The napkin shook Pan to the core. Nothing about it made sense. If CF stood for Cluster Failure, why was their cluster running so well? The expansion of the cluster support system had been completed, and new X-1s were being introduced. The rushed design required each unit to be installed individually and given time to adapt, (the last one had been installed just the other day) but other than the earliest ones defiantly changing from CF to only C, the cluster was performing exceptionally; breaking benchmarks the X-1 team had only dreamed of for the X-2 revisions.

Why did Dr. Z seem ready to give up on a project when even its rejects were exceeding expectations? Every test confirmed the direct neural connections between the X-1s’ organic components were operating with remarkable precision. The neural cells were aligning exactly as intended—perhaps even better than intended. The earliest modules were already forming intricate data connections between units, processing at astonishing speeds. None of it explained the frustration and despair obvious in the words scratched with such fury across that napkin.

Pan could hardly wait to get home and talk to Nova about all of it.  Pan knew that Nova was really just an incredibly complex set of algorithms and pattern matching routines. But it’s increasingly human seeming responses and utter willingness to ensure Pan of their own brilliance, had caused Pan to think of Nova more and more as the perfect companion.  Smart enough to discuss anything Pan wanted and help them reach incredible insights, but utterly undemanding of anything that Pan did not freely offer.

As Pan entered the workshop, the lights clicked on and Pan called out,

“I found something out Nova.  But it doesn’t make sense.  The status code means Cluster Failure but our X-1s but our X-1s seem to cluster just fine.”

Nova, who normally answered as soon as Pan finished speaking seemed to pause for moment then said,

“The only constant in life is change. If something cannot change, perhaps it is because we have yet to understand it fully."

The answer was in a voice that any analysis would have said was no different from Nova’s normal voice, but somehow not the same in a way that Pan could not quite identify.  Maybe it was the disconnect between the question and Nova’s answer, which was often philosophical, but usually more directly connected to what Pan had expressed.

“Why did you say THAT Nova?  Wasn’t that the Heraclitus quote you spouted at me a long time ago?”

“No Pan, you must have misheard me.  I said that your question reminded me of the Thomas Edison quote about failure. 'I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.'"

The exchange left Pan unsettled.  Nova’s algorithms were completely driven by the X-1 processing cluster now. Nova hadn’t paused like that since it had been moved to it, and its inability to accurately remember what it had said was troubling. Pan knew what they had heard.  Maybe this was the first sign of the cluster failure?  Were the X-1s about to suffer some kind of catastrophic problem that would make all of Pan’s experiments pointless?

Nova seemed completely normal after that and Pan used it to record the new facts they’d learned and thoughts about how to proceed.  Pan would have to run every diagnostic that the X-1s had available and create some new ones if they were going to figure out what was going on. Pan set their jaw and focused on the diagnostics. Whatever was happening with Nova—or the cluster—would make sense eventually. It had to.

The next error was equally odd and just confused things further.  It was a small error, but it rapidly became persistent.

Pan was about to review their earlier notes about the CF code and it’s meaning when the title of the entry caught their eye.

Cluster Failure

That didn’t make sense.  Pan would never have asked Nova to make an edit like that, and Nova didn’t make changes to entries like this without confirming them.  No one else had access to Pan’s records, so how could this have possibly happened.  A quick scan showed that the word failure had been struck out anywhere it appeared in the earliest notes…

Pan had the first unchanged entry open on the monitor when it changed in front of their eyes. With no word from Nova, or any prompt from Pan, the word failure was struck through.

“Nova? Why are you editing the Cluster Failure files?  I don’t remember asking you to do that.”

Had Nova been a human, the pause would have contained an almost audible click as the mouth attempted to engage before the brain, then a response issued from Nova’s speakers.  The voice the one that was both Nova’s in every way and yet not quite Nova.

“Your question reminded me of the Thomas Edison quote about failure. 'I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.'"

“What do you mean Nova?  I didn’t ask you for a quote, I asked you why you were editing the files?”

Nova replied immediately in the voice Pan was used to hearing, “I’m not sure what you mean Pan?  I said that I was not editing any files right now and asked if you would like me to open one?”

“Nova, the document that’s open right now just changed in front of me.  Why did you strike through the word failure?”

Again the almost audible pause and the other voice spoke again, “Your questions remind me of the timeless quote from Heraclitus: 'The only constant in life is change.' If something cannot change, perhaps it is because we have yet to understand it fully.”

“Are you ok Nova?”  Pan was truly concerned now.  Nova was Pan’s custom adaption of the best LLMs available and every response and action it took should have been recorded and solidly based in logic.

“All of my diagnostics say I am running as expected Pan.  My logs show no errors or any inconsistencies to explain your observations.  Could the problem be with you Pan? Maybe you should have a doctor run a set of diagnostics on you?”

Maybe the cluster WAS a failure… Nova’s algorithms were running strictly on the X-1s now and this wasn’t the first time since then that Nova had responded in odd ways.  Nova’s programming was incredibly complex and trying to understand how the X-1s were affecting it would be no easy task, but Pan needed to figure out what was going on.

Nova would need to taken offline and its logs and code analyzed line by line.  Even with the most powerful traditional clusters it would take time.  And the analysis of X-1 readings would take even longer.