If you're referring to this feature
"By default the CGI module implements a state-preserving behavior called "sticky" fields. The
way this works is that if you are regenerating a form, the methods that generate the form
field values will interrogate param() to see if similarly-named parameters are present in the
query string. If they find a like-named parameter, they will use it to set their default
values."
I don't think this has anything to do with what the OP is observing. There's no "regenerating a form" in the above code. Actually, there's no form involved at all, as the OP is directly supplying the parameter in the URLs called via SSI. A directly specified value ?count=10 should clearly override any value from a previous request.