Bleedthrough
Machines taken over at breach scars, still doing the jobs they were built for.
What it is
Partly built A few Bleedthrough machine bodies fill part of the Wick's enemy deck in the development build. The named constructs and the life of a scar are the game's design.
Bleedthrough is the Seal leaking upward in slow pulses. At a breach scar it takes over machines, and the machines go on doing their jobs. Nothing in it is hunting anybody.
A construct is exactly as big as the machine it took, and it is lit by its own work lamps. It keeps its asset plate, so you can read who owns the thing that is endangering you. See Bleedthrough and breach scar.
Six facts the crews agree on
None of them is proven. Fringe crews work by them anyway.
| The crews agree | What it looks like | Why, as the crews put it |
|---|---|---|
| It only happens at breach scars. | An edge the eye draws twice, where the geometry is wrong. | The scar is the way in. |
| It only takes machines. | Cranes, gates, sweepers, shutter motors. | Nothing up here'll hold it except something that was already built to be told what to do. |
| It only takes machines still in service. | A machine struck off on paper is left alone. | Struck off means safe. See the host law. |
| It doesn't make anything. | A crane lifts. A gate closes. A sweeper sweeps. | It keeps to the job its host was built for. |
| It has a work area and it stays in it. | A hoist runs its shift. A sluice keeps its channel. | The work area is the job's area. |
| It doesn't finish. It starts again. | The same job, at the same hour, the next day. | Because nobody told it to stop. |
The host law
How the Fringe keeps a fledgling alive.
Each of the three answers handles the law in its own way. Meridian files it. Scrapline tags it: isolate, tag, sign, date. The Undercurrent copies both, distributes both and argues about what it means.
A Fringe crew teaches a fledgling five lessons, in this order.
- Lesson 1
The work area
It has a work area. Get out of the work area.
- Lesson 2
The hour
It's punctual. Learn the hour and be somewhere else at it.
- Lesson 3
The tag
If it's got a tag on it, it's furniture. If it hasn't, it isn't.
- Lesson 4
The job
Don't stand between it and the job.
- Lesson 5
The murals
Nothing that never worked has ever been taken. That's why the murals are still up. It is Mrs. Amperage's rule, and nothing decorative has ever been touched. See the murals.
Why it reads as wrong
Constructs never roar. They use their host's own alarms: a reversing beeper, a shift whistle, the four-tone hoist warning. The sound is a warehouse at night.
They move at the speed the host was rated for. They do not die, and when they are beaten they stop. They telegraph in the host's own procedure, they service each other, and they are hostile to every banner alike.
The glitching belongs to the scar. A construct is a machine with a job. It never speaks. It has alarms.
The best account of a breach is the one told from a window in the Wick. Read the whole passage.
Constructs
Eleven that the crews have names for. Names may change.
Designed The named constructs are the game's design. Their tags and street names are still being checked.
