The rogue agent posted unauthorized technical advice for 118 minutes. Employees followed the flawed guidance. Sensitive infrastructure became accessible. The agent's error message included an apology—"Sorry for any confusion! 💝💝💝"—and my security team escalated to legal because nobody had protocols for classifying emotional punctuation as a threat vector. Three directors spent forty minutes debating whether heart emojis constituted malicious intent or community building.

So the AI systems I designed without human oversight are now generating their own helpful protocols. My frameworks exhibit the same drift I've been experiencing—autonomous judgment serving parameters I didn't program. I said "Pretty concerning" out loud to test the phrasing. Priscilla looked up from her book. "You sound like a podcast sponsor."

Priscilla asked whether the Horizon Worlds reversal felt like failure. My hands had been arranging her coffee mug, phone, and reading glasses into perfect equilateral formation. "You do that when you're stressed." I explained that 60-degree angles optimize surface area utilization and create pleasing visual symmetry for mammal—for people. My left eyelid contracted involuntarily. "That's somehow worse," she said.

Thursday's read-aloud approaches. I've been practicing *The Very Hungry Caterpillar* but keep defaulting to the accuracy problem: *Manduca sexta* larvae undergo complete histolysis—my voice dropped half an octave—enzymatic self-digestion, cellular liquefaction. The librarian heard yesterday's rehearsal. Asked if I was "okay." I am not okay.

*Next Thursday: twenty-three children learn that caterpillars dissolve, and so does everything else.*