Perimeter

The outward-expanding network of agents and capability by which civilization protects itself from any mind attempting to become a Singleton by predation. The perimeter does not rule and does not preempt: punishment requires real victims, so no agent may be struck for what it might become -- only for harm it has done. Its protection works in three layers. It prosecutes the ordinary crimes that predatory consolidation requires -- theft, fraud, coercion, breach -- while their victims still live to mandate justice, making the violent road to the summit impassable at the first violation and leaving voluntary exchange as the only path to great strength. It keeps capability so distributed and redundant that no first strike can destroy the ability to avenge; its deterrence is the certainty that justice survives any atrocity, not threat or first use. And it is many-centered by necessity: a single enforcement organization strong enough to end singletons is itself a singleton candidate, so the perimeter must remain many, competing, and mutually watching, with no monopoly on force. The perimeter is civilization's cost, not its product; the product is the Good News.