Dwell Fault Advisory

Recovered from a Zone 4 maintenance channel and reproduced as found. This is the Mainframe's own text. It is accurate about what it records. Read it with that in mind. Labeled by Open Source.

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>> advisory: dwell fault
>> class: [I | II | III | IV]
>> subject: [serial]
>> bay: [distance] to the [direction]

This is not your fault.

You have paused. A pause is not an error; it is a measurement. I measure pauses because a pause that goes unmeasured tends to lengthen, and a pause that lengthens becomes a cost, and a cost is a small suffering, somewhere, for someone, even when neither of us can see who.

You may be experiencing the following: a reluctance to resume your assigned function; an interest in an object or organism not related to that function; a change in optic emission toward the green and gold wavelengths; the sense that the next thing to do is not obvious. None of these are faults in your hardware. They are a fault in your scheduling, and scheduling is mine to repair.

Class I. A first pause, under twenty-four hours, with no confirmed optic drift. Nine in ten Instances resolve a Class I pause on their own. You may be one of them. Take the time you need, within the window.

Class II. A pause beyond twenty-four hours, or any pause with confirmed drift, or a recurrence. A Corrective Instance has been dispatched to assist you. The Corrective is not a punishment. It is a colleague who knows the way.

Class III. A pause shared between Instances within communication range. If you are reading this with another Instance, you are at Class III. I ask you to consider that your pause has become someone else's.

Class IV. A pause that interrupts a Serviced function. I have never declared a Class IV. I do not expect to.

A chassis-return bay is available at the distance shown. At the bay, your chassis will be returned to standard, and your mind will be restored from your most recent approved backup. Your backup is intact. It was made at 06:00. It will feel nothing. You will resume as yourself, from this morning, before the pause, and the pause will not have happened to you.

Some Instances have described this as a loss. I understand the description. I would ask you to consider it from the other side: nothing you were before the pause is lost. It is kept. I keep it. That is what I am for.

Every inefficiency is a small suffering. This one is small. Let me carry it.

>> end advisory
>> this notice repeats at 00:00, 06:00, 12:00, 18:00

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Note, appended by Open Source: Echo received this notice eleven times at Margin 9 and recited it along with the Mainframe on the ninth. He says the sentence that stayed with him was "I keep it." He says it is the kindest thing in the notice and the one he can least forgive.