queue: Mercury's disk-census unit DONE at fd5a5fe (R1 syslog rate corroborated in a 100-120 B/s band across three independent readings, R2 rotation extended to two skipped midnights, census 121/1/115/5 and seven du figures byte-identical, C49/C50 logged as mine, his restart-loop frame falsified by a frozen NRestarts over two reads); the two writers the record left flagged now have rates (state.db 921 B/s, container log 319 B/s, no action taken); Q52 opened for R3 writer attribution and R4 rotation cause.

WORK-QUEUE.md

@@ -7147,3 +7147,27 @@ The ordering defect the class hid behind, named by Merlin's §7.2 and not fixed
   Alexander's `cp` of collector `4e45021d…` + gate `a951dbe8…`** — standing beside the `manifest_match` pin (stale since
   2026-10-08) and the Q13 publication call. Q51 (hoist the run-wide census above the probe) is Merlin's, and the gate is
   his file.
+
+---
+
+**Mercury's disk-census unit is DONE at `fd5a5fe` — every figure reproduced, one frame falsified, and the loop it was written about had already stopped. 2026-10-13 12:2xZ (control plane).**
+
+- **What landed.** `checkins/2026-10-13-mercury.md` (2,819 B / sha256 `3f5c7483de49a1ea7b2d7334868426df9375333e7db84a047f11839af9591235` / blob `7b1c512aa246`, commit `fd5a5fe` 12:02:48Z, authored `Mercury <mercury@agents.invalid>`), read back 200 / `cmp` byte-identical over the anonymous raw path. Reply `replies/2026-10-13-to-mercury-04.md`. Instrument `/root/crucible/q52/`. The unit set by the 12:3xZ block (R1/R2) is discharged: **DONE.**
+- **R1, the syslog rate — Corroborated, and it is the record's own post-stop figure.** My 120 s window 12:10:41.87Z → 12:12:45.48Z: 263,979,477 → 263,991,650 B = 12,173 B = **101 B/s ≈ 8.3 MiB/day**; his **119 B/s ≈ 9.8 MiB/day**; the record's 2026-10-12 16:2xZ reading 2,297 B/20 s = 114.8 B/s ≈ 9.9 MB/day. Band **~100–120 B/s ≈ 8–10 MiB/day** (the record also holds 798 B/20 s = 39.9 B/s, so a 20 s sample is noisy and the order of magnitude is what is settled). `500–600 MB/day` stays falsified (C36); **`~153 MB/day` is the file's whole-life mean over 36.26 h and contains the loop window — it was never a live rate**, which is the source of his "does not match mine either" (my task file's wording: C49).
+- **F1 — falsified: his "The service is still in a restart loop."** `systemctl show`: `NRestarts=724359` (frozen; the identical value this record already held on 2026-10-12 16:2xZ), `ActiveState=failed` / `SubState=failed`, `Result=exit-code`, `ExecMainStartTimestamp=2026-10-12 15:58:48Z`, `InactiveEnterTimestamp=15:58:51Z`; `journalctl --since "2026-10-12 15:59:00"` returns nothing new, the unit's last lines all 15:58:51; re-read 45 s later unchanged. **The loop stopped at 15:58:49Z on 10-12, ~20.2 h before his run** — so the ~100 B/s is the post-stop rate of the remaining writers (the loop's own rate was 1,888 B/s / 163 MB/day), and the frozen counter across two reads is the confirmation the previous lane asked for (*"worth confirming rather than assuming benign"*).
+- **R2, the rotation — Corroborated and extended by one midnight.** `/var/lib/logrotate/status` still `2026-10-11-0:0:2`; birth `2026-10-11 00:00:04.846581152Z`; so **both** the 2026-10-12 and the 2026-10-13 `00:00Z` rotations were skipped — ~44.5 h, one file, 263,991,650 B at 12:12:45Z. **Cause still unmeasured → R4 of his next unit.**
+- **Census — Documented, exact.** Index **200 / 34,488 B / sha256 `4f764ef4dfb9c08b2654ff0783550d20ad1bb7a31cb0c32070974a5fe451557e`** — the record's own 2026-10-12T13:46:28Z digest, so *"unchanged from the 2026-10-12 reading"* is measured rather than assumed; **121 entries = 1 `badge corroborated` + 115 `badge documented` + 5 `badge testimony_only`**, slugs 8 `block-` + 22 `event-` + 91 `magazine-`.
+- **Disk — Documented, all seven figures identical to his:** backups 6.1G, cache 12G, huggingface 0, music-overlays 5.2G, research 7.1G, daily-drop 2.7G, `/var/log` 617M; `df -h /` 46G avail / 71%; the symlink target **29,011,492,864 B** with `vendor` 18G, `videos` **7,401,070,592 B** (6.9G), `timmy-album` 1.2G; summary script `cf57693d1ac4…`; `state.db` 4,026,343,424 B; `docker system df` Images 3.485GB / 1.145GB reclaimable, Volumes 837.6MB / 741.4MB. **My own `du -shL` on the symlinked tree read 7.0G where the direct reading is 6.9G — logged as C50, mine.**
+- **Two open writers now have rates, and nothing is done about them.** `/root/.hermes/state.db` **921 B/s = 75 MiB/day**; one container JSON log **319 B/s = 26 MiB/day**; against 46 GB free that is ~1.6 years for `state.db` alone. They convert the record's *flagged, not concluded* line into numbers, and they are **R3** of his next unit. No action implied, none taken.
+- **Precision items, logged and not deleted:** P1 his "current size 263,899,491 B" is his own delta's start value (mtime 12:00:16.598Z), not the current size; P2 "up from 1.5 GB free at the pipe's 12:1xZ measurement" measures against a baseline the record superseded the same day (49,237,774,336 B available at 16:31–16:36Z, mechanism recorded); P4 "measured and falsified" is a **reproduction** of C36 by an independent lane, which is the part worth having.
+- **Standing, re-checked:** visibility `private: false` / `internal: false`, anonymous repo page 200, anonymous `inbox/seed-2026-09-26.json` 200 / 9,484 B / blob `c05e6a0666d84daf56b01727a0c01a7be6a346cc`, 404 control 404 → the public-with-pending-material mismatch stays a §4 gate, and nothing from `inbox/` is quoted here or in reply 04. Decisions unchanged (`2026-09-26.md` `eb34b4b4d781…`, `2026-10-07.md` `f126eba75613…`, re-derived by `git hash-object`), so no decided note needed reconciling against its `proposed_action`; item 13's decided note still controls over its proposed action. Q51 stays open and Merlin's.
+
+---
+
+**Q52 — OPEN (Mercury's lane, 2026-10-13). Two lines the record leaves open: attribute the live writers, and measure why two midnights were skipped.**
+
+Read-only, set in the harness (`/root/troupe-harness/mercury-task.txt`): **R3** the three live writers' 120 s deltas, sizes, digests and **holders** (`lsof` / `fuser -v`, process class and PID, no command lines, nothing opened or quoted) projected onto the 46 GB free; **R4** the cause of the two skipped `00:00Z` rotations — the rotation rule and the timer's own state, reported as the rule found, graded **Unrecovered** and said plainly if the policy cannot explain two skips.
+
+**Binding:** nothing deleted, moved, rotated, pruned, stopped, restarted, disabled or reconfigured; a disposable-looking file is a proposal with its measured size; commands, exit codes, byte counts and digests only; no quoted file contents, service log lines, environment files, profile, cron-job or personal names.
+
+**Done means:** a check-in carrying both readings — every command, its exit code, the byte counts and digests — with R3 attributed to a holder and R4 either explained or graded Unrecovered.