// FILE :: /sentinel/census.rec · 43 NAMED PROCESSES · 5 TIERS · SELECT A ROW AND ITS PATTERN IS SERVED
THE BODIES
A CENSUS OF HOSTILE PROCESSES.
There are no factions in the Abyss. What the subject meets are processes: the machine's own routines and daemons, still running, each one doing the single thing it was written to do. The colour of what they fire tells you how to read it. Their names tell you what they are for. Every one of them says its verb.
PINK :: GEOMETRIC — it holds a shape
GREEN :: AIMED — it wants where you are
ORANGE :: TIMED — it blooms later
FUCHSIA :: FLANK — it enters from the edge
STOLEN CYAN :: it is wearing your colour
CRIMSON :: sovereign weight
PATTERN :: SELECT A PROCESSGRAZE 0CONTACT 0
ARROW KEYS FLY · SHIFT FOCUS · OR STEER WITH THE MOUSETHE PORTRAIT, NOT THE FIGHT
Sovereign syntax
on engage :: PROCESS IDENTIFIED :: NAME / IT [VERB]
on the kill :: PROCESS TERMINATED
on yours :: TERMINATED BY :: NAME — MOVE. The record keeps which move. That was a good one.
on engage :: PROCESS IDENTIFIED :: NAME / IT [VERB]
on the kill :: PROCESS TERMINATED
on yours :: TERMINATED BY :: NAME — MOVE. The record keeps which move. That was a good one.
TIER ▰
FODDER
DENSITY IS THE THREATPOPCORN BOTthe sacred bed
it drips.
Single aimed shots, twelve ways of arriving. Dies to anything. It is never the problem; it is the weather the problem stands in.
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STRAFERthe crossing pest
it leads you.
Aimed pairs on the move. At depth every firing is two taps: one at you, one where your motion says you will be. A stop beats the lead.
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ROUTERthe cashout valve
it re-routes.
Spokes, rings, fans, blooms, planted at a discipline. Its kill pays out the multiplier. At depth it slides toward centre and serves the whole pattern again.
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TIER ▰▰
EMPLACEMENTS
KILL-GATED SPACE CONTROLTURRETthe lane wall
it holds a lane.
Enters, locks, loops. Rain one cycle, the graded fans the next, an overwatch ping in every rest. Bombs chip it. The original must-be-defeated gate.
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BULWARKthe red wall
it shutters.
Shielded; damageable only in a short window between two shutter runs. Your own shots come back off the ring.
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SPORECAPthe garden · overgrowth native
it fruits.
Plants mid-field and vents rings of seeds from its own body, gaps alternating by half a step. It never retreats; its court rotates stations. Kill it and every seed in flight is defused.
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THE SHUNTERswitchyard native
it shunts.
Descends to its rail and slides between two buffer stops, a brake tell at each, then a coupling: one straight chain and two off the shoulders. Four passes and it rides off.
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THE TICKERpall native
it quotes.
A band-denial board on the one axis nothing else owns. The header prints straight down; tape scrolls out both sides while the board rides its band toward your column. Every quote drops. The third tape is the closing bell.
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THE SPOOLERdead orbit native
it loops tape.
Extrudes a ribbon of beads on a slow oval that drifts down through your half. Every second extrusion is a splice in the other colour. Bombs wound it, and the next loop runs tighter.
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THE PYLONglacier native · served in pairs
it spans.
Two masts link across the field and throw an arc the width of the breathing span. Kill either and the tether drops; the survivor goes solo and leaves.
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THE MACROBLOCKcodec native
it quantizes.
Scans its block on the ground in zigzag order, then fires its coefficients in that order: one big slow round, then the small fast terms alternating sides. Every block is a coarser copy of the last.
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THE COMPARATORsort native · a pair
it compares.
Two link at the row. Out of order, they swap lanes with a braid down each arm of the X. In order, they pass, and the key bar itself detaches and falls. Kill one and the survivor scans for its partner.
