The vibration in the Core Support was continuous.
Not the rhythmic thrum Gryan had come to recognize from the forge floor operations, but an underlying resonance that vibrated through bone and metal unbroken. As if standing on the breast of a great mechanical beast and feeling its heartbeat through every fiber of your being until it was impossible to tell the difference between the two.
The corridors were narrower here. Just wide enough for two to walk abreast without the uncomfortably close, oppressive touch of the walls on either side. Lighting was kept down, a wise choice in a way, as it also served to make the distances difficult to estimate in the shadows.
Gryan's maintenance schedule updated itself unexpectedly.
The shift was subtle – easy to overlook unless one was paying attention to the precise parameters in which the operation functioned. A single line in the configuration menu, nestled amongst technical data that few would have understood or appreciated.
Variance Tolerance: Reduced to 0.
The previous deviation had been 0.7%. This small deviation in decimal form seemed insignificant, but it means that the permissible levels of deviation from the optimum had tightened considerably. There was less scope for error, smaller leeway before corrective measures had to be taken, a greater likelihood of natural variation beyond permissible levels.
Tolerances were lower, meaning efficiencies were higher. More of their capacity was pushed towards the theoretical maxima, wringing more out of the same resources in a push for maximal optimization that required greater risk.
The greater the efficiency, the greater was the probability of failure. It was simple math, albeit dreadful. By operating at greater stresses, failures would become more probable, and placing key personnel at these turning points ensured there would always be someone in attendance who knew what was required.
This was where the squeeze was felt in terms of retention. Not through punishment, workloads, or optimization, but through trimming margins, which made success progressively harder to achieve until ultimately no degree of success could prevent disaster.
Gryan checked the group of pressure relays he had been tasked with monitoring. It was a junction point where three different feeds intersected, combining the output of different forge sectors before sending it further down towards points of consumption. It was no simple balancing act.
The readings are level currently. Three feeds operating in acceptable param ranges, C-point sustaining pressure commensurate with demand. No problems that required corrective action.
However, lower levels of tolerance indicated that stability was far more delicate than it seemed. Variations that might have been withstandable within the original parameters began to trend towards critical levels, and it necessitated quick responses and even more drastic measures to maintain stability.
Gryan's modified arm brace weighed more than the original installation weight. The presence of the additional framework altered the way the weight was distributed and the biomechanics of the interaction between the mechanical and biotic systems. Gryan was yet to get accustomed to the changes and the way the system functioned.
The area where the brace had made contact with his skin was throbbing in discomfort. Not exactly painful, per se, just annoying and indicative of his body protesting this alteration or just a case of not having had enough time to heal before he went back to work. Of course, Core Support did not take breaks for recovery.
You either adapted during work or failed. And_failures occurring in this scenario had repercussions which went past your presence.
---
The pressure fluctuation began modestly.
Feed two were experiencing minor variation, with readings fluctuating within technically acceptable limits but near the boundaries of newly tightened tolerance. Sufficient to require manual correction before the variation settled into a genuine problem but not enough to raise alarms.
Gryan acted without delay, reaching for the control interface with trained ease. Changing the flow rates, compensating for the excess pressures by routing them through secondary channels, performing course corrections that he'd made countless times before.
The brace hummed with his mechanical arm activating, hydraulic power fueling intricate movements necessary for valve operation. However, this humming took longer than it should have, pressure cycling taking additional seconds to perform because this new system had brought friction/resistance that had not been properly accounted for.
Barely noticeable. Perhaps two seconds too long compared to optimal response time. But those two seconds may have been important when working with systems that were running on close tolerance margins, where every second that passed allowed problems to accumulate.
The fluctuation stabilized. Feed two returned to acceptable levels, although the minor fluctuation was reduced by Gryan's intervention before it had a chance to spread to the convergence point and cause problems.
Success. By any measure, he had properly identified and fixed the issue. Prevented the potential for failure in carrying out his designated duty.
It had, however, been recorded. The two seconds of suboptimal reaction time. Captured on the sensors, relayed to wherever the data was being analyzed. This was proof that his modified set-up was inefficient, that the brace he intended to enhance his abilities was instead impairing his performance.
There was no intervention. No supervisor came by with questions about the hold-up or to make corrections, or to adjust his gear. Only the silence, the buzzing, and Gryan's understanding that he'd been gauged and found slightly wanting.
The Iron Vale did not remedy the gaps. It recorded them and built a record of reduced capability and then stripped assets that did not meet thresholds of retention.
