104cedbc2f
Nine cases playable, all lint clean, all verified end-to-end. A records-modernisation project puts sixty-seven years of paper through a scanner, and Frank Drebin Jr becomes the first person ever to read one of his grandfather's reports. Page nine of the Meridian Street file sets out the survey, the recommendation, the transfer and both signatures, in the same flat careful voice as everything else. He put it all in. He put all of it in. Page ten is the property schedule, because there was never going to be an explanation — to the man who typed it there was nothing there to explain. The palette drifts backwards through the case: room 0 is Act III cold blue, the basement is nearly all grey, the last rooms are 1958 monochrome, and every 1958 prop is generated mono so it reads as lit by a different decade — the owl trick from Case Ten extended across a whole case. Ninety-one-year-old Stanley Kowalczyk, the rookie from Act Zero, is the only warm-coloured thing in it, because he is the last living link and he has had his commendation on a wall for sixty-seven years, next to a note telling a night clerk to be at his sister's. Under the third floorboard at 1114 Delaware: nineteen tins, 1939 to 1958, every one full, not one ever opened, with an inventory on top in a flat careful hand headed PROPERTY — NOT YET SUBMITTED. He never spent any of it. It was never for anything. Jr does the only thing a Drebin can do with a true fact. Eleven pages, every sentence true, submitted at 3:14 in the morning — and the portal thanks him and asks him to rate his experience with the records modernisation portal today. He rates it honestly, because he is constitutionally incapable of anything else, and leaves a four-hundred-word comment, and nobody reads it. The cycle is the punchline and the punchline is the tragedy. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
124 lines
7.2 KiB
JSON
124 lines
7.2 KiB
JSON
{
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"name": "Police Squad — Records Modernisation Suite",
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"enter_text": "Sixty-seven years of paper on pallets, and a man from a vendor explaining a workflow.",
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"music": 1,
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"strokes": [
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{ "Rect": { "x": 0, "y": 0, "w": 160, "h": 168, "color": 7, "meaning": "Floor" } },
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{ "Rect": { "x": 0, "y": 0, "w": 160, "h": 58, "color": 9, "meaning": "Wall" } },
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{ "Rect": { "x": 0, "y": 56, "w": 160, "h": 3, "color": 1, "meaning": "None" } },
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{ "Rect": { "x": 0, "y": 59, "w": 160, "h": 109, "color": 7, "meaning": "Floor" } },
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{ "Rect": { "x": 10, "y": 10, "w": 44, "h": 34, "color": 15, "meaning": "None" } },
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{ "Rect": { "x": 14, "y": 14, "w": 36, "h": 5, "color": 3, "meaning": "None" } },
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{ "Rect": { "x": 14, "y": 23, "w": 26, "h": 3, "color": 8, "meaning": "None" } },
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{ "Rect": { "x": 14, "y": 30, "w": 30, "h": 3, "color": 8, "meaning": "None" } },
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{ "Rect": { "x": 66, "y": 14, "w": 32, "h": 24, "color": 11, "meaning": "None" } },
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{ "Rect": { "x": 72, "y": 20, "w": 20, "h": 10, "color": 1, "meaning": "None" } },
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{ "Rect": { "x": 112, "y": 10, "w": 40, "h": 40, "color": 3, "meaning": "None" } },
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{ "Rect": { "x": 116, "y": 14, "w": 32, "h": 32, "color": 1, "meaning": "None" } },
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{ "Rect": { "x": 122, "y": 22, "w": 20, "h": 4, "color": 15, "meaning": "None" } },
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{ "Rect": { "x": 122, "y": 32, "w": 14, "h": 4, "color": 11, "meaning": "None" } },
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{ "Rect": { "x": 0, "y": 164, "w": 160, "h": 4, "color": 0, "meaning": "Wall" } }
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],
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"spawn": [24, 148],
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"exits": [null, 1, null, null],
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"exit_flags": ["", "assigned", "", ""],
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"exit_blocked": ["", "You have not been given the basement yet. Ask for the basement.", "", ""],
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"objects": [
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{
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"name": "scanner",
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"sprite": "scanner",
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"x": 58,
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"y": 120,
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"look": "A document scanner rated at ninety pages a minute. Beside it, a laminated card: HOLD PAGES FLAT. DO NOT READ. READING SLOWS THE LINE.",
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"synonyms": "machine feeder line workflow card",
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"use_text": "You hold pages flat. You do it for two days. You are extremely good at it, because you are extremely good at everything you are told to do, and because nobody has ever once given you a job you could not do sincerely."
