Page 187 of Triplet Babies for my Ex's Best Friend

The corrupted lines draw my attention again. Not the obvious failure points. Those are clean enough now, contained by the patch. It’s the pattern beneath them. The way the logic buckled under load.

The sequence wasn’t simply damaged. It was redirected in a way that created instability only when the predictive correction layer engaged. Most engineers wouldn’t have gone that route. Too specific. Too inefficient if the intent was simple disruption.

Unless the goal wasn’t to break it. Unless the goal was to make it fail in a particular way.

I bring up the failure simulation again. The screen flickers through modeled conditions. Normal flight, crosswind, sensordisagreement, manual override delay, automated correction, feedback loop.

I stop, go back, and run it again.

The loop forms at the same point each time. Not immediately or obviously. The system attempts correction, overcompensates, receives distorted confirmation, and then corrects again. Each response amplifies the previous one until stabilization becomes the very mechanism producing instability.

My hand stills on the trackpad.

I know that shape.

Memory is an unreliable instrument. I know that better than most. Grief distorts sequence, weight, emphasis. It turns fragments into evidence and silence into accusation.

But this isn’t grief; it’s architecture.

I open a secured drive I haven’t accessed in months.

The folder name's neutral.Accident Review.As if neutrality has ever been sufficient.

My password fails on the first attempt because I mistype the final character. I correct it. The folder opens.

I don’t move.

The documents populate in neat rows. NTSB summaries. Internal engineering notes. Flight telemetry. Maintenance records. Sensor logs. Stabilization data. Photographs I never look at unless there’s no alternative.

Megan’s aircraft.

Megan’s last flight.

The room seems quieter, though it isn’t. Oliver is still talking softly to himself. Captain’s collar still jingles when he moves.

But everything narrows.

I select the telemetry folder, then the stabilization analysis. The file loads slowly, not because it’s large enough to warrant it, but because I'm aware of every second.

Four years is both a lifetime and no time at all.

The official report had been precise.Pilot error following adverse stabilization response. A sequence of decisions under stress. A delay in override. Failure to correct in time.Clean language. Clinical. Wrong.

But Megan wasn’t careless or slow. She wasn’t arrogant in the cockpit. She respected aircraft, weather, systems, and failure modes with the sort of disciplined attentiveness that made lesser pilots look performative.

She wouldn't have ignored escalating warnings. She would’ve listened, understood, and acted.

And still, the report said what it said.

Because the data supported it.

Or seemed to.

I pull the old stabilization logs beside the current corrupted demo sequence, splitting the screen.

At first, there's nothing. Different systems, generations, and environments. The aircraft she flew was running an earlier stabilization framework, one designed before the AI correction layer became what it is now. Smaller, more mechanical in its assumptions, less predictive.

But the core logic…