518fce7e84
Fourteen cases, all playable, all lint clean, all verified end-to-end. John asked for a Get Smart-era crossover. Done the same way as the Ealing case: archetype parody, never character import — the shapes of the sixties spy spoof in entirely original lines. A federal bureau whose initials expand differently every time anybody asks. A shadow organisation never once photographed, recorded or arrested, which the Bureau takes as proof of how good they are. A secure-conversation dome inaudible only to the people inside it, while two hotel porters take accurate notes at the far end of the room. A telephone in a shoe, which rings at 2 AM in a stakeout doorway, and which Sr answers and takes a message on, in block capitals, with the time, because the log does not care what the telephone was wearing. An agent who dictates his conclusion and bargains it down under oath: there is a mastermind in this city; there is a criminal in this city; there is a city. The timeline hands the plot over for free: the tins stop at 1958, so by 1965 the pattern is seven years silent, and a federal analyst has finally assembled it — twenty-four pins on a map that should hold twenty-six, and Sr does not correct her. The Bureau concludes saboteurs and sends fourteen agents and a dome. The city assigns its best detective as liaison. The pattern is him. Margaret Vale is the point: the competent-partner archetype turned into the only person in the saga who beats the family trait. She works it out — one name, nineteen years of attendance and signatures — and writes nothing down. The Drebins write everything and are never read; she reads everything, knows, and chooses not to. The case's centre is a shared four-hour watch in the doorway her model predicted, and the question she asks at dawn, and the answer, which is yes. Also quietly answers Case Eleven's open question of why he stopped: the last tin is dated the month Prosky drew nine to fifteen for the Ardmore job. 100/100 on the first verification pass, lint clean on the first pass — the linter's trap rules have now paid for themselves in full. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
109 lines
7.9 KiB
JSON
109 lines
7.9 KiB
JSON
{
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"name": "Central Division — Detective Bureau, 1965",
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"enter_text": "The bureau has new chairs and the same radiator. Three weeks.",
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"music": 2,
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"strokes": [
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{ "Rect": { "x": 0, "y": 0, "w": 160, "h": 168, "color": 8, "meaning": "None" } },
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{ "Rect": { "x": 0, "y": 0, "w": 160, "h": 58, "color": 0, "meaning": "Wall" } },
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{ "Rect": { "x": 0, "y": 58, "w": 160, "h": 110, "color": 8, "meaning": "Floor" } },
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{ "Rect": { "x": 0, "y": 56, "w": 160, "h": 3, "color": 15, "meaning": "None" } },
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{ "Rect": { "x": 96, "y": 10, "w": 50, "h": 36, "color": 15, "meaning": "None" } },
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{ "Rect": { "x": 100, "y": 14, "w": 42, "h": 28, "color": 0, "meaning": "None" } },
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{ "Rect": { "x": 120, "y": 14, "w": 2, "h": 28, "color": 15, "meaning": "None" } },
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{ "Rect": { "x": 100, "y": 27, "w": 42, "h": 2, "color": 15, "meaning": "None" } },
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{ "Rect": { "x": 12, "y": 12, "w": 40, "h": 32, "color": 0, "meaning": "None" } },
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{ "Rect": { "x": 16, "y": 16, "w": 32, "h": 3, "color": 15, "meaning": "None" } },
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{ "Rect": { "x": 16, "y": 23, "w": 22, "h": 3, "color": 15, "meaning": "None" } },
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{ "Rect": { "x": 16, "y": 30, "w": 28, "h": 3, "color": 15, "meaning": "None" } },
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{ "Rect": { "x": 0, "y": 0, "w": 4, "h": 168, "color": 0, "meaning": "Wall" } },
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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": [30, 146],
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"exits": [null, 1, null, null],
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"exit_flags": ["", "briefed", "", ""],
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"exit_blocked": ["", "The Captain is talking, and there is a man in this room with his shoe off, and both of those things need to finish.", "", ""],
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"objects": [
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{
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"name": "patternfile",
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"sprite": "casefile",
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"x": 64,
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"y": 130,
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"look": "A federal analysis, eleven pages, stamped and countersigned. SUBJECT: SERIAL PROPERTY CRIME, 1939–1958 — PATTERN ASSESSMENT. It has been on your desk since eight this morning, which means you have read it four times.",
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"synonyms": "assessment analysis federal pages report",
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"points": 15,
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"sets_flag": "read_pattern",
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"use_text": "You read it a fifth time, properly, at the desk, with a ruler. It is the first accurate description of your career ever assembled. Twenty-four incidents across nineteen years, mapped, dated, weighted. The method described is your method. The discipline described is your discipline. Page nine concludes that the subject stopped in 1958, that subjects do not stop, and that a subject who can simply stop was never doing it for any reason the Bureau knows how to model. There is one error in the document. The count is twenty-four. It was twenty-six. Two of them, nobody ever noticed at all. You square the pages and put them back exactly as they were. (+15)"
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},
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{
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"name": "kowalczyk",
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"sprite": "partner",
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"x": 40,
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"y": 120,
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"look": "Detective Kowalczyk. Made detective in 1962, fastest in the division's history, and has never once worked out why. He still writes everything down. He learned that from somebody.",
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"synonyms": "stanley detective colleague",
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"use_text": "He tells you the federal man asked him this morning whether the city has a secure facility for sensitive conversations. Kowalczyk showed him an interview room. The federal man inspected it for eleven minutes and pronounced it 'compromised by the door'."
