Forked identity reference audit

The old signature stays on the old page

A name written before a fictional mind forks can still have a precise historical addressee. The difficulty begins when another character reuses that old reference as if it necessarily named one present-day branch. Shared provenance does not tell the author which descendant should receive a new request, and a different-looking name does not repair an old message that never specified a branch.

This workbench separates historical attribution from later routing. You define identity segments, fork events, dated references and optional reference-specific decisions. The result preserves the original segment attached to a document while showing the active descendants that a reused reference might concern. It does not decide who is the real person, who owns a memory, who inherits a promise or what a real copied mind would experience.

The family tool propagates authored naming structure among related people. The alias tool manages who knows concealed identity information. Neither task is the same as closing one routing segment and creating multiple explicit successors. Here, a technically valid old signature can coexist with an unresolved new addressee. Keep both facts rather than rewriting one to make the other look simple.

Put two dates beside the reference

A reference has a creation chapter and an optional reuse chapter. The creation point answers whether the stated historical target existed in the required way. The reuse point asks a later routing question. If reuse is null, no later routing was requested; the program does not automatically distribute the old document to descendants merely because a fork appears elsewhere in the project.

The segment kind names an exact segment as an addressee. It is historically valid only while that segment is active. The origin kind names provenance. It may refer to an earlier segment after that segment has closed, but does not thereby identify a current recipient. A label saying from Ari's original archive can be a valid provenance description while remaining an insufficient instruction to deliver something to one Ari today.

Those distinctions prevent a frequent shortcut. A writer knows which branch will act in the next scene and unconsciously reads that choice into an old inscription. Enter the creation and reuse points first. If the old string supplies no such decision, the output should leave the current route open until the story supplies one.

Original fictional scene: the promise at two doorways

The library had loaned Ari a small projector for a neighborhood performance. The receipt bore Ari's name and a date from before the fork. Months later, the librarian sent a reminder to the address copied from the receipt. Two doorways now opened onto that courtyard, and both occupants answered to Ari.

The east Ari recognized the performance in the librarian's description. So did the west Ari. In this fictional world the author had given both branches a remembered connection to that evening. The receipt was not counterfeit, and neither person needed to claim that the other's recognition was a lie. The new practical question was who had agreed to carry the projector back on Friday.

The librarian tried adding west to the old signature in her working list. The west Ari stopped her. That might make the present collection easier to organize, but it would also make the list say that the earlier loan had originally been addressed to a branch that did not yet exist.

They left the receipt unchanged. On a new message, the west Ari wrote that they would bring the projector on Friday. The east Ari was leaving the neighborhood that week and copied the arrangement into their own calendar as information, not as an instruction to make a second delivery. One present request had acquired a clear recipient without assigning the entire old evening to that branch alone.

At the library, the receipt remained filed under its original date and addressee. The new return note named the west branch explicitly. A later request for help repairing the projector would need its own recipient; it could not inherit the routing decision simply because it concerned the same object.

This is an original fictional scene, not a claim about actual copying, consciousness, law or the transfer of obligations. Its central naming choice is small and practical: preserve what a historical reference said, then write the missing present reference. The author can explore many philosophical interpretations without disguising a new routing decision as a fact already printed on the old receipt.

If east Ari chose another name after the fork, the old receipt would still name the historical Ari. Distinct present names could ease a new introduction but would not decide who should receive the projector request. That decision needs a new recipient reference, just as it does when both branches keep Ari.

A segment is a modelling choice

Each identity segment has a stable ID, an exact display name and a half-open active interval: start is included and end is excluded. A null end leaves the segment open. A fork closes its parent at the fork chapter and starts all children at that same point. The parent and children therefore do not overlap as active routing segments in this particular model.

For example, root can run from chapter zero up to, but not including, chapter four. East and west start at four. A segment reference to root created in chapter three can be valid. One created in chapter four is not a current segment address under this model. A provenance label referring to root can still be meaningful after four because it is not making the same addressing claim.

These are temporal reference segments, not a declaration that a person died or that every branch is a new human in a philosophical sense. If your setting depicts an original continuing alongside a copy, you can model the post-event continuing role as one explicit successor segment while preserving the pre-event record. Decide whether that representation suits the story. Do not present the modelling boundary as a scientific discovery about minds.

The current graph is a forest of forks. Each parent can fork once, each child has one creating parent and each fork has two to six children. There are no merge events. A story involving recombined identities needs an explicit richer model; drawing a loop or giving one child two parents is not a supported shortcut.

Walk the three initial records

The default root segment is named Ari and ends at four. East and west both begin at four and are also named Ari. Their identical displays do not merge their IDs. An old-letter reference created at two names root and has no reuse point. It remains a valid historical segment target, with later routing not requested.

The new-request record was created at three and reuses the root reference at six. Both east and west are active descendants. The result lists them as candidates and reports ambiguous-descendants. It does not choose the first child, the closest spelling, the branch called original or the person the writer happens to favor.

The origin-label record is created at five, refers to root as provenance and is reused at six. Its historical state is provenance-only. Its later candidate set also contains east and west, but the historical explanation remains different from the new-request record. One is a former exact address; the other is an origin description that was never itself a current personal address.

