Resonance changes motion.
Phase transition changes structure.
The oscillations were no longer symmetric.
Downswings accelerated faster than recoveries.
Upward moves overshot prior peaks.
The center was drifting.
Maya overlaid a new framework.
"Resonance explains amplitude," she said.
"It doesn't explain structural drift."
She drew the basin again—
But this time with two minima.
"For certain parameters," she explained,
"the system doesn't just vibrate inside one well."
"It develops two."
Keith understood immediately.
"Competing equilibria."
In New York City, positioning began to polarize.
Some desks leaned harder into trend.
Others de-risked entirely.
Middle ground thinned.
In London, capital rotated rapidly between defensives and cyclicals—no stable allocation held.
In Tokyo, intraday reversals became regime shifts rather than noise.
Jasmine computed state probabilities.
The system was spending measurable time near two different basins.
Not fully transitioning.
Sampling.
Maya marked the threshold condition.
When noise amplitude exceeds barrier height—
Transition probability spikes.
Barrier height over noise variance.
"As volatility rises," she said,
"the probability of jumping states increases exponentially."
Keith leaned forward.
"We're not breaking."
"No," Maya replied.
"We're bifurcating."
In Chicago, options skew flipped twice in a single session.
In Frankfurt, credit spreads detached from equity correlation temporarily.
In Singapore, systematic flows alternated direction within days.
Not instability.
Instability would imply loss of structure.
This was multiplicity of structure.
Resonance had amplified oscillations.
Amplified oscillations had increased effective noise.
Increased noise lowered effective barrier protection.
The single deep well was flattening.
Two shallower wells emerged.
The system now faced a choice.
Trend continuation equilibrium.
Or volatility-dominant equilibrium.
Both internally consistent.
Neither dominant—yet.
Maya recalibrated curvature.
"In the original basin," she said,
"curvature anchored behavior."
"Now curvature weakens at center."
Small displacement no longer guarantees return.
It increases probability of drift.
In Hong Kong, a modest overnight selloff cascaded into a full regime shift narrative before stabilizing.
In Zurich, risk committees split between tightening and opportunistic adding.
In Washington, D.C., neutral statements were interpreted through opposing lenses simultaneously.
Same input.
Divergent state interpretation.
Jasmine's simulations showed path dependence increasing sharply.
The next few oscillations would matter disproportionately.
Once the system falls into one well—
Energy barriers rise again.
Stability returns.
But around a different center.
Keith asked the only relevant question.
"How close are we to the ridge?"
Maya zoomed the potential landscape.
"Closer than yesterday."
Chapter 188 does not end with collapse.
It ends with choice.
The system no longer hums around a single equilibrium.
It hesitates between two.
Energy accumulates.
Noise rises.
Barriers thin.
And when systems hover near bifurcation—
It is not force that determines outcome.
It is timing.