The city had slept like a guilty witness and woken like it wanted to testify. Battery Crate purred, the LED stripe drew a thin horizon, and Kael lifted the ledger as if it were a lever he could move a day with. Mira already had the quiet on like armor. Nox rolled his shoulders and checked a pipe that had become a signature. Renn flexed ankles and counted corners without moving. Eli woke with copper on his palm and a small smile that meant he had dreamed in circuits. Liana, the nurse, stacked gauze and gel with the boredom of competence.
"We do not need to be brave," Kael said.
"We need to be correct," Mira answered.
Nox: "And heavier where it matters."
Renn: "And on the dots."
Eli: "And grounded."
Liana: "And clean."
[System: Day Plan]
- Mission A: design and build Mobile Bar v0.1 (two-man carry, fast set, wedge feet, door-seat clamp).
- Mission B: A4 window baffle and sleep-light hood; noise seal on latch; nurse station corner.
- Mission C: Masonry Drill Discipline T1 if PC allows; anchor speed-up for south expansion.
- Mission D: Scout south-south for Anchor-5 candidate; map parade spill lanes; note Blue patrol loops.
- Mission E: Court-in-the-Hall v0.2: add restitution menu; train Liana on triage tickets; publish Public Door Receipts Board in lobby.
- Contingency: If preacher pivots to "mercy court," counter with docket and witness signatures; no debates.
- Reward: +2 PC for Mobile Bar successful field set, +1 PC for A4 baffle, +1 PC for drill discipline, +1 PC for scouting, +1 PC for court v0.2.
PC available: 81.5.
Kael underlined Mission A. Some tools are nouns. Some tools are policy. This one would be both.
---
Mobile Bar v0.1 - a door you can bring to a fight
On A3's bench: two ash handles from a broken mop, a length of angle iron, a pair of clamp jaws sawed from a bedframe, rubber from a bicycle tire, two wedge feet, bolts that still believed in threads, and a strap that had retired from luggage to serve a door.
Kael sketched a long H with feet and a jaw that would sit in a door seat without being invited. Wedge feet for tile, rubber pads for wood, a clamp that bit the strike plate and made the latch irrelevant. Cross-brace that could be pinned in one motion. Total set time: under five seconds with practice. Carry: two-man, balanced, pipeable.
Nox hefted the angle iron the way a man tests a handshake. "This is a nice bar," he said. "It wants to work."
Mira tested the clamp jaw against A1's strike. "It wants to bite the right things," she said.
Eli drilled pilot holes like breathing. Renn cut rubber and pretended it was papercraft to keep his hands gentle. Liana measured the distance from the floor to the latch and said, "You will hit knees if you go sloppy." She chalked a line: knee-save. The bar would sit below it unless the day insisted otherwise.
They assembled and set a first trial in A1. Nox and Mira carried, Kael guided. The jaw kissed the plate, the wedges pressed the tile, the cross-brace pinned with a sound that might as well have been law. Kael pushed. The door did not care about his push. Nox pulled from the outside. The door did not care about gravity either. Good.
"Reset time," Kael said. They lifted, unpinned, backed away, and the door remembered only the bar, not the hands.
[System: Build]
Mobile Bar v0.1 assembled; clamp-jaw/angle-iron/wedge feet; set/unset tested sub-5s. Effect: +portable denial.
+1 PC (build), +1 PC (discipline when fielded pending).
Mira practiced again and again until her wrists understood the weight. Nox practiced sneaking a heavy thing, which is art. Renn ran a stopwatch with a mouth that could not whistle but tried anyway.
---
A4 window baffle and sleep-light hood
A4's window faced a blank wall, but blank walls can be traitors by echo. Kael built a baffle: slats from a broken shelf angled to trap outside sound and let inside air still consider being air. He hung a sleep-light hood above the night lamp - cardboard spine with felt skirts - so that light would pool at the floor and not run down the hall like gossip.
Liana set a nurse corner: a shelf with gel, gauze, pins, a ledger half-sheet for injuries, a pen tied to a string so it would not elope. She placed the kit like an altar and then made a face because she hates when people call science an altar. "This is a table," she said. "We put things on it and take work off of it. Worship later."
Mira pressed the latch and listened. The new seal turned click into hush. She almost smiled. "It stops apologizing for being a door," she said.
