Augmented Aspects: Interlude XXXIII (Patreon)

<<<Author's Note: We are down to the final seven chapters (including this one). Going to try to push through the end to get this all over with by tomorrow April 10th, 2026 (hopefully). >>>Interlude XXXIII

The Anomaly

(Central Government Control Tower)

The code ran, compiled and still would not function as it was supposed to.

“You done with updating the world servers with the migration code, yet?” A very annoyed Shift Lead asked. His annoyance was understandable, what had been a simple routine maintenance and patch update had now expanded from a simple one-hour update to a six-hour marathon that would soon have the dayshift folks breathing down their necks.

“Almost, I kept getting errors when I tried to run the code in batch—” Vladamir the newest recruit and only member on the night shift who seemingly understood code replied. This propensity for coding was what made Kelvin gravitate towards Vladamir to begin with, that and the fact that Vladamir was quiet. Meaning normally maintenance and operations were simple, especially for night shifts. Then again, that was the benefit of working nights, you had the mostly easy shifts, quiet working environments where your sole purpose was to keep the servers running and apply minor updates as needed. This however was not a minor update, and Kelvin knew it.

“Did you run the code manually against each server?” Kelvin cut in, trying to get through this update as quickly as possible.

“I did, and I got it to be accepted to all but one server,” Vladamir replied, as he angrily hit the restart button and tried to get the code to be accepted to the last server again.

“What’s the issue?”

“It seems like there is a lot of data corruption. I’ve tried updating the server and even using old access logs, but those have all been wiped clean apparently,” Vladamir added.

“That’s the problem with these older servers and part of why we are moving away from them to the new modern servers capable of hosting hundreds of times the workload that these older servers had. Heck, after over eighty years of work, I’m surprised a dinosaur like this is still running,” Kelvin said, just looking at the age of the server components and seeing that this server deserved to be in a museum more than a state of the art government funded facility.

“What do we do?” Vladamir asked, visibly frustrated that his attempt to manually upload the code had failed once more.

“Log the error in an escalation ticket, and move on, nothing else we can do really,” Kelvin replied, giving out the proper instructions for just what to do when a critical patch could not be applied during the standard maintenance window allotted to them. With that Vladamir pulled out his work tablet, made a few quick notes, and noted the server.

Server Name: Biprism

Escalation Error: Failure to successfully apply auto-forwarding patch.

Escalation sent.

After looking over Vladamir’s shoulder, Kelvin just nodded and patted Vladamir on the shoulder, “good work.”

With that, their night was over and that was all they could do.

“Wait, what is this new patch for anyways?” Vladamir asked.

“Don’t you know? It was on the group memo,” Kelvin began, but only saw Vladamir shaking his head in response. “It’s the final patch that will provide the final kill switch for when all these servers are voted offline and sent to the seven core processing centers in the new Jutson Building across the street.”

“Wait, I thought there was still a contest, an apron thing, where some of these servers are going to be kept up and operational?” Vladamir questioned, a note of concern in his voice.

Hearing his note of concern, Kelvin paused and finally decided to tell the full truth about what was going on.

“Let me break it down for you, this building is scheduled to become a museum next year. That is why we have put so much time and resources into transferring everything over to the Jutson Building across the street.”

“But what about these servers?”

“That’s what you are for, you just uploaded the kill switch that will save all the lives that are too stubborn to have already moved. The code we just applied will execute on October 1st, the start of the new fiscal year. Once that hits, all players that have not made the transition will be forced to move over, and we can begin the process of cleaning out these servers and preserving a few that can be used to show how far we have come in less than a century,” Kelvin replied, and eyeing the server that hosted part of Biprism’s core algorithm and allowed an access portal to their update center. Looking at the server before him, he thought he knew a good example of one such server that deserved to be in that museum.

“Wait, what about those that are on their seventh life, or that only had one life to begin with?” Vladamir asked, suddenly concerned.

