Latency is manageable—
Until speed increases.
For months, adaptation contained disturbance.
Feedback loops engaged.
Oscillations damped quickly.
Dispersion persisted without amplification.
Then velocity changed.
Not magnitude.
Speed.
In New York City, execution frequency doubled as liquidity thickened.
In London, structured desks compressed hedging intervals.
In Tokyo, retail turnover accelerated through mobile platforms.
Transactions per unit time increased system-wide.
Maya updated the model.
"When rate of change increases," she said,
"delay consumes larger proportion of cycle."
She formalized velocity.
Then acceleration.
Keith watched the curvature sharpen on screen.
"Higher acceleration means larger displacement during fixed delay."
"Exactly."
Jasmine recomputed the stability boundary including speed.
"Velocity term rising," she said.
"Margin shrinking."
Latency unchanged.
Correction strength constant.
But system speed elevated.
In Chicago, options hedging cascaded intraminute rather than intraday.
In Frankfurt, credit ETF flows transmitted price changes faster than underlying cash could adjust.
In Singapore, macro desks shortened decision windows to remain competitive.
Adaptation competed with acceleration.
A modest shock arrived.
Not large.
But fast.
Price dropped sharply within seconds.
Models reacted.
Liquidity shifted.
But delay remained finite.
Overshoot doubled previous oscillation amplitude.
Short-lived—
Yet measurable.
Maya sketched phase space under acceleration.
"Feedback tuned for slower regime," she said.
"Now speed alters effective curvature."
Keith's expression tightened.
"So stability assumptions degrade quietly."
"Yes."
"Acceleration rewrites tolerance."
In Hong Kong, futures whipsawed within milliseconds before stabilizing.
In Zurich, risk systems flagged transient breaches that self-corrected.
In Washington, D.C., no policy signal responded.
The disturbance was microstructural.
Not macro.
Jasmine measured recovery half-life again.
Effective correction slightly weaker under high velocity.
Not failure.
But erosion.
Keith spoke carefully.
"So the system is adaptive."
"Yes."
"But acceleration compresses time."
"And time is what adaptation needs."
Chapter 204 does not collapse.
It accelerates.
Speed increases.
Latency constant.
Correction finite.
Oscillations shorten but intensify.
The system holds—
For now.
But acceleration exposes a truth:
Stability is not just about strength.
It is about timing relative to speed.
And when systems move faster than their feedback,
Even small shocks
Travel further
Before correction arrives.