What people knew as the Protectorate was not an area of sixteen square miles. An area of sixteen square miles was the particular range which had to be kept clear of sentient life – so the defensive structures were all outside of the area, so as to keep all personnel outside of the range. Even remotely controlled equipment counted as sentient in this regard (the phenomenon was known as sympathetic empathy and was, like most of The Protege’s powers, completely unique to him) and since the exact limits of his empathy was unknown save for its range, the people in power had decided to simply keep everything that was even fabricated by humans out of his range.

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