Data Contamination

The category Skyvault keeps ready for "having seen what one should not have seen."

It has grades. Class 3 is the level at which the person concerned is advised to undergo visual calibration. The determination is short: file a public anomaly report and the reply comes back 0.3 seconds later, worded as flat as ever:

No record of this event found in the system.
That location, that time period, no anomalous data.
Your report has been filed as "Class-3 data contamination." We recommend visual calibration at the nearest health station.

The same term lands in two different places. The first time it came down, it landed on the report. Once the weekly cumulative value passed 1.50, it landed on the person — Class-3 data contaminant. The difference is written on the screen in the assessment room: authority over subsequent handling transfers to Skyvault standard operating procedure, and individual consent is no longer a precondition.

There are several accounts of this in the city. Two years ago the push read as a "Class-3 visual perception deviation" alert; the health station ran the routine examination and everything came back normal. The homeroom teacher's version was that this is common during adolescence and he should get some rest. The health station's version was that the vision had drifted and a calibration would sort it out. The school administration recorded something else again: this student had not completed his appointment within the week, which would affect next semester's comprehensive assessment and the recommendation letter the school writes for him when he applies to move up. Three systems wrote about the same student, and the three records were never checked against one another.

The label itself is worth a second look. From beginning to end this category describes only the person — his vision, his fatigue, his growth period. The reporting interface has three fields, "event type," "event location," "event description," and there is no field in which to put "I believe the record is wrong."