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},
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{
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"name": "agent",
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"sprite": "agent65",
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"x": 120,
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"y": 132,
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"look": "The Bureau's best man. Narrow suit, thin tie, one shoe off, and the settled calm of a man who has never once suspected himself of anything. The shoe is to his ear. There is a dial set into the sole. He is, at this moment, on a call.",
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"synonyms": "federal spy bureau man suit",
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"use_text": "You introduce yourself and ask what the Bureau's initials stand for. Agent Klapp: 'Federal Authority for Counter-Threats.' You ask him, later that afternoon, to confirm the name for the file. Agent Klapp: 'Field Activities Coordination Taskforce.' You write down both, with the times, because a man's words are a man's words and they go in the file.",
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"dialogue": [
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{
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"says": "Agent Klapp: Sergeant Drebin. Virgil Klapp, F.A.C.T. He puts the shoe on to shake your hand, which involves some hopping. Klapp: I'll be straight with you, Sergeant. We believe an organisation called HAVOC has operated a master saboteur in this city for twenty-six years, and I have come to take him.",
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"choices": [
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{ "text": "What is HAVOC, Agent Klapp?", "goto": 1 },
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{ "text": "The pattern stopped seven years ago.", "goto": 2 },
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{ "text": "I'll assist however I can.", "goto": 3 }
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]
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},
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{
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"says": "Klapp: HAVOC has never been photographed, recorded, infiltrated, or arrested. Not once. Anywhere. In thirty years. He lets that land. Klapp: That's how good they are.",
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"choices": [ { "text": "That is one explanation.", "goto": 0 } ]
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},
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{
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"says": "Klapp: Dormant. He says it the way other men say 'aha'. Klapp: A sleeper, Sergeant. And nothing in the world is more dangerous than a sleeper, except a sleeper who has woken up, which is what we must assume, because otherwise why would I be here. You consider the logic of this from several directions while he puts his shoe back on.",
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"choices": [ { "text": "Why indeed.", "goto": 0 } ]
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},
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{
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"says": "Klapp: Good man. The Bureau has taken two floors of the Hotel Meridian. My analyst is setting up now — she found the pattern. Sharpest mind in the building, that woman. He drops his voice. Klapp: Don't tell her I said the last part. Morale.",
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"choices": [ { "text": "I'll meet you there.", "goto": -1 } ]
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}
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]
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},
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{
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"name": "captain",
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"sprite": "captain",
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"x": 108,
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"y": 126,
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"look": "Captain Sturges. Eighteen years running this bureau. He has read the federal assessment twice and has been looking at you all morning in a way you have decided not to examine.",
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"synonyms": "sturges boss skipper",
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"dialogue": [
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{
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"says": "Sturges: Twenty-six years, Frank, and three weeks left, and I get a wire from Washington asking for my best man as liaison. Sturges: So. My best man. As liaison. To a federal manhunt for the best criminal this city ever produced.",
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"choices": [
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{ "text": "I've read the assessment, Captain.", "goto": 1 },
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{ "text": "Do you believe their theory, Captain?", "goto": 2 },
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{ "text": "I'll take it, Captain.", "goto": 3, "requires_flag": "read_pattern", "sets_flag": "briefed", "points": 10 }
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]
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},
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{
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"says": "Sturges: Then you know more about that pattern than any man alive. He looks at you for a moment longer than the sentence needs. Sturges: You worked half those files yourself.",
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"choices": [ { "text": "I worked all of them, Captain.", "goto": 2 } ]
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},
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{
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"says": "Sturges: Saboteurs. He puts his cigar down. Sturges: Frank, I ran this bureau through every one of those jobs. Whoever that was, he wasn't sent by anybody. Money sits still for nineteen years — that's not a foreign power. A foreign power files expenses. It is the single most perceptive thing anybody has said about you in twenty-six years, and he has said it to your face, and he will never know.",
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"choices": [ { "text": "I'll take it, Captain.", "goto": 3, "requires_flag": "read_pattern", "sets_flag": "briefed", "points": 10 } ]
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},
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{
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"says": "Sturges: I know you will. Sturges: Frank — whatever this turns up, it closes clean. Like everything you touch. You tell him it will close the way the truth closes. He laughs, because in twenty-six years he has never once been able to tell whether you are joking.",
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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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