David Wallace - The Pale King - An Unfinished Novel

‘And that requires criteria.’

‘A procedure.’

‘It’s a procedure for processing information.’

‘You are all, if you think about it, data processors.’

The next slide on the screen was either a foreign word or a very complex acronym, each letter in bold and also underlined.

‘Different groups and teams within groups are given slightly different criteria that help inform what to look for.’

The Personnel aide was thumbing through his laminated outline.

‘Actually there’s another example of the information thing.’

‘I think they’ve got it.’ The CTO had a way of turning one foot out perpendicular to its normal direction and tapping it furiously to signal impatience.

‘But it’s right here under the desk thing.’

‘You mean the deck of cards?’

‘The checkout line.’

They seemed to believe their mikes were off.

‘Christ.’

‘Who’d like to hear another example illustrating the idea of collecting information versus processing data?’

Cusk was feeling solid and confident, as he often did after a series of attacks had passed and his nervous system felt depleted and difficult to arouse. He felt that if he’d raised his hand and given an answer that turned out not to be correct it wouldn’t have been that big of a deal. ‘Whatever,’ he thought. The ‘whatever’ is what he often thought when he was feeling jaunty and immune from attack. He had twice actually asked women out when in this cocky, extroverted, hydrotically secure mood, then later failed to show up or call at the appointed time. He actually considered turning around and saying something jaunty and ever so slightly flirtatious to the noisome Belgian swimsuit model — on the upswing, he now wanted people’s attention.

At age eight, Sylvanshine had data on his father’s liver enzymes and rate of cortical atrophy, but he didn’t know what these data meant.

‘There you are at the market while your items are being tallied. There’s an individual price for each item, obviously. It’s often right there on the item, on an adhesive tag, sometimes with the wholesale price also coded in the corner — we can talk about that some other time. At checkout, the cashier enters the price of each grocery, adds them up, appends relevant sales taxes — not progressive, this is a current example — and arrives at a total, which you then pay. The point — which has more information, the total amount or the calculation of ten individual items, let’s say you had ten items in your cart in the example. The obvious answer is that the set of all the individual prices has much more information than the single number that’s the total. It’s just that most of the information is irrelevant. If you paid for each item individually, that would be one thing. But you don’t. The individual information of the individual price has value only in the context of the total; what the cashier is really doing is discarding information. What you arrive at the cash register with is a whole lot of information, which the cashier runs through a procedure in order to arrive at the one piece of information that’s valuable — the total, plus tax.’

‘Get rid of the layman’s idea that information is good. That the more information the better. The phone book has lots of information, but if you’re looking for a phone number, 99.9 percent of that information is just in the way.’

‘Information per se is really just a measure of disorder.’ Sylvanshine’s head popped up at this.

‘The point of a procedure is to process and reduce the information in your file to just the information that has value.’

‘There’s also the matter of using your time most efficiently. You’re not going to spend equal time on each file. You want to spend the most time on the files that look most promising in terms of yielding the most net revenue.’

‘Net revenue is our term for the amount of additional revenue generated by an audit less the cost of the audit.’

‘Under the Initiative, examiners are evaluated according to both total net revenue produced and the ratio of total additional revenue produced over total cost of additional audits ordered. Whichever is the least favorable.’

‘The ratio is to keep some rube from simply filling out a Memo 20 on every file that hits his Tingle in hopes of jacking up his net.’ Cusk considered: An examiner who filed no Memo 20s ever would have a ratio of 0/0 which is infinity. But the net revenue total would, he reflected, also be 0.

‘The point is to develop and implement procedures that let you determine as quickly as possible whether a given file merits closer examination—’

‘—that closer examination itself involving some type or types of procedures blended with your own creativity and instinct for smelling a rat in the woodwork—’

‘—although at the beginning of your service, as you’re gaining experience and honing your skills, it will be natural to rely on certain tested procedures—’

‘—a lot of these will vary by group or team.’

‘Incongruities on the Master Files, for one thing. That’s pretty obvious. Disagreement of W-2s plus 1099s with stated income. Disagreement of state return with 1040—’

‘But by how much? Below what floor do you simply let an incongruity go?’

‘These are the sorts of matters for your group orientation.’

Sylvanshine now knew that two separate pairs of new wigglers were actually, unbeknownst to them, related, one pair through a liaison five generations ago in Utrecht.

David Cusk was now feeling so relaxed and unafraid that he was almost getting drowsy. The two trainers sometimes established a rhythm and concert that was soothing and restful. Cusk’s tailbone was a tiny bit numb from settling back and slumping slightly in his seat, resting his elbow casually on the foldout desk, the heat of the little lamp of no more direct concern than news of the weather somewhere else.

‘Who has an unusually big dip in income or rise in deductions compared to previous years? These are just samples.’

‘A major one — who has been fruitfully audited within the past five years? This appears on some, but not all, of the Martinsburg printouts.’

‘—Sometimes you have to order additional specs from the Master Files.’

‘But be disciplined about it. Avoid the temptation to think that you always need more information. You can drown in it.’

‘Plus it’s expensive.’

‘Get to know your cart boy. Your cart boy is the GS-7 who liaisons with the examiners and the Technical Pod, where data processors can get you additional information from the Master Files if you fill out a DR-104 data requisition form.’

‘Not all of them are boys. “Cart boy” is just a more historical term.’

‘Plus cart boys are who keep the files circulating, particularly picking up files that you’ve cleared and keeping your Tingle’s in-box filled.’

‘They do not bring refreshments or do personal errands.’

Cusk was considering the possible advantages of being a cart boy if being an examiner turned out to be too dangerous in terms of subjecting him to attacks and making it difficult to leave the area. Cart boys sounded as if they were in more or less constant motion, and constant motion meant constant chances to nip into the restroom and check the sweat situation and wipe sweat off his forehead. On the other hand, it would probably mean a large pay cut. A small gurgling noise Cusk heard behind him at five-minute intervals was the sound of Toni Ware’s glasses’ auto-lubricant in her eyes.

‘You’ll meet your cart boy in your Group and Team orientations.’

‘Other general examples: Who’s in a largely cash business?’

‘Who’s got unusually high charitable deductions compared to the averages for his income level?’