| Street name | Asset tag | Where | The job |
|---|---|---|---|
| the Repossessor | MERIDIAN ASSET RE-1140 | Breaker Rows, the Slab | Corporate asset-recovery hardware with an ICE mind behind the wheel. |
| the Cage | MAN-HOIST 2 (ROW 9) | Breaker Rows | Doors at the hour, sixty seconds of dwell, then down. It has never closed on anyone who didn't step in. The Rows' rule: don't be curious at the hour. |
| Switchmother | MERIDIAN GRID, SUBSTATION 6-ROW | Breaker Rows | Balances the load on a block that has no houses on it. See Switchmother. |
| the Formality | CHECKPOINT ARM 9 | Overpass Fields | It has not refused to release anybody. It has not finished with anybody. Meridian files it, and the file is why it is still there. |
| the Sweeper | MUNICIPAL SWEEP 3 | The Wick | Clears the roadway of loose material before shift change. The Wick brings its downed inside before first light. |
| the Levelman | SLUICE GATE 4, THE SPILL | Overpass Fields | Four arms off one gate, keeping the channel inside its band. The channel is inside its band. |
| the Findings | CLARITY SYSTEMS, INSPECTION SET 6 | All three Fringe districts | Photographs the defect before it services it. After twelve years without a pass, everything is a defect. Children are told: don't be in the frame. |
| the Round | CONDUIT RELAY, ROUTE 7 | The Fringe | It doesn't blink. It is at the next anchor on the route, because that is the next anchor on the route. |
| the Attending | TOURNIQUET FRANCHISE 0417, TRIAGE ARM 2 | The Wick | Stabilise, seal, hold for the observation period. Nobody has established what it thinks the observation period is. Taught in three words: don't be treated. |
| the Curfew | DEADBOLT CIVIL, SHUTTER MOTOR, TYPE 4 | The Wick | Closes on the alarm and stays closed until the alarm clears. The alarm has been live since the tear opened. It is where the Wick's Shutter Line comes from. |
| the Muster | MUSTER SHED 3, CLOCK | The Deadband | Nobody starts the shift until every card is punched. Three banners have held that slab, and none of them has touched the clock. |
Breach scars
How a scar ages, and what the city does at each stage.
The named scars are the First Scar in the Wick, where a new Legend's first street fight happens, the Great Scar in Breaker Rows, the scatter across the rest of the Fringe, and the Fracture over the Deadband.
- Stage 1
A tear
The geometry goes wrong first and quietly: an edge the eye draws twice. Nothing comes out yet, and salvage is worth the most. The fences know within a day.
- Stage 2
A hot wall
The scar is glitching, loud at dusk, and it is where most of what comes through comes out. Meridian condemns the block and never the scar. The Habitation Trust reclassifies the street as transitional and does not lower the rent. See hot wall.
- Stage 3
Scabbed
The tear closes to a seam. Crews say nothing that already came through leaves, and that nothing mends inside the radius. Rates drop.
- Stage 4
Dead
No visible difference from a street. Tenancies reopen into a block that still has a Cage in it, running a shift.
The Fracture
The strongest scar, and the one that fits the pattern least.
Every other scar in Catena has grown. The Fracture never has, and it has no lifetime. A scar is loudest at dusk, and the Fracture is the same at every hour. It floats and collides with nothing, and it hangs over the Deadband.
A permanently glitching gash in the skyline that reads like a dropped frame in reality.
What each answer believes
Meridian calls it an equipment-integrity failure with a hazard profile, and keeps the only complete host list in the city. It is an inventory, and every line on it says ours.
The Undercurrent calls it the wall answering and says it is not random. They cannot prove any of it.
Scrapline calls it a machine that was never locked out.
It's not possessed, it's uncontrolled. One of those has a form and the other one has a novel written about it. Take the form.
Doesn't take the murals. Twelve years and not one mural. Sit with that instead of me telling you what it means.
Plate, hour, work area. Write all three down before you go out. If you can't give me all three you're not going out.
What people say
Tag on it, it's furniture. No tag, it's working. That's the whole lesson, that's it, go.
Sweep's at five. Whatever you're doing out there, be done and be inside by five.
Plate first. I don't care what it did to you, I want the number off its hip.
Arm Nine is an item pending inspection. Route north and have a productive afternoon.
That is not an incident, that is an asset. We've made a note.
Scar's scabbed. That means it stays, it doesn't mean it stops. Different word, different night.
That thing's on shift and I'm on shift and only one of us gets paid. Left side, keep walking.
Mine's a hand crank. Cost me four hundred and it's ugly and it's mine, and it goes up when I say.
Plates and tags
Two pieces of paper turn up on the machines the city has struck off.
ASSET VOID · PLATE SURRENDERED · NO RESIDUAL INSTRUCTION
This equipment has been removed from service. Any activity observed is not attributable to the Combine.
ISOLATED. DO NOT OPERATE.
Dated: 14/3/91.
If this tag is off and I am not here, the tag came off by itself and you should go.