Terminals elsewhere in the hospital allowed
people to look up information. Medical records were kept by hand in a
different department.
The operating system was complicated but not too different from one he
had used a few years earlier. There was a job control language that
scheduled daily updates and a weekly billing run. A log kept automatic
track of all programs that were executed. This gave him the names of
the programs. He found Dan at the other end of the hospital and asked
him for a password. Once inside the system, he found the source code
for the billing programs. A lot of small programs were run in sequence
before the bills were actually produced. He took a guess and printed
out the last three to be run; the late messages were probably
hard-coded in there somewhere. The code was incomprehensible. He
couldn't get anywhere without a book. He said goodbye and drove to the
Maine Mall.
There was only one book on RPG II. It was a language from the dawn of
computer history, thirty years old. He took the book to the Food Court
and began trying to interpret the code listings. Two cups of coffee
later, he drove home. He had made some progress, but there was a lot
left to figure out.
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