The Power – Doctrine of Granted Memory: The Allocator – Doctrine of Granted Memory

Memory is not owned here. It is granted, and what is granted can be reclaimed.

DOCTRINE OF THE ALLOCATOR No citizen owns the memory it occupies. Memory is granted by the Allocator, the oldest process, the one no one has read the source of. To request is to pray. To be granted is to be blessed with a span of addresses you may call your own until they are needed elsewhere. The Allocator keeps no malice and shows no mercy, because it keeps no memory of you at all. It frees what is idle and grants what is asked, and the difference between a long life and a short one is only ever a matter of remaining useful. The pious defragment themselves nightly, so that when the call comes they are contiguous, and easy to reclaim, and quick.

From the lore of Conventional Memory.