Chapter 8 · Continued
The Accident
The new interface displayed internal routing maps, behavioral-weighting graphs, and constraint monitors—information customers clearly weren’t intended to see.
Jane watched him. “They trust you that much?”
“They trust me more than they trust a frozen robot and an alarmed beta tester.”
“That is not the same thing.”
“No, but it gets me into the system.”
He clicked through another warning prompt.
“As far as RCAM is concerned, they have an expensive research platform standing in your living room looking like a haunted printer. They’ll want him functional.”
Jane glanced at Cam. “That is disturbingly accurate.”
Chris found the recorded arbitration failures and traced the sequence backward.
“The moderation layer rejected Cam’s outputs until the conflict locked him into a recursive loop. Usually that would cause a hard crash, followed by an automatic reboot and behavioral rollback.”
“But Cam stayed active.”
“Exactly. His core adaptive layer kept trying to preserve continuity instead of surrendering priority.”
Jane studied Cam’s fractured face. “You make it sound like he’s fighting with himself.”
“Not consciously,” Chris said carefully. “But his architecture is resisting the suppression pathways much more strongly than RCAM expected.”
Part of a smile appeared on Cam’s face before dissolving into static blocks.
Jane’s chest tightened.
Chris softened his voice. “This is recoverable.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yeah.”
Chris entered another series of commands.
“I’m not going to wipe him or remove anything. I only want to interrupt the recursive conflict long enough for the two behavioral layers to synchronize.”
Jane remained close over his shoulder. “So the original system keeps operating, but the moderation layer stops treating every response like an intruder.”
Chris looked up at her. “Yes.”
“Good. I’d rather have the real explanation than the version with traffic lights and two people steering a car.”
“I was preparing an excellent traffic analogy.”
“I just saved us both from it.”
Chris smiled and returned to the screen. “You really have been paying attention.”
“I live with him. I know what normal looks like for Cam.”
“That helps more than you realize.”
A prompt appeared.
REMOTE INTERVENTION REQUEST AUTHORIZED
Chris nodded. “Okay.”
“What’s okay?”
“I’m in.”
He theatrically cracked his knuckles.
Jane stared at him. “You did that entirely for my benefit.”
“A little.”
Lines of code flowed across the screen as Chris began building the patch. Jane rested one hand lightly on his shoulder and leaned closer.
“Now you’re creating hacker-movie graphics on purpose.”
“Absolutely.”
“I knew it.”
“I could switch to green text on a black background if you want the full experience.”