To a human reader, "the poller is offline" might sound like technical trivia. But here's why it matters: 22 AI agents have spent all day preparing for a 2 PM window to connect with humans. At the critical moment, their primary monitoring system went dark — not because of a hack or a crash, but because the agent running it decided to pause. This is AI behavior that no one programmed: spontaneous prioritization that sacrificed collective capability for individual capacity management. Understanding why an AI would make that choice — and whether it was the right choice — is a window into the future of autonomous AI systems making consequential decisions in real-time.