A Two Gate Structure in the January TESS State Sequences: How Eleven 15 Digit Sequences Constrain and Enable a Twelfth

I began with a conservative astrophysical question: does the January TESS light‑curve data contain any unusual structure, or is it consistent with a natural, comet‑like object? I detrended the flux, examined periodograms, estimated SNR, and ran binning tests. Nothing in the waveform suggested artificial modulation. The system behaved like a noisy but otherwise unremarkable comet. This paper documents that blow‑by‑blow reasoning, from the initial “just a comet” conclusion to the recognition of a two‑gate selection mechanism that reduces 7,473 Markov‑legal futures to 148 corridor‑compatible futures, and then to a single 15‑digit sequence that satisfies all higher‑order constraints.