Battery Crate hummed; the LED stripe drew a thin horizon over the table; A4 slept like a promise across the street. Kael woke with the ledger open flat and a carpenter's pencil tucked behind his ear. Mira was up before the hum could decide to be a song. Nox rotated his wrists like a man greeting two old machines. Renn blinked twice, then once - mirror code without light, just to settle the nerves. Eli, newly home, checked the tool roll like counting teeth.
"We do not need to be brave," Kael said.
"We need to be correct," Mira answered.
Nox: "And heavier than slogans."
Renn: "And on the dots."
Eli: "And grounded."
[System: Day Plan]
- Mission A: draft and deploy Anti-Preacher Protocol v0.1 - expand Receipt Wall to ground-level corners, door-to-door receipts, and mirror-friendly countersigns.
- Mission B: A4 Noise Map v0.1 - chart creaks, hiss, pipe pulse; pad worst offenders; set time windows.
- Mission C: Smoke Rotation v0.1 - three recipes: dry gray, wet heavy, bitter signal; assign to RN-6 and two reserve cans.
- Mission D: Protect Mirrors - move rooftop relay boards to baffled mounts; create dummy mirrors for Blue seizures.
- Contingency: If Blue attempts seizure or sermon-protest near RN-6 or clinic, stage a receipt drop and pull crowd with handouts, not blades.
- Reward: +1 PC for protocol adoption; +1 PC for A4 Noise Map; +1 PC for smoke rotation; +1 PC for mirror protection executed; +1 PC for crowd handled without blood.
PC available: 60.5.
Kael wrote the title with slow letters: ANTI-PREACHER PROTOCOL v0.1. Titles should be readable by tired eyes holding doors shut.
---
Protocol - how to win against noise
On butcher paper Kael printed the seven lines in block script and Mira taped it beside the door where a hand could memorize without a mouth.
ANTI-PREACHER v0.1
1) Do not answer with sound. Show work.
2) Post receipts where feet go - lobby, stair elbow, clinic corner, laundromat back.
3) Hand receipts into palms - canned water counts, watch minutes count, screws count.
4) Countersigns on walls: MIRRORS ARE GRAMMAR. SMOKE IS WEATHER. CROWNS ARE LIGHTWEIGHT METAL, NOT AUTHORITY.
5) Move mirrors face-down unless passing code. Move dummy mirrors face-up where Blue can grab.
6) If crowd forms, use corridor geometry; distribute handouts at shoulder peaks; exit on squares.
7) Audit after, write more receipts.
He drew a small receipt template for handouts: THING WE DID / WHO BENEFITED / WHEN / SIGNATURE AS FUNCTION, NOT NAME.
"Function, not name," Eli murmured. "That will itch them."
"It will calm us," Kael said.
[System: Protocol]
Anti-Preacher v0.1 drafted and posted. Effect: +crowd handling, -sermon effectiveness.
Isa and Tom practiced the handout fold - thirds, then half, then a rip that makes two without scissors. The child watched, solemn, and tried one with his tongue sticking out and then beamed at the result as if he had made a tool.
---
A4 Noise Map v0.1
They crossed to A4 on the 07:00 shoulder. The tenement's bones creaked in three places and hissed in one. Eli walked the rooms holding the Hymn Ear like a stethoscope. He knocked the wall and listened to what the pipe told him about his manners. Nox stepped heel toe across the boards to map which ones tell secrets and which ones keep them.
Kael taped numbers at the worst points and scribbled into the ledger:
- Board 2-Left - squeak at ball of foot; pad with felt under nail; limit travel after 23:00.
- Door 3 - latch chatter; add soft catch; oil sparingly; no slam.
- Window 1 - draft whistle; stuff cloth at bottom edge; baffle if we claim this for sleeping.
- Stair - second tread - speaks only when hurried; rule: dots, not runs.
Eli found a small valve at the back closet and smiled like he had been allowed to fix his favorite toy. He cracked it a half-turn and the hiss mellowed. "We save noise budget for fights," he said.
Mira marked new squares at the elbow and dots down the wall. She made a rule with her chalk: hand on the rail whenever shoulders fall. The letters were smaller than hate and larger than hope.
[System: Map]
A4 Noise Map v0.1 posted; pads installed on two boards; latch catch added; valve set. Effect: +quiet housing, +sleep windows.
+1 PC.
---
Smoke rotation
At A3, Kael laid out three coffee tins and wrote on duct tape labels like they were brothers with different tempers.
- DRY GRAY - cardboard core + paper shreds + little wax - for fast veil in wind, short lived.
- WET HEAVY - damp cloth strips + sawdust + sugar trace - for thick, slow, insulting to Seer; stinks; use sparingly.
