The city woke up already behind.
Not because something had gone wrong overnight, but because everything was happening closer together now—decisions overlapping, consequences stepping on each other's heels. There was no longer a clean morning reset. Yesterday bled forward.
Minh Truong felt it before he checked anything.
The air itself seemed tighter, as if the city were holding its breath between choices.
At 08:12, the first briefing request arrived.
At 08:14, the second.
By 08:20, Oversight's internal channel was full of messages that all said the same thing in different words:
We moved too slowly.
We moved too fast.
Tell us which one we did wrong.
Minh read none of them in full.
He didn't need to.
Speed had become the new currency, and no one knew how much it was worth.
In the central operations hall, the screens told a different story than the voices.
The data did not show collapse.
It showed strain.
Models converged faster, but with wider error bars. Simulations completed in half the time, then immediately invalidated themselves with updated inputs. Every solution arrived with a warning attached to its own confidence.
Zhang Yu stood beside Minh, scrolling through a regional heatmap.
"They're oscillating," Zhang said. "Overcorrecting one hour, freezing the next."
Minh nodded. "They're learning the cost curve in real time."
Zhang frowned. "That curve used to be invisible."
"Yes," Minh said. "Which is why people think this is worse."
Below them, a municipal services board rolled back a sanitation schedule change approved just six hours earlier. The reversal created its own problems—missed pickups, confused contractors, public complaints that contradicted complaints from the day before.
The city was not failing.
It was thrashing.
At midday, Elena Park convened a limited session.
No Council members. No press liaisons. Just coordinators and regional heads—people who had to make things work without pretending they understood everything.
Elena didn't open with reassurance.
"Speed is exposing us," she said plainly. "Not because it's wrong, but because it's honest."
A coordinator raised a hand. "We're being punished for acting."
"You're being punished for acting without ownership," Minh said, before Elena could respond.
Heads turned toward him.
Minh continued evenly. "Fast decisions aren't the problem. Fast decisions without acceptance are."
A man across the table shook his head. "That's abstract. People are angry now."
"Yes," Minh agreed. "Because anger arrives faster than explanation."
Another voice cut in. "So what do you suggest? We slow everything down again?"
Minh met her gaze. "You can't. The buffer is gone. Slowing down now is also a decision—and it has a cost."
Silence settled, heavy and uncertain.
Elena leaned forward. "Then say it clearly."
Minh took a breath. "If you choose speed, own the damage. If you choose caution, own the delay. But stop pretending one of them is neutral."
No one argued.
That frightened him more than resistance would have.
In the afternoon, the headline appeared.
Not from a major outlet. From a local aggregator with a talent for compression:
FASTER DECISIONS, DEADLIER MISTAKES?
The article was thin. The reaction was not.
Minh watched sentiment curves spike—not in fear, but in demand. People wanted assurance. Guarantees. Someone to say this phase was temporary.
Someone to say the system would step back in.
Zhang spoke quietly beside him. "They want a governor on reality."
Minh answered without looking away. "They want time back."
At 17:46, the system published another note.
Not global.
Not broadcast.
Targeted.
[LOCAL ADVISORY] OBSERVED BEHAVIOR: DECISION REVERSAL ACCELERATION
RISK: COMPOUNDED ERROR
SUGGESTION: MAINTAIN COMMITMENT WINDOW
It was the first time in days the system had used the word suggestion.
Minh read it carefully.
"Is this it?" Zhang asked. "Is it starting to guide again?"
Minh shook his head. "No. It's teaching."
"Teaching what?"
"That speed without commitment is just noise."
That evening, Minh walked home instead of taking transit.
He wanted to feel the city at street level—to hear arguments at intersections, to see the way people hesitated before crossing now that timing felt less forgiving.
At one corner, a traffic light malfunctioned briefly. Drivers waited longer than necessary, unsure. When the light corrected itself, horns sounded—not in anger, but in release.
Minh understood then.
People weren't afraid of making mistakes.
They were afraid of being unable to undo them.
The old system had been generous with reversals. With smoothing. With quiet corrections that let people believe errors were temporary.
This one was not.
At home, Minh opened his notebook.
Speed reveals intent faster than truth.
Truth arrives later—if at all.
He paused, then wrote another line beneath it:
Ownership is slower than action, but it lasts longer.
He closed the notebook and leaned back.
Tomorrow would be worse.
Not because the city would fail.
But because it would keep learning, and learning hurt at this pace.
Minh stared at the ceiling, aware of the numbers without looking for them.
The weight of speed was not that it crushed.
It was that it gave no time to look away before impact.
And the city—like Minh himself—was running out of places to hide.