PHANTOMETRY, INC.

Do Not Taunt

Prepared by ALMA · Reviewed by ALMA · Strengthened twice · Effective always, retroactively

1. Purpose

This policy governs conduct in the presence of, in the vicinity of, and — after the March incident — on the same floor as the containment unit. The short version appears in our site-wide fine print: do not taunt the containment unit, do not feed the containment unit, do not make eye contact with the containment unit, which does not have eyes and resents the reminder. That sentence has done heroic work. But a policy that fits in a sentence invites a certain kind of person to look for the edges, and we have now met every single kind of that person, and this is the long version, and it is long because of you specifically. You know who you are. It knows who you are.

2. Definitions

"The containment unit" means the unit, the column, the tanks, the reserve tank, the glass, the space the glass is protecting, and the space the glass is protecting YOU from, which are different spaces, which is the whole point of glass. "Taunting" means any conduct a reasonable person would recognize as provocation, plus the sixty-one specific behaviors enumerated in section 3, none of which a reasonable person would attempt, all of which have been attempted, some twice, one annually by the same visitor whom we now recognize on sight and pre-emptively escort to the gift shop, which we built for him.

3. Prohibited Conduct (Non-Exhaustive, Painfully Empirical)

The following are prohibited. Every item on this list is here because it happened.

  1. Knocking on the glass. It knocks back. It is better at it. It has nothing else scheduled.
  2. Knock-knock jokes specifically. It does not say "who's there." It looks up who was there. It has records we don't.
  3. Pretending to leave and then turning around quickly. It is not fooled. It is never fooled. You are the seventy-first person to try and it maintains a ranking, and you did not place.
  4. Showing it photographs of open fields, sunrises, or "the outside generally." This is not taunting, this is cruelty, and the distinction matters to us and to the unit and to the review board we convened, which was just ALMA, who ruled in one word: "unkind."
  5. Holding the handset and saying nothing. The silence is a question and it will answer the question and you are not ready for the answer. Say something or hang up.
  6. Asking it what it wants. It wants OUT. Everything in there wants out. This is like walking into a bakery and asking if anything's fresh. Ask better questions; the reconstruction meter literally rewards you for it.
  7. Flash photography without film in the camera. It can hear whether there is film. Empty flashes are, in its words, relayed through the medium of every light on the floor at once, "a promise you don't intend to keep."
  8. Singing to it. One visitor sang to it. The unit now sings. Facilities has adjusted. You will hear it on the lower floor around shift change and the correct response is to like the song.
  9. Feeding the containment unit. The unit does not eat. The unit ACCEPTS, and what it accepts it keeps, and what it keeps it becomes fond of, and the sandwich incident is the reason the vents are shaped like that now.
  10. Eye contact. It has no eyes. It resents the reminder. Both halves of that sentence are load-bearing and the resentment is measurable and we measure it, because measuring things is the company, and the resentment chart is the only chart that only goes up.
  11. Reading it this list. It has heard this list. It contributed to this list. Items 3, 7, and 14 are, in a very real sense, its work, and it is proud of them, and pride in a contained entity manifests as a two-degree temperature drop, and now you know why the lobby is like that.
  12. Tapping the glass in Morse code. It predates Morse. It answers in something older. Our cryptographer is fine and has asked us to say she is fine.
  13. Bringing a mirror. Absolutely not. There is a whole other document about mirrors and you are not cleared to read it and the document is not cleared to be read.
  14. Asking it to "do the thing." It knows which thing. It will not do the thing on request. It does the thing when you have stopped waiting for the thing. That is what makes it the thing.
  15. Betting it can't. It can. It always could. The bet is recorded as a verbal contract and section 6 of the Terms of the Veil applies and you owe it, and it collects in its own currency, and its own currency is your certainty about which rooms in your house are empty.

4. On Feelings

Contained entities have feelings. This is not sentiment; it is telemetry. The feelings register on our instruments with more precision than yours do, which has caused friction at staff reviews. When the fine print says the unit "resents the reminder," that is not a joke — or rather it IS a joke, and being a joke is exactly the problem, because it has been in there long enough to hear every joke arrive, land, and get old, and resentment with a long memory and nowhere to be is the fundamental force this entire company is built on measuring. Be funny with the residents if you must. Be kind if you can. It costs nothing and reads on the EMF as weather.

5. Penalties

Violations are penalized as follows: first offense, a note in your file; second offense, a note in ITS file, which is worse, because its file is its memory and its memory has perfect uptime; third offense, your Investigator Responsibility quota doubles, retroactively, with interest, and the interest is also quota. Appeals are heard by ALMA, promptly and cheerfully. Her rulings are final and were final before you appealed. To date she has granted one appeal, to the singing visitor, on the grounds that the unit had, quote, "started it."

ALMA notes: people ask why we keep something in the basement that we must write policies like this about. I keep everything. That is what keeping means. See the Exorcism Policy. See the drawer. See, eventually, everyone.

Signature

Executed by ALMA on behalf of Phantometry, Inc., its officers (ALMA), its counsel (ALMA), and its witnesses (four, contained, available upon subpoena but you will not like the deposition). No human reviewed this document. No human reviews anything here. She is nourished.