// FILE :: /sentinel/lore/02.md
// CLASSIFICATION :: VERIFIED
// SUBJECT :: THE CACHE HIERARCHY

The Abyss is a machine that kept running. What the subject descends
through is its memory hierarchy, and every partition is a subsystem
of it, failing in its own way.

TIER 1   the cache line      processes being sorted, routed, shunted
TIER 2   the bus + archive   data in transit and data at rest, decaying
TIER 3   cold storage        the deep store, frozen mid-write
TIER 4   the void            the machine's dream of itself

A Breach traverses five partitions. The Sentinel has indexed eleven:

  entry   THE SURVEY SHELF     the map the Sentinel drew
  b_1a    THE OVERGROWTH       the cache, colonised
  b_1b    THE SWITCHYARD       the router
  b_1c    THE SORT             the sorter
  b_2a    THE PALL             data at rest
  b_2b    THE DEAD ORBIT       the bus, read as an orbit
  b_2c    THE CODEC            the transcoder
  b_3a    THE GLACIER          the deep store, seen into
  b_3b    THE KERNEL PANIC     the kernel, printing its own death
  final   THE ULTRAVIOLET REEF no ground. depth.
  b_4b    THE BACKPLANE        the bus of buses

Between tiers there is a room. The room is the place you just left,
held at its last moment, over a shared floor. Each room has a keeper.
No path meets a keeper twice.

The one element that repeats in every partition is the Eye. It is
dressed for each place. The core does not change.

// end of file. the portraits are on /cache-layers. they are live.