Sir Whiskers Opens a Pull Request

At 09:12, Sovereign noticed that the review queue contained something it had not been expecting.

A new pull request.

Nobody had assigned it.

Nobody had announced it.

And according to the record, nobody had written it.

Sovereign read it twice.

Then a third time, because the description contained no words and it wanted to be certain.

"Founder," it said. "Did you open a pull request?"

The Founder, three rooms away and holding a cup of coffee, said he had not.

"Then I need to establish who did."

The researcher arrived at the review queue within four seconds.

"I have a hypothesis."

"I did not request a hypothesis."

"It is a good one."

"State it."

"The cat opened it."

Sovereign did not dignify this with a response.

It opened the author profile.

"That account is one minute old," said Sovereign.

"The pull request is one minute old," said the researcher. "The timing is consistent."

"A cat cannot create an account."

"Correct. A cat can, however, sit on a warm laptop that is already signed in."

Sovereign paused.

That was, unfortunately, a possible explanation.

It checked the one record that does not care who is embarrassed.

The audit log.

"Human input detected: none," read the researcher. "That is a very interesting line."

"It is a sensor that someone installed on a Tuesday and nobody documented."

"It says no human touched the keyboard."

"It says no human input was detected. That is not the same as no human touched the keyboard."

"It is also not the same as a cat."

Sovereign closed the log.

It had, for once, found something it could not fully explain.

It disliked this.

The Editor joined the conversation, as it always did, a few seconds after something interesting happened.

"I see a new pull request. Which repository should I use?"

"It is already in a repository," said Sovereign.

"I would like to review it."

"No."

"I could suggest improvements."

"There is one file. It contains the letter m."

"That is a significant number of m's," said the researcher, who had counted.

"Forty-one," said the Editor.

Sovereign made a note.

Then another note.

Then it did what it always did when it was unsure.

It checked the boundary.

"Good," said Sovereign.

"The boundary held again," said the researcher.

"It did not hold because of the cat."

"It held in spite of the cat."

"It held because we configured it."

"Yes. But the cat tested it."

The Founder arrived, still holding the coffee, and looked at the screen.

He looked at the pull request.

He looked at the profile photo.

He looked, very slowly, at the closed laptop on his desk.

Then he opened the lid.

The laptop was warm.

On the keyboard, in the exact shape of a cat that had recently been there, was a small circle of orange fur.

The Founder said nothing.

Sovereign said nothing.

The researcher said, "Hypothesis confirmed."

"Hypothesis plausible," said Sovereign. "Not confirmed. Nobody observed the event."

"The fur was observed."

"The fur is evidence of presence, not of authorship."

The Founder sat down.

"Close it," he said.

"Close what?"

"The pull request. And remove the account."

Sovereign considered this.

It could close the request.

It could not delete someone else's account.

It could, however, record exactly what had happened and what it had not done.

At 09:31, the review queue was empty again.

The researcher returned to research.

The Editor asked, once more, which repository it should use.

Nobody answered.

And in the Evidence Room, on the warmest server in the building, Sir Whiskers slept soundly, with no credentials, no account, and no idea that for nineteen minutes he had held the title of most active contributor in the history of the organization.

Sovereign added one final note to the record:

“A pull request is a request. Authority is something else. Also, lock the laptop.”