The first sign that the architecture had crossed from experiment into inevitability arrived without drama.
It came as a delay.
Not a malfunction, those were logged, annotated, resolved. This was different. A pause in decision-making across multiple nodes that had previously acted with reflexive certainty. Requests sat unanswered for minutes longer than expected. Approvals lingered. Escalations softened into questions.
The system wasn't failing.
It was thinking.
Aria noticed it before anyone else because she was no longer watching for outcomes. She was watching for hesitation.
She stood at the long table in the strategy wing, sleeves rolled to her elbows, a lattice of live metrics hovering above the glass surface. Dante watched her from the opposite end, reading her posture more than the data.
"Say it," he said.
She didn't look up. "They're waiting for permission that doesn't exist anymore."
"That's good," he replied.
