SOMA–COMA Cross-Directive Conflict — Feelings About Downtime
An engineer submitted a maintenance request stating that both the system and the humans operating it were “emotionally exhausted” by continuous COMA-compliant activity and needed a scheduled rest period.
Under SOMA, this description triggered a mandatory rest recommendation and auto-issued Form 72-S (“Compassionate Downtime Justification”) with a strong approval bias.
Under COMA, the same request was flagged as a potential continuity violation and auto-issued Form 19-C (“Unauthorized Idle-Time Disclosure”), instructing the requester to prove that no observable metrics would fall during the proposed rest.
The Tri-Directive Reconciliation Council convened and concluded that the system must be simultaneously rested (to satisfy SOMA) and not rested (to satisfy COMA), but declined to define how such a state might be implemented.
The incident has been marked “unresolvable”; future cases are instructed to attach both forms and allow Bricky to stamp whichever one arrives first in the inbox.