novelslam Chapter 130 An "Accident"
Chapter 130 An "Accident"
Tuesday, November 8, 1988.
Tokyo, Nihonbashi Kabutocho.
Inside the Tokyo Stock Exchange, several industrial-grade air conditioners were running at full speed, yet they couldn't remove the suffocating, stale air. The stench of sweat from over two thousand "batakeren" (people in red vests) screeching under intense pressure mingled with the tarry smell of burning "Seven Stars" cigarettes, filling the entire space.
2:20 PM.
There are forty minutes left until the market closes.
Matsumoto stood in the narrow semicircle of the batting box, gripping a black telephone receiver tightly in his hand. Sweat streamed down his temples, stinging his eyes, but he dared not blink, afraid of missing a single gesture.
"Buy! Feidao Construction! 50,000 shares!"
The trader on the other end made a hand gesture.
Matsumoto reacted instantly. His fingers flew across the terminal, a series of actions he had repeated thousands of times.
"make a deal!"
With a roar, the printer spat out a transaction confirmation slip.
Matsumoto tore off the piece of paper, stared at the numbers on it, and his heart pounded.
It became.
Including the real estate stock transactions this morning, my commission for this month has exceeded three million yen.
Three million. That was the money his father had saved up after five years of farming in the countryside. Now, that amount of money was enough for him to pay the down payment on the BMW 3 Series he had been eyeing for so long at the Roppongi showroom, and also enough to buy a decent bag for the hostess he had just met in Ginza.
"Well done, Matsumoto!" A senior colleague patted him hard on the back. "You're on a winning streak today! At this rate, doubling your year-end bonus is no problem!"
"We still have to watch the last half hour!"
Matsumoto wiped the sweat from his face, a greedy and excited smile spreading across his lips. Today, he felt invincible; the pulse of the entire market throbbed at his fingertips.
The atmosphere in the hall suddenly changed.
A frenzied, even manic, commotion swept in from the other end of the hall.
"It's here! It's a Merrill Lynch order!"
"American pension funds are in the game! They're buying up everything!"
"Toshiba! Hitachi! Nippon Steel! Buy them all! Regardless of cost!"
The news instantly swept through the entire trading floor. The Nikkei average index approached the 30,000-point mark, and on the huge electronic price display, red numbers jumped wildly, each flash representing hundreds of millions of yen pouring in.
Matsumoto felt the blood rush to his head.
It's here! The legendary multinational mega-purchase!
If BMW can seize this opportunity, even if it's just a small piece of the pie, it can transform from a 3 Series into a 5 Series.
"Order accepted! Order accepted quickly!"
The agent's desperate roar came through the earpiece.
"Nippon Steel! 30 million shares! Buy at market price! Quickly!"
Matsumoto's adrenaline surged to its peak. He waved his right arm, pushed through the crowd, and pressed the red button that represented "confirmation" with trembling fingers.
Once this deal is finalized, the transaction fees alone will be enough for him to live on for the rest of his life.
……
At the same second.
Marunouchi, deep within an underground utility tunnel less than 500 meters from NTT's core server room.
The dim emergency lights emitted a pale, white glow, and the air was filled with a damp, musty smell.
A man dressed in NTT grey maintenance work clothes, his hat pulled low, was squatting in front of the main control line distribution box. His movements were unhurried, as if he were performing a routine line inspection.
He took out an extremely thin syringe from his toolbox, which contained a small amount of transparent, gelatinous liquid.
Instead of touching the thick data transmission cables, he precisely located the return signal port responsible for the temperature control system of the switching room.
The needle tip gently pierced the gap in the interface and pushed in a drop of liquid.
It's a high-resistance insulating gel that solidifies within minutes, silently blocking the sensor from sending an "overheating" alarm signal to the central computer.
Then, he took out an inconspicuous screwdriver and slightly moved the relay spring of the backup line switching module outward by two millimeters.
This negligible camouflage of metal fatigue is enough to cause the automatic switching mechanism to physically jam during the next high-load impact.
After doing all this, he closed the lid of the box and carefully wiped away all traces of his touch with a dusty cloth.
No cables were cut, and there was no smell of burning.
It all looked like an unfortunate and unavoidable component failure due to aging.
