling round the world, visiting the victims’ and doctors’ houses to inspect their terminals – he definitely didn’t go for a conspiracy theory, but he also didn’t suspect the central governement didn’t send the warning to everyone, so he wen’t to what was in the middle of the “news chain”.
At the end of those 9 weeks, around 3152682000, when Lt. Rhuminoo got to his office at the precinct, he didn’t want to believe what was on his desk. It was the final report of Halfidoo’s investigation – the final result of what, despite his own thought, Rhuminoo wouldn’t do better.
Case closed. Supposedly corrupt doctors were released and only subjected to a Di$42 fine for PTN, and the victims were found guilty of their own deaths. Halfidoo’s investigation returned that every single person involved in this situation was using ouf-of-date spam filters, with a very conservative rule: delete spam from server.
Viagra and Xanax failed the filter. -
THE END -
João Craveiro
:: jcraveiro.com ::
P.S.: This is a kinda stubby story, specifically invented/written for Asymptomatic's FFAF. There may be some plot holes here and there, which would probably disappear if the story was a bit more developed -- namely, the description of how different Digitalia would be from our present world. In my head, I imagined Digitalia to be similar to George Orwell's "1984" world. For example, people wouldn't be allowed to talk between them about news they received in their ODI's -- to avoid misundertandings to cause panic -- and that's why people that didn't know of the Viagra/Xanax issue through government official news wouldn't know at all.P.P.S.: English is not my mother tongue, and neither do I speak it in a daily basis; given this, please be tolerant for some errors.
P.P.P.S.: For those about to ask Where the hack did yu come up with the names Halfidoo and Rhuminoo? – “halfidoo” is an anagram of a Portuguese obscenity, and “rhuminoo” is an anagram of a Portuguese celebrity which is as narcisistic as Lt. Rhuminoo (if you are keen of the Premier League, you’ll figure it out) ;)