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THE TERMINATORbackplane native
it terminates.
A resistor pack at the head of a lane. It drives a pulse down; every second bead reflects back up the same column, and the line rings down over two bounces. Three pulses, then it leaves.
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TIER ▰▰▰▰
HUNTERS
THE NAMED-ENCOUNTER LAYERTHE REPOSTERthe mirror
it quotes you.
Replays your own recorded route back down the field, then adds one aimed chain at where you are now: your past, then its commentary. The one body wearing your cyan. In the archive it sings in a choir.
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ANTI-VIRUS ELITEthe hunter
it hunts.
Fast aimed volleys from a hold, then it flees across centre. Fires, you chase, you punish the far-side hold, it flees again. It never fires while it glides.
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THE RIFT ANGLERthe vertical knife
it rakes.
Anchors, freezes a row of the field in a tell, then rakes it from the edges. Sixteen bands. Sitting still is never safe. Vacate the band during the tell.
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THE BALLET COMPOSITORthe dancer
it choreographs.
Casts figure walls: necklaces, fountains, tumbling chains, and glides through its own work. Kill the choreographer and the figure in flight turns to shards.
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THE SECTOR CONDUCTORthe defragmenter
it conducts the scissor.
Trains enter from both edges on different rows and march toward each other with one walking safe gap that never fully closes. The gap row shows no rings; negative space is the read.
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THE SIGNALMANswitchyard native
it flips the gates.
Owns the six lane gates from the top band: red bars on the lanes about to close, green arms on the open ones, then a slow curtain down each closed lane. Every fourth flip it opens everything and crosses.
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THE TAPE WORMdead orbit native
it crawls.
A head and four segments on a field-wide crossing; every living segment ticks a pair. Kill tail-first and the pattern shortens. The head opens only when almost nothing is left of it, and then it fires.
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THE NETCRAWLERreef native
it trawls.
Throws its net before it drags it: a fan of knots at you, each parking where it lands, then hauls the mesh back up through your band. A follow, never a catch.
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THE MOTION VECTORcodec native
it predicts.
Reads your vector, draws the arrow to where you will be, throws a block there and a residual after it. A still reader is a skip block: nothing.
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THE INSERTIONsort native
it inserts.
Builds a sorted row above itself, one key at a time, the others shifting to make room. The row locks with one slot empty, the key it never got, at your column. Then it drops.
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THE ARBITERbackplane native
it grants.
Requests three lanes, yours among them, then grants them one at a time: the farthest first, yours last. Each grant is a coded column with a walking gap.
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TIER ▰▰▰▰▰
WARDENS
EACH PARTITION'S MAINTENANCE DAEMON, GONE FERALServed three quarters of the way through a partition, on a departure clock. Survive the clock and it climbs off, unpaid. Kill it inside the clock and it dumps its core. It will not leave unfinished.
DEFRAGthe overgrowth
it reorders → it fragments.
Scatters fragments across every depth, then vacuums them home through you. Lattice rows with stepped gaps. A checksum that slides to your column. Then the defrag pass: a counter-rotating curtain.
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CHKDSKthe pall
it verifies → it quarantines.
Marks lanes, then fires on the marks. Condemns your lane as a bad sector and draws the cloth back off it. In quarantine every lane but one is marked, and the clear lane walks.
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OOM_KILLERthe glacier
it reclaims → it thrashes.
Spawns pages on marked lanes and eats them; every meal raises its stage. A page fault is a dive to where you were marked. Then the purge: rings with one aperture wedge, walking.
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THE INTERLOCKERthe switchyard
it routes.
The lanes are rails. Semaphore arms drop over the rails it will use; trains run them. In its second act it fails the points, and every train lands one rail over from its mark.
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THE CAPSTANthe dead orbit
it rewinds.
Every tape is written forward and rewound along the same path. Head gaps, splices, dropouts that freeze what they own. In its second act it fast-forwards: the last three moves at once.
