Packet Monitor System :Rom

I sit here with my colleagues in the basement level. We are Packet Monitor System.

And trust me it sounds boring as fuck. But the harsh reality is millions and trillions of data is pigeonholed into loops and more loops and traverses through the internet daily. And we live in 2020. So not that far out from your own future. 

But at PMS and what an abhorrent acronym  I am tasked with making sure there are PLCs which stands for proclivity language clips. These clips without sounding overtly complex mean that you need to be able to monitor the data faster and when something does not add up-- volcanoes in Micronesia do indeed explode. Something about the abrasion of the information creating heat and some other bull shit FOC hasn't told us. No there are no replicants. No crazy AI that we are aware of. We still have cell phones. But the coolest thing is we just monitor information. Also, what is super strange is we have a weird black tube monitor and it will spit and whirr out data. But there are purple thermal graphs that either jump, spike or slither. And when this happens we are happy if it can maintain a great pace. Think of it as a really old supercomputer from oh the 90's. Remember those times. Oh, and you want my name and what I do.

I told you.

My name though I have not. Just call me R. Short for Rom Romulan Therrance. I know my name is kinda lame but my parents who live in upstate New York, love Star Trek.

Anyway, that supercomputer was burping today and Max Salter head of my division told me that there was an anomaly.   He did so with an abrasive tone and I was worried. It either means his donut is cold or there is something wrong with our supercomputer. No, this will not be like the Moon is a Harsh Mistress, our supercomputer will not devoidingly grow intelligence.  Shit, I don't even like science fiction. I do love computers and am damn good at my job. My parents love Star Trek but I like fantasy stuff. Ever heard of Sanzitelli Marrone; The Trees of Naghur? That's the kind of shit I am in to.

So again the boss was perturbed by an anomaly.But I checked my data  and looked at optimal packets received, to loss, I was told to go and hunt down the iFrame subset,

So I typed:

Iframe=null (0)

Iframe-=subset alpha numerics =(1)-void

Iframe-=subset alpha numerics= (1)-no void=override (A)

So all that means is I was trying to override no-void. If I do this a yellow text normally appears. But this packet loss was fucking massive. It'd be like if you blackholed England and fit 3 Englands there.

