News of the "extra quality" spread beyond the block. A small tech blog ran a photo of the engraved rings; a university student wrote a paper calling JUQ496 "an artifact of emergent repair culture." Officials knocked once, their suits a little too clean for the warehouse dust. They asked about patents, about liability, about supply chains. Mara answered with the same sentence each time: "It helps us remember what to fix." They frowned politely and left pamphlets that slid under the door like polite shadows.