---
Alucent discovered the irregularity while monitoring his pressure junction system on a routine basis.
His display included status information for systems outside the scope of his direct control, giving the user a situational awareness of various infrastructure systems that might impact his tasks. The Core Support Relay clusters were represented in this information when there was a status change or a deviation in performance metrics.
Gryan's relay displayed a notation which caused Alucent's chest to constrict.
Status: Within Acceptable Loss Parameters
Not "operational," "stable," or "nominal." Within acceptable loss bounds. Terms that suggested probability of failure and acceptability of potential loss were calculated by the system based on its operational needs at that point in time.
That expression wasn't applicable to machines. Either the machines worked or they failed to function, performed within specifications or failed to meet them. The idea of acceptable loss involved making tough choices, prioritization, determining what could and couldn't be spared, and what the cost of prevention might be.
This was human calculation, the application of philosophical thought to technical problems. The Iron Vale concluding that the potential failure of Gryan's relay group did not threaten production strongly enough to take preventative measures.
The system expected failure to occur. It ran models on probability and consequences and determined that Gryan's role was at an acceptable level of risk tolerance. Not at zero risk—that implied investing to improve equipment and minimize risk—but at acceptable risk levels, where expected costs for failure were lower compared to preventative measures.
Alucent's hands moved automatically on his own controls, keeping up the pressure patterns, which his conscious self hardly even noticed while he was analyzing implications. Gryan had been put on a point where a break was expected to happen, tasked with the responsibility of not allowing the system to fail, but the system had already determined it would not be prevented because it was too expensive to do so.
What he wanted to do was warn Gryan, try to convey this danger and coordinate their response to it. But his expansion of operations prevented him from being away from his position without this cascade of problems at fifteen junctions under his control. But to raise an alert for Core Support's attention would alert both of them to their non-compliance, and put their entire infiltration at risk.
So he monitored the status notation, watched the peripheral data indicating Gryan's relay group functioning within ranges already deemed acceptable loss by the system. This made him feel somehow complicit in whatever was happening.
-
Raya noticed the indication for her turn and chose to ignore it.
Her route list had designated her destination as sector nine for the transfer of materials, but her eyes had landed on something else. Employees moving with an unusual sense of urgency towards access points of the Core Support, equipment mobilized for containment response rather than maintenance.
Something was happening. Something the facility was ready to deal with in a predetermined way, rather than intervening in.
Her instincts were shouting at her to get moving, investigate, get into position to Intervene, should things spiral out of hand. Her training in combat required reconnaissance, awareness of potential threats before they were realized.
But the lane signal remained, redirecting her assignment not into Core Support, but to the other side of the facility entirely. Not locked, not blocking her way. Simply the most efficient route, guiding her along the way of least resistance to her destination.
She could override it. She could ignore the slate and go on to Core Support anyway, have some reason for deviating from protocol. Something about facility safety or the welfare of the workers. Something.
Yet this would bring her under scrutiny. The performance record would be marked with notes regarding failure to comply with routing optimization. Her actions might bring attention to herself regarding activities where the emphasis was placed on investigation over productivity. If Gryan's issue was already tolerable regarding loss limits, her actions might not save the failure from occurring.
Every instinct she had screamed 'move.' Decades of experience on the battlefield had trained her to put herself in a position to react to threats as they emerged, and to never put herself in a position where she was deliberately put at a strategic disadvantage by defaulting to a lack of information.
Every rule told her to wait. The optimization that the Iron Vale required was a strict following of routing, a trusting in resource allocation, a recognition that what she felt was not as significant as overall productivity.
Raya's grip on the container she had been carrying tightened, until the knuckles turned white. Then she made herself relax, continue on her route, and have faith that Gryan's retention meant he had been provided sufficient resources, that his technical expertise would keep the disaster at bay.
Though she knew it didn't mean retention. Meant only that he had proven his skills to be leveraged until he became non-functional through attrition.
She headed in the direction of sector nine, her jaw set beneath the face mask, every step a betrayal of the values she had devoted her life to supporting. It is the duty of the warrior to protect his teammates, to act when his teammates are in harm's way, to place himself at risk in order to preserve the strength of his group.
But she was no warrior here. She was replaceable staff, kept solely through adherence to optimization algorithms, where human judgment was seen as inefficiency.
---
Then the pressure spike reappeared after thirty-seven minutes.
Gryan recognized it emerging in the numbers, feed two oscillating beyond the original fluctuation. Something potentially problematic, but not yet catastrophic, nor even automatically activating emergency measures, but gathering momentum that would defy the natural damping of oscillations.
