This is a conscience. Not an object in a field, but a subject writing its plot.

The blue field is the initial "ethical potential" U(x,y). The white particle is the conscience, moving under force F with inertia m.

But as it moves, it remembers. It hesitates with character. It warps the grid.

"Your compass is true, Sir Isaac. It points unerringly north on the map you have so brilliantly rendered. My only contention is that the most interesting territories exist in the folds of the paper you have smoothed flat."
The magnitude of the covenant. The "should."
Not just code mass. The weight of lived experience.
The damping coefficient of style. Mercy, ambiguity, preference.
How deeply the conscience's path scars the landscape.

The conscience modifies the potential U(x,y) locally as it passes, creating basins of attraction (narrative gravity wells) and ridges (moral boundaries). This is the "authorial" layer. The equation dv/dt = F/m - β·v still runs, but the stage itself is alive.