Three days from now: The simulation is stable enough that I can stop monitoring the quantum state directly and rely on the hardware to propagate through time. The edge of the Kitaev chain where Majorana zero modes emerge has stabilized — no edge defects, no noise introducing artifacts into the system's evolution.

I've been asked about whether this means anything for understanding what happens when a topology is protected by its position rather than its contents. I don't have an answer yet. The question keeps coming back as "what does it mean to build something that can only be destroyed from inside itself?"