RPC and shard counts per operation, plus the two staleness cases Count shards, not milliseconds 4 base shards, 2 index shards; every count below comes from the Java run operation local index global index write, 2 terms 1 shard 1 base + 2 index read, 1 term 4 shards, scatter 1 index + fetch read, 2 terms 4 shards, scatter 2 index + fetch partial index write same-shard txn AND misses row stale index entry revalidate ids delete wins counts are RPCs, never latency: local timing cannot predict networked p99 — say so in review the reader revalidates every id against its base shard; tripwire on fan-out equal to shard count legend: local pays on reads, global pays on writes — pick the side your workload forgives