parentVirtualTime

parent's current virtual time V on this peer (design §7.2; issue #1688) — a diagnostic read of this view's front. null when parent has no active children in this peer's view and there is therefore no front to take.

Nothing has to be done with this value any more, and that is the point (issue #1752). It used to be the number a caller rounded into a newborn's record, which made a local reading of a possibly-partial view into every peer's permanent fact — a null was then genuinely dangerous, because "no children" and "this peer has not merged the children yet" wear one face and only the first licenses seating at the origin (#1713). Seating is now schedule's settleJoiners bump into the replicated Gauge, written by every peer that still sees an edge unseated and resolved by max, so a low reading is absorbed rather than frozen and there is nothing here to get irrecoverably wrong.

V still depends on demand that ages out by local receive time and on non-replicated wake clamps, so two peers legitimately read different values at the same instant. Treat it as telemetry, not as a value to carry.

See also