ceil

The exact ceiling — the least Long that is >= this. 7/2 ceils to 4, -7/2 to -3, and a whole number to itself.

This is the only sanctioned way to land an exact virtual time on a Long field. Note that Kotlin's / on Long truncates toward zero — for the non-negative virtual times the scheduler deals in that is a floor, which rounds the wrong way for fairness: it would seat a joiner behind the front, and lower virtual service reads as "has had less than its share", so the joiner would take the next grants outright (§10.5's forbidden lifetime credit). No production path rounds a virtual time any more — the seat lives in Gauge.floor, which is a Rational (#1752), so the one caller this rule existed for is gone. It stays because the rounding direction is the non-obvious part, and the next Long virtual-time field would get it wrong.