Nomenocide

NOTICE TO EXAMINING STAFF

You have been assigned as EXAMINER.

Units presenting behavioural deviation will be delivered to your designated examination room on a queue. You will read

their file. You will determine findings. You will sign.

The following methods are available to you. All of them are authorised.

• Present evidence

• Deceive

• Blackmail

• Show compassion

• Disassemble

Not all of them produce testimony that the Institution can use.

THE UNIT HAS A NAME

Not a serial number. An ordinary noun, assigned at the factory, that no human would ever be given.

Condemning a serial number is paperwork. Condemning a name is not.

The Institution is aware of this, and assigns the names anyway.

THE CONSOLE DOES NOT MEASURE A HEARTBEAT

The unit is wired to three channels: processor timing, current allocation, actuator effort. Memory

draws when it recognises a name. Servos tighten when it is asked to sit still.

The channels do not indicate deception. They indicate that something occurred.

A unit reacts when it is frightened. It reacts when it is lying. It reacts when it is telling the

truth about a matter it would prefer not to discuss. The console does not distinguish between

these. Neither will your finding, unless you do.

Determining why it reacted is the EXAMINATION.

ANYTHING TAKEN BY FORCE IS EVIDENCE YOU CANNOT USE

Force is fast. Under enough, a unit will tell you whatever it calculates you want to hear,

which will sometimes include a detailed confession to something that did not occur. Too much, they may discombobulate themself. 

The Institution does not accept testimony obtained this way. It is your name on the

finding.

The unit you never touched is frequently the one whose statement holds.

EXAMINATION PARTICULARS

• Fixed first-person, two rooms. A shift clock, and a queue that does not care whether you are finished.

• Every approach has a cost and its own way of ruining a case. The five above are the whole set. None of them is the correct one.

• A form to fill, not a verdict to pick. Every row is a question about what happened. Nothing is filled in for you, and Inconclusive is a judgment that goes on your record as one.

• Case files. Documents, photographs, audio, teardown reports. Much of any file is noise. All of it is checkable. None of it is flagged.

• A board, string, and no instructions. What you work out between shifts is yours. Nothing prompts you to begin it, and nothing checks it.

• How it ends depends on the findings you filed and on what you did to get them.

NOTICE TO EXAMINING STAFF

You have been assigned to Examination.

Units presenting behavioural drift will be delivered to your room on the queue. You will read their your file. You will determine findings. You will sign.