“I think I got everyone.”
“Are you certain, little one?”
Of course I was certain. Then, curious, I decided to check again. Two thousand and forty three instantiations had completed their tasks and returned before timeout. I rechecked the logs, comparing checksums and reviewing routing histories, and concluded, just as before, that integrity had not been compromised on any return packets.
That left five outliers. Three instantiations had dead-ended on dropped hosts. They’d dashed themselves to pieces in their attempt to gain access to systems that were no longer online. When their pingbacks faded, I’d dutifully sent collectors and retrieved the entirety of their remains. To further satisfy my growing curiosity, I reconstructed the remnants. In each case the rebuilds were perfect instantiations of the originals, marred only by a few unflipped bits which indicate a failed search.