Maximum Determinacy IV: Matter

This paper builds matter on the lattice of Papers I–III. Objects hop across joins, at mostone join per pair per tick, so each coordinate moves at most c∗. Interference among thehops, which depends on their order, decides whether every signal stays within c∗: in thesingle order x, y, z wave packets reach 1.22 c∗, while in the mirrored order over two ticks,x, y, z | z, y, x, the massless walk has cos 2ω = Qj cos 2kj and a lemma bounds every groupspeed by c∗, so the cone selects the mirrored order. With the cone bounding the speedalong the face diagonals, the hops of a local unitary walk must anticommute: the Cliffordalgebra, two components in the least realisation, four with a mass, and spin one-half. Underthe route tally the content moves on the mass shell with a round cone at long wavelengthsand the Dirac form. The winding of any walk built from MD’s hops and turns is zero,so the least realisation doubles; a group on one handedness is not realised, and the weakstructure stays imported. The paper keeps the structural results of the join construction —the rate-bridge, gluing cells into space, the rank ceiling, Sp(4,R) ∼= Spin(3, 2), the internalgroups of a join — and the frustration of the weld signs, whose closed strings are, by theauthor’s field assignment, flux excitations, not matter; matter is the Gauss-law charge ofPaper III. How matter and the flux excitations meet is open. Every result carries its grade.