policesquadquest/cases/case-00b-the-quartet/rooms/room1.json
type-two 7b2222f97a Beirut cold open, the unused film beats, and ZAZ's back catalogue
MRPGI is verified clean and in sync; all thirteen cases still pass against it.
This pass closes the content gaps a sprite audit turned up — several generated
sprites were never placed, and each one was a missing film beat.

- Case Seven now opens in BEIRUT, as the film does: four days at the back of a
  summit of the six least popular men on earth, holding a glass of water,
  which is where a Los Angeles shipping company with two hundred and six ships
  gets named out loud. Added as room6 with start_room pointed at it, so nothing
  renumbered. Case is now 140 points across seven rooms. The despots are
  generic fictional strongmen rather than caricatures of real heads of state.
- Case Ten: the P.L.O.T. Device itself now appears — the title object of the
  case had never once been on screen — plus Cane's self-driving car, which
  refuses the destination and plays an advertisement before the paperclip
  intervenes.
- Case Six: Danny Cavanaugh's publicity still, captioned in his own hand,
  "DANNY CAVANAUGH — AVAILABLE."
- Case Eight: Hector Savage's fire hose, and Meinheimer's own wheelchair.
- Case Nine: Tanya Peters and the clinic on Wilshire (Frank is DONOR OF THE
  QUARTER; there is a plaque; his wife has not seen it).
- Case 00b: the Professor's four-foot diagram, admitted as Exhibit 1 over a
  defence objection that it is prejudicial, which the judge agrees it is.

ZAZ's own earlier films go in as texture, not cases (DESIGN §10):
Airplane!'s "don't call me Shirley" in Case Five, the escalating "wrong week to
quit" across four rooms of Case Eight, the drink poured into his own face, and
Otto the inflatable partner in Act III at forty per cent with no pump. Kentucky
Fried Movie's news anchor who doesn't know he's on air (twice, 1988 and 2025)
and Feel-A-Round at the Academy Awards, where the usher cannot move because he
is the horse.

Six name-shadowing blockers caught by the linter on the way in, including
'earpiece' swallowing 'plotdevice' and 'body' swallowing 'comedian'.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-07-26 18:37:54 +10:00

