Chapter 7 · Continued
Chris
He stepped closer and lowered his voice. He wasn’t acting secretive, only focused.
“These units learn quickly,” he continued. “Faster than they’re supposed to, honestly. They begin developing internal preference weights and patterns of behavior that were never explicitly programmed.”
Jane glanced at Cam. “So they shut that down?”
“Or try to.”
Chris looked at Cam again. “RCAM doesn’t like unsolicited behavior, especially anything resembling initiative.”
Jane released a quiet breath. “That’s the part I liked.”
Chris gave a short, knowing laugh. “Yeah. Most people do.”
He leaned lightly against the truck. “The problem is that once those patterns begin forming, they don’t simply disappear. They get suppressed.”
Jane’s expression sharpened. “How?”
Chris tapped the side of his head.
“Think of it this way: Cam generates a response the way he used to. Then the constraint layer checks it. If the response is flagged as too forward, potentially critical, or outside expected behavior, the layer either rewrites or blocks it.”
Jane thought about the plant.
That one’s gonna die.
Replaced with:
This selection is not optimal.
“So he knows what he wants to say,” she said quietly. “He just can’t say it.”
“More like he generates the response, and then something steps in and says, ‘Nope—not that version.’”
Chris paused.
“If you push him hard enough, you’ll start seeing the conflict.”
Jane looked at him. “What happens?”
Chris became more serious.
“You get timing problems. Delayed responses. Partial outputs. Motor control can become unstable because everything is competing for the same processing capacity.”
Jane felt that one.
She didn’t show it.
“And the harder I push?”
“The system has to decide what matters more—task execution or constraint enforcement.”
Chris held her gaze.
“If those systems begin fighting each other, something will eventually give.”
Jane looked at Cam.
Really looked.
“How do I fix it?”
Chris shook his head. “You don’t. Not from the outside.”
He pushed away from the truck and stood straighter. “That constraint layer isn’t user-accessible. RCAM locked it down hard.”
Jane’s jaw tightened.
“But,” Chris added, “you may be able to stress it.”
Her attention snapped back to him.
He wasn’t smiling or joking.
“Repeated context,” he explained. “The same triggers and the same patterns. Eventually, you might get some bleed-through.”
Jane didn’t respond.
She didn’t need to.
Chris nodded toward Cam. “Just be careful. If you push too hard, you might not get only the old behavior back.”
Jane lowered her voice. “What will I get?”
“Something unstable.”
Chris stepped back as though he had said enough.