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},
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{
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"name": "archivebox",
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"sprite": "archivebox",
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"x": 108,
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"y": 116,
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"look": "Pallets of banker's boxes out of the basement. The labels are handwritten and the handwriting changes about every eleven years. The 1958 pallet is going through on Thursday. After Thursday the paper is pulped, because the paper has been scanned, and a scan is a record.",
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"synonyms": "boxes pallet paper files archive",
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"use_text": "You look at the label on the top box of the 1958 pallet. It is not a hand you have seen before, and it is a hand you know immediately, because you have seen it on the back of a photograph on your father's desk for fifty years. F. DREBIN."
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},
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{
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"name": "hockenjr",
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"sprite": "hockenjr",
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"x": 34,
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"y": 132,
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"look": "Captain Ed Hocken Jr., on the line beside you, holding pages flat, because he would not ask anybody to do a thing he would not do.",
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"synonyms": "hocken ed captain",
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"use_text": "He tells you his own grandfather's reports are on the 1961 pallet and that he has read every one of them and that they are, in his professional opinion, terrible. He says it with enormous love.",
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"dialogue": [
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{
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"says": "Hocken Jr.: Frank! Two days on the scanner and you haven't complained once. My dad said your dad never complained either. Hocken Jr.: Did yours ever talk about his dad? Mine never talked about his.",
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"choices": [
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{ "text": "My father talked about him constantly.", "goto": 1 },
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{ "text": "No. Never once.", "goto": 1 },
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{ "text": "There's a box with his name on it, Ed.", "goto": 2 }
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]
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},
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{
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"says": "Hocken Jr.: What was he like? You tell him what you were told: nineteen years, best clearance rate the division ever had, never once had a file come back, and a commendation in '58 for the Meridian Street thing that they still taught at the academy into the seventies. You have said those four sentences your whole life. You have never once been asked to say a fifth.",
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"choices": [{ "text": "There's a box with his name on it, Ed.", "goto": 2 }]
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},
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{
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"says": "Hocken Jr.: Then read it! Frank, it's going in the pulper Thursday. Hocken Jr.: That's your grandfather. Nobody's read a word of that man since he wrote it and on Friday there's nothing to read.",
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"choices": [
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{ "text": "The card says not to read.", "goto": 3 },
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{ "text": "I'll ask the Chief for the basement.", "goto": 4 }
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]
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},
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{
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"says": "Hocken Jr.: The card says reading slows the line, Frank. The card is about the line. He is, without knowing it, the second person in this story to be completely right about a piece of paper and completely ignored.",
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"choices": [{ "text": "I'll ask the Chief.", "goto": 4 }]
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},
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{
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"says": "Hocken Jr.: Ask her. She'll say yes. She says yes to you about eleven per cent of the time and this is one of them.",
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"choices": [{ "text": "Eleven per cent.", "goto": -1 }]
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}
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]
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},
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{
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"name": "davis",
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"sprite": "davis",
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"x": 128,
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"y": 130,
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"look": "Chief Davis, signing off a vendor invoice with the expression of a woman signing off a vendor invoice.",
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"synonyms": "chief boss commander",
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"dialogue": [
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{
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"says": "Davis: Drebin. Two days on a scanner and no incidents. I want you to know I've noticed and I want you to know I don't trust it.",
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"choices": [
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{ "text": "Chief, I'd like the basement.", "goto": 1 },
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{ "text": "Chief, my grandfather's case files are on Thursday's pallet.", "goto": 1 },
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{ "text": "I have been holding pages flat, Chief. Sincerely.", "goto": 2 }
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]
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},
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{
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"says": "Davis: The basement. She puts the pen down. Davis: Drebin, the last time you asked me for something, Police Squad was dissolved by a budget amendment and you lost your trousers on international television.",
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"choices": [
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{ "text": "That's true, Chief.", "goto": 3 },
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{ "text": "It's four boxes and two days, Chief.", "goto": 3 }
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]
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},
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{
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"says": "Davis: I know you have. That's what's unsettling.",
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"choices": [{ "text": "Chief, I'd like the basement.", "goto": 1 }]
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},
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{
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"says": "Davis: Take the basement. Davis: Frank — you understand what a records project is? It is the first time in sixty-seven years anybody has looked at any of it. Not the first time in a while. The first time. Davis: Whatever is down there has been down there the whole time, and the only reason nobody knows is that nobody has ever gone and looked.",
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"choices": [
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{ "text": "Understood, Chief.", "goto": 4, "sets_flag": "assigned", "points": 10 }
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]
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},
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{
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"says": "Davis: Thursday, Drebin. Then it's a wellness suite.",
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"choices": []
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}
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]
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}
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]
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}
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