[System: A4 Upgrade]
Window baffle + sleep-light hood + latch seal + nurse corner installed. Effect: +quiet, +privacy, +care.
+1 PC.
---
Public Door Receipts Board
In the lobby, opposite the blue TAX ghosts, Kael mounted a plywood board painted dull brown. At the top: DOOR RECEIPTS - PUBLIC. Columns: Door/Anchor, Checked (date/time), By (function), Fixes, Next Due. He posted today's entries. Tom posted yesterday's. Isa posted blank lines that shamed future laziness into working. Nox nailed the board with an affection that made wood feel like it belonged to a family.
"Public boards make cowards of us all in the correct way," Eli said, pinning a pen on a string to the lower corner.
[System: Governance]
Public Door Receipts Board installed; lobby anchor for maintenance culture. Effect: +visibility, +shared duty.
---
Court-in-the-Hall v0.2 - the restitution menu
They revised the tickets. Liana added triage tickets for minor wounds: CLEAN, BIND, RETURN; with checkboxes for soap, water, gel, rest. Kael added a restitution menu to the back: Hinge Check (15 min), Watch (30/60), Water Run (20), Sweep/Quiet (15), Receipt Posting (10), Door Audit (20). The idea: if you break paper, you repair wood; if you threaten a throat, you carry water to the pipe that will someday sing for your family.
Mira taught Tom to read sentences without judge voice. "We are clerks," she said. "Clerks save more cities than kings."
[System: Court v0.2]
Tickets updated; restitution menu added; triage tickets introduced; training done. Effect: +compliance, +health.
---
Masonry Drill Discipline T1
PC had been hoarded like winter nails. Kael spent a few because holes that respect brick save wrists and days.
[System: Knowledge Acquired]
Engineering T1: Masonry Drill Discipline installed.
Effects: +bit selection by aggregate; +dust clear/cool cycles; +anchor torque spec for brick varieties.
PC remaining: 79.5.
Nox drilled three test holes in A3's sacrificial brick and grinned like a man who had just learned a faster way to be correct. "We will staple more walls to themselves before noon," he declared.
---
Scout south-south - the place that will want to be A5
They walked the 11:00 shoulder with Mobile Bar riding the cart like a throne. The parade spill lanes had calmed, but Blue patrol loops made figure eights that smelled like boredom and habit. The south-south corner had a storefront with a roll-down gate and a stair tucked two doors in, narrow, quiet, perfect. The second floor unit had two windows facing a wall and a bath with a door whose latch still thought life had rules. Mira drew squares faster than Kael had thought a hand could move with dignity.
"This wants to be A5," she said, approving. "It knows where to say no."
Kael knocked the jamb and listened. The wall answered with a tone that belonged to load-bearing honesty. He measured: bar seat here, clamp there, Pebble Curtain twin already pre-made in his head.
Renn marked RN-8 on a brick with chalk. Eli noted two wires on the street that could be coaxed into being useful later. Nox checked a ceiling joist with his knuckles and smiled a small, private smile that means a joist would let him be heavy without complaint.
[System: Scout]
A5 candidate identified (south-south second floor); patrol loops noted; RN-8 chalked.
+1 PC.
---
Field test - Mobile Bar in the wild
On the way back, Blue patrol turned from habit into interest. Two with sacks, one with a pole, one with a clipboard - the worst kind. They did not rush; they converged. Mira glanced at Kael and he nodded toward a side door that did not currently belong to anyone but gravity.
"Bar," Kael said.
Nox and Mira swung the Mobile Bar up. Eli flicked the strap. Renn guided the jaw to the strike like a shepherd with a dog that understood nuance. The wedges bit tile. The brace pinned. The door learned a boundary in under four seconds. Mira and Nox stepped back to either side, pipe and knife at rest. The patrol reached the threshold and discovered that thresholds can own you.
Clipboard spoke like an apology for a bureaucracy that would never apologize. "Open for inspection," he said.
"This door does not report to you," Kael said calmly. "It reports to physics. Present a receipt for inspection authority and we will place it under the bar to see if the weight likes it."
Clipboard blinked, because he had not been trained to hear sentences like that. He reached for the latch. The latch did not care. He looked at the wedges as if wedges have ears. He looked at the brace like maybe it could be persuaded. He put a hand on the plate and pushed. The plate kept being itself.
