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Even with all twenty rental editing suites running at full capacity, they used less than one-third of the theoretical computing power of the supercomputer "Hollywood Kid."
Of the remaining processing capacity, about half was allocated to the old film digital restoration team, while the rest went to the R&D department.
However, Stark Pictures' R&D team still lacked the ability to fully utilize the remaining computing power. Their usage required submitting requests and scheduling time slots.
In reality, those requests were almost always approved. The scheduling system mainly served to notify others what tasks would be running and how long they might take.
But the ones who truly consumed the machine's power were still Henry and Tony Stark.
And what they ran on it were mostly private projects.
Although Tony Stark spent most of his time in New York on the East Coast, he could still remotely control the supercomputer's virtual machines over the network.
Back in July 1995, Tatu Ylönen of the Helsinki University of Technology in Finland released a new encrypted communication protocol:
Secure Shell Protocol (SSH).
This protocol replaced insecure systems like Telnet, FTP, and rsh, quickly becoming the preferred remote access method for server users.
Because SSH used a lightweight text-based interface, even dial-up connections allowed Tony Stark on the East Coast to smoothly operate the supercomputer located on the West Coast.
At that time, SSH was still open-source software, so the version used by Hollywood Kid had been jointly modified and improved by Henry and Tony Stark.
Originally, the two communicated through a separate email server.
Later, they switched to leaving messages on a hidden bulletin board inside a private Docker container.
In other words, as computing technology improved, both their security systems and firewalls were constantly being upgraded.
After all, whenever the two of them got bored, they would run stress tests or edge-case experiments on each other's code, poke at one another's systems, and then upgrade the defenses again.
---
However, the message board was primarily used by Henry.
He used it to submit work reports and summarize West Coast intelligence.
Tony Stark rarely left messages or replies.
So Henry never knew whether that billionaire actually read any of it.
Normally, Henry submitted a weekly report.
Anything that wasn't in the newspapers—or differed from what the media reported—would be included.
How to analyze or use that intelligence was Tony Stark's responsibility.
Today wasn't the usual reporting day.
Henry had come to the Hollywood Kid service center specifically to report the information he had just learned about vampires.
Although the invitation was addressed to him, the real target was clearly the owner of Stark Industries.
If this wasn't reported early, things might spiral out of control later.
Because this wasn't a scheduled report, Henry had no idea how long it would take for Tony Stark to read it.
Or whether these reports simply vanished into the void after being posted.
Honestly, that wasn't Henry's problem.
As an employee, doing the job well enough to justify his salary was sufficient.
Even if Stark Industries doubled its fortune, Henry wouldn't get a share of it.
---
Organizing the report took only a few microseconds.
The real delay came from typing it out.
After all, keyboards had physical speed limits.
If Henry had written it by hand, it wouldn't have taken even a minute.
After sending the report, Henry followed his usual habit.
He quietly slipped into Tony Stark's virtual machine to see what the genius billionaire had been working on lately.
No surprise there.
Artificial intelligence.
Tony Stark had begun studying AI years earlier.
His MIT graduation project—the robotic arm Dum-Dum—primarily demonstrated achievements in mechanical engineering, but it already contained early AI elements.
After earning:
a PhD in Engineering Physics at MIT,
and a PhD in Aeronautical Engineering at Caltech,
Tony Stark had recently returned to MIT to pursue a third doctorate—Artificial Intelligence.
However, Stark's current AI research differed greatly from the data-driven machine learning models that would become popular in the future.
His system relied instead on:
large numbers of automated procedures,
image tracking,
and fuzzy logic decision-making.
In simple terms, this type of AI couldn't truly learn.
It simply kept adding more and more exception cases into its decision tree, creating the illusion of an all-purpose intelligence.
That was why the robotic arm Dum-Dum often behaved strangely.
Those odd actions were usually the result of misjudged environmental conditions.
Stark's current AI work on the Hollywood Kid supercomputer focused primarily on interactive responses—in other words, conversation.
His research questions included:
How to recognize voice input
Convert speech into text
Extract actionable commands from the text
Execute those commands
Provide appropriate responses if execution failed
Another challenge was determining which voices should trigger responses and which should not.
Different speakers might require different logic paths.
All of these were part of Stark's research.
Perhaps this was the prototype of his future AI butler:
JARVIS.
The only problem?
He was running these AI experiments on a supercomputer designed mainly for graphics processing.
---
Henry started writing a program that could allow the GPU to share computational workloads with the CPU, improving overall performance.
He planned to install it in his own virtual machine.
Whether Tony Stark noticed the hint or not wasn't Henry's concern.
At that moment, a notification sound interrupted his thoughts.
The secret message board had a reply.
Henry immediately dropped the half-finished program and jumped into the message board server.
Sure enough—
There was a new message.
---
Philanthropic Billionaire:
So vampires contacted you, but the real target is me.
You're sure about that?
West Coast Wage Slave:
Intel from the Continental. Reliability is high.
Young Playboy Spreading Love Everywhere:
But from what you described, they targeted you first and are trying to drag me in.
Can't you just block this on your side?
West Coast Wage Slave:
They're vampires.
If they don't achieve their real objective, do you think they'll give up—or create more trouble?
Either way this will reach you sooner or later. I'm just informing you in advance so you don't complain later.
Young Playboy:
Fuck! You changed my ID again!
Stop doing childish things!
West Coast Idiot:
Oh, you can see that?
I thought I only changed how the name displays on my end. Sorry.
Playboy With Insufficient "Essence" Left to Spread Love:
How did you even get in here? I encrypted my user data!
Playboy:
Fuck! You changed it again!
West Coast Donkey:
Your encryption is garbage.
Did you forget this host is a supercomputer?
Brute-force cracking doesn't take long.
Furious Professor Tony:
You're stealing computing resources again!
Fine, whatever.
But do you actually believe vampires exist?
West Coast Pig:
If refusing to believe would make them disappear, I'd happily deny it.
Unfortunately reality doesn't bend to my beliefs, so debating that question is pointless.
Great Professor Tony:
I originally thought those creatures were just mutants with certain abilities.
But mutant powers rarely repeat themselves.
If what you're saying is true, then groups of vampires and werewolves wouldn't be surprising.
So tell me—
Do you believe in magic?
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