The constant hum alters slightly. It is an infinitely tiny sub-harmonic shift that only he can detect. A minute variable. An error in a single unit of code.
Curious, he locates it, draws it to the surface of the data-sea for inspection, as one might select a single grain of sand from an ocean floor. It is a tiny aberration, one single proto-cell of data misaligned with the rest of the reality organism. At first, he cannot define the nature of its error. He adjusts his noospheric appraisal, and deploys higher levels of analytic scrutiny.
It is a tiny mote of discordia. A single packet of information return, one of a trillion received every second by the sensoria of Mars. It is out of step with all the others. It is not temporally synchronised with the rest, by a factor of one millionth of a second, even allowing for relative position. Its time is wrong. Kelbor-Hal presumes this to be a micro-discrepancy in imaging or auspex mesh, a tiny imperfection in the Mars arrays. Active, he tests this assumption, running diagnostic examinations of the Mechanicum systems to locate machine fault, technical malfunction, data-decay and storage/evaluation flaw. Concurrently, he instructs a full re-scan as a comparative.
It is mildly diverting. Faults occur in every system, no matter how immaculate, due to the holy laws of entropy. They are always a pleasure to correct, for the correction of a micro-error is the path to perfection. It is the first error he has detected in four months. It is something to do besides wait.
The diagnostics report no fault. The re-scan returns the same error. Alertly active now, the Fabricator General repeats the diagnostics and the re-scan. The diagnostics report no fault. The re-scan now returns two micro-errors. Two motes of discordia. Two temporal anomalies.
Kelbor-Hal diverts all primary magi to address the issue. By the time – four nanoseconds – they are in work, the error return is four. Then sixteen. Then two hundred and fifty-six.
He is watching a cascade failure. An expanding zone of temporal collapse. The epicentre is Terra, but the error-wave is accelerating outwards across the Solar Realm.
Time is broken. The four-dimensional structure of realspace is unravelling, dismantled by the exoplanar forces bulging through the rift-wound that the Warmaster has inflicted on Terra.
Time is broken. Kelbor-Hal pauses, and reframes his definition, realising that it is woefully imprecise. Time isn't broken. Time has ceased. It has stopped. It has frozen, suspended.
The constant low hum of Mars changes again. Cautionary sirens start to wail in the depths of the forge. Kelbor-Hal composes a priority signal to the Warmaster, and sends it on repeat. He watches as the wave of un-time, rolling out from Terra, begins to break across the Martian Zone. He watches as the harmonised chronometers of the forge suspend, or zero out.
He watches as the clocks stop.
He watches as the measureless data in the caverns of his domain begins to re-form and rewrite, recomposing into new units of information, each one identical, each one the same word, each one the same binharic expression of a name.
It is the name of the Omnissiah. The new Omnissiah. The true Omnissiah.
Kelbor-Hal begins to scream, which is quite unlike him.