It did not turn yellow. It turned bright red. ERMA is our supercomputer. Educational Ram Monster Algorithmic -aflux. Who the hell comes up with these acronyms. "R!" "Go back and run a dump test- packet 111," he said.
"Boss, I already ran an override and nothing." said, R. "Well, goddamnit, there is massive packets being flooded somewhere,--just please go do the dmp.test," he said.
"Fine boss, I mean sir, do I need purple clearance to get into the server room?" R said. "No!, just go and ask Tag for clearance to the server room, he was cleaning something off one of the t-blades," Salter said. "Fine!, I am on it.I hope I can find Tag-- he is normally dicking off somewhere not even in the server room, although, he claims he is there." R said. R started walking slowly wondering why he did not need a purple clearance card to get in the server room. Not much happened as he crept towards a massive white pristine glass door. He examined the window and pulled the handle sharply. Though, he needed the purple card. "Hey, man it is really cold in here." a face popped up. It was Tag Wortherman. "Man, you need to literally chill in here. Did you see what I did there? Tag exclaimed.
"Dude, Tag I need to run a dmp.exe ." R said. "Okay, here Imma let you in." Tag said. To describe Tag is to describe and unshaved hippie that has unkempt surfer hair. I think he'd actually give pro surfer Kelly a run for his money. But Tag was never a surfer and how he came into this line of work was anyone's guess. He wanted to get away from his dad's business venture. His papa was a venture hawk for a company called Glow Corps. Yeah, they made just that glow material that was so awesome it was in RND for the military. It glew hot white instead of ya know neon green. But he worked there and hated it. Norman Galitz brought him to our team. The guy is a natural with networking and server fixes. "So, what brings you to the freezer?" Tag said. "Um well, here I am running this dmp.test. Do I smell pizza? Do you have it in the server tower? Dude, I am not questioning your methods." R said. "You have to know pizza cold is great. And besides didn't you have that tuna sandwich earlier?" Tag said.
"I will not be casually insulted by you Tag!" R said. "Okay, so plug this yellow paracord into the tower here. You will see a blue light flicker and when it is solid you can run the dmp.test. If you don't run it right you'll crash the system. Then I will have to reboot her heart in the whole mainframe. And I have my pizza bro, I am content, don't shit the bed on this one." Tag said. "You are in good hands Tag, I will run the dmp.test on 111 and get the hell out of here. Then you can eat your frozen ass pizza." R said. "Wait, what are the servers temps currently?"R said. "If you must know brew it is -333.87 Fahrenheit which is basically like 71 Kelvin. So we are good." Tag said. "Oh, here it is okay the test came back with a problem. Negative output=(0) Run...
Negative output=(0) Run... Negative output= (2) Now we are getting somewhere R thought. Run...negative output= (1) . "Wait, it was just 0 and now it is 1." said R. "Tag, run me a locationary trace protocol now. Zero in on the USA, Canada, Mars? I am just kidding but run USA, Canada, Venezuela, Dubai, Jerusalem now, please. " You got it. mumble mumble Garsh here's it is." Tag mumbled. "I can't hear a damn word you are saying because you have that damn slice of pie in your mouth." R said. R thought that if the LTP was put in place it could possibly run a protocol to verify the country in which the packets were being lost. "Here it is.... -----------LTP returns--------
abceddeasfgadgdagadagagdsga 0001010101010101010101010110101010101010101010101011010
Trace amplified: Countries/ NA/ Jerusalem
DIR/file protocol LTP=verified
-======0101001010110101010101
=DIR/file protocol LTP=run
=DIR/file protocol LTP=dead
Location: verification dbbbi
"Holy shit, whoever is doing this flooded packet loss has breached PMS fully, this is top notch brotatoe work right here. Whoever it is surpassed 6 firewalls that we have in our system. They are scouting our systems but we did get a location. It is somewhere in the Middle East. Specifically, it came back with Dubai." said Tag. "Shit, you are kidding me. We have flooded packet loss from someone in Dubai?" said R. R figured maybe it was some governmental program that Dubai had installed to teach their hackers how to attack our data for fun. But there was a group of hackers that lived there that was in the news. Akhem Groupi a transplant that was from Dubai but moved to Lichenstein. The Red Rabbit was another Aniti Nahemerzov but he too was a transplant.But that was the only intel we received more than 4 weeks ago. We do work with security councils almost daily. If we see something that doesn't add up. We have a committee and team that will go to different countries and report these findings to them. Normally, if we find something we tell the UAC (The United Appropriations Council)
R left the server room and went straight to Salter. Salter was in his office. His office smelt of expensive cuban cigars and had a lot of tech in his office. Papers were piled to the left and right but space was well kept and not cluttered. "Salter, we ran the dmp.exe. I mean I did and it came back with massive packet flooding in Dubai." R said. "Wait, what Dubai?" Salter said. "Yes sir, Dubai--but do we know of any people there that UAC told us of ?" R said. "No, but there is a collective of hackers all over the world, some transplants and some else," Salter said. "Well, need to report this to the UAC at once and see what they tell us to do," Salter said. "Sir, why would the negative output be 2? It is always 1 every single time in the last 10 years I have run that subset." said R. "Rom, I am not sure what is going on but we need to sit on this. Just two weeks ago we had small pings of packet loss from Germany and then Finland and a couple other places. But it was always 1 every time I ran the program. How old are ERMA these days? Her flash BIOS has been updated last time. It is 2020 but she was updated in 2016. That is a 4-year gap. She is good for 30 years. So it is not on her end. It is peculiar R. Whatever this organization or person wants it is big. I can fully assure you that." said Salter.
R decided to go get a cup of water from the breakroom and a sandwich out of the vending machine. R, when he was in high school, was not a genius. But he graduated from the Fluvial Academy in New York. Go figure their mascot was a goddamn guppy named Claude. A private school yeah but he did study copious amounts of programming books when he was younger. He learned Cobol, C++, Python, MATLAB, and several other outdated languages like C.He figured he'd need it someday. But his good graces were spent on his 'devils in the details' approach. that is what Salter loved about him. Something about this was strange. Why indeed go through all that trouble to flood ERMA? R ate his sandwich and he sat there softly with both hands on his hands. He took a sip of water and breathed deeply.

He had no answers.