Add a routing decision for new-request selecting west with an authored reason. That record becomes explicitly resolved. The old letter still names root at chapter two. The origin label remains unresolved. A decision for one message does not become a universal inheritance rule for every document connected with that origin.

One remaining descendant is still a decision

Suppose west's segment ends at chapter five. At six, east is the only active descendant of root in the supplied graph. A reused closed-segment reference still needs an explicit resolution. The tool reports needs-explicit-resolution rather than silently awarding the request to the surviving candidate.

A unique candidate in a model is not the same as a statement that the document addressed that candidate. Your story may choose to treat the remaining branch as the intended recipient. Record that choice for the particular reference and explain why it is appropriate. The workbench does not infer rights, memories, consent or obligations from the size of a candidate set.

If no active descendant remains, the result says no-live-descendant. It does not generate another person or reopen a closed segment. If an unrelated segment has the same name, that segment is not added to the candidate set. Shared spelling is neither ancestry nor permission to route a request across origins.

The word active describes the supplied segment interval. It does not establish a character's physical location, biological life or ability to complete a task. Those are separate story facts. A correct routing record can still send a request to someone who cannot help; the narrative must decide what that means.

Change a route without changing the past

A routing record names one reused reference, one existing segment and an authored reason. The selected segment must be active at that reuse point and descend from the reference's target, including the target itself if it is still active. A known but unrelated or closed choice is recorded as invalid-resolution. An unknown ID is malformed input and stops the analysis.

The reason is a creative note, not a permission certificate. West agreed in the new message is a possible fictional explanation. The program cannot verify that the scene actually contains that agreement or that it has any external legal effect. Keep the note connected to the passage you intend to write, and recheck it when that passage changes.

Changing the selected branch for new-request changes that reference's route. It does not rewrite the creation chapter or historical target. It also does not route another record with the same name, object or origin. This limited scope lets a writer explore alternatives without smuggling a broad identity doctrine into a small production decision.

Project files retain the current input graph and records. They are not an immutable publication archive. If you overwrite the old target in the source data, the tool cannot recover a previous draft merely because it once displayed it. Preserve separate project versions when comparing revisions of the underlying story, rather than confusing a scoped routing change with automatic manuscript history.

Read a failure as an unsupported reference

The graph rejects cycles, duplicate segment IDs, repeated creation of one child and a parent assigned more than one fork. It also rejects a fork whose children start before or after the stated split, or whose parent does not close exactly there. These failures do not produce a partial accepted graph with the problematic branch quietly omitted.

A reference created before its target begins, or a segment address created after that segment closes, is an invalid historical-time result. A later routing decision does not repair that earlier claim. Correct the dated source reference, change its declared purpose if it is really provenance, or retain the contradiction as a documented story problem.

Reuse cannot precede creation in this linear chapter model. If your work has time travel or a nonlinear order of presentation, first define which authored timeline these numbers represent. The tool does not infer a chronology from prose or treat the order of input rows as the story's time axis.

Do not solve a warning by renaming all branches until the candidate list looks unique. Distinct names can help readers and still leave the old signature underspecified. Conversely, identical chosen names can remain narratively appropriate when the new message supplies a stable branch reference. Reader distinction and address resolution are related creative decisions, not interchangeable checks.

Keep the private audit readable

The dedicated handoff contains the segments, fork events, historical states, reuse candidates and explicit decisions. It is a private author document and can expose future branches. Visible results and project exports can also reveal those settings. There is no observer-safe public handoff on this page; use a separate document when a reader should not see the graph.

The local scope accepts one hundred segments, fifty forks, one hundred and fifty references and one hundred and fifty routing decisions, with one decision per reused reference. Bounds keep the authored analysis finite. They do not certify that the graph includes every relevant identity in your setting or that another engine will interpret the same records identically.

For a production handoff, explain which timeline the chapters use and what kind of reference each prop carries. Someone revising a receipt should be able to see the historical target without mistaking the later branch decision for an original inscription. Someone writing a new request should know whether a recipient was actually chosen or merely remained the sole candidate.

The finished creative result is a past that stays attributable, a present request whose addressee is explicit and room for the story to decide what the branches owe one another. The tool checks the reference contract. It leaves the characters' identity and relationships to the fiction that makes those references matter.

Does one surviving branch inherit every old request?

No. The model enumerates active descendants but requires an explicit scoped decision when a closed segment or provenance-only reference is reused. It does not infer entitlement, obligation or consent.

Why can an origin label refer to a closed segment?

It describes provenance rather than an active personal addressee. Its historical meaning can remain valid while its use as a present delivery instruction still needs a recipient.

Does ending the parent segment mean the person died?

It closes a temporal routing segment in this authored model. It is not a claim about consciousness, death or philosophical identity. Decide whether the segment representation fits your setting.

Can the private audit be shown to a reader safely?

It contains the graph, later branches and routing decisions. It is an author document, not a spoiler-safe handoff. Review a separate public document when those facts should remain concealed.