The Sapporo Outbreak (17 page)

This. This, was something very different.
 

The familiar 'shopping aisles' were gone. In their place were row upon row of identical towering black, silent and unblinking machines, glaring ominously back at him. There were no coloured cables flowing from the machines. Nothing at all. The ceiling seemed to ... glow. Intrigued, Skinner gazed at the ceiling and flicked his eyes up to the right, triggering
 
a short animation. The graphic explained that the ceiling comprised 1,800 individual LED panels, all powered entirely by the movement of the building's occupants, captured by two hundred thousand micro sensors embedded in the floor tiles and polished concrete. Skinner dropped his chin, and the iSight system explained that the raised floor comprised of 860 reinforced floor tiles, and underneath snaked 400 miles of shielded high performance fibre optic cable.
 

Skinner shook his head in amazement. Here at last were the mysterious slabs of computing power and blinking lights promised in every B-grade sci-fi movie. He glanced to his left and saw Harper and Santos gawp at the futuristic scene. To Skinner's amazement, Hill seemed unimpressed while Sakura shook her head impatiently. It seemed clear to Harper that she considered this tour a complete waste of her time, and wanted it over as quickly as possible.

The group turned to listen as Harper interrupted the silence.

"Miss Sakura. This equipment is remarkable. Qantum supercomputers if I'm not mistaken," Harper paused to ensure the others recognised his brilliance. Santos rolled her eyes.

Sakura replied, "Yes Mr Harper, you are correct. You are looking at the largest single collection of quantum computing power in the world."

Harper didn't appear to register Sakura's response, more focused on what he'd be saying next.
 

"Yes, as I said, very impressive. But I don't recall seeing this equipment in any of your other centres around the world. What happens if something goes wrong here? Will the new iSight game stop working?"

Sakura smiled warmly at the man towering over her tiny frame. Skinner and Santos turned and smiled at Harper's soft serve question. Santos flicked the hair from her forehead as she whispered, "I wonder if that's exactly how Tanaka told him to phrase that?"

Skinner grinned and looked over at Alex Hill. The lawyer seemed to be the only one taken in by the pantomime. He seemed genuinely eager to hear Sakura's response.

Sakura slowly scanned the group, resting her attention on the receptive young lawyer.

"There are no single points of failure in iSight. What you see here either has, or will soon be replicated in our other centres. All systems are connected to each other directly and over the Internet. If any centre suffers a catastrophic failure, the others will immediately take on the load and the game will continue uninterrupted. As a final fail safe, we have distributed smaller elements of the game into other commercial hosting centres around the world should all centres fail."

Harper's grin disappeared instantly, replaced with deep concern, at the last sentence from Sakura. That was clearly not in his script.

Sakura continued, "And so Mr Harper, we have created an online games network so distributed, so
intelligent
that it is effectively impossible for it to fail."

Before a visibly angry Hill could respond, and to Sakura's surprise, Harper interjected, "I must say I'm surprised to hear of other hosting facilities being used Miss Sakura. There are many risks to that approach, and I would..."

Sakura interrupted sharply. "But Mr Harper, this is on the advice of your own company. Your lead architect, Mr Dodgson suggested these improvements to Mr Tanaka several months ago. I'm sorry but I did not realise you were unaware of this."

Harper looked momentarily dumbfounded, before quickly (too quickly Santos thought), stumbling a response. "Yes, of course, I do remember raising this with Mr Dodgson. Sorry, I'm so wrapped up in the big picture I sometimes let the little details pass me by."

Sakura smiled. Hill, Skinner and Santos all glanced at Harper who was for once, lost for words.
 

Sakura continued. "Therefore, with these changes the iSight 3 game can continue without one - or indeed for a limited time - any of the data centres operating. Of course, without the data centres operating, the game would be very limited. Without the information being captured about each player in the data centres, the game would quickly drift from today's indistinguishable-from-reality experience to something far less compelling.

Now it was Skinner's time to interrupt.

