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>
61 lines
4.9 KiB
JSON
61 lines
4.9 KiB
JSON
{
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"name": "Sub-Basement Three — Records, 1951–1962",
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"enter_text": "One strip light, four boxes, and sixty-seven years of nobody.",
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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": "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": 7, "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": 60, "y": 2, "w": 40, "h": 5, "color": 15, "meaning": "None" } },
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{ "Rect": { "x": 6, "y": 14, "w": 34, "h": 44, "color": 8, "meaning": "None" } },
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{ "Rect": { "x": 6, "y": 14, "w": 34, "h": 3, "color": 7, "meaning": "None" } },
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{ "Rect": { "x": 6, "y": 28, "w": 34, "h": 3, "color": 7, "meaning": "None" } },
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{ "Rect": { "x": 6, "y": 42, "w": 34, "h": 3, "color": 7, "meaning": "None" } },
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{ "Rect": { "x": 120, "y": 14, "w": 34, "h": 44, "color": 8, "meaning": "None" } },
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{ "Rect": { "x": 120, "y": 14, "w": 34, "h": 3, "color": 7, "meaning": "None" } },
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{ "Rect": { "x": 120, "y": 28, "w": 34, "h": 3, "color": 7, "meaning": "None" } },
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{ "Rect": { "x": 120, "y": 42, "w": 34, "h": 3, "color": 7, "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": [20, 148],
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"exits": [null, 2, null, 0],
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"exit_flags": ["", "read_survey", "", ""],
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"exit_blocked": ["", "You have not finished reading. You are the first person to start.", "", ""],
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"objects": [
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{
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"name": "archivebox",
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"sprite": "archivebox",
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"x": 46,
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"y": 118,
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"look": "Four boxes. 1958. The rope handles have perished and the lids have taken the shape of the lids above them. On the side of the first, in grease pencil, in a hand you have seen on the back of one photograph your whole life: F. DREBIN — CLOSED.",
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"synonyms": "boxes box pallet archive lids",
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"points": 10,
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"sets_flag": "found_file",
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"use_text": "You get the lid off. Every file in this box is closed. Every one of them was closed by the same man, and the folders are squared to the box, and the tabs are aligned, and there is not one loose sheet anywhere in it. On top, because it is the biggest, is MERIDIAN STREET — 1958."
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},
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{
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"name": "oldfile",
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"sprite": "oldfile",
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"x": 84,
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"y": 126,
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"look": "MERIDIAN STREET BONDED DEPOSITORY — CONSPIRACY / ATTEMPTED BURGLARY, NOV 1958. Eleven pages, typed, and behind them a survey in the same hand and a transfer manifest with a signature at both ends of it. Nobody has untied this ribbon since 1958. You can tell, because the knot is a police knot and the dust on it is unbroken.",
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"synonyms": "file meridian folder ribbon report pages",
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"requires_flag": "found_file",
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"points": 25,
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"sets_flag": "read_survey",
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"use_text": "You read all eleven pages standing up, under a strip light, in a basement, and you are the first person to do it. It is the best police report you have ever read in your life. It is better than anything you have written. The noise complaint is in it. The bus fare is in it. The parrot is in it. And on page nine, under PREMISES — PRIOR KNOWLEDGE, in the same flat careful voice as everything else, your grandfather sets out that he wrote the security survey on that building, that he recommended the transfer, that the company took his recommendation, that four million dollars left the building five weeks before the tunnel reached it, and that he personally signed the manifest at both ends. He put it in. He put all of it in. You turn to page ten expecting an explanation and page ten is the property schedule, because there was never going to be an explanation, because to the man who typed this there was nothing there to explain. (+25)"
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},
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{
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"name": "ardmore",
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"sprite": "oldfile",
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"x": 118,
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"y": 136,
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"look": "Underneath Meridian Street, in the same box: ARDMORE ST PAYROLL — ROBBERY / HOMICIDE, OCT 1958. Closed. A conviction. Nine to fifteen, served eleven.",
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"synonyms": "ardmore payroll second cassidy prosky",
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"requires_flag": "read_survey",
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"use_text": "Four pages. Immaculate. And in the middle of page two, in a sentence that is doing no work at all and is there because the form has a field for it: 'Latent lifted from strongbox interior lip; no match against elimination set; note that sworn officers of this department are not printed and no elimination set exists for us. Card destroyed under s.9 (moisture), 4:15 PM, witnessed Ofcr. Kowalczyk.' And at the back, behind everything, three handwritten pages by a nine-months rookie which the typed report superseded, in which that rookie wrote down a dark sedan pulling out of the lot at 12:09 and was sick about not getting the plate. Both documents have been in this box, touching, for sixty-seven years."
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}
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]
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}
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