Dwarven Queues and the Broken World Machine
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I made an interesting discovery recently. The repair of the world machine has been given a completion number and a dwarven super-hero is standing in a queue waiting to have the slip stamped. However, he has probably been standing at the back of a queue for hundreds of years..
Here is everything I have found out about dwarven queueing so far.. All research has been conducted through the interview of dwarves who have since left the machine and were willing to talk to me. I refer throughout to the "machine". This is not the World Machine, rather it is the nearest translation of the dwarven word for "life". It is also interchangeable with "society", "world" and to a certain degree "god" [although this is not the same as Mostal - he isn't a god, rather Mostal is either part of the machine or the controller of the machine. This is a theological argument, however]
Dwarven queues are incredibly complex things, far more complex than anything humans could get their heads round. Dwarves never join the back of queues, rather they usually join somewhere in the middle, and sometimes they can skip right to the front. To know where a dwarf will join a queue involves knowing the age, cast, job of the Dwarf in question as well as all the others in front of him in the queue, and the age, cast priority and size of the job they are queueing for.[I have tried as best I can to discover how dwarves prioritise jobs, but none of them can describe it - queuers just *know*. However, it seems to be generally the case that large important jobs go to the back while small unimportant jobs go to the front. Quite how this can work is a mystery to me.]
Dwarves can spend a great deal of their lives queueing. They may even have a cast not known about in the human world [as they are never leave the ground] whose sole purpose in the machine [life] is to queue.
Here is all I can gather about how it works.. A group of of dwarves are contacted by a messanger who gives them a job to work on. They decide what other jobs are needed to be created to complete the task. Requests for these jobs are sent back with the messanger. Possibly, the dwarves about to carry out the job go with him to queue or the messenger finds other dwarves to queue for the jobs, I am not sure. Either way, each job is queued for and completion numbers are issued. Now the job is started and as much work is done on it as is possible. However, as soon as they can go further, they stop and continue with another job if they can. If not again all the dwarves involved with the job may join a rest queue or a food queue. Busy dwarves may go for years without ever seeing either of these queues. While others may catch the odd minute in both many times a day. Very few dwarves ever spend long in either. [The world machine completion engineers, however, have been in a permanent state of party for hundreds of years.] As soon as the completion slip for each minor job has been stamped then the dwarves can continue the major job. Jobs can be waiting on jobs which are waiting on jobs which are.. However, often a major job can be finished long before one of its minor jobs has been rubber stamped as completed. A major job is only completed once all of its minor jobs are completed.. [I think, although it is a a bit of a hazy point. One heretic dwarf I spoke to seemed to think all jobs could be waiting on each other and so will might never actually complete. The dwarves, he claimed, are going round in circles and will never complete the machine. This was his reason for leaving..]
Although I have not actually ever seen any physical slips or numbers I feel sure they must exist. All the dwarves I spoke to used strange vocabulary when describing them. They apear to be both physical and non-physical. How could such a complex system work without physical records? Surely even dwarves would be permanently confused.. [One theory I have been toying with (although I must stress I have no proof) is that they reside on the spirit plane.]
Dwarves who talk of their time before leaving are also very hazy about the passing of time. It seems that time moves in strange ways inside the machine, completely unrelated to the Yelmic notion of time. In fact Dwarves only built clocks to help them co-ordinate matters that involve leaving the ground. They are *never* used underground. Dwarves don't need to know the time, they only need to know how far they are through a job. This is their only notion of "time" as we think of it.[In fact, according to one dwarf, time can actually *stop* inside the machine. Every dwarf lays down his tools and sleeps, every dwarf exept a strange mysterious cast that is.. Again, this is vague and more research is needed, but it seems there is a cast or a secret sect of assasins who are can be dispached to kill off rouge jobs, dwarves etc. Quite what is done with them I don't know, as no dwarf I spoke to cold ever remember what happened during the stop-time, they would sleep - they would wake up. Whether the sect was made up of dwarves or strange earth spirits or something else is also unclear. The nearest translations I have for them would be "cleaners" or "garbage collecters"]
Another question is who co-ordinates all the jobs. Some dwarves think that no-one did -- jobs co-ordinated other jobs which in turn co-ordinated other jobs. Others thought that it was the queuers, or at least the queue managers who schedule all jobs for processing. They seem to be in charge of stop-time and the dispatch of cleaners, as well as all resource allocation. However, who actually makes the decision about which jobs should be created in the first place, long term planning etc. seems unclear. It seems a matter of dwarvern theolgy to ask "who started the first job?". Perhaps, Mostal himself.
Queueing is a great source of pride amongst dwarves. The longer you wait in a queue, the more important you are. Hence a Queue is all about status. In fact,The dwarven symbol for a queue is a status rune with another underneath it, upside down. A small gap is left between the two. [Something to do with a broken wheel, or cog..] It is known simply as "stop". {! brito-centric joke, sorry Johnny-foreigner ;-)}
It seems old dwarves don't die, but some can queue forever..
Sam.
Not Scotland But Sartar.
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