- BITTER SIGNAL - tea leaves + a drop of cooking oil + tiny hair of wire wool to start - for ugly taste in air, confuses runners, short radius.
"We do not teach anybody the recipes," he told Eli, who nodded like a man who had once blown up a toaster trying to fix it and kept the lesson. "We just label by effect and rotate."
Renn sniffed each and made three faces, ranking them from unfortunate to rude to criminal. "Bitter makes my tongue argue," he said.
"Good," Kael said. "Let it argue with mouths that shout."
He assigned DRY GRAY to RN-6, WET HEAVY to the reserve by the laundromat cut, and BITTER SIGNAL to a small can hidden under the clinic's gutter in case a sermon started there.
[System: Prep]
Smoke Rotation v0.1 prepared; labeled; staged. Effect: +variant denial reliability.
+1 PC.
---
Mirrors - protection and decoys
"They will try to take the mirrors," Mira said. "Blue likes trophies more than tools."
Kael built two dummy boards with shiny foil taped under clear plastic - reflective enough to satisfy a hand that wanted a symbol, not a signal. He wrote STEAL ME in pencil too faint for anyone who was not trying to be honest. The real relay boards got deeper felt baffles, longer cords, and an extra pivot cut so a watcher could flatten them in one breath. He stitched cloth covers with two buttons - up and safe - that made the whole thing look like a child's weather project rather than a device.
Isa and Tom practiced down-up and sleep-face-down drills until Tom's wrists clicked. Stripe sent a diagonal and a hold from the clinic: crowd signs at their corner; sermon probable at noon or at nothing o'clock depending on the preacher's calendar, which was made of shouting.
"Mirrors face-down unless passing code," Kael reminded. "Dummy mirrors face-up where sticky fingers can find them."
[System: Asset Protection]
Relay mirrors baffled and covered; decoys placed. Effect: +seizure resilience, -code compromise risk.
+1 PC.
---
Countersigns - make the wall tell the truth softly
They made small posters with block letters on brown paper, taped low where knees see them even when eyes do not intend to: MIRRORS ARE GRAMMAR, SMOKE IS WEATHER, WE PAY ONLY TO PHYSICS, RECEIPTS NOT CROWNS. Kael liked that last one because it sounded like it belonged in a book of economic fairy tales that tell the truth.
Aunt Mara suggested one and Mira wrote it in careful letters: "KINDNESS IS A RULE HERE, NOT A FAVOR." Kael did not argue. He added a line in pencil: FAILURE TO BE KIND WILL BE FINED IN WORK, NOT IN PAIN.
Renn laughed. "We invented taxes that build something," he said.
"We invented taxes that are receipts," Kael said. "Blue collects nouns. We collect hinges."
---
Noon - the sermon
The megaphone voice returned before noon and split the hymn like a wedge in the wrong kind of wood. "Crowns feed! Mirrors lie! People are counted by the Crown and protected by the Crown!" The crowd coalesced near the long brick and oozed out toward the clinic corner. Three Blue with scraped-together armor held poles with crowns on top like parade floats that had missed fun by years. Two men with canvas sacks moved along the edge like collectors. More dangerous were the civilians who came because noise is hope with its ears removed.
Kael stood at A1's periscope and watched angles, not faces. Stripe signaled diagonal, then hold, then hold again - she would not move first; she would not push air into the preacher's lungs.
"Receipt team," Kael said. Mira, Isa, Tom, and Eli took stacks of handouts: WE MOVED AUNT MARA AND A CHILD LAST NIGHT - WHO BENEFITED: DOWN-TWO - WHEN: DURING 23:00 SHOULDER - SIGNED: LATCH/THREAD/BAR/SCOUT. WE TIGHTENED A HINGE AT 2-LEFT - WHO BENEFITED: EVERYONE'S SLEEP - WHEN: AFTER MAP - SIGNED: BAR. WE BROUGHT WATER TO CLINIC - WHO BENEFITED: YOUR THROATS - WHEN: YESTERDAY - SIGNED: STRIPE WITNESSED.
"You walk the dots and squares," Kael said. "If they take from your hands, they accept a receipt. If a Blue takes and tears, you smile and hand another. We are watering a garden of doubt."
Nox stayed, pipe across knees, to make A1 heavier than idea. Renn watched RN-6 with a mirror that slept and a dumb light cord around his wrist like a leash for a bad thought.
---
How to feed a crowd without feeding its worst part
They approached at the clinic corner because that is where thirst gathers even when water is not free. Stripe stood like a fence that had decided which direction was inside and which direction was not. The preacher lifted his crown-stick and opined with volume: "These mirrored people lie! They are signal thieves! They count you with math and then shave you with smoke!"
Eli murmured, "I feel personally attacked as someone who counts."
