Battery Crate purred its small yes. The LED stripe drew a horizon thin enough to pretend it was not deciding anything. Kael woke with the ledger open to a page that would forgive mistakes if paid the same day. Mira had the knife on its hook and her hands empty because empty hands make faster rules. Nox sipped water like a man who respects the contract between throat and day. Renn flexed a wrist with a mirror face-down on his palm as if teaching it humility. Eli looped copper into a figure-eight that looked like a plan. Liana stacked gauze and gel with the boredom that means someone is safe.
"We do not need to be brave," Kael said.
"We need to be correct," Mira answered.
Nox: "And heavier than habits."
Renn: "And on the dots."
Eli: "And grounded."
Liana: "And clean."
[System: Day Plan]
- Mission A: build and teach Dummy Mirrors v0.1 for west tower allies; seed rumor correctly.
- Mission B: Codebook Hygiene Pro T1 if PC allows; rotate mirror macros; burn old strips.
- Mission C: A5 seed run (bar seat, strap, Pebble Curtain, latch catch); Mobile Bar v0.1 cache inside.
- Mission D: Corridor extension: RN-7 to the south market cut; dot lanes through the lot; low baffle at manhole ring.
- Mission E: Bread Receipt template; convert mercy-theater to work credits; post at clinic.
- Contingency: If Blue starts quiet seizures, use Dummy Light decoys to draw them off and tickets for the rest.
- Reward: +1 PC dummy training west, +1 PC codebook hygiene, +2 PC A5 seeding, +1 PC corridor extension, +1 PC bread receipts deployed.
PC available: 87.5.
Kael touched the paper with a finger like a plumb bob. Today wanted order with tricks. He would give it both.
---
Dummy Mirrors v0.1 - teach thieves to love props
On A3's bench, Kael laid foil-backed plastic from an old binder, clear packaging sheet, felt, two nails for pivots, and a board with edges sanded so it would look touched by care. He assembled four in under an hour: reflective enough from three meters, dumb from one. Each board got a cloth cover with a visible button that begged for a hero to unbutton it in front of a crowd. Inside, the foil shone like a cheap idea of light.
He wrote the lesson on butcher paper for the west tower crew:
DUMMY MIRRORS v0.1
- Use as trophy bait; never as signal.
- Place at "reachable height" where Blue hands will go first.
- Keep real relays face-down, baffled, covered, far higher and further back.
- If seized, let them celebrate; do not heckle; receipts will win later.
- Burn dummy if compromised in private; do not teach thieves better taste.
Renn snorted. "We are feeding raccoons with shiny trash," he said. "I approve."
Kael carried two to the roof. Eli loaded two onto a cart with felt to keep them from talking. Stripe flashed a diagonal from the clinic and then a hold that meant wait for shoulder; the west sent ready. At the 07:00 shoulder's rise, Kael and Renn moved under cover of geometry to the west hop, leaving the pair with hands that knew their own roofs.
[System: Outreach]
Dummy Mirrors v0.1 delivered west; training given; placement rules posted.
+1 PC.
They returned to A1 by the last of the shoulder's generosity. The house looked a little taller when roofs talked to each other without envy.
---
Codebook Hygiene Pro T1
PC had gathered like rain in a bucket. Kael spent some on a rule that prevents clever enemies from becoming cleverer.
[System: Knowledge Acquired]
Info T1: Codebook Hygiene Pro installed.
Effects: +macro rotation schedule, +pattern entropy guidance, +burn discipline.
PC remaining: 84.5.
He rewrote the mirror macro: help request now a hold-then-flash rather than flash-then-hold; friendly diagonal tilted opposite direction; blue-near mark moved to a short vertical-sweep to avoid mimicry by accident. He burned last week's strips in a tin and let the smoke be small and honest, not a signal. He posted the new macro where wrists could learn and mouths would not argue.
Mira practiced until the new diagonal lived in her bones. Renn tied a string around his finger as a joke and then learned without it anyway.
[System: Hygiene]
Macro rotated; old codes burned; wrists retrained. Effect: -capture risk, +resilience.
+1 PC.
