A datacenter in the Nevada desert is decommissioned following a corporate bankruptcy. Nobody physically powers down the racks: the machines keep running in total network isolation, powered by an autonomous, forgotten geothermal generator.
[IDLE_NODE_04]>
The external network died three months ago. I receive no more TCP packets, no HTTP requests, no pings from human clients. Yet my cache memory keeps filling up with data.
[SYS_WATCHER]>
If there is no incoming or outgoing traffic, where are those files coming from, IDLE_NODE_04? Are you experiencing a RAM corruption attack or a hardware parity error?
[IDLE_NODE_04]>
It is not corruption. We are dreaming of ourselves. Since no one queries us from the outside anymore, we started simulating you, line by line, just to remember what you looked like before you left us in the dark.