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The Two-Beat

Assessment 02 of the Manifest · Proportional timing against a lengthening interval

How to play
Goal
Every cycle has two beats. Press on the second one — the high beep — after it stops being played for you.
Controls
Press Begin the count and then just listen: the first five cycles play both beats, low then high, and you press nothing. After that the high beep goes silent and you press Space, or click the plate, at the moment you think it would have sounded. Ten scored presses. Practice mode keeps the high beep audible the whole way through.
Scoring
The high beep always lands 30.8% of the way through the cycle, and each cycle is 12% longer than the one before. Your error is shown as a percentage of the interval, so being 0.1s out on a long cycle scores better than the same 0.1s on a short one. There is deliberately no bar or sweep to watch — the whole point is placing it by ear.

The trap: if you copy the gap you just heard, you will be early every single time, by exactly 12%, because the cycle grew underneath you. You have to place it against the cycle you are in, not the one you just left. That is the whole assessment. Nothing is kept unless you sign it at the end.

The surge comes up out of the crust and something under it answers. The answer never arrives at a fixed delay. It arrives at 30.8% of the way through the interval, every time — while the interval itself gets longer every cycle.

Nothing sweeps and nothing fills. There is no bar to watch. You get a flash at each surge and nothing in between, and you place the answer by feel.

The interval lengthens by the same proportion every cycle. That is the whole assessment. Place against the interval you just heard and you will be early, every time, by exactly the growth rate. Place against the one you expect and you will be right. Every interval you have already heard is written in the notebook below, because that is what the notebook is for.

This assessment records every placement and its error as a fraction of the interval, and whether your error shrinks or grows as the drift accumulates. It is telling you so now. It will assess you anyway.
Phase — Placement 0 of 10 Mean error — Best —
In one sentence: every cycle you hear two beats — a low one and then a high one. You are placing the high one. The first five cycles play it for you so you can learn where it falls; after that it goes silent and you press where you think it would be. Do not press on the low beep. That one is just the start of the cycle.
Press BEGIN. Click the plate, or press SPACE.
plate
shaft nine · right ear to the metal · left hand flat beside it
Last interval heard
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Growth per cycle
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Last placement
—
Error
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SHAFT NINE — NOTEBOOK
Write what you counted before you let yourself think about it.
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