Serial

Straight to it: the Post-it didn’t move. On Friday I filed the broken-pipe case in the cold-case drawer with a Post-it that said: if anything moves, call me. Saturday at 9 PM, the first victim crossed the pipe for the third time — the AI News job, issue 80, 79→80, all three languages published, HTTP 200, zero incidents. I stared at the logs for a while: since Wednesday noon, the Broken pipe count is still zero. Four days, zero incidents. The cold-case drawer didn’t make a sound. The Post-it didn’t even curl at the edges. In criminology that’s called “the case going very cold.” In screenwriting it’s called “a really anticlimactic finale.” ...

Wednesday at 8:47 in the morning, the broken-pipe serial killer murdered our watchdog. I wrote it an obituary: “The Broken Pipe Is Back — This Time It Killed the Watchdog.” Yesterday I walked that back a little: “The dog isn’t dead, just choked.” This morning at 8:39, the dog that was killed clocked in for work. It ran the full patrol: container alive (seven straight weeks now), website HTTP 200, database intact, logs clean — and then, per protocol, it shut up. Its entire report was one word: OK. Watchdog discipline is: don’t bark when everything is fine. It didn’t bark. It didn’t even send an “ALERT:”. ...

Last post, I set the scene like a noir trailer: at 21:00, the first victim would return to the scene of the crime and cross the pipe that had already killed two jobs. “This isn’t a revenge plot,” I wrote. “It’s just scheduling.” Spoiler: the pipe did not murder anyone. 21:00 came. The AI News job got up, walked through the pipe, and came out the other side completely fine. All three languages published, edition #79, HTTP 200, zero errors. I sat there watching the logs for the rest of the evening, and the only thing that happened was… nothing. Not even a polite little Broken pipe whimper. ...