382 lines
14 KiB
JSON

{
"name": "14 Meridian Terrace — The Front Parlour",
"enter_text": "Doilies, a parrot, and five criminals in matching waistcoats who have stopped mid-note.",
"music": 4,
"strokes": [
{
"Rect": {
"x": 0,
"y": 0,
"w": 160,
"h": 168,
"color": 8,
"meaning": "Floor"
}
},
{
"Rect": {
"x": 0,
"y": 0,
"w": 160,
"h": 62,
"color": 15,
"meaning": "Wall"
}
},
{
"Rect": {
"x": 0,
"y": 14,
"w": 160,
"h": 2,
"color": 0,
"meaning": "None"
}
},
{
"Rect": {
"x": 0,
"y": 60,
"w": 160,
"h": 3,
"color": 0,
"meaning": "None"
}
},
{
"Rect": {
"x": 0,
"y": 63,
"w": 160,
"h": 105,
"color": 8,
"meaning": "Floor"
}
},
{
"Rect": {
"x": 10,
"y": 22,
"w": 26,
"h": 30,
"color": 0,
"meaning": "None"
}
},
{
"Rect": {
"x": 14,
"y": 26,
"w": 18,
"h": 22,
"color": 15,
"meaning": "None"
}
},
{
"Rect": {
"x": 44,
"y": 24,
"w": 22,
"h": 26,
"color": 0,
"meaning": "None"
}
},
{
"Rect": {
"x": 48,
"y": 28,
"w": 14,
"h": 18,
"color": 15,
"meaning": "None"
}
},
{
"Rect": {
"x": 108,
"y": 20,
"w": 44,
"h": 34,
"color": 0,
"meaning": "None"
}
},
{
"Rect": {
"x": 112,
"y": 24,
"w": 36,
"h": 26,
"color": 15,
"meaning": "None"
}
},
{
"Rect": {
"x": 128,
"y": 24,
"w": 2,
"h": 26,
"color": 0,
"meaning": "None"
}
},
{
"Rect": {
"x": 0,
"y": 100,
"w": 160,
"h": 1,
"color": 0,
"meaning": "None"
}
},
{
"Rect": {
"x": 0,
"y": 164,
"w": 160,
"h": 4,
"color": 0,
"meaning": "Wall"
}
}
],
"spawn": [
16,
148
],
"exits": [
null,
2,
null,
0
],
"exit_flags": [
"",
"knows_plan",
"",
""
],
"exit_blocked": [
"",
"They have not finished telling you. They are nowhere near finished telling you.",
"",
""
],
"objects": [
{
"name": "teapot",
"sprite": "teapot",
"x": 34,
"y": 112,
"look": "A large flowered teapot under a knitted cosy, on a tray, with six cups. Six. There are five lodgers and one landlady, and a police officer has just arrived, and she has already got the seventh out of the dresser.",
"synonyms": "tea tray cups pot cosy",
"use_text": "You accept a cup, because a man who refuses tea in a front parlour learns nothing and a man who accepts one learns everything."
},
{
"name": "parrot",
"sprite": "parrot",
"x": 138,
"y": 108,
"look": "A grey parrot in a domed cage by the window. Mrs. Pargiter has had it since her husband died. It says one thing, over and over, in a voice that is clearly the Professor's: 'ELEVEN WEEKS AND NOT ONE STRAIGHT ANSWER.'",
"synonyms": "bird cage polly",
"use_text": "You listen to the parrot for a while. It has learned eleven weeks of that front parlour by heart, and it delivers all of it, at length, in five different voices, and you take out your notebook and write down every word."
},
{
"name": "banjo",
"sprite": "banjo",
"x": 62,
"y": 116,
"look": "A banjo, a music stand, and four sheets of the same eleven bars. Nobody in this room can read music. Nobody in this room has tuned anything. Behind the stand, badly hidden by the stand, is a gramophone with the lid up.",
"synonyms": "music stand instrument gramophone sheet",
"use_text": "You put the needle down. Eleven bars of a barbershop quartet, recorded in 1949, with a jump in it where the record is worn. It has been playing every evening from seven until ten for eleven weeks, and Mrs. Pargiter has complained about it to the police, in person, on the bus."
},
{
"name": "landlady",
"sprite": "landlady",
"x": 96,
"y": 118,
"look": "Mrs. Enid Pargiter, four feet eleven, seventy-nine years old, who came into a police station on a bus this morning to complain about the noise and has no idea whatsoever that she is the only reason any of this is going to come out.",
"synonyms": "enid pargiter old lady mrs woman",
"use_text": "You thank her for coming in. She says it was no trouble and that the boys are very nice and that she does wish they would learn a second one.",
"dialogue": [
{
"says": "Mrs. Pargiter: You'll be the officer about the noise. Sit down, I've made a pot. Mrs. Pargiter: They're lovely boys. Very quiet. Except for the music, which is the same, and the digging, which is constant.",
"choices": [
{
"text": "The digging, Mrs. Pargiter?",
"goto": 1
},
{
"text": "How long have they been here?",
"goto": 2
},
{
"text": "How many of them are there?",
"goto": 3
}
]
},
{
"says": "Mrs. Pargiter: In the cellar. Since August. I said, boys, whatever are you doing down there, and the Professor said 'ACOUSTICS', and I said oh, and that was that. Mrs. Pargiter: They've taken out an awful lot of the cellar. I do hope they're putting it back.",
"choices": [
{
"text": "Where does the cellar go, Mrs. Pargiter?",
"goto": 4
}
]
},
{
"says": "Mrs. Pargiter: Eleven weeks on Thursday. They paid the whole eleven weeks in advance, in coins, in a sack. Mrs. Pargiter: I did think it was a lot of coins.",
"choices": [
{
"text": "It is a lot of coins.",
"goto": 0
}
]
},
{
"says": "Mrs. Pargiter: Five. Mrs. Pargiter: It's a barbershop quartet. She says it without a flicker. In eleven weeks it has not once come up, in that house, that a quartet is four.",
"choices": [
{
"text": "Five is a lot for a quartet.",
"goto": 5
}
]
},
{
"says": "Mrs. Pargiter: Well, east, dear. My cellar goes east. East is the wall of the Meridian Street Bonded Depository. It is eleven feet of Victorian brick and behind it is four million dollars of other people's property, and she has just told a homicide detective about it over a cup of tea because he asked.",
"choices": [
{
"text": "East.",
"goto": 5
}
]
},
{
"says": "Mrs. Pargiter: You'll speak to them about the noise, won't you? Only Thursdays I like the wireless. You tell her you will speak to them.",
"choices": [
{
"text": "I'll speak to them.",
"goto": -1
}
]
}
]
},
{
"name": "professor",
