“Sherman, take a look at this!”
Cliber’s shout brought Huang running to stare at her console screen. His eyes widened with excitement.
“Signal conductivity and virtual memory increases simultaneous with multi-tasking crashes,” Huang muttered. “Where were the crashes?”
Cliber touched a key and highlighted the locales on the architecture construct.
“Hmmm. Intrusions in progress?”
“None on report. I’ll run a check,” said Cliber, even as she applied herself to the keyboard.
Hutten crowded in to view the display.
“What do you make of it, Konrad?”
The systems engineer looked perplexed. “OMDRs operating beyond spec. A full three banks of 77206 chips at maximum capacity, but the Haas biochip’s barely above maintenance cycle activity.” He shook his head. “I don’t know. It doesn’t match any of the expected parameters.”
“Exactly.” Huang beamed. His infectious grin spread to the other two. “We’ll need to confirm it.”
“I’ll start a full diagnostic.” Hutten returned to his own station and jacked in.
From her position at the door of the research lab, Crenshaw watched and heard all. The technical details meant nothing to her, but the excitement of the researchers communicated quite a bit. She had picked a lucky time to pass through the lab on her daily observation tour. If something significant had happened, she would report it to Sato immediately. Perhaps she could claim that her intervention had motivated the laggard team, thereby improving her standing with the Kansayaku.
“A breakthrough, Doctors?”
Huang and Cliber looked up, seemingly stunned to notice her. “No,” Huang said tentatively, in accompaniment to Cliber’s head shake. More forcefully, he added, “Just a glitch. A hardware problem in one of the nodes.”
Crenshaw nodded and said nothing. Their suddenly sober faces told her that they were lying, that they obviously wished she were not present. She decided to accept their explanation until she knew not only what had really happened, but just how to use the information to her own advantage.