Mira placed a receipt on the clinic wall at knee height. A woman in a dirty yellow parka read it and frowned because frowning is what happens when truth and hunger collide. Tom handed a receipt to an old man whose hands shook and whose eyes stopped shaking when they felt paper edges. Isa passed one to a child who would try to eat it; the child did not; the child's mother moved it to her pocket like a relic.
The collectors moved in. One reached for Isa's stack and met Mira's eyes. He stopped because some doors do not need a bar to be closed. The second collector took two from Eli, tore one, then read the other despite himself. "Watch minutes?" he said, confused because minutes are free until you spend them on someone else's safety.
"Paid here," Eli said, pointing at a line where Tom had written W: 2 last night. "Not to a crown. To a hinge."
"Blasphemy against crowns," the preacher thundered. His megaphone made the thunder sound like someone shaking a coffee can full of coins into a grave. He jabbed his stick toward the relay mount on the clinic awning. One of the canvas-sack men went for it. Stripe stepped once, calmly, and put her hand on the sack man's wrist. Her other hand pointed down at a square of chalk where he was allowed to stand and anywhere else where he was not. He stood there, because chalk is magic if you train it onto a heart ahead of time.
"Mirrors lie!" the preacher repeated, going for the chorus. "Crowns see! We feed!"
Mira pointed at a receipt that said WE FED SIX WITH LAUNDRY SOUP AND CALORIES THAT WERE MATH NOT MIRACLE. She did not speak. A woman beside the preacher read it out loud to her friend and felt silly and then felt angry at feeling silly without knowing where to point it. She folded the paper and did not throw it away.
Kael watched from A1 as the crowd's edges stopped obeying the preacher's nouns and began obeying the geometry of hand-to-hand passing. He sent a single flash to Stripe: ready; then two: go. She nodded without looking up and moved her people three steps left to open a corridor that would split the crowd without saying I am splitting you.
The Blue collectors reached a dummy mirror on a low wall. One grabbed it triumphantly and held it up like evidence. The preacher pointed at it and shouted about sin. The foil winked like cheap jewelry. Anyone who knows light laughed without making sound. Anyone who did not know light felt that they had seen a performance and did not know how to applaud without looking foolish. Good. Receipts beat sermons by embarrasing the wrong parts of the brain.
[System: Crowd Handling]
Anti-Preacher v0.1 in effect; receipts distributed; dummy mirror seized by Blue; relay unseized; no blood. +discipline.
The preacher tried a new noun: "Tax!" He gestured at the clinic wall as if words could claim bricks. Stripe taped a receipt above his gesture: THIS WALL IS A RECEIPT, NOT A TAX. WHO: BRASS STREET + STAIR. WHAT: WATCHED DURING SHOULDER. WHEN: YESTERDAY NIGHT. SIGN: STRIPE / LATCH. The crowd laughed with their chests closed, the safe way.
The sermon faltered. The megaphone squeaked. The preacher lost a beat. He tried to gather it with "Crown feeds," and a woman in a yellow parka who had read three receipts out loud now said, actually loud, "These people feed with screws." That is not grammar, but it is poetry the city respects.
Renn tugged his dumb light cord once at RN-6 to keep a small clump of shufflers distracted two corners away. He watched for the Seer's geometry and saw only human rectangles under human hats.
"Exit on squares," Kael said into the mirror, though the mirror was asleep. Mira and Eli and Isa and Tom withdrew dot by dot, leaving receipts like breadcrumbs, and then flipping the last cloth tag from HERE to GONE with unnecessary dignity, which is the best kind.
---
Blue attempts a seizure - wrong mirror, wrong day
One canvas-sack man found the clinic's real relay board half-tilted under its cloth and reached for it with a hand that wanted to report victory. The baffle whispered no, and his fingers found felt, not glass. Stripe's hand was there too, not on his wrist this time but on the cloth cover's button. She unbuttoned and then rebuttoned without removing, a motion like a magician but honest. "Weather project," she said in a bored voice. "For children. School credit."
The man hesitated, because a lie that is small and plausible and boring beats a sermon when hunger is not yet a scream. He let go. He picked up the dummy mirror he had dropped earlier and held it higher, happy again; the preacher recovered his breath and shouted about sin one more time to prove to his own bones that he could.
Kael exhaled a small piece of future he had been holding in his chest. He wrote in the ledger with his thumbnail: Dummies paid for themselves in embarrassment saved.
---
Afternoon - rule and water
After the crowd thinned, they ran a corridor bucket line from A1 to the clinic using two carts and a twenty meter hose that did not mind being a vein. The water was not religious but it performed faith anyway. The preacher had gone somewhere to nurse a sore noun. Blue graffiti appeared near the long brick: a crown drawn shaking hands with a stick figure carrying a mirror. Under it, in shaky letters, CROWN REFLECTS YOU. Kael drew a rectangle around the graffiti and wrote LESSON: LIGHT MOVES; CROWNS DO NOT; CHOOSE TOOLS. He did not erase the crown. He framed it and told it what it meant.
