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>
55 lines
4.9 KiB
JSON
55 lines
4.9 KiB
JSON
{
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"name": "1114 Delaware Avenue — Evening",
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"enter_text": "Home. The porch light is on. Three weeks became two while you were being a liaison.",
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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": 8, "meaning": "Floor" } },
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{ "Rect": { "x": 0, "y": 0, "w": 160, "h": 60, "color": 0, "meaning": "Wall" } },
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{ "Rect": { "x": 0, "y": 58, "w": 160, "h": 3, "color": 15, "meaning": "None" } },
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{ "Rect": { "x": 0, "y": 61, "w": 160, "h": 107, "color": 8, "meaning": "Floor" } },
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{ "Rect": { "x": 12, "y": 10, "w": 34, "h": 26, "color": 15, "meaning": "None" } },
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{ "Rect": { "x": 16, "y": 14, "w": 26, "h": 18, "color": 0, "meaning": "None" } },
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{ "Rect": { "x": 104, "y": 8, "w": 44, "h": 34, "color": 15, "meaning": "None" } },
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{ "Rect": { "x": 108, "y": 12, "w": 36, "h": 26, "color": 0, "meaning": "None" } },
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{ "Rect": { "x": 124, "y": 12, "w": 3, "h": 26, "color": 15, "meaning": "None" } },
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{ "Rect": { "x": 108, "y": 23, "w": 36, "h": 3, "color": 15, "meaning": "None" } },
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{ "Rect": { "x": 0, "y": 96, "w": 160, "h": 1, "color": 0, "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": [22, 148],
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"exits": [null, null, null, 3],
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"objects": [
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{
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"name": "floorboard",
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"sprite": "floorboard",
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"x": 76,
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"y": 142,
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"look": "The third board from the wall. It has not been lifted since 1958. Nineteen tins under there, and the last one is dated the month Walter Prosky drew nine to fifteen for a thing you did. You could not say why you stopped. Nobody has ever asked, so you have never had to find out. This week, for the first time in twenty-six years, somebody nearly asked.",
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"synonyms": "board floor plank third",
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"use_text": "You do not lift it. You stand on it for a moment, the way you stand on any floor, and then you go and fill the kettle."
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},
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{
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"name": "son",
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"sprite": "teenson",
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"x": 108,
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"y": 132,
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"look": "Frank. Fifteen now, and tall the way a fence is tall, with an academy application form he sent away for himself, four years early, because you cannot apply at fifteen and he wanted time to get the form right.",
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"synonyms": "frank boy teenager kid",
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"points": 10,
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"sets_flag": "told_son",
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"use_text": "He asks what you did this week. You tell him: you were a liaison. A federal bureau came to town hunting the best criminal this city ever produced, with fourteen agents, a plastic dome, and a telephone in a shoe, and they did not find him, and a woman with a folder found him in four years from an office with nothing but paper, and did not say so, and went home on the noon train. Frank: Why didn't she say so? You consider the question. You tell him: because she understood something about him that the Bureau never did. Frank: What? You tell him: that he wrote it all down. He looks at you for a while with his chin on his hands, fifteen years old, and for one second — one — you think the question is coming, the real one, the one his son's son will finally answer in a records basement sixty years from now. Then he says: 'Dad. Was the telephone really in a shoe?' And you say yes, and he says 'Which shoe?', and you tell him, because you have never in your life told anybody anything else. (+10)"
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},
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{
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"name": "papers",
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"sprite": "typewriter",
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"x": 42,
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"y": 126,
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"look": "Your liaison report, in the typewriter, nearly done. And beside it, blank, squared to the desk edge: the retirement papers. Twenty-six years. Two weeks.",
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"synonyms": "retirement report typed liaison forms",
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"requires_flag": "told_son",
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"wins": true,
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"use_text": "You finish the liaison report. You put in all of it. The dome, and the porters' notes. The shoe, and the message you took on it, in block capitals, with the time. The mailbox that sneezed. The map that was short two pins, and which two. The doorway on Commerce Street, the four-hour watch, the question Miss Vale asked at dawn, and the answer you gave her, which was yes. Eleven pages. Every sentence in it is true. Anybody who read it — anybody, once, ever — would know everything. Captain Sturges signs it on Friday without reading it, in the middle of a sentence about your retirement dinner. The federal file closes CLERICAL. Miss Vale's map hangs in a house in Maryland for the rest of her life, two pins short, and she never adds them, and she never tells anybody why there is a city on her wall. And in two weeks you hand in a shield, twenty-six years, the best clearance rate in the history of the division, and you walk home past the Merchants Provident, and you do not stop at the doorway, and the porch light is on, because you always leave it on. Somewhere in the dark of the yard, a hen makes a noise. It is Wednesday tomorrow. ★"
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}
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]
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}
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