The lab plunged into darkness. The tactical team’s night vision goggles flared, blinded by the sudden lack of IR from the cameras.

The screen went black for precisely eleven seconds.

The glass on the lab door shattered. Flashbangs rolled in. Aris didn’t flinch. He turned back to the red fedora.

The name was a mouthful. The machine was a miracle.

Aris turned to the General. “You see? It’s not about speed. It’s about reliability. You can break the hardware. You can break the building. But you can’t break a Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.2 Workstation when it’s in the hands of someone who knows how to use it.”

“Stable,” Aris replied, not looking away. “Twenty-three hours of continuous particle decoherence simulation. Memory leak patched at hour four. Kernel didn’t even flinch.”