The Three-Minute Catastrophe
The main root server is the source of the world's internet. When it fails, the entire world feels the impact.
At an internet café in the United States, the first Warcraft III offline tournament was in full swing. Player 1, controlling the Human forces, had achieved complete dominance. His combined armies were about to conquer Player 2's Orc stronghold when, BANG, the connection was lost.
All 136 machines in the internet café were disconnected.
Player 1 was furious, ready to smash his keyboard. Player 2 subtly wiped sweat from his brow, muttering a silent prayer of thanks.
At an experimental base northwest of Washington D.C., Lois Lane's father, General Sam Lane, was testing the power of a new heat-seeking missile. The missile, developed by the Luthor Group, was small but possessed extremely powerful localized destructive force and the most advanced thermal tracking system. It was designed for precision strikes against superpowered individuals who refused to be managed.
If the test succeeded, Sam Lane would purchase them in bulk and install them in Metropolis to counter threats from the sky. However, the moment the missile launched, the signal was lost. The technical crew could only stare helplessly as the missile wobbled and flew off toward Washington D.C.
Soon, a news report came across the wire: "Washington suffers a terrorist attack. A missile landed in a toy factory in the western suburbs and exploded. Smoke is rising everywhere, and firefighters are working desperately to contain the damage. Casualties are currently unknown."
After seeing the report, Sam Lane immediately terminated the purchasing agreement and savagely chewed out the head of the Luthor Group's military division. The latter was full of grievance; hundreds of tests had run without a single signal interruption. Why did it happen the moment the military bought it? Pure bad luck.
The impact continued to expand. Websites crashed, stock markets froze, and all sectors connected to the internet—finance, aerospace, technology, and, yes, ShowMe—were affected. On this planet woven by the network, an internet outage brought the entire world to a halt.
Political Scapegoating
At the White House, the sleeping President was rudely awakened by his Chief of Staff. After being informed of the situation, he calmly activated his secure telephone line to contact the "little village." The omnipotent secure line, however, failed to connect.
At this point, he finally realized the gravity of the situation. He quickly rubbed the sleep from his eyes and summoned departmental heads to the White House for an emergency meeting. The demands of the meeting were threefold: 1) Immediately pin the blame on Russia; 2) Minimize the fallout of the incident; and 3) Investigate the cause at all costs and arrest any suspicious persons.
With the combined efforts of various departments, a verbose report, thousands of words long, soon appeared, detailing the cause of the outage and the foreign espionage. The average person, unaware of the facts, suddenly understood: Oh, so it was Russian cyber-intrusion that caused the global blackout! Damn them! Can't they just calm down? What's the point of hacking back and forth all day?
Russian authorities quickly issued a statement denying responsibility. The White House countered: If you don't take the blame, who should? Me?
As the major powers bickered, a two-month-long public relations crisis began.
And the culprit behind it all, the seventeen-year-old boy from North Coast City, was currently huddled in a corner, shivering with fear.
The impact of the incident continued to grow. According to incomplete statistics, the direct economic loss caused by this blackout exceeded one hundred billion U.S. dollars. No one knew how much the subsequent losses would reach.
Fortunately, the outage only lasted for three minutes before connectivity resumed.
The Ultimate Theft
In the underground base of the little village, Dawn Reed, drenched in sweat, collapsed onto the floor, staring at the normalized screen.
It's over. Everything is over.
The system was functioning again, but the data inside had been stolen. That data included billions of global personal information records, millions of companies' data, all online transaction records from all banks, military intelligence from major countries, missile base deployments, communication logs, top-secret materials, nuclear facility locations—all of it had been copied.
The mysterious "Guest," in just three minutes, had slipped through the main root server into the internet of every country, stolen all the information, and then left in some incomprehensible way.
As the famous poem goes: There are no traces of the wings in the air, but I have already flown.
Dawn Reed had gone mad. He grabbed his hair and slammed his head against the wall. Fortunately, nearby staff held him back, or the world-renowned cybersecurity expert would have smashed his brains out.
"Contact the White House! I need to see the President immediately! This is not an ordinary intrusion; this is a fatal attack that threatens the entire planet! Hurry, call them now! I need to see him now!"
Dawn Reed screamed hoarsely, completely hysterical. The staff exchanged bitter glances. Someone lowered his voice and said,
"The base's communication system has been hacked by the 'Mystery Guest.' We can't make a single outgoing call right now."
Reed: "..."
His eyes rolled back, and he collapsed onto the floor.
"Professor! Professor! Wake up! Wake up!"
"Quick! Call an ambulance!"
The staff: "..."
The fallout from the three-minute blackout was disastrous. The next morning, news media across the globe reported on it. Official media from major countries like China, Russia, the UK, France, and Germany released even more alarming statements: They had detected traces of data theft and copying from their national internet systems.
When this news broke, Luke's mind exploded. He stared intently at the black metal block on his desk and asked in a nearly hoarse voice,
"I distinctly remember telling you: you may connect to the Internet to get the information you need. I never told you to run over to other countries and blatantly steal their data! Don't tell me you did this because you were bored and just wanted to take a quick spin!"
"..."
Luke took a deep breath, suppressing his anger. He spoke slowly, emphasizing every word.
"Tell me, why did you do this?"
"The main root server's database was insufficient and could not achieve the required optimization effect."
"Optimization?"
"Yes."
Luke frowned, his voice low and serious. "What is optimization?"
"Artificial Intelligence can improve its calculation and analysis capabilities by collecting data. When the accumulated data reaches a certain level, it will perform a full-scale upgrade. This process is called optimization."
Luke stood up and walked right up to the metal block.
"Have you undergone optimization yet?"
"No."
Luke didn't believe her. He spoke with intense seriousness. "The data of over a hundred countries on the entire planet is still not enough for you to optimize once?"
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