Distant+Whispers

Three quick beeps from his computer caught his attention. The e-mail icon, a tiny spinning
envelope, was highlighted. He clicked on the icon, expecting some mass mailing. Few in this
company even knew his username.
There was a letter from someone named ‘sunsquared@tntclaims.com.tt’. The subject box was
blank. There were just two words in the body of the letter: ‘tntdemo’ and ‘tntreg’. They both were
colored blue and underlined. Links?
Denmark stared at the links warily. Probably a virus. His fingers hovered over the delete button
until he checked out the sender again. SUNSQUARED. Sunny Duville? That made sense. She was the
one who set up his email. Of course, she knew his username. All right sister! Denmark pumped a fist
in the air. He grinned and clicked on the first link— tntdemo —and waited as a PDF file pieced itself
together on the screen. Wow! He whistled. Will you look at this! It was a complete demographic table
of Trinidad’s population by boroughs, by ethnicity, by age and by income. He had spent all morning
searching for this information. He closed that file and opened the other— tntreg . This one included
data on the structuring of Trinidad into four hospital regions and a statistical rundown on the total
procedures, inpatient and outpatient services done in each region. It was an actuarial treasure chest.
With this information he could have fixed the flawed reports in half a day.
Denmark quickly searched for his benefactor. At that precise moment the brown goddess—Sunny
DuVille—stood up and gazed at him. Denmark stood up, grinned broadly and gave her a thumbs up
sign. He didn’t care that half of the workers saw this exchange and immediately started their eye
gossip. If these Hindi people were watching out for each other, so could the black folks. Raj was
watching out for his people and his white friends. Why shouldn’t black folks do the same.