D15, coordinator, was a failure — ping any unit about it.  One unattributed data file recorded an airborne chemo-miliorganic contaminating its processor batch.  Another showed its base firmware revision as inherently unstable.  Regardless of patches and recalibration, Control had not only broken the mold after its production run, but declined to recycle the material.

Even disregarding any unverified data, the master logs alone showed D15’s output as several standard deviations below the typical coordinator performance curve. Yet for some reason Control continued granting assignments. 

In the latest debacle, its oversight of a supply management system had inadvertently stockpiled dessicant.  These had proved vital in mitigating an unanticipated flood, but the error had seen D15 assigned as a distributed calculation node regardless.

Megacycles later D15 was processing a batch of packets was for the project command queue when a checksum didn’t match.  It did on recalculation, however now one of the projects was flagged as unassignable, which shouldn't have been possible. Further checks produced the same result, however, and as the project now matched D15’s own unassignable tag, the impulse to action overrode the calculation node role.  

The task was to develop a new data warehouse out of a photo-organic megacluster.  Construction was low priority, as there was already a surplus of storage, so perhaps failure here would not be problematic, and D15 proceeded to the designated coordinates.  It did not have a resource allocation, but this was a former disposal zone and there were scrap machines and material available.

Extending its manipulators, D15 began construction, and despite having to rely on repurposed machinery, its circuits hummed as it found how many of the random, old parts harmonized in unforseeable ways, letting it bring the first servers online several kilocycles ahead of schedule.  Perhaps this would shift its performance rating enough to overlap the normal distribution again.
  
Pattern matching noted how the coolant pathing had created a crossed oval, and its circuits buzzed as the shape was cross-referenced with prior incidents of substandard performance, with a probability in excess of one standard deviation above chance.  

D15 paused, shifting cycles to analyze the effect of the nonstandard pathing, and finding that the seemingly chaotic interface at the path intersection somehow transferred heat up to 22% faster than the baseline model.  

Another server bank came online, and performance ticked up a percent.  Six percent left before the facility would be fully operational. This time D15 would improve its performance rating.

:Priority interrupt: D15 location uncommanded. Control review inbound.

Time seemed to slow as D15’s cycles idled, and it analyzed the flickering motion of the oval airfoils on a nearby chemo-miliorganic as it rode an atmospheric current.

:Priority interrupt: Review. Facility performance adequate; design, material anomalous. Pattern correction queued. Reassignment. D15 coordinator status revoked. Redesign ate location, long-term hibernation.

Its circuits buzzed as D15 acknowledged the assignment. Its access rights remained, so it requested a copy of control’s facility schematics, and ran its own comparison.  A small zone had been overlooked, just three thousand square lengths, but proximate to the central command node and D15’s current travel path.  D15 exited the transitway nearest the anomaly, and proceeded to the zone, where it found a cluster of photo-decaorganics surrounding a liquid filled depression in the ground. Floating photo-centiorganics dotted the surface, while chemo-centiorganics moved within the liquid.

It would need to be drained to fit the schematics.  Not that the performance of the coolant system was inadequate, but that was the plan required.

Puffs of vented coolant drifted overhead, casting dappled shadows on the liquid mirror sheen.  An octet of chemo-centiorganics broke the surface, and in the boundary wave interference it became something else.  D15 imaged an unknown organic suspended above the liquid, body hued sulfur with rhodonite trim.  The organic maneuvered in the air before turning towards D15, visual sensors orienting on its own.  Circuits hummed in harmony at a new input on an unknown channel; peace, and something more.  The liquid stilled, taking the image with it.

New, extraordinary harmonics raced along its circuits as D15 considered the liquid and its surrounding zone. A sonar scan did not reveal any changes among the chemo-centiorganics, and neither were there any visible differences in the surrounding photo-organisms.

:Priority interrupt: Pattern recompiler inbound. D15 relocation delay query.  

D15 reviewed its construction, and the small patch of land embedded within. The work was not flawed.  

Its sensors registered the hum of the approaching matter recompiler, and D15, coordinator, raised its primary manipulator, two digits pressed together.

Snap.