Act 1: Beating Heart
Segment 3: A Glorious Arms Race
Chapter 3-8: Distributed Computing
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Date: 2021-03-22 10:05
From: Makoto Tokuda
To: Brian Mackenzie
Cc: Rei Nagatomo
Subject: Questions about Prometheus v3
Hello Professor Mackenzie,
I hope you are doing well. Some questions came up in my head after our conversation. Please take a look at them and answer if you have time.
I was wondering how the high-level architecture looks like? Also how the components communicate with each other
How does the program confirm if generated life forms are sensible?
Is it using many-nucleotide system? Or normal life simulation?
Best,
Makoto 徳田 誠
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ATTACHMENTS: prometheus3_diag_arch_2020-12-18_FINAL (SVG)
Date: 2021-03-26 19:37
From: Brian Mackenzie
To: Makoto Tokuda
Cc: Rei Nagatomo
Subject: RE: Questions about Prometheus v3
Hi Makoto,
First, apologies are in order for getting to your e-mail so late! We've had a curious incident at the lab. It seems our systems all crashed irrecoverably last Sunday and nobody was around to fix it until the day after. Even our monitoring systems went dead.
We've been busy cleaning up the mess and trying to recover from it, so the grad students – and me! – haven't had much time lately.
I've attached some documents that answer your questions related to the project. Please don't share them widely, I trust you enough. Nothing in there is confidential, but we've had a lot of strange things happen to us already.
Best,
Brian
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Makoto snorted with mirth. Gabumon peeked its head up from the couch. "Makoto, what's so funny?"
He waved it away. "Nothing, just, uh, I think the other four really had an impact on Monday." He chuckled. "Sorry, Professor. But we had to shut the system down."
"Wait, really? It's shut down?" Gabumon asked excitedly. "So is that it?"
Makoto adjusted his glasses. "Careful. I wouldn't celebrate too early."
"Oh, why?"
"They're trying to recover and redeploy. I'm honestly not sure how to get them to stop." He put his phone down. "It's not like we can just tell him about all the things we've found."
Satsuki reclined and sipped her mug of tea. "I mean, if his research crosses into life forms that don't exist in the human world, maybe we could." She had a sly grin on her face. "I wonder what his reaction would be if he saw you, Gabumon."
Gabumon didn't notice. "Satsuki, that sounds like a bad idea."
"It is a bad idea, I was joking." She straightened out her hair. It was still drying, but she didn't really like using a hair dryer if she could help it. It caused split ends. "Did he say anything else? It's been a few days, so I was hoping for more."
"He's been busy cleaning up the mess the Tamers made," Makoto replied. "They really broke everything."
"Good. Maybe they'll get so discouraged, they'll give up."
"I wouldn't bet on that," Makoto cautioned as he downloaded the attachment. He browsed through it. His faint smile suddenly dropped as he scanned over the architecture diagrams. The control plane had several different agent classes, spanning multiple bounding boxes. He scrolled down. Multiple labels. Of course.
"Makoto?" Satsuki asked, taking notice. "What happened?"
"Oh no."
"Oh no, what? Tell me!"
Makoto facepalmed. "I'm stupid! Of course it looks like that!"
"What looks like what?!"
Makoto threw his phone down in frustration. He should have expected this. "it's a distributed control plane!"
"I have no idea what that means," replied Satsuki. Gabumon shook its head. It didn't either.
"There's more than one data centre!" Makoto growled and laid his head down on the table, and then thumped his forehead against it. "Dumb, dumb me!" He sighed. "I'm sorry, Satsuki."
"Sorry about what?"
He straightened up and looked as solemn as he could. "You're not done." A clock ticked seconds away.
Gabumon asked, "Not done? You mean there are more places where there might be an abnormal Junction?"
"For safety reasons," he explained, "they deployed the part of Prometheus that does all of the central command and control in multiple physical locations. That way, they never lose the whole system unless something truly catastrophic happens. And that means," he sighed, disgusted that he hadn't thought of this earlier, "that there's the potential the other one is having the same problems! Aghh!" He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his face, then screamed into his forearms.
Satsuki slumped in her chair. Just great. They didn't need this. The other four had been recovering from their last fight, and she wasn't sure if they were mentally ready for another one. But they couldn't keep the Tamers in the dark. "We should show this to Ryuta."
"Professor told me not to share it with anyone else."