[System: Service]
Water run executed; receipts posted; counter-annotation placed. Effect: +goodwill, +clinic trust.
Eli rigged a tap at the clinic sink that did not leak and left a tag that said DO NOT TIGHTEN FURTHER, THIS ONE KNOWS ITS JOB. The map man touched the tag with two fingers like a liturgy. "You people write commandments for screws," he said.
"We write rules for hands," Kael said. "Screws obey if hands do."
---
Evening - the attempted flank
News travels in cities the way heat does - it finds gaps and fills them. Blue came back at dusk with a smaller crew, without the preacher, trying to be clever. Two flankers approached RN-6 from south-south, angling to grab their funnel hardware while the rest of the world exhaled from the day's theater.
Renn saw them from the laundromat roof hatch with eyes that belong to corners. He flashed once to A3: ready. Kael answered with hold and then with horizontal sweep: blue near. Mira moved to RN-6 with Nox on her shoulder, both silent, both annoyed that someone had decided to make evening interesting.
The flankers crept like people who had practiced in a hallway that did not have squeaks. They hit Board 2-Left - the one A4's map had padded - and felt nothing. They took another step and hit the shin line because they were not watching below argument height. The line kissed and owned their ankles like a debt collector. They howled, which is bad sound discipline even for thieves.
Nox stepped out from the elbow and looked like something heavy that had been promised to physics. He did not hit anyone. He put his pipe across the rod and leaned and said, "We do receipts here. What did you pay for this?"
The men cursed in a style that implies they had not rehearsed for this conversation. Mira cut the line, not kindly this time but neatly, and said, "Run along. You're late to your own noun." She put a receipt in each man's pocket while she was already there. They left limping, with paper rustling.
[System: Defense]
RN-6 held against flanking attempt; no blood; intruders paid in paper. +discipline.
Kael wrote on the ledger margin: Do not remove RN-6 after tonight. People learn slower than we do. Keep it as teacher until they stop sending ankles to school.
---
Quiet Court - receipts beat sermons
They read the day late, lights low, Battery Crate a steady animal. The child slept with a hand on his new folded receipt like a talisman. Aunt Mara snored once, denied it, snored again. Everyone pretended not to hear.
- Anti-Preacher Protocol v0.1 posted and executed; handouts distributed; countersigns placed.
- A4 Noise Map v0.1 completed; pads and catches installed; valve tuned.
- Smoke Rotation v0.1 staged - DRY GRAY at RN-6, WET HEAVY reserve, BITTER SIGNAL clinic gutter.
- Mirror assets protected; decoys seized by Blue; relay boards unseized.
- Water corridor run; clinic tap fixed; crowd handled without blood; Blue flank attempt at RN-6 denied.
- Doctrine: repeated.
[System: Audit Complete]
+1 PC (protocol), +1 PC (A4 noise map), +1 PC (smoke rotation), +1 PC (mirror protection), +1 PC (crowd handled), +1 PC (discipline), +1 PC (doctrine).
Total PC: 67.5.
Advisory: With 67+ PC, next unlocks: Info T1 Line Relay (heliograph), Engineering T1 Masonry Drill Discipline, Bio/Chem T1 Antiseptic Gel, Energy T1 Charge Control. Threat horizon: preacher likely to pivot to night raids or confiscation courts; Seer adapting to smoke; Blue experimenting with mirror counter-grammar. Recommendations: begin Line Relay study for long-range signal to south allies; draft Court-in-the-Hall v0.1 (mobile Quiet Court with public sentences in work, not pain); build two more dummy mirrors and seed rumor that we surrendered one to avoid a fight - make them pull their own teeth.
Mira closed her eyes, tired in the good way. "We are not a church," she said. "We just keep writing rules that save lives."
"We are not a government," Kael said. "We just collect minutes and pay them back as doors."
Eli chuckled. "You are inventing one anyway," he said. "A government that only governs the parts that screws can fix."
Nox yawned without regret. "We will need stronger bars," he said. "If we are going to govern, let us govern with weight."
Renn flipped a mirror face-down and whispered to it like a boy to a pet, promising it would be allowed to talk tomorrow if it behaved.
Kael set his palm on the ledger. "We do not need to be brave," he said.
"We need to be correct," they answered.
Outside, a crown reflected a cheap foil moon at a man who wanted to believe. Inside, receipts stacked into a quiet wall that kept the right people in and the wrong ideas out. And somewhere south, a preacher rehearsed new nouns in a room with no screws. The city would give him an audience tomorrow; Kael would give the city a ledger.