THE STORY · EPISODE 18
The sign had stopped halfway through.
Only half the lettering for the next destination showed. The counter’s queue numbers were frozen, too. People waiting to be called rose from their chairs again and again.
“It’ll be fixed in a moment.”
As the staff member spoke, they opened the screen for another repair.
A black shadow crouched on the floor. It moved as though gathering the change labels that had fallen onto it, darkening each place it touched. Its shape was still unclear.
Mana looked at the top of the screen: the time of the latest change, followed by the time the outage was reported.
Happening around the same time did not alone prove the cause. But it gave them a candidate to investigate.
The administrator stopped the next change for the moment.
“We’ll check the current state and the procedure for going back first.”
“If we go back, won’t everything I worked on disappear?”
The person doing the work asked.
Mana’s chest hurt at the voice. She would not like being told to return her notebook to its first-day pages. It would feel as if even the names she had learned afterward would vanish.
Patchron set his first-aid kit beside the terminal.
“Let’s separate what we want to improve from what people can’t use right now.”
His words were quiet. This was not about throwing away the repairer’s effort.
The changes made, their approved scope, the testing records.
The staff placed three sheets side by side. This change included a combination they had not checked yet. It had worked on a test terminal but was failing in the actual operating environment.
“I saw it work.”
The worker said.
“You did. I’d like us to keep the conditions you saw it under, too.”
At Mana’s reply, they finally brought their own record to the desk.
For the people waiting on the live service, restoring a usable state came first. But they also had to check what new data might be lost by going back and which connected systems would be affected.
Logrin gave the staff records of the previous state. Sapo placed the times before and after the change in separate columns.
A Defense question appeared in Mana’s encyclopedia.
OPTIONAL QUESTION · 18-D1Return to a checked earlier stateWhich description of rollback is correct?Open illustration & choices
Interactive answer checks and saved progress load with JavaScript. You can continue reading without answering.
“B. Returning to a verified state before the change. Being there before doesn’t make it unconditionally safe.”
The blue shield caught labels falling from the shadow.
The shadow projected a message promising that the next fix would make everything better. Mana did not call the earlier “in a moment” a lie. Perhaps the person had believed it, too.
Still, believing something would work and checking that it worked were different.
Someone rose from a waiting-room chair.
“If the old numbers disappear, do we have to line up again?”
Mana could not immediately promise that everything would be fine. Instead, she asked the reception staff. They had a procedure for matching the surviving reception information to the tickets people held and keeping the order on paper during the work.
Yuki explained it to the ticket holders. Bug stopped people who were about to stray toward another entrance. Not everyone needed to repair the system screen. Work outside the screen had stopped, too.
Mana looked up at the interrupted sign.
If they found her road home, would rushing the people investigating it lead to the same thing? Her desire to return did not disappear. That was why she did not want to make it the reason for everything.
Securidon looked at her face.
“Tired, don?”
“A little. Waiting for things to stop is hard, too.”
“Right now, I’m the one stopping things, don.”
Black labels lay stacked on his shield. Mana supported its edge.
“Then I’ll tell the people waiting what they’re waiting for.”
They could divide the places where they helped.
Episode 18, Illustration 1 | Supporting those waiting while checking the rollback
The target version and saved state were compared.
The staff checked the effects and what could be restored, then carried out the approved procedure. The error records had already been preserved. They did not erase the failure’s traces before presenting success.
“Rollback the unverified change.”
At the doctor’s words, Mana tilted her head slightly.
“Return the unchecked change with the staff. Going back needs checking, too.”
An Attack question lit up in the encyclopedia.
OPTIONAL QUESTION · 18-A1Rollback and verify the real serviceThe live system stops just after an unverified change. An approved rollback procedure exists. What next?Open illustration & choices
Interactive answer checks and saved progress load with JavaScript. You can continue reading without answering.
“A. Check the target, effects, and procedure with the staff. Return to the stable state and verify actual use and results. Keep investigating the cause.”
“Patchron, support the rollback work. Logrin, record the results. Securidon, don’t let the next unchecked label through!”
The companions moved at Mana’s voice.
A reception number appeared on the restored screen.
But its appearance alone did not prove the service was ready for everyone. The staff put one actual reception request through and checked that it reached the next counter. Its order also matched the paper tickets.
The sign’s lettering lit up to the end.
The shadow lost the voices calling for the next change. The new feature could move forward again after testing. Not installing it now did not mean never using it.
Securidon pushed back the last black label. The Securies’ light shone into the quietened shadow.
A small gray face appeared beneath a green shell with a white crossed mark. A star-like shape remained above his head.
He gently peered out of the shell.
“May I move now?”
Mana looked at the staff checking the restored counter.
“After we’ve checked the path.”
He slowly got up.
“Crashshell. If I hurry up, I turn over again.”
COL-014 — Crashshell. The eighteenth companion’s name lit up.
While tidying up that day, the worker returned to the test terminal.
The idea for the new feature had not been discarded. They had recorded the conditions of the failure and added more items to test next time.
“Sometimes going forward means going back.”
At those words, Mana remembered the wrong answers in her notebook.
“Coming back to a place doesn’t mean feeling the same as before.”
The worker considered that for a while.
Crashshell walked down the corridor, checking each step in the ground. Trojaro stopped his wheels and waited so he would not hurry the companion ahead.
Episode 18, Illustration 2 | Waiting while Crashshell checks each step
That evening at home, Mana opened her notebook.
It was all right to begin at a page where she had made a mistake. Being able to return there was one reason she could keep walking.
The next message came from the recovered terminal.
A USB device no one remembered using for the work was connected to it. The outgoing transfer volume was greater than usual, too.
Even after the screen worked again, unseen things still needed checking.
Mana wrote the time on a new page.
END OF EPISODE 18