At that Kelvin just shrugged, “who knows. Honestly I don’t even know what happens to those who die normally in this, but this feature will allow us to ‘save as many lives’ as possible at the benefit of saving tax payer credits,” Kelvin replied giving little air quotes while he said save as many lives, quoting the campaign commercials that have become rampant.

“But what about us?” Vladamir asked, suddenly concerned. Hearing the note of concern in his voice, Kelvin took on his conspiratorial tone.

“Look, between you and me, there are going to be layoffs. But you, you are fine. I’ve already got you billeted to come with me over to the new Jutson building to be our maintenance staff on the new servers,” Kelvin replied.

There was a moment of silence as Vladamir let that message sink in, before finally he asked the one question still remaining.

“Okay, thank you. But what do we do about this server?”

Looking at the archaic device, Kelvin just shrugged and finally responded, “nothing we can do. Worse comes to worse on the 1st, we just turn it off.”

***

Five Floors up, and three Government departments higher, a stressed secretary ran forward, carrying a data pad with a glowing red escalation alert highlighted. Knocking once on the open door, the secretary paused and waited for the confident Department lead to turn, face him, before entering.

“Madame Deputy,” the secretary began, making sure to give as much honorifics as possible, particularly when attempting to share bad news.

“Yes Stevenson?” the Deputy Department lead asked.

“It is about the midnight maintenance on the Afterlife Initiative,” secretary Stevenson replied. The deputy head gave a hand rolling gesture, trying to get Stevenson to move on with whatever he was trying to convey. Seeing the go ahead, Stevenson continued, “well, the auto-forward patch was applied to all servers, but one.”

“Just one?”

“Yes, the Biprism server, an apparent Steampunk server. Maintenance logs show that the patch was first tried to applied in batch, then individually. After a few hours of maintenance, the attempt to update was eventually dismissed, and flagged for our attention.”

“What is the status of the server now?”

“The server is still up, but it is showing signs of degradation, and—” with that last comment Stevenson paused, not quite certain how to present the last part of data.

“And?” The Deputy department head inquired.

“And, logs show signs of what could possibly corruption, or hacking attempts,” Stevenson replied.

“Hacking?”

“Yes, it appears that one of the main fighters, the only fighter to qualify from the Stemapunk world and qualify for representing Biprism in the five mechanoid combat events shows signs of power levels that are beyond typical expectations.” Stevenson replied gently.

“So you are saying that there is clear sign of possible cheating?” The Deputy head declared. For his part Stevenson waffled for a moment but finally straightened up as he answered.

“It would appear so, yes.”

“Good, flag it for cheating and mark it as one of the planets that will not be able to advance regardless of standings, due to this disqualification event.”

“Very good, should I disqualify them now?”

“What? No, let them go, do well. Cheat their little hearts out, and make it so other servers don’t meet the threshold to remain either.” The Deputy replied, her tone practical and calculating.

“Wait, you want them to enter, knowing they cannot advance?”

“Stevenson, we are here to cut back on the number of servers that will remain. If we can get some servers eliminated, and then disqualify the rest then we are looking at promotions and career advancements!” The Deputy stated, her threat obvious: do this and your career will rise, fail to follow this, and you will find your career path suddenly narrowed.

“The claim of hacking has not been verified,” Stevenson quickly changed.

The Deputy head just waved her hand, “doesn’t matter. No need to waste further resources on this matter. Mark them as disqualified for cheating now, and it will be a matter of paperwork later.”

With that Stevenson nodded, realizing that trying to prove that hacking didn’t occur at this point would be practically impossible.

“Very well, now my only question is, if we suspect these people of cheating. Then what happens if they corrupt other opponents, and get them to exhibit the same anomalies?” Stevenson asked.

“Isn’t it simple? We mark them as cheating as well and ban their servers from existing in this completely above board competition for ratings and seating.” The Deputy Department head replied.

“Noted,” was Stevenson’s one word reply before marking Biprism and its unusual coding as corrupted and to be purged after the October 1st server transfer.

“Anything else for me?” The Deputy Department head asked.

“Nothing,” Stevenson replied, and turning about left the room prepared more servers for the decommission list.