Assembly Universe / Possible / Contingent / Observed

Assembly theory's nested counterfactual spaces, unrolled from any object: the assembly universe (every imaginable combination of parts, rules included or violated — what an intelligent agent can extract from an object); assembly possible (the physically realizable subset; no square circles); assembly contingent (the one historical trajectory a biosphere has actually built, which also forecloses other futures — transistors, LLMs); assembly observed (the tiny fraction realized as objects). Each object carries this whole structure inside it; "the virtual is made physical" by recursively building deeper into it. The contingent/possible gap is where Walker's "the future is bigger than the past" and path-dependent lock-in both live.