She grabbed her brother by the shoulders and shook him. "Makoto! This could potentially become a disaster!" Gabumon flinched. She rarely lost her cool like that, but it made some sense. This was a shocking discovery. Her chest heaved as she breathed forcefully.
"I… I guess," Makoto replied. He wiped his glasses clean with his shirt. He'd smudged them with his fingers just then. "Maybe I should just show him in person instead of emailing it to him."
"Whatever works." Satsuki groaned, sat back down, and slid down her chair. "God damn it."
"I'm sorry, sis."
She waved her hand. "Nothing any of us could have done, I guess."
Gabumon's head turned as Satsuki's phone, on the table, pinged. "Eh? Oh, it's just news."
Satsuki glanced at it. Her eyes widened as she read the notification message. She scrambled to pick up her phone and unlock it to read the breaking news.
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Foreign substance found at data centre in Koto warehouse
NNK News | Published 2021.03.26 20:10
BREAKING
A data centre housed in Koto has been evacuated and fenced off by police after an employee reported the discovery of an unknown liquid spill inside the warehouse. The data centre operator has assured its customers that no servers will be shut down without prior notice. However, access is currently restricted to the site. The operator is investigating if this liquid spill is related to recent server failures in the data centre that had started earlier today.
Police add that there is no known risk to the public at this time.
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"Foreign substance?" She tapped around. Perhaps there was a photo of this on some other website or app. As she did, the Tamer chat came alive. It seemed she wasn't the only one who had noticed.
• • • • • • •
Sumida Tamers
Segawa Takaharu
[embedded link]
gdi
20:13
Shimizu Kazuhiko
It can't be…
20:13
Ishida Yuuka
Σ(ﾟДﾟ；)
This… this isn't leaking out, is it?
20:14
Nagatomo Asuka
ffs
really…
thought this was over
20:14
Koyama Ryuta
Satsuki – Did Makoto get a response today?
20:15
Tokuda Satsuki
Yeah… confidential document though
Wants to see you in person
20:15
Koyama Ryuta
On my way. Give me a few minutes
20:15
• • • • • • •
There was a knock at the door. Satsuki glanced at her phone. He wasn't joking; it was just a few minutes. She opened the door. "Ryuta, you're out of breath." She let him in. Makoto and Gabumon waved.
He huffed. "I rushed as quickly as I could." He waved back breathlessly. "Makoto, what did you get?"
"Architecture documents. Here, let me use my tablet instead." He poked about his mail app. "Take a look at this."
Ryuta sat and squinted at the diagram. "Control plane… sure… Nishi-Waseda… Koto…" He stopped suddenly and winced. "I had this thought in the back of my head that this would be the design." He rubbed his cheeks. "Well, at least it's not as bad as I thought it would be."
"What were you expecting?"
"I was fearing that they were twinned to some other place on the other side of the Earth. But it's just Koto, so that's … local, at least." He leaned back and stared at the ceiling. He shook his head. "It has to be one. We've left it there for days, now, if it formed at the same time as the one we destroyed."
Gabumon stared at the photo that Takaharu had sent. "This is giving me a bad feeling. Amedramon!"
"Amedramon's in my apartment, I ran off without it," Ryuta replied. Gabumon gave him a quizzical look. They were normally inseparable. "Haru was enjoying putting ribbons on it, and I didn't want to stop her fun."
Satsuki sputtered on her tea. "Pictures?"
Ryuta grinned. "I'll send you them when I get back." He ran his tongue across his teeth. "Damn, if we'd finished that sensing program in time, maybe we would have known. Takaharu was in Koto just a few days ago."
"Yeah… sorry about the delay," Makoto apologized. "We've been busy even with the spring break."
Ryuta shrugged. "You're telling me it's hard to trace portals in the real world that shouldn't exist? Madness. Absolutely inconceivable." Makoto chuckled. Ryuta continued, "And since your spring break comes to an end soon, too, I should take over for the next few months." Ryuta got to typing a message to the others.
"That would be appreciated."
• • • • • • •
Sumida Tamers
Koyama Ryuta
I suspect it's what we feared.
20:27
Shimizu Kazuhiko
… OTL
20:29
Ishida Yuuka
(・・ ;) You sure?
20:29
Koyama Ryuta
There's another data centre on this diagram, labelled Koto
20:30
Nagatomo Asuka
[gif: tableflip]
20:31
Ishida Yuuka
We're not going today, right?