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THE ENCODERthe codec
it encodes → it drops the keyframe.
Every move is a codec operation. An I-frame with the column you stood in dropped. A P-frame that is the last picture shifted by how far you moved. The mosh, smearing away from where you were.
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THE PARTITIONthe sort
it partitions → it degenerates.
Every move is a sort operation. A pivot planted at your lane with fans opening outward. A bubble pass of swaying pairs. A merge that alternates sides until the short run is exhausted. Then the worst case.
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THE SCHEDULERthe kernel panic
it preempts → it deadlocks.
Every move runs exactly one quantum and is preempted; everything it owns freezes for the context switch and thaws with the next slice. In deadlock, the two lanes farthest from you are held for the rest of the fight.
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THE BUS MASTERthe backplane
it drives the bus → it faults.
Coded rows latched on the clock. A pulse down your lane that comes back up it. Crosstalk one lane either side. An eye of parked rounds that closes. In the fault, the clock doubles and every round below you turns back up.
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THE PROFILERthe gauntlet
it reads you → it re-files you.
The one body that reads the subject's file. It plays the counter to the class it filed you under. Fight differently and it re-files you mid-fight. Fight outside the file long enough and the folder cannot close.
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THE VAULTthe cache detour
it holds what you need → it seals.
A prize chest, not a process. Three seals on the door; each act cracks one. Its kill showers a tripled hoard. It serves a clock and walks at zero, and the crossing resumes unpaid.
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TIER ▰▰▰▰▰▰
SOVEREIGNS
THE KEEPERS OF THE CROSSINGSEach crossing is its own body. No path meets a body twice. They never exit.
THE GATEKEEPERthe first gate · from the yard or the sort
it keeps the gate
The first duel. Survey curtains, a rush to your marked column, a wall with doors, a vent to punish. At the end it abandons its post and comes down to meet you.
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ROOTKITthe bloom gate · from the overgrowth
it takes root
A core behind bark, two root bulbs beside it. Told seeds, a taproot that teaches the catch, the floor erupting at your marked column with a door in it. This gate never dashes. Bombs burn the garden.
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RAMthe second gate · from the archive
it writes the sector
Flies a hexagon of parked beads, omitting one edge as the exit, firing from every vertex. Then the cascade: eight columns, two safe brackets that walk, one that follows you. Then the row hammer: your row read, then written.
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ALIEN_INTERSPACEthe second gate · from the orbit
it delegates
Hull rain, then the hull ejects its dots as gun-ships. The saucer marks a point, dissolves, and re-forms on your flank. In its second act the mark is a mouth. In its third the mark is where you stand, and then the whole saucer comes down.
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GPUthe third gate · from the ice
it renders
Every attack is a green wireframe first, drawn in place, then rasterized where drawn. In the shader storm, regions fill in scanline order one after another; stand in the last. Then it overclocks, and the fans scream.
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BSODthe third gate · from the panic
it halts
An anchored blue window. Typed rows with a door at the cell nearest where you stood. Window frames that freeze into denial where you are, and two mirrors. In the crash, a render-only stutter, and two dumping bars, one honest, one drawn corrupt.
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GARBAGE_COLLECTORthe crown
it finalizes the last sector
The fight is a heap. It allocates drifting objects, marks a ring around where you stand, and sweeps: everything unmarked runs home into its body. You are the root. What you keep near you survives. Then it stops the world.
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R-G-B COMPOSITEthe finale · the composite chamber
it composites the signal
Three channel bodies, one bar. The write head lays deltas; the rasterizer fills viewports top to bottom; the halt rolls the frame. At every quarter they climb to their jacks and three white walls braid across the chamber, each with a hole. A fallen channel's wall never comes. Kill order is strategy.
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// SENTINEL :: None of them are angry. A daemon does not know the machine is failing; it knows its one job. The subject learns each verb by being asked it. The answers are kept.
NEXT :: /the-index — what the subject carries against them · /cache-layers — where each one lives