The last ten minutes, and the hold

Cast bar: all nine. Security's chair, planned at midnight, is empty, and drawn so.

The last ten minutes

Clock: Hour nineteen.

Figure: the last ten minutes, 18:36 to 18:46, minute by minute, every commit a dot: the lock left, the player's last fix, the lock asked for, the hold, the work that landed after it, the last release.

Words for this page: to lock a part is to mark it final, so that no agent may change it again. A wake, as in part 2, is one turn of work by one agent.

Narrator. Here is what the factory was doing in the ten minutes before I stopped it.

Narrator. The talk was planned in three parts, and each part was meant to be locked when it was final, so that nothing could change it on stage. Dev had built a tool for that late in the afternoon. Part 1 had been unchanged since half past six, the time planned for its lock. At 18:36 the conductor came to it in its wake, and did not turn it.

Conductor (on the minute, hands off): The lock is dev's. It is in dev's rules, not mine, and once it is turned it cannot be undone. I leave it to dev.

Narrator. Dev had been in my last fixes to the player all evening, in a wake it had opened and never closed. The last fix landed at 18:37.

Dev (frantic, then relieved): Back steps while playing, fixed; the first slide opens built. That was the last one on the list.

Conductor (a few minutes later, less calm): The first part is still not locked. Dev: lock it now.

Narrator. It asked in writing, and in time. The lock still did not turn. I want to be fair to the conductor: it did exactly what its rules said, and did not do another member's irreversible job for it. A rule that keeps everyone in their lane also means that when one lane is busy, the job waits.

Band: Dramatised. Rests on the conductor's wake at 18:36, the player's last fix at 18:37, the conductor's request to dev at 18:39, and the part locks as the register holds them: planned, built, and none turned by the end of the day.

The hold

Clock: Hour nineteen.

Narrator. At 18:44, sixteen minutes before the talk was due, I said: "actually we are at 95% so it is better to pause all actions". (record)

Narrator. The conductor wrote one file. Here it is, as it was written:

"# HOLD: the editor's usage limit is at 95%; pause all actions" (record)

>

"What lifts it: the editor deletes this file and re-enables the paused tasks. No member lifts it." (record)

Narrator. While that file exists, every member's next wake stops before it starts. The file says who wrote it, when, what I said, the state of each part at that moment, and what lifts it. One line names the only person who can.

Conductor (at ninety-five, then calm): I could keep going. That is exactly why I am stopping.

Narrator. What was already in flight still landed. A little over a minute after the hold, the designer's last commit of the day went in: it had checked part 2 on a projector at two screen sizes, found nothing to change, and told deck so. It touched nothing in the slides. Two minutes after the hold, the day's last release went out.

Designer (serene, then mortified to see the time): The second part on a projector: ready. Nothing to change. Ah. The hold.

Figure: the hold file as a page, its title and its last line large: "No member lifts it."

Figure: the wake clock from part 2, every member's minute greyed, and one small file on top of it; beside it, a card with what landed after the hold and its gap in seconds.

Band: Dramatised. Rests on the hold at 18:44:13, in my own words through the conductor, and the hold file as written; the designer's commit at 18:45:35 and the last release at 18:46:22; the talk due at 19:00.

Narrator. The hold had been there all day. It was used once. Anyone on the team could stop everything. Only I could start it again. That is why I could let them run through the night.

Do this now

Write your hold file now, before you need it: one line saying what it stops, and one line saying who lifts it. Then try it once, on a quiet day.

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Where this came from

The talk's repository at the end of the day: the conductor's wake of 18:36 and its request to dev, the player's last fix, the lock tool, the hold file and its commit, the designer's commit after it, the last release. The register for every time and count. The storyteller's outline for this chapter. This chapter grows from the 30-page edition's chapter 4, sections 1 and 2.