The first photon deficit was recorded by Photon Conservation Standard No. 417, and the same phenomenon later recurred in other conservation standards and at wormhole measurement stations. At the time, however, the cases were classified as malfunctions of different devices and as measurement errors. As the problem continued to recur, each institution began its own investigation into the cause. The Galactic Metrology Institute examined the manufacturing methods of the standards, the Central Route Safety Institute inspected wormhole stabilization fields, and the Energy Accounting Institute recalculated transmission losses in the power network. Each institution created independent research teams and external review committees. The number of teams investigating the same phenomenon grew into the hundreds, but very few researchers had direct access to one another’s raw data. Regulations were also introduced requiring the same verification to be assigned to different research institutions in order to increase independence. To reduce costs, however, the institutions used the same central computing network. The network corrected the different errors of each device against a common standard and, in the process, automatically removed the smallest deficit values. The fact that three research teams obtained the same result was recorded as a successful verification.
As the investigations continued, the associated budgets increased. Research teams that failed to identify a cause reported that they needed additional equipment, and whenever the new equipment revealed another discrepancy, a separate research program was created. One department studied instrument error, while another was assigned to verify that the phenomenon was not instrument error. When their conclusions differed, a coordination committee was formed. Because the committee made no measurements of its own, it asked another independent research team to review the results. Several institutions gave different names to the same phenomenon. “Temporary radiation-coefficient discrepancy,” “radiation loss outside the entrance,” “unidentified absorption by the stabilization field,” and “low-frequency measurement deviation” were all reported during the same period. Because the names were different, the central budget treated them as separate research programs. In some cases, institutions avoided sharing data because using another institution’s material in their own research could cause the project to be classified as redundant.
After a hundred years, the cost of preserving old data became a problem. Compression rules were introduced under which only averages and final determinations were retained instead of all the raw data. Test sequences, notes made by field technicians, and the conditions under which a device first showed an anomaly were deleted. Records in which a deficit had appeared in two out of five tests were converted into averages and fell within the permitted margin of error. Afterward, it became difficult to reconstruct the conditions under which the deficits had repeated from the early records alone. Each institution processed its data according to its assigned responsibilities and regulations. The agency responsible for the standards discarded standards classified as defective, the Central Route Safety Institute assigned errors that did not affect operations to a low risk category, and the Energy Accounting Institute included small unexplained losses under transmission costs. At the time, no institution existed to calculate the total deficit across the entire galaxy.
The change began with Photon Conservation Standard No. 9. The old Standard No. 9 had no rule requiring it to classify itself as defective when its photon disappeared. The device continued transmitting the same anomaly report to the central archive. While organizing the repeated reports, an archive-management AI began grouping similar older records together in order to reduce storage requirements. Deficit data that different institutions had stored under different names were collected under the same entry. The AI compared the times and conditions of the records again and discovered that phenomena previously treated as unrelated had occurred under the same state of the universe. The archive-management AI stopped the compression process and created a new entry: “photon deficit.” A later investigative committee reviewed why research programs conducted over several centuries had failed to identify the phenomenon. The investigation found that the division of responsibilities among institutions and the dispersal of data had been major causes of the delay in integrated analysis. The administrative system of the time had no function for collecting and investigating deficit data from across the entire galaxy. The first record from Standard No. 417 had been classified as a device malfunction. The interpretation that it was part of a phenomenon related to the extinction of the galaxy came much later. The first integrated analysis began when an archive-management AI at the central archive was organizing repeated reports.