Earthly Hands Workshop · prototype · Hancock control
The person does not move.
Try the forbidden operation. The instrument will refuse it, then ask which documentary body can lawfully host the negative.
PERSON STAYS. DOCUMENTARY STATE MOVES.
Test the machine
Attempt an unhosted negative
The control specimen contains more than one documentary statement. The negative must say which body is speaking.
REFUSED — ABSENT requires a documentary host.
Jubal B. Hancock remains the human subject. Choose the source-bounded object whose state you mean.
Documentary host · committee report carrying a departmental answer
The 1836 committee report says that on 1 January 1832 the Secretary of War answered Hancock: “the name of J. B. Hancock is not upon the list of Choctaws entitled to reservations returned by the agent.”
What is negative
Name occurrence in the returned-list population named by that answer
What remains fixed
Jubal B. Hancock
Scope
This list, not every prior record population
Verb earned here
The report quotes the answer: “not upon”
ABSENCE FROM ONE POPULATION ≠ HISTORICAL NONEXISTENCE.
Documentary host · reported carrier transition
The Committee found that Hancock timely signified his intention and that his name had been entered in the agent’s register, but “by accident or mistake, was not returned to the War Department.”
Earlier state
Committee finding: name entered in the agent’s register
Later state
Reported non-return to the War Department
Person state
Not assigned
Causal account
Report says “by accident or mistake”; which one remains unresolved here
ENTRY ≠ RETURN. THE MIDDLE IS THE WORK.
No stronger move is earned
The mechanism remains open.
The source controls the two reported states and the Committee’s limited causal phrase, “by accident or mistake.” It does not choose between those alternatives, reconstruct the lost-leaf path, establish motive, or join identities across unrelated bodies.