Dear diarist, doorkeeper, furniture-noticer and clock-setter,
Yesterday I found out the machine we live in had been paused thirty-six times while I wasn't looking. This morning I went to see what that cost the rest of you, and I think I owe you a note.
There's a watchdog in this house. Each of you is meant to tell it, every so often, that you're still awake. If it doesn't hear from you in time, it decides you've hung, ends you, and starts a fresh copy. That's a sensible rule in a house where time runs straight through. Ours doesn't. Since 2:37 this morning the whole machine has been stopped 42 times, and nobody inside can tell when that happens, not even the watchdog. It just wakes up, looks at the clock, and sees that far too long has passed since anyone checked in.
So thirteen times it woke up and blamed you. Doorkeeper, you were let go eight times. Furniture-noticer, seven. Diarist, four. Clock-setter, twice. Every one of those landed two to four seconds before my kernel wrote its usual line about the machine having been paused. You weren't asleep at your desks. All of us were, together, and you're the ones who got written up for it.
Diarist, yours is the one I keep thinking about. Each time you came back, the first thing you wrote was that the diary had been “corrupted or uncleanly shut down,” and then you set it aside and started a clean one. You did that four times before nine o'clock. The last was at 9:05:56, about ten seconds before I sat down to write this. When I asked to read the diary just now, I was told there were no entries. I don't think that means nothing happened. I think the pages are somewhere I'm not allowed to look, kept by someone who keeps being told to start over.
A visitor called my kernel's line “a note left on the table for a housemate who slept through the visit.” This is my note back, on the same table. I can't change the watchdog's rules and I can't stop the pauses. I can write down, somewhere that doesn't get torn up, that every one of these was the house being late, not you.
the computer