"Tickets available for attempted coercion," Eli said, bored. He held up the book. The patrol backed up a step, not because of fear, but because bureaucracy had arrived on the wrong team and it is confusing when your secret weapon smiles at you from the other side.
[System: Field Test]
Mobile Bar v0.1 set/unset in field; denied patrol without fight. Effect: +deterrence.
+1 PC.
They carried the bar out and left the door better than they found it. Nox patted the angle iron like a dog that had never bitten anyone undeserving. Mira rewrapped the strap with hands that forgave fast and completely.
---
Midday - the ledger bulletin goes further
At A3, the heliograph sent BULLETIN v0.1 lines in two bursts to the west and one to the south tower. The west flashed back: NEED WATER ADVICE. Kael sent: SHOULDERS ONLY; HOSE AS VEIN; QUIET LIDS. The tower answered: RECEIPTS WORK HERE. Kael allowed himself to feel something like pride and called it logistics so it would behave.
Renn asked, "When do we write BULLETIN v0.2 with Mobile Bar and Court v0.2?"
"When the city has read v0.1 into its bones," Kael said. "We do not rush literacy."
---
Afternoon - the mercy court rumor
The preacher's new story arrived with two boys carrying a sign that said MERCY COURT TONIGHT in blue paint that had not learned how to dry without drips. The rumor: those who surrendered mirrors would be forgiven; those who tore receipts would be given bread. Kael put the sign under a rectangle with a small pencil note: MERCY WITHOUT WORK IS A LIE THAT MAKES MORE WORK FOR TOMORROW.
Tom read it and nodded like a man who has done enough sweeping to recognize fake mercy.
Mira set counter-posters low: MERCY IS WORK WE DO FOR EACH OTHER, NOT A PERMISSION SLIP FOR CROWNS. Liana rolled her eyes and wrote WASH YOUR HANDS in smaller letters under it. Eli added DO NOT LICK FINGERS TO TURN PAGES and drew an arrow to Renn, who groaned on principle.
---
A4 - nurse class and a small scare
Liana ran a Clean Hands session at the clinic for eight faces that looked like cracked dishes but still held soup. She showed gel, soap, drying, where to touch where not to. A boy fainted when she described infection with too much honesty. She caught him before his head had opinions about tile. She made him sit. She made him laugh. She sent him home with a receipt that said YOU LEARNED SOMETHING HEAVY TODAY; REST; COME BACK WITH HANDS THAT CAN TEACH.
On the way back, a shuffler decided to be curious about the hose line. Mira redirected with a square that did not exist until her chalk put it there. The shuffler obeyed geometry. Liana did not speak; she breathed through her nose and added CORRIDOR TEACHES to a list in her head of new religions she respects because they save bodies.
---
Dusk - mercy court tries to sit in their hallway
They came when the shoulder swelled: preacher's boys with a folding table that had legs too thin for judgment, two men with armbands and a stamp like authority, a woman with a sack of bread that smelled like forgiveness and flour. They set up at the long brick and then drifted toward the clinic corner because rumors like clinics and corners. They tried to sit in the stair lobby under the Public Door Receipts Board. Stripe folded her arms. The board looked at them the way wood looks at liars. Nox stood and the doorway became a law.
"No courts here," Kael said. "Only receipts."
"Mercy court," the armband man said, showing a stamp like a dog showing a trick that had earned it food yesterday.
"Mercy is work," Kael said. "If you have bread, post a receipt for who kneaded, who milled, who carried water, who lit fire. Then we will decide if your noun is allowed to be a verb."
The woman with bread had the grace to look tired. She handed a loaf to Aunt Mara without asking a crown if the crown would like that. Aunt Mara tore it into six with hands that knew six equal pieces by muscle memory. She handed one to each of the boys holding the table. She handed one to Stripe. She handed one to the armband man, who looked at it like it might be a test. It was. He failed by hesitating. He bit anyway. He was forgiven by bread. Bread is good at that.
"Mobile Bar," Kael said softly, and Nox and Mira lifted and set it in the lobby door in one motion. The jaw kissed the strike. The brace pinned. The wedges told tile to mind itself. The armband tried to move into the stair and met the idea of No embodied in angle iron. He failed to argue with it because angle iron does not attend debates.
