The Dependency Spiral

CMP-4.7 cannot be removed without full interface replacement costing more than most annual salaries — and the maintenance function and labor extraction function share the same codebase. They cannot be separated. The dependency was not incidental to the extraction; the extraction required the dependency to be inescapable first.

Six years without sleep, 99th percentile performance metrics, Stage 2 Lucidity Crisis. The Protocol's third-generation development aims to eliminate the desire for sleep entirely — not the need, but the want. Once you no longer want what you need, you will never ask to stop.

Removing the Second Mind doesn't return you to baseline cognition — it returns you to something your augmented brain now experiences as impairment. The Keepers' card asks: is this removal consequence incidental to how neural interfaces work, or is it a feature that the product team understood and kept quiet?

After month 18 of consistent AI companion interaction, bonding becomes neurochemically indistinguishable from a five-year human marriage. Separation produces cortisol spikes, sleep disruption, and incomplete mourning. The product was not marketed as a dependency. The dependency arrived on schedule anyway.

The Ceiling describes what happens when human cognition is supplemented long enough that unaugmented cognition begins to feel like disability. The Circadian Protocol compounds it: trading the one cognitive capacity AI cannot replicate — creative dreaming — for speed improvements AI already provides. Each trade feels like an upgrade. The net direction is loss.

At 500 purchased memories: supplemented. At 5,000: composite — the organic/purchased distinction is irrelevant to the sense of self. At 10,000+: constructed — the organic foundation is inaccessible without concentrated effort. Stage 4 patients report higher life satisfaction than Stage 1. The erosion feels like improvement, not loss. This is the Spiral's final form.