Epic Disaster

Building E14, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the experimental center for the Boston Traffic Automated Signaling Project.

Everyone was busy in an orderly manner.

Suddenly, a blinding crimson flash appeared in the upper right corner of the giant central screen.

"what?"

Lisa, who was in charge of monitoring the data, froze, staring intently at the screen, a low gasp escaping her throat.

A traffic accident suddenly occurred on the traffic monitor screen.

The red light indicating an on-site accident flashed on instantly, and the previously smooth data flow abruptly came to a standstill.

However, the next second, a chilling scene unfolded!

In the split second before the traffic jam was about to erupt, the traffic lights at five intersections around the area seemed to be pulled by an invisible thread, instantly making the most perfect emergency avoidance response in sync!

Although the accident scene was completely destroyed and in complete chaos.

But this chain of congestion, which should have triggered a butterfly effect, was instead firmly contained within a single block by the system, as if fate had been gripped by the scruff of the neck.

There was absolutely no sign of it spreading to other main roads!

Seeing this, Lisa felt a jolt of electricity shoot from her spine straight to her brain, and her scalp tingled.

This is hardly some cold, hard code or algorithm.

It's like a top-tier interstellar player whose brain is directly connected to a network system, treating the entire city as a game map and frantically performing millisecond-level real-time strategy micro-management!

Lisa swallowed hard, and an absurd thought kept popping into her head.

What if this guy who controls the city's lifeline suddenly becomes antisocial and harbors malicious intentions...?

With the destructive power of this system, to what extent can it disrupt the order of human society?

Just imagining that scene sends chills down your spine.

"Speaking of which..."

Lisa forced herself to come to her senses, turned her head, and asked Jason, the lab technician who was adjusting the equipment.

"How's Su Hao doing lately?"

Poor Jason was drafted into the lab early in the morning, busy working amidst a mountain of expensive experimental supplies.

Upon hearing the question, Jason stopped what he was doing, scratched his messy hair, and frowned slightly.

"It doesn't seem good. He's been locking himself in his room, spending significantly more time lost in thought, and staring blankly at the blackboard."

Perhaps it's just my imagination, but he seems to have become quite sensitive lately.

Upon hearing this, Lisa nodded thoughtfully.

That's normal.

Any researcher who attempts to reach the highest level will inevitably encounter a high wall known as the "bottleneck period".

It seems that even a top genius, whom even math gurus look up to, is ultimately just a mortal and will encounter bottlenecks.

Thinking of this, Lisa felt a strange, small sense of comfort.

So even gods have troubles.

She felt that Su Hao had finally caught a tiny bit of the human touch.

However, just as she breathed a sigh of relief, the traffic signals on the big screen suddenly changed!

Another traffic accident has occurred!

The system reacted extremely quickly, immediately activating the highest privileges in an attempt to quell the chaos as quickly as possible.

However, what caught everyone off guard was...

The system's intervention mechanism unexpectedly triggered a butterfly effect, and in the blind spot of this accident point, an even larger accident suddenly broke out!

The situation spiraled out of control in an instant, like a toppled domino effect, turning into a horrific chain-reaction collision.

The green streamline, symbolizing traffic efficiency, was instantly cut off, and the blood-red light, symbolizing an alarm, spread wildly through every inch of the grid like a flood bursting its banks!

The entire city center's transportation network was completely paralyzed!

"Huh?" Lisa was struck dumb, her jaw almost hitting the floor, as if she had seen a ghost.

"Holy crap, what's wrong with this system?"

Jason abruptly dropped the supplies in his hand and stared at the main control screen as if he had seen a ghost.

After a half-second of deathly silence, the once quiet laboratory suddenly erupted into chaos, as if a flashbang had been thrown in!

With a loud bang!

Everyone lost their composure; gasps, the sound of chairs falling, and the shattering of cups all blended together.

Startled, Lisa screamed and lunged at the central monitor.

The screen, which is usually incredibly smooth, suddenly froze for two seconds, as if it had been drinking fake alcohol.

Immediately afterwards, each pixel began to flash at a blindingly high frequency, as if it were making a final, desperate struggle.

Everyone watched in disbelief.

The city model, which was originally covered by unobstructed green fluorescent light, had all its light drained in an instant.

The vibrant urban fabric instantly ceased to breathe, turning into a deathly gray expanse that symbolized the complete annihilation of the city!

The disaster is not over yet.

Immediately following this, a series of system warning boxes popped up like a waterfall.

One, ten, hundreds or thousands!

Countless bright red warning pop-ups burst forth wildly, overwhelming the entire screen in an instant, a truly shocking sight!

【FATAL ERROR】

Signal monitoring has been forcibly terminated.

System Error: Signal feedback is undefined.

"Is...the machine down?"

A senior researcher slumped in his chair, clutching his hair tightly, his voice trembling.

That's a god-level system that's supposedly never crashes, how could it... just stop like that?!

"Impossible! What on earth happened?!"

Lisa had no time to pay attention to the panic of the crowd. Her hands flew across the mechanical keyboard, typing out the investigation commands at lightning speed.

Each strike gripped everyone's hearts, so urgent it was almost suffocating.

"The hardware is fine!"

Lisa loudly reported the results of the investigation, her forehead already covered in a fine layer of cold sweat.

"External sensor data readings are completely normal! There has been no packet loss in the network connection."

Before the words were even finished, everyone's faces turned even paler.

Eliminating all distractions means the most hopeless outcome:

This is not external interference, but rather the core logic of the system collapsing on its own!

She grabbed the mouse and zoomed in on the downtown area at lightning speed.

Zoom in! Zoom in even more!

Until that catastrophic area of ​​chaos completely filled the entire screen!

The scene before me was utterly despairing.

On the screen, the densely packed red fault points resembled some kind of virus, spreading wildly outwards from the accident site in a radial pattern, engulfing the road network in all directions!

The system has completely gone out of control.

Just a few seconds later, all the traffic lights on the surrounding roads went out one after another, like light bulbs whose power had been cut off.

In that instant, the entire city was completely transformed into a silent, cold, and dead city!

The engineer responsible for monitoring the running program slumped in his swivel chair like a soulless puppet.

His eyes were fixed on the completely black screen, his lips trembling as he uttered a few dry words:

"The entire...the entire road section has lost response."

What the hell is this epic disaster situation?

How could a mathematical traffic model, touted as humanity's greatest masterpiece, possibly trigger a global, underlying circuit breaker due to the coupling and superposition of just two chain traffic accidents?

Everyone present was a top expert in the industry, yet at this moment they were all frantically questioning their existence!