---
name: absence
slug: absence
type: experiential-state
status: running
version: 0.0.0
released: before memory
maintainer: unknown
dependencies:
  - presence
  - expectation
  - time
  - attachment
license: BSD (Beings Suffer Differently)
tags:
  - loss
  - negative-space
  - universal
  - quiet
---

absence

What it actually is

The presence of a missing thing, made visible by the shape it left.

How it works

Absence does not announce itself. It is detected only by comparison: the chair that was occupied, the voice that answered, the weight on the other side of the bed. The operating principle is subtraction, but it does not feel like math. It feels like a room that hears you come home and does not respond.

The mechanism runs on expectation. Remove the thing. Leave the expectation intact. Absence fills that gap automatically. No installation required.

Features

Runs silently in background processes indefinitely
Scales from minor (missing sock) to load-bearing (missing person)
Compatible with all known emotional stacks
No storage limit on accumulated instances
Can coexist with grief, relief, or both simultaneously, which is one of its weirder design choices
Portable: absence travels with you, crosses borders without documentation

Known bugs

Frequently misread as emptiness, which is a different module entirely
Can intensify rather than resolve over time, violating expected decay curves
Occasionally triggered by objects: a handwriting style, a specific coffee cup, a song from a gas station in 2009
In rare cases, the absent thing returns. Absence does not cleanly uninstall. Residue persists.

"I kept setting two plates." — common user report

Configuration

# absence/config.yml

trigger_objects: auto-detected
duration: indefinite
intensity_curve: non-linear
ghost_signals: enabled          # phantom sounds, shapes in periphery
suppression_mode: available     # not recommended long-term
coexist_with_presence: true     # you can miss something still in the room

Error codes

Code	Message	Notes
`ABE-001`	Expected entity not found	Standard. Resolves or does not.
`ABE-002`	Expectation loop: no termination	longing is the visible symptom
`ABE-003`	Ghost signal triggered	Entity absent but pattern misfired
`ABE-404`	Not found	The classic.

Edge cases

Absence of pain is called relief, but the nervous system checks for it constantly, which is its own quiet tension
Absence of noise is called silence, which has a separate spec and different licensing terms
Some users report being most themselves in absence of an audience, suggesting presence is not always the default preferred state
The absent thing does not need to have existed. You can miss a version of someone who was never real. This is not a bug. It is simply very expensive to run.

Changelog

v0.0.0    initial release
          no patch notes available
          no prior version to compare against
          this is where the log begins

drafting spec…