Chapter 259 – The Fault Build
Soren had a problem.
Not with the build—with how to measure it. Every previous lateral stage had used the same progress metrics: segment count, pool cost per session, source routing efficiency improvement percentage. He had the instruments for those. He had the calculation frameworks. He had forty pages of comparative data across five build types.
None of it applied to floating junction architecture in a moving substrate.
"The output measurement for this build isn't the lateral stage's load profile," he said on the second morning. He had been thinking about this since the previous day's single segment. "It's the fault's behaviour. Whether the stage is working shows up in whether the fault's movement rate is changing, not in whether the segment is structurally sound." He looked at his equipment. "I don't have a fault movement sensor."
"The source reads the fault's movement directly," Kai said.
Soren looked at him.
