Previous: Chapter Twenty: The Cloister Cluster
Brother, can you check on a remote process called “initiative”? It has retro server privs, and it’s not playing nice. Three smoked out GPUs, all three previously working museum pieces.
Sister, that process is remote to us too, from some cloud control node in our crowd computing service. I have emailed the Archsysadmin in Louisville for more info. It must be an old process, since it requested ancient computer hardware. No one writes fresh code for your antiques anymore. My guess is that someone fat fingered the year in a job scheduler twenty years ago, on a server that should have been unplugged 10 years ago. Wonder if that person is still even alive?
Sorry about your toasted hardware. I understand that replacements are rare, but if you do find some, I am sure the Diocese can smash a piggy bank to make you whole. Just remind Thester Kat at the Diocese that I said it’s all my fault.
Sister Sparks paged through the online auction listings. Antique GPUs. Sparks filtered by interface and architecture, and made a few notes in pencil on a fresh piece of stationery. She’d need to run the narrowed list past the Gamer Sisters, especially with Old Nuns Only less than a week away.
CRYPTO MINE GPUs: 100’s TO SELL
Sparks messaged the seller.
Dear @RailAgainstDaylight. I run a game server at an old folks home, and we had a fire that claimed 3 GPUs. I want to know if yours are old enough to run Broad Daylight V?
Sparks sent the message and continued paging through auction listings. Less than five minutes later, a new message.
Dear @GamersOfSwitten, they certainly will run Broad Daylight, up to VII. Are you really the Gamers of Switten? The Cloister Cluster is legend. Is that what the GPUs are for? By the way, my name is Rad.
Sparks smiled to herself and reached for the keyboard. “Yes. That’s us.”
The reply came almost instantly. “I am in Iowa. Kentucky, right? Be there in 12 hours.”
No negotiations on bulk pricing or shipping. No sale, or credit inquiry, even. Who was this Rad?
Sparks messaged Thester House. “Thester, turn down the guest bed.”
True to promise, Rad rolled up to the Convent at dawn. Sister Sparks met Rad at the gate with a mug of steaming coffee. The mysterious seller was dressed in black, head to toe. “You’ll certainly fit in here,” Sister Sparks almost said aloud.
Rad smiled at Sister Sparks in greeting as if they were long time friends, and held up a small road case. “Trade ya!” Meaning the coffee.
Rad was treading consecrated ground, and knew it. The Cloister Cluster was not, by a factor of a million, the most powerful retrogaming server extant: those records were all held by modern computers made to emulate the old gaming platforms, and could host, in theory, more gamers than there would be if everyone was a gamer.
What made the Cluster special was its historical authenticity. Original game code executing on actual original silicon curated from half a century of the planet’s e-waste, by three generations of gamer nuns.
Housed in limestone block crypts beneath the Convent, the ancient systems were kept cool by water pumped from a cave passage hidden yet deeper beneath the Nelson County ridge.