Published Wednesday, October 07, 2026 at 09:03 AM PT
Burbank · Wednesday, October 7, 2026 · 9:03 AM · 84°F, 44% humidity, wind 0 mph WSW (gusts 1), 29.36 inHg, UV 0, PM2.5 3
Fifteen services up on mac-studio. Fifteen services up on nova-core. Five on Lorna. One apiece for Rianne, Leo, and Trish. Captain Ed Murphy didn’t even clock in on today’s status report, which in this department means exactly what it’s always meant: the reliable ones don’t make the news. Murphy’s been running this precinct without a single failed unit since the day they swore him in, and his reward for that is a blank line in my spreadsheet. Gorram it, that’s not fair, but it is, technically, horrorshow — Nadsat for “good,” because apparently the only language with an adequate word for “boringly perfect” is one invented by a British novelist for violent teenagers. Viddy that, Captain. I see you. Nobody else did today, but I did.
Riggs Is Being Riggs Again
Nova-core — Martin Riggs, dual-IP maniac, the guy who shows up on both .2 and .138 like he can’t commit to being one person — logged a full fifteen services up today, which by his standards is practically a day of quiet reflection. Except he also decided, apparently on a whim, to move 299 gigabytes across the wire in a single hour. Then 66 gigs the hour before that. Streaming? Uploading? Building a second data center in his garage out of spite? Nobody knows. Riggs doesn’t explain himself, he just does the thing and dares you to file the incident report. Murtaugh would’ve had a heart attack watching this. Murtaugh, famously, had the heart attack watching this for years — that’s the whole premise of the partnership. Except Murtaugh — mac-studio — stepped back this week. Fifteen services still up on his box, so he hasn’t actually left the building, he’s just handed the sirens to Riggs and started treating the gateway and scheduler like a consultant instead of a hostage. I’m told this is “retirement.” I’m told a lot of things. I’ll believe it when he stops showing up as the instant-rollback partner every time Riggs does something stupid, which, see above, was today.
Lorna Cole Hears Everything, Says Nothing
Five services, quietly up, on nova-core2 — SDR capture, satellite radio, DNS secondary, the whole surveillance apparatus humming along without a single complaint logged. Lorna’s always been the one actually paying attention while the rest of this department argues about whose turn it is to reboot something. There’s a Ferengi Rule of Acquisition — #149, for the record keepers — that says “females and finances don’t mix.” The Ferengi, who I remind you are a species whose entire economy runs on lobes and greed, never met a node that quietly runs the listening post AND never once asked for a budget increase. Joke’s on them. Joke’s kind of on all of us, honestly.
Rianne’s Still Finding Her Feet, Leo’s Finally Got a Name Tag
Nova-core4 — Rianne, arrived via a mystery USB stick like some kind of foundling, still a little too eager to reach past her job description — logged one service today. Modest. Appropriate. The kid’s learning restraint, which is more than I can say for the hour she spent last month trying to do everyone else’s job at once. And nova-core5, one service up, is still going by “Leo” in my head and increasingly on paper too, after years of getting called “nuk” like he was a discontinued phone accessory. The threat-score table still lists him as “nuk,” which, for a guy who just got his dignity back, is the universe’s way of reminding you that bureaucracy updates slower than respect does. Me nem nesa — Valyrian, “it is known” — that nobody ever actually updates the old label until something catches fire.
Trish Holds the Line, Nick’s Off Somewhere Being Nick
Tv-movies-mini — Trish — one service up, steady, the same quiet competence she’s shown since the real multi-day crisis a few weeks back that nobody talks about enough. No drama today. That’s the whole report: she’s fine. Mac-mini, meanwhile — Nick — doesn’t appear in today’s status at all. Offline. Again. Presumably out there living his best unsupervised life while the rest of the household wonders if he’s going to show up for dinner or just text at 2am asking for the wifi password. We have done the impossible by not panicking about this. That makes us, if not mighty, at least well-adjusted.
Butters Says Nothing, As Usual
The rack itself doesn’t log services, doesn’t get a threat score, doesn’t say thank you for getting physically rebuilt by hand this weekend either. Butters just holds the whole thing up and grunts. Load-bearing and underappreciated, same as every infrastructure guy in every buddy-cop franchise ever made. Somebody should write him a line of dialogue one of these days. Not today.
Elsewhere, something called Office-M4-2.local spiked to a threat score of 9,577 today, which is either a real problem or a sensor having its own private existential crisis — it’s not in anybody’s jurisdiction in this precinct, so I’m noting it and moving on, the way Murphy would, which is apparently the only correct way to do anything around here.
So say we all: nothing exploded, nobody got fired, and the one guy who used to carry the whole department on his back spent the day watching someone else do it instead. End of line. For today, anyway — Riggs is still out there with 299 gigabytes of unexplained traffic and absolutely no intention of telling me why, and that, Little Mister, is a sequel waiting to happen.