The ABC Conjecture had been solved!
Whether for the mathematics community or the future destiny of human civilization, this was unquestionably a historic day.
And Cornell University in the United States, which administered the arXiv electronic preprint repository, had the distinct honor of experiencing that fact earlier-and more acutely-than anyone else.
Cornell University Computer Engineering Academy.
The morning calm was shattered by a sudden crisis.
The arXiv repository, which had always run fairly reliably, suddenly collapsed under an explosive surge in traffic, as though it had suffered a massive DoS attack.
"Damn it! Is today some special holiday? Why is everyone logging on at exactly this time..."
"Traffic has increased a hundredfold... God, what happened last night?"
"Who knows! Hurry up and call Los Alamos National Laboratory. Tell them to bring the backup servers online!"
"They're already online... Give it up. There has to be something wrong with this much traffic. This definitely can't be normal user activity!"
The laboratory descended into chaos.
Faced with the crippled servers, the professors called in to help tried everything they could, but remained helpless.
Traffic on arXiv had always been relatively steady, with a morning peak and an evening peak. Most users chose those two periods to check for new developments in the research areas they followed.
For precisely that reason, Los Alamos National Laboratory, which operated the servers, had allocated extra server resources to arXiv. What no one had expected was that events would outpace their preparations.
Those additional backup resources were a mere drop in the bucket. The sudden surge in traffic brought the entire website down in an instant, and now no one could get in...
Dr. Osmon, who was responsible for maintaining the repository, was sweating with anxiety. Seeing that the situation had spiraled out of control, he immediately