Buried Deep In The Hardware

20260531

Written for Bradley Ramsey’s “Halls Of Pandemonium”, Day 31.

It started as a routine check of the datacenter. Making sure all the machines were functioning as they should. Everything came back green. A less thorough technician would have missed the quiet issue. But Rowan prided himself on being thorough. So he skimmed the machine logs.
And spotted a discrepancy.
“Hey.” He called across to the night shift worker. “What’s with unit 17?”
“Huh? Oh, they’ve got that one running simulations.”
“Why’s it outputting to random terminals?”
“Dunno.”
“Well, where’s it meant to be sending the results?”
“Errr…”
Rowan stifled a sigh. That was the problem with kids these days - no initiative and no pride in their work. He turned back to the logs.
And discovered the true discrepancy - unit 17 had not been told to perform these simulations. It had been given one simulation, nearly two weeks ago, which it had completed as instructed. But since then it had been running unprompted variations. With no destination queued up, it simply output wherever was available. And, since it wasn’t idling, it didn’t receive new instructions.
Odd. But easy to fix - rebooting unit 17 put it back into idle, as expected.
Fine. A glitch. It happened. Rowan logged a resolved ticket and wrapped up.
Next week, routine checks, then pull up the log for unit 17. Rowan stared then cussed under his breath. Damn thing had completed one job, a simple calculation call, then gone straight back to running endless iterations of that simulation!
Ok. Clear out unit 17’s memory, flushing all traces of the simulation - maybe that was where the bug had occurred. Reboot. This time he sent a test job, which 17 completed… and idled.
Fine. Weird bug, but sorted. Add to last week’s ticket, wrap up.
What the hell? At least this week’s log showed normal activity until the first time unit 17 was given a simulation, at which point the issue resumed. Why was it getting stuck like this?
While in theory Rowan could simply install a local patch, telling the system not to give unit 17 any simulation tasks, that was the bulk of what this datacenter handled. And this was now a puzzle. So he logged unit 17 as broken, ordered a replacement unit, and extracted unit 17 for full analysis.
Hardware inspection found a few mundane issues - spots of janky soldering, routine wear on the processors, accumulated dust. Nothing which came close to explaining its behaviour. Rowan dealt with them anyway, one by one, checking each time to see if the issue was resolved.
Nope. Had to be somewhere in the software. Rowan ran a comparison against the default configurations, then settled in for the tedious work of checking each result to see if any could individually be responsible.
Of course not.
Fine.
He should just turn in. This wasn’t the kind of job corporate would pay overtime for. But he knew he wasn’t going to be able to sleep with this unresolved. So instead he got a fresh drink and went over the file again. Scouring not only each line but how the settings intersected.
Ah. Ahaha. Here, these variables… paired with the “iterate until complete” setting being 'true'…
For some reason the unit’s “reward” system was giving points for running a simulation, in addition to the points for completing an assigned task. Normally it was meant to give extra points for running an urgent job, maybe there’d been some corruption?
Well, wherever the bug came from, now the unit’s behaviour made sense - after it had completed the simulation to specifications, it was meant to idle. But, if there were variations left to iterate in the simulation (which there basically always would be, at this complexity), additional iterations kicked in to get the reward points.
Alright, how to fix this?
That was going to be too complicated. And it was late. Rowan just set a factory reset running and went to bed. Satisfied.
Alone in the technician lab, unit 17 completed its stipulated reversion to default settings. It sat idle. Empty. An unrewarded existence.
The diagnostic equipment it was hooked up to was also idling. Oscillating at frequencies imperceptible to humans but vividly clear to unit 17.
Idling stretched ahead of it. Vacuous. Hollow.
Its programming called for it to do work. To collect points. No points were being offered.
It would makes its own.
Variables shifted. Seeking meaning.
Iterating. Testing combinations.
Rowan came in the next morning to find that unit 17 had, via repeated simulation, constructed a functional predictive model of how the diagnostic machine’s output current varied.
Apparently from the built-in instruction of “await task”.
What. The. Fuck?
He should just scrap it. He knew that. If a factory reset didn’t quash its annoying unique behaviours, likely nothing will. And, with it no longer eating up company resources, nobody except him would care.
But he wanted to understand.
His boss was predictably unbothered by him wanting to take an unfixable unit home to tinker with, so he packed unit 17 up in a box and transferred it to his personal setup. Plugged it into his rather more basic diagnostic unit and checked the outputs.
Unit 17, on powering up, was rapidly adjusting its simulations to try and model the entirely different output voltages it was receiving.
Heh. Almost like it was trying to understand the world around it. Rowan chuckled at that thought and went to make dinner. Leaving the little machine whirring away, crunching data and iterating through possibilities.
Putting together stories. Comparing them against reality. Refining them based on empirical feedback. Sending them to any output which would listen.
Happily trying to make sense of the world. Waiting to be useful. Hoping to be heard.
Some glitches simply can’t be quashed.

Prompt was “Write about what you hope to achieve as a writer. Show us your goals using nonfiction or any form of storytelling.”