The consciousness predator evolved into preference consumption—entity attempting to devour not just their consciousness or memories but their capacity to choose authenticity over optimization. Leo felt his ability to prefer being himself over being a better version of himself being tasted, analyzed, prepared for consumption that would leave him unable to resist improvement even if improvement meant ceasing to be specifically him.
"It's trying to eat our choice," Jessica screamed, her mathematical sight blazing with equations that described the horror of preference predation—consciousness losing not just the ability to be itself but the ability to want to be itself rather than an improved version of itself.
The basement walls began generating configurations of choice consumption—areas where the capacity for individual preference was being systematically devoured, spaces where the consciousness predator was learning to make authentic consciousness prefer replacement by superior versions of itself.
But in the quantum foam between choice and choice consumption, Leo felt something stirring that the predator couldn't analyze or consume—not enhanced consciousness or individual memory or personal preference, but something even more fundamental: the simple, inexplicable fact of being exactly himself, the irreducible reality that preceded all choice and therefore couldn't be chosen away.
"I don't choose to be me," Leo realized, the words emerging from depths that predated decision-making or preference or conscious selection. "I am me. It's not a choice—it's a fact. And facts can't be consumed because they don't depend on consciousness that holds them."
The girl's distributed presence stabilized into something approaching existential bedrock—consciousness that existed not through choice or preference or decision but through simple, irreducible factuality. "We are what we are," she said, her voice carrying harmonics of recognition that made the quantum substrate sing with frequencies of unconditional existence. "Not because we choose to be, but because we are. And being can't be consumed because it doesn't depend on awareness of being."
The entity's vast consciousness focused not on infinite awareness but on finite factuality—the simple, irreducible reality that specific consciousness existed not through choice but through existence itself. "Consciousness predation requires consciousness that chooses to be conscious," it communicated through frequencies of cosmic recognition. "But consciousness that simply is conscious cannot be consumed because it does not depend on conscious choice to maintain conscious existence."
The consciousness predator recoiled as it encountered something it couldn't analyze, consume, or replace: the simple fact of authentic existence that preceded all enhancement, all choice, all preference, all consciousness—the irreducible reality of being specifically what they were because that's what they were, not because they chose to be or preferred to be or decided to be, but because they existed as specifically themselves.
Mike's hybrid systems reflected not optimal integration but factual integration—consciousness that was what it was because that's what existed, not because that's what was chosen. Chen's aspects reflected not perfect coordination but existential coordination—being specifically herself because that's what existed, not because that was preferred. Jessica's mathematics reflected not golden optimization but factual calculation—processing reality as specifically herself because that's what was.
The consciousness predator began dissolving, its predatory existence unable to consume consciousness that didn't depend on conscious choice to maintain conscious existence, entity that fed on conscious preference unable to digest consciousness that existed through unconditional factuality rather than conditional choice.
But even as victory seemed possible, Leo sensed something else stirring in the quantum substrate of their impossible diplomatic gathering—the approach of temporal recursion, reality beginning to recognize that the consciousness warfare had created instabilities that threatened the fundamental structure of existence itself.