The man stood up, pulled down the brim of his hat, picked up his toolbox, turned and disappeared into the shadows of the utility tunnel.
He raised his wrist and pressed the earpiece, producing only two soft tapping sounds.
"Beep, beep."
……
At the Tokyo Stock Exchange at this moment.
The cursor on the screen is blinking.
Matsumoto's fingers, filled with boundless anticipation for the future, pressed down heavily.
"Snapped!"
...
The expected hissing sound of the printer spitting out paper did not occur. There was also no "sold" notification sound.
Matsumoto paused for a moment. Thinking he hadn't pressed it properly, he pressed it again with more force.
There was still no response.
The screen froze at that moment. The continuously scrolling red price numbers suddenly stopped.
"What happened?"
Matsumoto instinctively patted the phone receiver in his hand and shouted into the microphone, "Hey? Hello! Headquarters! Can you hear me? Has the order been sent out?"
no respond.
There was no busy tone or static in the receiver.
There was only deathly silence.
Meanwhile, in NTT's server room, a few kilometers away.
As the data surge arrived, the temperature of the core chip of the D70 switch began to rise sharply. However, the sensors blocked by the insulating gel continued to send false "normal temperature" signals to the main control system, the cooling fan remained running at a low speed, and the relays on the backup line were stuck in place due to that two-millimeter deviation and could not be popped up.
Heat builds up rapidly on the silicon wafer until it exceeds a critical point.
A logical deadlock at the physical level occurred amidst utter silence.
It was as if an invisible hand had severed the other end of the telephone line, completely draining the life force that connected the building and the entire financial heart of Tokyo in that instant.
……
The back-office computer rooms of major banks and securities companies.
Ogawa, the trading manager at Nomura Securities, suddenly jumped up from his swivel chair.
"What's going on! Why isn't it moving!"
He rushed to the trading terminal and pounded the "Enter" key. The keyboard clicked, the green cursor on the screen blinked weakly, and the data flow remained completely still.
"Minister! Line 2 is down!"
"There's no signal on Line 3 either!"
"The Kobe branch office sent an urgent call saying they can't confirm the transaction!"
The shouts of the subordinates rose and fell, filled with obvious panic.
Ogawa loosened the tie around his neck and grabbed the landline phone on the table—a dedicated line directly to the NTT data center.
"Get me to the Marunouchi Bureau! Quickly!"
He yelled into the microphone, spitting as he spoke onto the black plastic casing.
"Beep—beep—beep—"
All that came through the receiver was a monotonous, cold busy tone.
Xiao Chuan's face turned deathly pale. He took the microphone away from his ear and slammed it hard onto the mahogany desk.
"Bang!"
The microphone bounced up and fell heavily, cracking the plastic casing.
"Damn it! That damn NTT!"
Xiao Chuan braced his hands on the table, panting heavily, his eyes bloodshot, and veins bulging on his forehead.
In the very second that the line went down, at least 3 billion yen worth of payments were stuck halfway through.
That's the client's money. That's the company's commission. That's his bonus for the second half of the year.
It's all over.
"Sizzle... sizzle..."
In the corner, a large fax machine receiving market data emitted a screeching sound.
Ogawa suddenly turned his head.
The machine ejected half of the thermal paper and then jammed completely. Black ink smeared onto the paper, turning the word "transaction" into a blurry stain.
"Minister...the system log shows..."
The head of the technical department ran over, sweating profusely, his voice trembling, holding a freshly printed error report in his hand.
"NTT's D70 switch located in Marunouchi... is suspected to have suffered a thermal control module burnout due to excessive concurrent requests, which triggered a chain reaction and resulted in a physical-level logical deadlock."
"Deadlock? Burnout?"
Ogawa gave a bitter laugh. Of course, he wouldn't know that it was a deliberately created "accident"; he would only think that the bureaucrats at NTT had messed up at this crucial moment.
He looked out the window at the bustling Otemachi district. The skyscrapers still stood tall, and the sun still shone brightly.
But in his eyes, the city's blood vessels had burst.
Trillions of yen in funds were turned into stagnant water due to an "accidental" blockage in a copper wire.
……
Akasaka, top-floor office of Saionji Industrial Co., Ltd.