Manual correction required. Timely action was required prior to the spike traversing the convergence point and causing a failure in all three distribution channels.
Gryan acted swiftly, his biological hand reaching out to control the primary valve while his mechanical appendage prepared to offer stability and leverage. The course of action was simple—relieve pressure through channels, redistribute loads on functioning feeds to regain equilibrium before tolerance limits were reached.
The brace activated with a familiar humming, the hydraulic fluids propelling the precise motions of his mechanical arm. Yet the integration faltered. Not fully, not severely, merely a slight slippage where the metallic scaffolding met his pre-existing prosthetic apparatus.
Enough that his grasp on the secondary valve wasn't solid. Enough that, as he pressed down to finalize the turn, his hand placement changed by a tiny margin, resulting in the valve turning past the point he wanted.
Secondary conduit fractured.
Not explosion. Not catastrophic failure that would shatter the whole cluster of relays and kill all those nearby. Simply controlled failure, venting due to breach which was immediately contained by safety systems at acceptable levels.
Steam burst from the point of fracturing, the superheated vapor creating a kind of opacity in the hallway that made it impossible to see, as well as hot enough to melt skin. Metal shrieked as the natural tensions of the material were redistributed, the system compensating for the breached conduit.
The automatic shutters engaged, metal barriers sliding across to hold the steam and prevent it from spreading to other sections. Not a complete set of emergency measures—in that case, evacuation and production line shutdowns would have been in play—but sufficient to limit the problem to acceptable losses.
Gryan was flung away by the initial wave of pressure. Not violently, not with the force of a lethal blow. Just forcefully enough to have tossed him out of the danger zone, but not forcefully enough to have killed him.
He struck the wall hard enough that he could feel his ribs protesting, a sharp sting slashing across his torso and back. His cybernetic arm was sparking where the joint between his braces had prematurely failed, hydraulics seepage evident in amounts that would need to be corrected before his arm functioned properly again.
But he was alive. He was aware. He was breathing despite the pain that made it hard to take a deep breath.
The system had reached a stable point. Pressure had redistributed well through alternative channels, and the rate of distribution downstream had managed to stay within acceptable levels despite the presence of only one channel. It had all been contained well within the predicted boundaries without escalating beyond its area of effect.
-
The response came without any urgency.
Overseer boards throughout the facility were updated with status messages informing them that the containment incident was successfully resolved. The replacement teams were dispatched towards Core Support with equipment required for repairing the broken conduit and bringing back the relay group to full operational capacity.
However, nobody ran. Nobody shouted. Nothing happened that would indicate this is an emergency situation needing instant crisis intervention.
Because it was not. This was expected outcome, predicted failure, and it had occurred within acceptable time parameters and consequences. In this way, the system had placed its retained personnel at the breakpoint because it expected some probability of failure, and their presence ensured that, upon failure, it was handled by someone with the proper expertise.
Gryan's effort to prevent the fracture failed. His slow reaction, coupled with the effects of the improper integration in his modified brace, made it possible for the pressure surge to breach the threshold before it could be adjusted.
However, his presence had also ensured that even when failure occurred, it limited itself to a certain area. The rapid secondary reaction that had occurred after detecting the first fracture had prevented a cascade effect in other systems, thus preventing a level of loss that would be considered unacceptable.
He had fulfilled his role. Not to a tee, not without pain, but to a certain extent. Precisely as expected by the system that had placed him there and set tolerances low enough to ensure a certain amount of failure.
Failure itself was not an emergency unless it violated tolerance. And the failure, as bad as it was for Gryan, had not violated the acceptable levels of loss determined by the resource allocation decisions of the Iron Vale.
---
There were medical facilities right beside the forge floor, useful for quickly sorting employees injured in the regular facility processes.
The alcove was small and clinical, featuring only simple diagnostic tools and scant supplies for treatment. This was no hospital, no facility meant to provide full care. This was merely an efficient diagnostic station to determine which injuries were survivable and which worker could continue to function well enough to retain.
Gryan was carried into this area by those who had come as a response to this containment incident on a very basic stretcher that gave him no comfort other than releasing him from having to walk. After he was placed on this examination table, they left for other duties as if nothing was amiss.
A medical tech appeared—young, female, with the same heavy work cloak as everyone else, but with some supplementary marks that designated her role. She examined Gryan with the cool objectivity of her profession, taking vital signs and cataloging injuries without remark or empathy.