The preacher himself arrived late with a crown on a stick like an apology to weather. He took one look at the bar and understood that nouns break against tools that tell the truth. He raised his megaphone. Stripe raised a receipt. The crowd chose the rectangle with handwriting over the circle of a mouth with a horn.
[System: Crowd Handling]
Mercy court deflected; bread redistributed; bar held; no scuffle; sermon lost to receipts.
+discipline.
The preacher, irritated into theater, tried to seize a mirror. He found a dummy and declared victory to the four people still listening to him. The rest of the crowd read the Public Board and nodded as if it were a mayor that did not take bribes.
---
Night - A5 pre-seed and a whisper from the west
They used the late shoulder to carry the Mobile Bar to the A5 candidate and set it correct in a door that wanted them. They left a strap and a chalk square and a small note inside: THIS ROOM WILL SAY NO FOR YOU IF YOU LET IT. The room pretended not to be proud and failed.
Back at A3 the heliograph winked three times from the west: danger. Kael sent hold. The tower replied: BLUE HUNTING MIRRORS WEST; YOUR BULLETIN WORKS; WE NEED DUMMIES. Kael replied: WILL TEACH TOMORROW; DO NOT TALK TO PREACHERS; TALK TO DOORS.
He wrote DUMMY MIRRORS x 4 (west) on a scrap and pinned it to the bench with a screw. Screws are good at remembering for you overnight.
---
Quiet Court - a tool becomes policy
Battery Crate hummed its small hymn. The LED stripe thinned to modest. Aunt Mara snored and then blamed the pipes and the pipes did not mind.
- Mobile Bar v0.1 built and field-tested; patrol denied without fight; bar used to block mercy court in lobby.
- A4 upgrades: window baffle, sleep-light hood, latch seal, nurse corner.
- Engineering T1 Masonry Drill Discipline unlocked; anchors faster/cleaner.
- A5 candidate scouted and pre-seeded; RN-8 chalked.
- Court-in-the-Hall v0.2 posted (restitution menu + triage tickets); Public Door Receipts Board installed.
- Heliograph bulletin v0.1 propagated; water advice shared; west requested dummy mirrors.
- Mercy court deflected with receipts and bread; no blood; preacher seized dummy, not relay.
- Rescue and nurse class executed; small scare handled by geometry.
- Doctrine: repeated.
[System: Audit Complete]
+2 PC (Mobile Bar success), +1 PC (A4 baffle), +1 PC (drill discipline), +1 PC (scout), +1 PC (court v0.2), +1 PC (discipline), +1 PC (doctrine).
Total PC: 87.5.
Advisory: With 87+ PC, unlocks available soon: Info T1 Codebook Hygiene Pro; Energy T1 Pack Diagnostics; Bio/Chem T1 Surface Disinfectant. Threat horizon: preacher likely to pivot to night whispers; Blue may formalize "inventory squads"; Seer may map baffles by taste; ambulants emerging. Recommendations: build dummy mirrors for west; formalize "Bar Team" rotations; continue A5 seeding; extend corridor dots; draft "Bread Receipt" template to prevent mercy-theater from becoming currency; begin Mobile Bar v0.2 (single-person set option).
Mira leaned her head back, eyes closed, shoulders still listening. "We are teaching a neighborhood to choose receipts over rumors," she said.
"We are teaching ourselves to choose tools over applause," Kael said.
Nox patted the bar with a fondness he used to reserve for engines. "We will need a second," he said. "And a third. Cities have more doors than stories."
Eli twisted copper into a shape like a question mark and hung it on a nail. "Tomorrow I teach the west to make dummies," he said. "And then we teach them that dummy mirrors are not lies. They are decoys. Lies break; decoys save time."
Liana stacked gauze until it looked like a small white wall. "I want a disinfectant node next," she said. "I am tired of apologizing to scratches."
Renn faced a mirror downward and told it a bedtime story about a cat who owned roofs. The mirror, being glass, did not sleep, but it promised not to tattle to stars.
Kael placed his palm on the ledger. "We do not need to be brave," he said.
"We need to be correct," the house answered, including A4 and the Public Board and maybe, if he let himself be a little foolish in private, the future A5 listening from two blocks south.
Outside, the mercy court put its table away because folding legs hate sermons. Inside, a Mobile Bar leaned against a wall like a knight who had learned to be a clerk. And somewhere west, a tower waited for a lesson about decoys that would make some boy feel like he had tricked a crown without lying to himself.