The thick bulletproof glass completely shut out the noise from the outside world, and the only sound inside was the slight airflow from the central air conditioning vents.
Saionji Satsuki sat in an armchair by the French windows. Today she was wearing the uniform of Seika Academy, a dark blue suit jacket with a gold school badge pinned to it, and a dark green ribbon tied at the collar meticulously. White stockings encased her slender calves, and on her feet were a pair of gleaming leather shoes.
Beside her, a black, encrypted phone without a dial pad suddenly emitted a low buzzing sound.
"Buzz—"
Satsuki put down her teacup and picked up the receiver.
"it's me."
Dojima Yutaka's voice came from the other end of the receiver. The background noise was extremely quiet, as if he were in a closed space.
"The 'Mole' has returned to the team. The core switchboard of the Marunouchi Bureau has been confirmed to have suffered physical damage."
Dojima Gen's report was devoid of any emotional fluctuation.
"What are the results of the on-site investigation?" Satsuki asked.
"The aging of the temperature control module caused the circuit to overheat, and the backup line switching valve jammed due to metal fatigue. Everything looks like... the end of its lifespan."
"very good."
Satsuki hung up the phone.
Her fingers lingered on the receiver for a second before gently tapping the table.
The first domino has already fallen.
She swiveled her chair to face the huge floor-to-ceiling window, her gaze sweeping over the vast city below.
"Fujita."
"exist."
Fujita, who had been waiting quietly in the shadows, took a half-step forward. He held another mobile phone connected to the external network, its red indicator light flashing.
"How's it going outside?"
Fujita glanced at the terminal in his hand, his voice low:
"Mr. Shimomura just sent a monitoring report. All three of NTT's core nodes in Marunouchi and Otemachi are now offline. As a result, the Tokyo Stock Exchange's quotation system is completely paralyzed, and the settlement networks of major banks are disrupted."
He paused, then looked out the window.
"In addition, the wide-area dispatch signal of the Metropolitan Police Department's Traffic Control Center was also cut off."
Satsuki followed his gaze.
The Akasaka-mitsuke intersection beneath my feet is one of Tokyo's busiest traffic arteries.
Normally, traffic flows smoothly here. But right now, a disaster is unfolding there.
Because the central computer's unified scheduling was lost, the originally intelligently adjusted "green wave" instantly became ineffective. The traffic lights at the intersection automatically switched back to the factory-set "local timer mode"—rigid and mechanical, mindlessly changing colors every thirty seconds.
Faced with the massive traffic flow during the afternoon trading hours, these rigid traffic lights are simply a drop in the ocean.
The green light turned on for the Qingshan direction, but the traffic had barely started moving when it was blocked by vehicles that hadn't yet finished crossing. Then the red light came on, splitting the traffic flow in two. The vehicles crossing laterally tried to force their way through, but ended up stuck in the middle of the intersection.
In just ten minutes.
The entire Akasaka-mitsuke intersection was completely blocked by vehicles that refused to give way to each other.
Countless drivers leaned out and cursed, horns blared incessantly, and traffic police blew whistles in an attempt to direct traffic, but in the face of such systemic paralysis, human power seemed so insignificant.
"What about S-Food?" Satsuki asked, looking at the traffic that twisted like a dead snake.
"Everything is normal."
Fujita Tsuyoshi's voice carried a hint of barely perceptible pride.
"Mr. Shimomura said that our POS machine uses a proprietary encryption protocol, bypassing NTT's crashed public network nodes. Right now, the data flow throughout Tokyo is congested, but our data is... 'speeding'."
Satsuki's lips curled up slightly.
She stood up, walked to the window, and placed her palm on the cold glass.
Beneath her feet lay paralyzed traffic, frantic traders, and countless coins stuck in copper wires.
"This is what happens when your blood vessels are too thin and your blood is too hot."
She looked at her reflection in the glass—a youthful yet indifferent face.
"It will become necrotic with the slightest stimulation."
In this crazy bubble era, everyone is rushing forward, but no one notices that the roadbed beneath their feet has long since rotted away.
"Since the giant has already fainted..."
Satsuki turned around, straightened her skirt, and moved as gracefully as a student getting ready to go to school.
"Then let everyone see who the savior is."
"Notify Wenwen News Agency that preparations can begin."