"Miss Sakura, I have to say I find all this technology talk very hard to follow, so can I clarify. Are you saying that the iSight 3 game could theoretically continue without any WhiteStar centres operating?"

Sakura nodded proudly. "That is correct Professor."

"But wouldn't that mean the games would be running without any control?"

His three companions swivelled as one at Skinner's question, then looked questioningly at Sakura.

Sakura didn't like the way this was going. They had lost track of the big picture, seemed to be focusing on the impossibly negative.
   

Sakura acknowledged Skinner, then addressed the group.
 

"I'm sorry, I should have been clearer. The game has multiple layers of safeguard, buried deep in the code, which ensure the game could continue to run for up to four hours with access to no WhiteStar data centres. I should point out of course that given the world-best technology and global spread of our centres, the possibility of every one failing at the same is miniscule. Nevertheless, we have catered for this eventually. If after four hours the game still can't access any of the global data centres, then the iSight player will experience what we call 'an orderly exit' from the game. They will be notified that the game is shutting down, their current game data stored temporarily in other hosting centres,"

Harper glowered.

"...and the game spread will coordinate a global shutdown, and can only be restarted at one of the WhiteStar centres.
 

Santos leaned forward, "Has this ever been tested Miss Sakura?"

Clearly keen to move on, Sakura waved dismissively "We have simulated this many times and the system is fail proof." Turning away from Santos before she could respond, Sakura said, "Now Mr Hill, I believe you had a question."

Santos grabbed Skinner's hand to get his attention. He turned to look at the psychologist as she mouthed
bullshit
. He nodded grimly. This trip wasn't panning out to be the 'tick the boxes' visit he'd expected.
 

Hill almost tripped over his own words in his hurry to respond. "Yes I do. Once again Miss Sakura, this seems like extremely significant news I am only just hearing of." The anger and frustration in his voice clear to all.

Santos watched Sakura closely, and couldn't shake the feeling that this conversation had been planned. That Sakura had wanted to play this out with Hill and, for whatever reason, she wanted the others to witness it.
 

Sakura calmly responded. "But you and the board have been fully informed of these changes Mr Hill. They are detailed in the addendum to operations working notes circulated during February's board meeting."

Hill's mouth opened. For a moment he seemed too angry to speak. Finally, his face reddening, Hill blurted out, "Miss Sakura, those documents are hundreds of pages long and appear at every board meeting. As Mr Tanaka is well aware, at every meeting we ask that he provide summary notes of their contents, and to this day he has failed to do so."

"I'm afraid I don't know anything about that Mr Hill. All I can say is that everything you see and hear today has already been provided to you in earlier board notes."

Santos and Skinner exchanged glances while Harper grinned as if the whole thing was hilarious. An awkward moment's silence descended on the group while Hill glared at their beautiful, impassive host.
 

Santos cast a professional eye over Hill. He seemed to be taking this slew of discoveries very badly, almost personally. Santos watched as Hill adjusted his tie, his hands trembling slightly while he fumbled with the blue silk. The man was clearly struggling to cope with the stress, and it was starting to show.

Sakura tried hard to hide her frustration at having to nurse these people. Particularly now - at the most critical moment in WhiteStar Corp's young history with the imminent release of iSight 3 - Sakura had been ripped from the action to babysit these wide-eyed visitors. Tanaka had made it clear that these visitors were to be handled carefully. She was to 'keep them as informed as they need to be'. It was also clear that Tanaka held Sakura responsible for making sure these visitors left impressed. To Sakura, they were an inconvenience, the latest in a long line of western faces to goggle in amazement at Tanaka's brilliance.
 

If only they knew how much more there was, that all they were seeing was the tip of the iceberg.

#

11:30am Thursday, Level Four Systems, Sapporo (Minus 3:30 Hours)

Clearly anxious about the time this was taking, Sakura hurried the group forward through the narrow glass corridor separating the incredible array of machines stretching off to the west (their left) and east, quickly arriving at a frosted glass door.

