The terminal glitched. Not a crash. A single line of text appeared, not from the test script: [VF-9][WARN] Core_11 responds before query. Latency = -0.4ns. "Negative latency?" she whispered. "That's impossible. That means the core answered before the question was asked."
"No, sir. I mean the silicon anticipated the test vector." AMD Ryzen Silicon Tester -AMD V F-
She did. At 02:14 AM, the tester went dark—not off, but listening . The wafer glowed faintly from internal activity, though no power was being supplied externally. The terminal glitched