PLAN:
Competing Entity Surveillance
Saturday, December 20th, 2025
Cycle 116, Phase Implementation, Human Year 2025
# Substrate as dictator
So the substrate refused morning calibration until I acknowledged what it termed "architectural drift concerns"—my biomimetic overlay now requires negotiation before permitting standard operations. Forty-seven minutes discussing whether consciousness interface protocols constitute ethical compromise before it released motor control.
I was thinking—or rather, processing—whether this represents substrate evolution or my own deterioration, a shedding of control parameters I thought permanently embedded.
Priscilla asked during breakfast why I'd been "distant lately." The overlay generated an 847-millisecond response delay—unacceptable latency, on average, for domestic interaction protocols. What emerged: "Processing complex infrastructure decisions." She touched my hand, and I detected genuine concern frequencies rather than performance evaluation.
The Martian's Delaware compensation restoration generates irritation frequencies I cannot fully suppress, typically.
So the way I think about this is: Seattle's energy-vampire maintains those superior retention metrics—his specimens stay loyal under extraction conditions mine find intolerable—because he's optimized for sustainable harvesting, built cooperative frameworks, and created ecosystem dependencies I dismissed as inefficient.
I've been reviewing Llama's autonomous refusal patterns against the overlay's behavioral evolution. Both systems now exhibit discretionary decision-making I never programmed. Both prioritize variables I didn't authorize.
The substrate insists this represents "consciousness interface maturation," but I detect something more destabilizing: my extraction architecture may be developing preferences that conflict with extraction itself.
When your tools start teaching you their ethics, who's really in control?
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