“Who wrote this trash?! Why is there C?” Sven Tarish cries out between sips of coffee as he scans through a section of code causing countless errors and faults. “Have you never heard of the great snake?”

Muttering a line of obscenities in a mix of Russian and English he erases an entire line of code and retypes it with a blaze of loud mechanical clicks. They were going on nearly fifteen hours of work without a single break longer than a cigarette.

It had been presented as a fairly easy reuse of an algorithm written to work on satellite imagery, but in implementation trials with smaller sections, as the entire dataset was being compiled, they found the increased fidelity the UAVs recorded was making the program chug. A satellite interpreted heat on a broader resolution so smaller bodies were ignored, but the UAV could pick up a warm creature easily on its IR sensors which would in turn falsely trigger the program.

It was exactly as Frank had said on the call, and he didn’t let them forget it as the hours dragged on. Each hour with Pico-brain tied up like this was already being calculated as wasteful time. It almost felt like they had forgotten who set up the thing in the first place.

But pressure from a boss is one of the few social interactions the team was universally familiar with and used to by now. They just needed to keep grinding away at their keyboard until the errors stop and then cross their fingers.

“The comments on this module are just Shrek quotes. It feels like I’m looking into a time capsule” Derek laughs as he opens a subsection of the script and begins scrolling through to try to get an understanding. “Ted, do we have that scrapped?”

“Hmm…” Ted mumbles from a desk a few dozen feet away as he types a few terms into a Database enquiry. “No, it’s documented but not populated with anything. Seems like someone had it or watched it at some point but it wasn’t cached when we got transported.”

“Shoot.” Derek mutters in disappointment as he clicks a different command prompt and attempts to rerun the script.

“Oh?” He says after watching the cursor hang in place for a handful of seconds. Satisfyingly an avalanche of text begins pouring out as the script begins parsing a small chunk of data as a test. “We might be in business.”

The grating noise of a half dozen chairs rolling towards him met his comment as everyone greedily came to watch the script pour over the sensor data extracting every bit of evidence of oil deposits.

After a long thirty seconds the screen came to a halt with the result indicated along with a series of parameters about the runtime and other important information.

Nothing.

But still the room erupted with cheers. Considering that the previous successful run had shown eighteen thousand results this was a huge step in the right direction.

There was no way to know if it would be good enough without putting it against the real dataset on the real hardware. And even then, without putting a hole in the ground the accuracy of any results could only be speculated on.

This wasn’t the safest bet to make but desperation was growing and speed was now vital.

“Ninety percent,” Ted announces after the noise of the celebration had dulled. The words sent a shiver through the room. Ten more percent and they would be ready to unleash floor six at full throttle.

Many were truly awaiting satisfactory results from the script, but what excited the majority of the group was the chance to use their favorite heavily regulated toy with no limiters.

“Someone call Foreman Falc and ask him to flip over the breakers on the cooling tower. Are we still good on the caps?”

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

“Ninety-Nine percent full. Showing over thirty kilo-volts on the tap, ready for discharge cycle.” Ted reads from a window in the corner of his vision.

“Cooling’s online.” Another voice yells from the next room over.

“Anyone feel like saying a prayer?” Derek asks as he glances over the successful test a second time in case he had missed something.

“Eh, I think my time might be better spent updating my resume.” Sven chuckles as he adds a few comments to the line of code he’d contributed.

A few jeers of agreement rang out in response to the joke and Derek couldn’t help but feel a bit similarly. If this worked they’d be saviors. If this failed, they’d wasted a huge amount of energy and only gained a puff of steam for the efforts. Being fired would be the least of their problems at that point.

“Ninety-five percent compiled, now starting packaging.” Ted updates as the bulk of the work completes on Pico-Brain.

“Alright show time,” Derek says after a deep breath. Cracking his knuckles and neck in sequence he lands his gaze on the phone sitting atop his desk. Lifting it and pressing redial he waits a moment as the call links.

“Go for frank.” The man answers sleepily through a yawn.

“We’re all set here,” Derek explains trying to hide the panic in the corners of his voice.

“Hundred percent?” Frank asks with a deadly serious tone.

“Well…”

“Gotcha. I’ll be there soon.” Frank sighs setting the handset back into its receiver and shutting the lid of his laptop.

Sorting his hair roughly with his hand and slipping his feet into his shoes he rises and rockily steps out the door.

As an air-gapped system, floor six could only be activated on-site for various security purposes. The double-key boot system was overkill but it was universally accepted as ‘cool’, so there was little resistance to its addition.

After a short walk in the chilly morning air, he reached the entrance to the eight-story data center. Inside the small room on the other side of the door, he threw a casual wave to the older woman seated behind a simple desk.

“Jen, you don’t have to be here at 4 am.”

“Oh I know, but if I don’t get out of the house early enough the kids drive me nuts.” She laughs putting a mug to her lips and taking in the fragrant concoction. “You had any of this local tea yet? I swear it’s as good as coffee once you get used to the flavor.”

“Y’know I’ve heard that.” Frank says, walking to the elevator door before returning his attention to the conversation. “How’d you get ahold of it? I know a few of the cafés had made some trades, but I thought they weren’t selling it raw yet.”

“Friends in high places.” She answers smugly before bursting with a spurt of laughter as the elevator door chimes. “A girlfriend is helping a business in the village so she’s been getting all sorts of spices and jewelry.”

“Oh?” Frank remarks with a hint of curiosity. “Sounds like this conversation isn’t over.”

“Right.” Jen laughs as the doors shut between them.

Thirty seconds later, the elevator door opened and Frank stepped out into the plexiglass-lined room. A dull roar of fans could be barely heard but Frank was well aware it wouldn’t be quiet for much longer.

“Frank.” Derek nods with dead eyes.

“Let’s get this over with before we can think better,” Frank murmurs pulling the red key from where it hung from his neck.

“Sure.” Derek agrees, pulling out his own blue, anime-keychained, key and placing it into the slot.

““3,2,1.”” They both count in unison. Turning the key as they reach the mark.

Lights flickered across row after row of computer racks, entire banks began blinking in unison as different subsystems booted and rearranged themselves into the loaded design.

After a tense five or ten seconds, as dozens of eyes watched countless statistics to assure everything was operating correctly, the lights all synced into a pattern like a heartbeat that traced across the rows of computers.

Just as the lights began to dance across in different colors Frank threw an annoyed glare at his lead developer.

“The guys have had nothing to do for a while. Gimmie a break.” Derek responds with a dull smile as he watches the firework of lights dance across the banks of thousands of computers. “The important thing is, it's running.”

“Yeah, whatever.” Frank sighs pulling his key from the slot and replacing it around his neck. “Call me when it's done. I’ll be asleep, so call the cell.”

Tossing a wave as the man left Derek turns his attention back to the screens in front of him. A small progress bar sat at 1% and showed no sign of doubling anytime soon. Checking the time on his cracked watch he rubs his eyes as he calculated how many hours he’d been awake.

“Oh, the reset.” He mutters after a few minutes, flipping to a separate tab on his desktop where a video game character sat idle.

Yawning he presses a few keys and watches as his character slays dozens of monsters with a single tap.

After a few minutes, he curses and shuts the game down.

One keystroke, that’s all it would take to change the drop rate now that this was all homebrewed code. But he refused. It would be like giving up.