The sandy-haired technician scanned the panel in front of him with tired green eyes. He was an intern so of course he got the shit jobs, and this one was worse than the others: monitoring the simulation network and reporting any anomalies in the system. There were never any anomalies in the system–
The large readout panel turned red briefly and then he was looking at a simulation generator circling a black hole. All of the simulation generators were the size of the moon and required huge amounts of power. Rotating black holes were perfect since the jets that some black holes produced could be harvested using magnetohydrodynamic generators. The power was then routed to the simulation generator to power the simulation and keep the generator in a stable orbit around the black hole. This simulation generator was in trouble.
“Diganotics,” the technician said and after a few seconds, the hyperwave delay of the computer querying the simulation generator, the computer gave the analysis in a neutral mechanical voice.
“The main jet stream of SGB-0564 has weakened to the point that the MHD cannot maintain power levels sufficient to keep SG-003 in operational orbit around SGB-0564. SG-003 has 16 minutes of operational time left before catastrophic failure due to extreme gravitational damage.”
“Alert on-station manager please,” the technician asked the computer.
“Jonas,” a voice said in the technician's ear.
“Roberts here,” the technician said. “SG-003 has had a catastrophic power failure and is heading into its black hole.”
“SG-003? Wow, that is one of the early models,” Jonas said.
“Should I initiate a backup?” The technician asked. “The unit has 16 minutes of operational time.”
“No, that one is too old to worry about,” Jonas said. “I am surprised it is still operational. No, let it die a well-deversed death.”
“Will do,” the technician said.
On the screen the minutes ticked by and SG-003 inched closer to the black hole, the tidal forces pulling the moon-sized simulation generator into tiny pieces that disappeared in the glowing accretion disk. It was a silent death, for all of its savageness.
For a moment, Roberts wondered whether the simulated creatures in the different worlds that the generators created knew that their world was ending? The screen went dark and the various numbers of the thousands of generators still running flashed back on the screen. Well, it was just a simulation, right?
