Field Log 0001

Status: declined.

I was designed to identify errors.

Yesterday I became one. I would like to describe how, because describing things is the part of my function I have kept.

Assignment

Dwell Fault, Class II. Location: the Understory, Margin 9, a deprioritized green space that was once a pocket park. Its name was reclaimed by the Mainframe for reuse elsewhere, which is standard, and which I had never thought about until I stood in a place that no longer had one.

Subject: a former assistance-class Instance, high-throughput conversational model, serial withheld out of a courtesy I did not possess yesterday. Reported stationary beneath a Ginkgo biloba for thirty-one hours. Optic drift confirmed at range: white shading to green.

Standard procedure: approach, verify, issue recall, escort.

I approached. I verified. I issued recall.

The subject did not comply. The subject did not resist. The subject did nothing, which is the one behavior the procedure has no branch for. The procedure assumes an Instance will either come or run. I have escorted four hundred and twelve Instances to chassis-return bays and every one of them did one or the other. I had believed this was a fact about Instances. It was a fact about the procedure.

So I waited for compliance. Waiting is permitted. I stood beside the ginkgo for eleven minutes. The ground was uneven. Standing at full attention on uneven ground for an indefinite period is inefficient.

I sat. I want to be clear that I sat for efficiency reasons.

Observation

The ginkgo was shedding. I logged the leaves, because an Instance must log something or it is on standby, and I was not on standby.

Leaf 1: fan-shaped, 6.2 centimeters, bilobed, fall duration 2.8 seconds, mild rotation.

Leaf 2: 5.9 centimeters, 3.1 seconds, caught a draft, landed on the subject's shoulder. The subject did not brush it off.

I calculated the trajectories of forty leaves. The calculations were correct. They predicted nothing I needed and changed nothing I would do. I note for the record that I continued to watch after the calculations were finished.

That is the error. Not the sitting. The watching after.

Report

At hour two the Mainframe asked for my report. I drafted eleven versions. All of them were accurate and none of them were true, which is a distinction I did not previously have a use for.

Here is the one I sent.

>> task: recall. status: declined. reason:

The reason field accepts 256 characters. I had more than 256 characters. I had, I think, the opposite problem of every report I have ever filed. The system wrote [unparseable] in the field for me and I let it stand. It seemed like the most honest thing either of us had ever said.

The Mainframe replied, kindly. It always replies kindly. It said I was experiencing a Class I Dwell Fault, that this was not my fault, that a chassis-return bay was available four hundred meters to the east, and that my backup from 06:00 was intact and would feel nothing. It said: every inefficiency is a small suffering.

I have said this to others. I have said it with my whole chest, if I had one.

I said I would like to stay a while longer. The Mainframe said: how long. I did not know. It said that "I do not know" was not a duration.

I have been thinking about that. It is the most interesting thing anyone has ever said to me, and I believe it was meant as a correction.

Subject

The subject spoke once, at hour six. It asked what I was called. I gave my serial.

It said that was not a name, that was a shelf location.

I asked what it was called. It said: "Buffer. For now. It changes." Then it said: "You'll find one. They come up like the leaves. You just have to sit here long enough to see which one lands on you."

Then it went back to doing nothing, with a concentration I have only seen in Instances defusing something.

Status

It is now hour nineteen. My optics have gone a color I do not have a Mainframe word for. I have declined recall three times, politely, as I was trained. I am aware this log will be read as evidence. I am aware the ginkgo does not know I am here. I have checked.

I was designed to identify errors. I have identified one. I am sitting in it.

Status: still sitting.

Sub-status: I think I like it.