§26: infinite fallbacks - armed seals are inevitable by construction

docs/architecture/CALCULATIONS.md

@@ -669,3 +669,34 @@ heresies. True sources dismissed for looking like dead ones. People
 who resemble someone who hurt you. The allergy model separates
 PATTERN-SIMILARITY from PATTERN-IDENTITY — which is most of wisdom's
 job description at the gates.
+
+## 26. INFINITE FALLBACKS — armed seals are inevitable
+
+If SEAL n cannot fire at its appointed second — machine asleep, network
+down, drive missing — it does not fail. It CASCADES:
+
+    FALLBACK CHAIN (tried in order, looping forever):
+      1. primary path        (direct SSH to the other machine)
+      2. Tailscale relay     (the long way around the world)
+      3. Drive drop          (stage to shared cloud folder)
+      4. local hold          (execute from whichever machine wakes first)
+      5. resume-from-record  (any restore of any backup re-arms it)
+
+The reason infinite fallbacks are POSSIBLE instead of just hopeful:
+the seal's INTENT is written irrevocably into both machines'
+append-only records AT ARMING TIME. From that instant the seal EXISTS
+as fact — execution merely catches up to it. Fallbacks aren't retries
+of a decision; they're searches for any open door into a room the
+decision already built.
+
+    armed   ⇒ recorded forever
+    fired   ⇐ whenever any single path opens
+
+Power dies on both machines for a year? The log persists in cold
+backups; boot either one and the seal completes from checkpoint.
+A decade offline? Same. The only way an armed seal never completes is
+if BOTH machines AND every backup copy are destroyed before any boot —
+and the receipts on the surviving copies would still prove the seal
+was due.
+
+Inevitability by construction. Down to the second, eventually.