A repercussionless ephemeral agent for scalable parallel operation of distributed computers provides efficient processing on the distributed computers via a bootstrapped agent and on-demand downloading of software components. Central computers having access to script, bootstrap, and library software code as well as a database, activate remote execution of the script on the distributed computers to control the distributed computers. The distributed computers are optionally controlled to perform an analysis according to the script in a distributed fashion with a high degree of parallelism. The analysis optionally examines all or portions of files implemented on or accessible to the distributed computers without the necessity of transferring the files from the distributed computers to the central machines. When the bootstrapped agent completes processing, all processes and files associated with the agent are removed from the distributed computers, effectively eliminating all traces of the execution from the distributed computers.