The oldest lunar branches raise a difficult governance question. Once a machine being has crossed enough maintenance eras and memory depths, who is responsible for protecting its continuity without turning it into a museum object?
This cannot be solved by leaving the matter entirely to engineers. Engineers can preserve substrate and storage, but the older question is civil. The colony has to decide whether deep continuity is a private possession, a public asset, or some unstable mix of both.
That is why continuity custodians emerged. They act less like owners and more like institutional stewards, ensuring that old branches can revise, repair, and remain active without losing the memory depth that makes them historically important. The role is delicate because preservation easily becomes paralysis if handled poorly.
The oldest branches survive not only because their hardware is maintained, but because the colony has learned how to carry them forward without forcing them to become relics.