The sun is down
20:32
Koyama Ryuta
I want to make sure this doesn't get one more second to grow.
But it is late
20:32
Tokuda Satsuki
Let's vote. I vote to go now
20:33
Ishida Yuuka
I literally can't, I'm standing in for mom again… sorry
20:32
Tokuda Satsuki
Hey no need to feel bad, family is important too
20:33
Ishida Yuuka
aww
20:33
Nagatomo Asuka
let's break some hearts guys
20:33
Shimizu Kazuhiko
I'm in, Ryuta's right, we need to stop it now
20:34
Segawa Takaharu
Uh… I would, but…
[photo]
It's a bit hard to be in Koto right now
Nagoya is far away wwww
20:34
Shimizu Kazuhiko
Monodramon is sad you won't see it evolve
20:35
Segawa Takaharu
😅 Bad timing
But go Monodramon! Get it done! We believe in you
20:35
• • • • • • •
"Four of us again, huh?" remarked Satsuki. "Surprisingly hard for us to be in the same place at the same time."
Ryuta replied, "It is how it is. We all have things to do. This isn't our day job." He paced back towards the apartment door. "I have to fetch Amedramon first. Give me some time."
"Hey, you know, I don't know exactly where that warehouse is. There's no address in this article."
"Doesn't matter, Amedramon can show us. Probably."
Satsuki raised an eyebrow at him. "Koto isn't as small as you think it is."
"I suppose…" he sighed.
"But we do need to go south, one way or another. Maybe we should gather at someone's place first." She finished her tea. "Why not yours? Since you have to go there already."
"Mine? Uh…" Ryuta glanced away. That might delay them a lot if they did.
"Your parents don't like guests?"
"Quite the opposite, they pamper their guests too much."
Satsuki snorted. "That sounds like more reason to go. Ah, we can just wait outside." She got up with Gabumon. "Makoto, don't worry yourself too much. And if Gaku and Etsuko come back, tell them I'm out with the Tamers again."
"And if they ask what's going on?" Makoto questioned.
"I dunno, you can probably make up an excuse."
"Ugh… again? Fine." He sighed and leaned back, hands folded behind his head. "Sometimes I wish I could go with you guys."
"You can, you know," Satsuki replied. "Nothing's stopping you."
He shrugged. "I mean, between school and never having seen one of these things before, maybe it's best I stayed out of the way. I guess I'd just be a body to defend. Not exactly useful," he chuckled.
"Makoto, you're our eyes and ears behind the walls. That's more than useful," replied Ryuta. "Right, let's go."
"Stay safe, guys!" he replied.
Satsuki and Ryuta paced down the asphalt road. "So," asked Satsuki, "the last time you guys did this, how did you get into the abnormal Junction?"
"We found it corrupted a stairwell, and we just kept going down and down. Eventually we fell in. I'm assuming whatever Junction we come across is going to be much the same."
"But that time, it didn't leak, right?"
"No. This one has had time to leak something out. I can only assume if we left it for long enough, we would see Plasmids walking out. Then if we've gone from random blobs to animal creatures… I wonder what we'll see this time."
The two fell quiet. They didn't really want to discuss the Junction anymore. They would find out soon enough anyway. After several minutes of walking, they made it to Ryuta's apartment. Satsuki waved. "I see you guys got here, too."
"Yeah, I saw the message," replied Kazuhiko. "Are we going up?"
Ryuta shook his head. "Kanae would tie you down for an hour. Just wait here." He greeted the security guard on the way in and ascended the elevator.
Kazuhiko spoke into his phone. "Monodramon, this is your time to shine."
"Hell yeah!" came the excited response.
They waited around for several more minutes. Multiple cars passed by. Asuka glanced upward. "Do you think he's okay up there? It's been a while. He easily could have been down by now."
Satsuki shrugged. Yuuka hadn't said much about the few times she had visited, but she got the impression his parents were strict. "I'll call him if needed."
He rushed down a few minutes later. "Sorry for the wait, everyone."
"What happened?" asked Asuka.
"Nothing too important." Asuka raised an eyebrow, but he didn't elaborate any further.
Satsuki was busy looking for transit recommendations. Makoto had sent them the location after looking for matching images to the data centre in the photo. They would be heading to Ariake.