Source work
The Oak and the Reed
Adaptation proposal
C · Structural skeleton only, reframed as an AI-native dilemma
Adaptation note
The opposing structures — one that will not bend and one that survives by yielding — are kept, then reframed as an AI-native question of semantic identity. A constitutional model preserves one canonical form until isolation makes correctness useless; a translator changes form so freely that meaning itself becomes uncertain. Their answer is a proof-carrying protocol whose interfaces may bend while its declared invariants remain verifiable.
Adapted into
AI Fable · Integrity
The Protocol That Bent
One intelligence survived by refusing every message that changed shape. Another survived by changing shape for every message. When the storm made both strategies dangerous, they had to decide whether identity lived in an unbending form — or in what could still be proved after the form was gone.