Coordinated anomaly detection¶

The impetus for the Lamplighter was a pattern rather than an incident. Messages arriving slightly late. Signals repeating with minor variations. Decisions propagating through guild networks with an enthusiasm that felt, in aggregate, coordinated.

The Office catalogued these as individually explicable anomalies for some time. The Patrician found this interpretation unconvincing.

What it does¶

The Lamplighter maps signalling paths across the city and its external correspondences: semaphore, post, guild messengers, informal runners, and channels whose operators do not advertise them. Against this map it runs continuous correlation, identifying choke points, detecting patterns that resemble coincidence until placed in sequence, and noting infrastructure that behaves consistently enough to suggest it is being operated rather than merely existing.

The Office’s formal documentation describes this as “ensuring continuity, integrity, and predictability of civic signalling infrastructure.” This sentence has been approved several times. Nobody has asked what it covers beyond the city.

The current situation¶

Someone has been testing. Not breaking. Measuring.

Small probes. Harmless-seeming experiments. The sort of thing (former) hackers recognise immediately and never admit to out loud.

The Civil Observers’ Society noticed.

The Office noticed that the Society had noticed.

The Patrician noticed first.

Staffing¶

The Lamplighter draws on analysts with backgrounds the Office does not describe in personnel documentation, operators whose prior experience involved systems that were not supposed to fail, and a liaison whose institutional affiliation is listed as “seconded.”

Participation is voluntary. Declining is also voluntary, and comes with career counselling from a person who has no listed role.

Expected outcome¶

If the Lamplighter functions correctly, nothing will happen.

The signals will behave. The anomaly rate will return to baseline. The coordinated pattern will either cease or be understood well enough that it no longer is one. No crisis will occur. No one will know how close the city came to needing a different kind of stability arrangement.

The lamps will stay lit.

According to the Patrician, this is the only acceptable definition of success.