IX. Mechanical Failure

"Did you ever wonder how history will remember this?" said the guard on monitor bank 2. His voice suggested that decades of two-packs-a-day had eroded a nasal tenor into the gravelly tone it now held. His name tag read "Baird," beneath a head of gray blond hair.

"Remember what?" said the guard on monitor bank 1. He was a dark-skinned man with a name tag on his shirt that read "Porter" and a book on his lap that read "Sudoku." He made an occasional glance from the half-empty booklet to the bank of surveillance screens in front of him. A janitor was currently pushing his cart past Hazardous Material Storage; the others screens showed no signs of life.

"This point in history." said Baird, leaning back in his chair. "You know, will it be looked on as a shining moment of global unity, or an unfortunate period of regression?"

Porter went back to his Sudoku. "Man, Baird, you think too much for this job."

"It's what I get for going to school for--"

"Philosophy. In college. Yeah, I know. And this was the only job you could get. You've been here two years now, remember?"

"Hey, just humor me. There was this period from the ninth century to the fourteenth. They call it the Middle Ages. But some people call it the Dark Ages. For five hundred years, Western civilization hunkered down and did nothing. Took a plague that wiped out a quarter of the population to get things moving again."

"Eh, it hasn't even been thirty years. It's a bit early to call it a dark age, don't you think?" Porter said, glancing up at his screen again. He frowned. "Monitor A's gone down."

"Yeah, I just lost G." said Baird. He sat forward and held down the intercom button. "Central, this is Security, Floor twelve. We've lost visual on two--"

"--Four!" put in Porter.

"Scratch that, four monitors. And there goes another. What's going on down there?"

"Security, we're experiencing problem with the surveillance system CPU. It should be back on in a few minutes. In the meantime, conduct a manual sweep of the floor. It's probably just a malfunction, but Knupsky's not taking any chances. We've got LEMs on standby, call 'em if you need 'em."

"Understood. Beginning sweep now."

Porter moaned.

"Quit your whining; you should be glad to get out of this box for a change." said Baird, picking up his walkie-talkie. By now all twenty-four screens in the room had lost visuals.

"Look at this. F just went out." said Porter. The screen on his bank had gone black.

"Maybe they're rebooting the system. Come on, I'll take North side, you take South. Check in every five minutes."

"Calm down, cowboy; it's just a computer failure."

"Like I said before," said Baird, checking his sidearm, "just humor me."

Eighteen floors down, technicians scrambled around the sub-basement in the area of the surveillance system central processor. The case had been removed and those assembled watched in dismay as its 64 lights winked out one at a time.

"What the hell is going on?" demanded Security Chief Knupsky, a red-faced man in a black uniform. "Why are my cameras all going blind?"

"Sir," said a technician, "The surveillance system's exhaust fans somehow jammed. Each of the system's processors are way over safe operating temperature, and they've started burning out. Each time one goes, the system automatically divides its workload between the remaining processors, which is only making things worse."

"Hod do we fix it?"

"We'd have to shut the system down entirely and wait for it to cool."

"Shut it down? Do you have any idea what a security risk that is?" Knupsky's booming voice almost pushed the technician back.

Two more green lights went out. Twenty-three processors remained online.

"Sir, we'll lose the whole system if we don't. It could be days before we can conduct enough repairs to get it back from that state."

Knupsky scowled. "Then do it. But you eggheads better understand that heads will roll for this."

As the massive computer was deactivated, Knupsky continued interrogating the cornered technician. "Why don't we have a backup?"

"This machine is a Micrologic multicore. Their primary strength is that each individual processor backs up the other sixty-three. The system doesn't even notice until twenty or so go down, and keeping it above that level is easy. The only problem is that the system generates a lot of heat. That's what the exhaust fans are for. The odds of them all going down at once like this--they're astronomical!"

"Sure, sure. How long will the system be down?"

"He have to get the fans going, or the whole thing will just overheat again. Ten, maybe twenty minutes." said the technician.

"Dammit." Knupsky pulled out his radio. "All units, I want you out on patrol. Put this building on lockdown until I give signal. No one enters or leaves."

Loyalty Enforcement Monitors, colloquially known as "chots," poured out of their barracks and ascended the stairs and elevators of Tower Zero. In their hurry to set up a lockdown, the seventeen janitors ending their shifts went entirely unnoticed.