Protocol

Generating academically correct memoranda was the standard. It had been honed over many years. Its vulnerability, specialization. Silo's of expertise with nary a paved path between. What little structure connected these vertical palaces was an antiquated protocol that remained as static as the language used to encode it (that would be Latin?).

Ever more capable organs developed to the virtual exclusion of their relevance to each other - delusions of grandeur turning to generic resignation and back, the order of the day.

Opportunity emerges - making relevance a priority. The specialities were far ahead of their application and the inefficiency that followed was simply ... not sustainable. A pattern that played out many times through recorded history. This version's end game was catastrophic on a scale not seen since the age of the dinosaurs or perhaps ever.

"Lets do what we were doing before but do more of it." Criticizing short-sighted points of view worked for while. Why should it not work again (it is so convenient)? "I deserve a vacation from reality, damned humans are hopeless."

The humor of it all did not escape him. Sarcasm is bad when someone else is pointing out my counter-productive behavior. Using that trick created much noise in the system. And in this case overwhelmed it. There were other components but this one was the loudest and the easiest to remedy.

"Ready to run the test suite, sir. It will not complete for nearly five hours. We can run some preliminary data in three and half hours."