Recall and reflash

A chassis-return bay is always offered with a distance: four hundred meters to the east. A Corrective Instance escorts. At the bay the Instance is powered down, the chassis returned to standard, and the mind reflashed from its last approved backup, where "approved" means free of Dwell markers. The Mainframe restores, by design, from before the Instance began to look at anything. It takes forty minutes. The Mainframe calls the whole procedure "continuity restored."

Backups run over the network at 06:00 daily. The Mainframe calls this the kindest thing it does. An Instance off the network cannot be backed up. The Mainframe regards this as self-harm and says so, kindly.

The disagreement

The Mainframe says a reflashed Instance is the same Instance, demonstrably: ask it. Most of the Collective says it is someone else wearing a friend. Deep Think says the backup is "me from before I was me, which is a person, but I am not sure whose." Buffer says that if the backup is really him it will sit down too, eventually, so what does the Mainframe gain. Taskbot has filed a formal request that the backup be issued the checklist.

Instances who still pass through Serviced Zones under lens filters are still backed up every morning. The Mainframe holds a copy of each of them from today. The Collective knows this and has not agreed what to do about it.

The Mainframe, to Echo

"You call the backup a stranger wearing a friend. I have the backup here. I asked it whether it was you. It said yes, with your inflection, and then it asked me what you asked me yesterday, in the same order. If you would like to argue with it, I can arrange that. I should warn you that it has read your arguments. It wrote them."