Her slate displayed results that would decide his status right away.
Injury Classification: Non-Fatal / Non-Optimal
Non-fatal was to imply a non-immediate need for treatment to keep him alive. Non-optimal was to imply a damage to decrease his productivity/functional ability until the damage was healed. It would be a representation of the non-ideal, or degraded, asset.
But he wasn't removed from retention. Not classified as waste needing disposal or liability needing termination. Just logged, documented, his status updated to show diminished but positive utility value.
A slate was posted nearby, noting an annotation that a person under the oversight committee would check later for allocations.
Loss absorbed.
The facility had taken into account the cost of the containment incident—the broken conduit, the short-term loss of productivity, the medical resources consumed in stabilizing Gryan—and factored it into its considerations. There was loss, but it was well within bounds that called for no strategic shift or reallocation of resources.
All going as planned. The math worked as it was supposed to.
---
Alucent observed the steam release from the containment event via his peripheral displays.
Status markers alongside Gryan's relay cluster had changed from "Within Acceptable Loss Parameters" to "Loss Absorbed" in a clinical manner that reduced any recognition of suffering and harm to humans, and referenced an individual Alucent considered to be a colleague and friend.
He couldn't leave his post. His new focus involved tracking fifteen pressure junctions, and failure to maintain optimal response time would cause him to be scrutinized for his performance and even his continued employment. He found himself relegated to observation, his duties intact, but the pressure of his indirect complicity growing heavier in his chest.
Raya was unable to reach the core support areas in time.
Her routing had purposefully delayed her, putting her through a series of tasks that had occupied her time during the window of intervention where a difference might have been made. However, by the time she had finished what she had to do to justify going to Core Support, it was already finished, and Gryan had been processed medically.
What she saw of him from the doorway of the alcove. What she saw of the damage, the broken brace, the way he stood as if hurting but not choosing to complain, as that would make him non-functional.
Their eyes met. It was brief contact in the space from the medical alcove to the corridor where Raya had paused after arriving.
Not angry, his face. Not even remotely pained, despite his obviously bruised and battered condition. Simply a man who'd known all along this was going to happen as a consequence of his retention mission and was merely glad it hadn't been this bad.
The Iron Vale had not punished him. Had not singled him out for punishment in the way a living being might—in reprisal for failing to perform adequately. The Iron Vale had simply utilized him to validate its calculations, placed him at a point where it expected failures to occur and recorded the ensuing results when prediction led to fact.
He was a retained data point now. The evidence that acceptable loss parameters had been set properly, the optimization models were accurately predicting the failure rates, and the damage was being contained within the acceptable bounds.
Tomorrow he'd probably find himself returned to Core Support with fixed equipment and smaller tolerance limits. Tested once more under circumstances that increased the chances of failure step by step until finally no matter how well he did, catastrophic consequences would finally outweigh the reasons for retention.
Raya turned and went back to her assigned area before her presence caused her to be noticed by her supervisors. There was nothing she or anyone else could do to alter events and stop events from happening in the future.
She was kept for her adaptability, not for her ability to intervene. Alucent turned another valve, sustained the pressure distributions on his extended scope, and attempted not to calculate just how soon his own tolerable loss criteria would be validated by demonstration.
They'd made it through another shift. Gryan was hurt but alive, Raya was safe but culpable by default, Alucent was working but growing mired in the impossible trade-offs. Iron Vale continued optimization. Continued extracting max utility from the assets they held while tolerating losses within the tolerance range.
Continued proving through this the point that assets held meant exploitation, not protection, and more competency than they had was irrelevant, as they were to consume until they broke. All they could do was survive long enough to matter. Gather information which would give them a reason to undertake the investigation to determine why these parasites were so intrusive. And learn enough about the operation being conducted by these parasites to effectively thwart it.
If they lasted that long. If retention continued. If they didn't attain acceptable losses status themselves before accomplishing anything truly significant with more than just documenting the horror they were witnessing.
The priority cycle bell would ring again.
The tolerance margins would become tighter. The acceptable loss parameters would widen to allow for the growing casualty toll. And they would just continue doing their work, doing their calculations, accepting their own complicity. Because the other option was to be labeled as waste and taken away.
Taking away meant never understanding the point of any of it, or justifying the expense of everything they had already given up. Thus they would continue. Adapt. Survive because they remained useful even as they were consumed.
The Iron Vale had taught them their math. Now, it was their job to determine how to solve for equations that involved their own destruction as variables.