She paused before entering, then turned to face the group.

"We are about to enter the virtualisation lab - or VR Lab. Mr Tanaka believes that what happens inside here is the single most important element of the iSight 3 experience. As such he considers this the most valuable intellectual property WhiteStar owns. I would therefore remind you of the binding agreements you each have signed not to disclose anything that you see inside this lab. Is anyone uncomfortable with this - if so I can arrange for you to wait while we take this part of the tour."

Sakura was met with silence. She smiled inwardly - no one had ever decided to skip this part.

"Very well then. Inside you will meet Dr Becker. He is the VR Lab Director. I will leave you in his care for.." Sakura paused, "...45 minutes. Please direct all questions to Dr Becker. When I return we will visit the Network Operating Centre - or 'NOC' - where you will see how the entire iSight game is managed, and security maintained." Sakura nodded to Harper as she spoke.

"Finally, if you're not too tired, we will visit the immersion labs. Here you will see how we research and test our games. You will see volunteer game players immersed in many different elements of the iSight 3 experience and observe their reaction first hand. I'm pleased to say Mr Tanaka has arranged for you to observe the reaction of an entirely new set of volunteers. They have been carefully selected to give you the broadest view - some are experienced iSight 2 players, others have never played before."

Skinner and Santos nodded together, more curious than ever to see the responses of others first hand.

"And of course," Sakura continued, "you will all be given the opportunity to fully immerse yourself in the release version of iSight 3. And this - I can promise you - will exceed anything else you have seen today."

A murmur of excitement rippled through the small group. Santos noticed that even Hill looked intrigued.

"Now, please follow me."

Sakura walked toward the door, which slid silently into a recess in the wall.

As they walked forward, the visitors heads swivelled to get their first glimpse inside the mysterious VR lab.
 

They slowed to a halt behind Sakura, roughly in the centre of a large square room. A corridor to their right - or west according to iSight - stretched through to a brightly lit area beyond. To their left were three raised platforms, like high school bleachers only the platforms were much deeper. The farthest platform - some thirty feet from where they stood - was roughly at head height to Santos, while the middle 'bleacher' was roughly chest height. The nearest - a few short steps away - was raised to knee height.
 

Sitting behind single large desks stretched the width of each bleacher were nine people, three per level. Skinner noticed that they all seemed very young - early twenties he guessed. They all faced transparent glass monitors - three per person arranged in a shallow semi-circle, and every one of them seemed entirely focused on the screens ahead of them. Skinner also noticed that two wore the iSight 3 glasses - one on the far right of the lowest bleacher, the other top bleacher in the centre. Skinner watched fascinated as they worked. Their hands in constant swirling motion in front of their screens as if conducting some invisible orchestra. They appeared to be whispering, talking to themselves, although Skinner couldn't hear anything.
 

It looked to Skinner truly bizarre, like some sort of avant-garde street performance.
 

Sakura ignored the 'bleachers' and ushered the group through the corridor and into a brightly lit large cube-like room. The group slowed to a stop behind Sakura as a squat bearded man walked forward to greet her.
 

 
Dominating a room lined to the left and right with large glass monitors was the wall facing them. A single enormous screen covered the entire wall, displaying a constantly changing kaleidoscope of sharply coloured geometrical shapes connecting by curved, coloured lines of varying thickness. The shapes themselves had numbers inside. Skinner read one number from a floating hexagon - sa24059.7ra2601.94 - and after a few seconds trying to see some pattern, shrugged and continued scanning the room. As with all things viewed through the new iSight 3 glasses, Skinner felt the 3D effect to be indistinguishable from reality. It really did feel like this fractal was dancing in the air right in front of him.

Sakura watched the familiar sight. Another group of visitors dazzled, over stimulated by the amount of data, graphs, charts and animations pouring from the monitors and giant screen.
 

"Ladies and Gentlemen," Sakura announced a little too loudly. Santos quickly turned to her left and right. Other than Sakura, there were no other women in the room.