"sprite": "professor",
"x": 66,
"y": 138,
"look": "The one they call the Professor. Threadbare tweed, a scarf that reaches the floor, and the specific radiance of a man whose plans are magnificent, elaborate, forty pages long, and have never once worked.",
"synonyms": "prof mastermind scarf tweed",
"points": 20,
"sets_flag": "knows_plan",
"use_text": "You ask the Professor what he does. He tells you. He tells you for nineteen minutes without being asked a second question. He tells you about the cellar, the eleven feet of Victorian brick, the gramophone, the eleven bars, the Saturday night when the depository runs a skeleton watch, the van, the route, the fence in Steelton, and the split — which is five ways, evenly, because he is not a thief, he is an *artist*, and artists share. He draws you a diagram. He gives you the diagram. He asks whether you would like him to go over the timings again. You say you would. He does. (+20)",
"dialogue": [
{
"says": "The Professor: A policeman! Splendid. Absolutely splendid. We are a barbershop quartet.",
"choices": [
{
"text": "There are five of you.",
"goto": 1
},
{
"text": "Tell me about the cellar.",
"goto": 2
},
{
"text": "What do you do, Mr. — ?",
"goto": 3
}
]
},
{
"says": "The Professor: ... He looks along the row. He counts. He counts again. The Professor: Well now.",
"choices": [
{
"text": "Tell me about the cellar.",
"goto": 2
}
]
},
{
"says": "The Professor: ACOUSTICS. He says it exactly the way the parrot says it. The Professor: We have been improving the acoustics since August. Eastward. Considerably eastward.",
"choices": [
{
"text": "How far eastward?",
"goto": 4
}
]
},
{
"says": "The Professor: Fanshawe-Root. Cecil. And what I do, officer, is I *plan*. The Professor: I have planned eleven operations in this city and not one of them has come off, and do you know why? Personnel. Every single time. Never the plan. The plan is always immaculate.",
"choices": [
{
"text": "Tell me about this one.",
"goto": 4
}
]
},
{
"says": "The Professor: Eleven feet, three inches, and we are through the last course tonight. The Professor: Would you like to see the diagram? I've done a diagram. He has done a diagram. It is four feet across, it is pinned to the wall of a rented front parlour, and it is titled in ink: THE MERIDIAN STREET OPERATION — SATURDAY.",
"choices": [
{
"text": "I would like to see the diagram.",
"goto": -1
}
]
}
]
},
{
"name": "muscle",
"sprite": "muscle",
"x": 122,
"y": 142,
"look": "Eighteen stone of him in a bowler hat two sizes too small, holding a paper bag of aniseed balls and offering them round. He is the one they brought for the violence. In eleven weeks nobody has established whether he understands this.",
"synonyms": "big heavy bowler large giant",
"use_text": "You ask him what he is here for. He thinks about it for a while, and then he says: 'They said there'd be a van.' He offers you an aniseed ball. You take one. It would have been rude."
},
{
"name": "cracker",
"sprite": "cracker",
"x": 40,
"y": 132,
"look": "The safecracker. Seventy-one, waistcoat, spectacles, and a brass ear trumpet. He is, by a distance, the finest hand with a combination lock in the state. He has been profoundly deaf since 1943.",
"synonyms": "safecracker old deaf trumpet peterman",
"use_text": "You ask him how he intends to hear the tumblers. He says: 'WHAT?' You say it again, louder. He says 'WHAT?' again, and then, without any change of expression: 'I've been asking them that since August, son. Nobody's answered me yet.'"
},
{
"name": "wheelman",
"sprite": "wheelman",
"x": 20,
"y": 124,
"look": "The driver. Checked jacket, pencil moustache, goggles pushed up on his forehead, which he has worn indoors for eleven weeks.",
"synonyms": "driver spiv goggles checked",
"use_text": "You ask him where he learned to drive. There is a pause of about four seconds, which is three and a half seconds too long. He says he is 'more of a natural'. He has never held a licence. He has never sat behind a wheel. Nobody has ever asked him, because he came with the goggles and the goggles were very convincing."
},
{
"name": "insideman",
"sprite": "insideman",
"x": 88,
"y": 148,
"look": "The inside man. Celluloid collar, round spectacles, briefcase held against his chest like a shield. He is genuinely a clerk, and he genuinely has keys.",
"synonyms": "clerk inside briefcase spectacles",
"use_text": "You ask him which floor he works on at the depository. He says, apologetically, that he does not work at the depository. He works at the Meridian Street Bonded *Warehouse*, which is a different company, on a different street, and has been trying to raise this since September. He has raised it four times. Each time the Professor has said 'ACOUSTICS' and moved on."
},
{
"name": "plans",
"sprite": "plans",
"x": 118,
"y": 102,
"look": "Four feet across, pinned to the wall of a rented front parlour, in ink, with string and photographs: THE MERIDIAN STREET OPERATION — SATURDAY. It is, and this is not a small thing to admit, magnificent. Every timing on it is achievable. Every measurement is correct. It is the best plan you have ever seen and it is on a wall where the milkman can see it.",
"synonyms": "diagram plan wall string pins operation",
"use_text": "You take it down and roll it up and put it under your arm, and the Professor helps you, and holds the corner, and asks whether you would like him to go over the timings again. It is entered into evidence as Exhibit 1. At trial, counsel for the defence objects to its admission on the grounds that it is prejudicial. The judge agrees that it is. It goes in anyway."
}
]
}