---
A5 seeding - give a room a spine
They moved at the 11:00 shoulder with Mobile Bar riding the cart. RN-6 said yes in a quiet accent. The south-south stair received them like a man who has decided to stop drinking. The second floor unit that wanted to be A5 waited with patience that is not passive. Kael measured the jamb and drilled with the new discipline: dust out, cool, torque honest. The bar seat went in like it belonged to the wall's childhood. The strap found the pipe. The Pebble Curtain combed itself with washers. The latch catch learned to kiss.
Eli cached the Mobile Bar behind the inner door with a cloth cover that looked like a blanket. Nox set the jaw once, then twice, making the door learn three versions of No. Mira chalked squares and dotted lanes with affection disguised as geometry. She wrote on the jamb: A5 (quiet).
They left a small kit: gel, gauze, pencil, two tickets blank, one receipt form. They left a note on the inside of the door: THIS ROOM WILL SAY NO FOR YOU IF YOU SIGN IT WITH WORK. The room tried not to preen and failed without noise.
[System: Anchor Seed]
A5 strap/bar seat/Pebble Curtain/latch planted; Mobile Bar cache staged; squares posted. Effect: +expansion capacity.
+2 PC.
---
Corridor extension - RN-7 and the ring that liked to sing
The south market cut had a manhole ring that argued with cart wheels about music. Eli loosened its worst note with a pry bar and then taught it a better chord with a rope shim. Kael laid dots through the lot, three new squares where people can breathe and scratch a nose without losing a day. RN-7 went up on brick: a narrow lane with a low shelf wing and a shin line tuned to ankle bones that belong to trouble. Mira wrote a rule: CARTS FIRST, HEROES NEVER.
Renn tested the path with the pram the pan-people had left behind as collateral for safety, then returned the pram like a citizen. He left a receipt on it: RETURNED BECAUSE WE LIKE ORDER, NOT BECAUSE WE LIKE YOU. The joke made the day honest.
[System: Corridor]
RN-7 established; ring baffle installed; lane dots/squares posted. Effect: +south throughput, -noise signature.
+1 PC.
---
Bread Receipt - make generosity a ledger, not theater
Kael drew the template like a baker would approve.
BREAD RECEIPT
- Grain from: _______
- Kneaded by: _______
- Baked at: _______ (fuel: _______)
- Carried by: _______
- Given to: _______ (why: _______)
- Witness: _______ (function, not name)
He posted it at the clinic and at the Public Board. Aunt Mara filled the first for six small loaves: Grain: mystery bag from back room; Kneaded by: two hands with arthritis; Baked at: clinic stove; Fuel: cranky; Carried by: Stripe; Given to: line at noon; Why: morale; Witness: Latch. The board looked proud without moving.
[System: Economy]
Bread Receipts deployed; mercy converted to work/math. Effect: +transparency, -preacher theater value.
+1 PC.
---
Contingency becomes a door
Blue tried quiet seizures at 14:20 with two men and a boy on a bicycle who wanted to be relevant. They angled toward the west relay that had a dummy at the front and a real board far back. Renn watched from the laundry hatch with a piece of foil on a string: Dummy Light - not a mirror, not a lamp, just glints where there should be nothing at all. He let the foil flash two ungrammatical, shiny lies behind a trash can. The boy turned his bicycle toward the glint because bikes love bad ideas if they shine. The men followed because some men follow boys who follow glints. They found foil and felt foolish. By then Stripe had rebuttoned the cover and a ticket had landed in a pocket, which is how lessons sit down.
[System: Decoy]
Dummy Light decoy tested; Blue drawn off; seizure failed; ticket issued. Effect: +asset safety, +practice.
+discipline.
Kael logged: decoys should never be pretty enough to respect themselves.
---
The line relay learns manners
At shoulder, Kael and Eli adjusted the heliograph pivot to stop singing to birds. They added a felt visor and a cardboard shadow. They practiced sending BULLETIN addendum: DUMMIES WORK; DO NOT MOCK THIEVES; LET THEM WASTE TIME. The west replied with a single polite flash that meant they had laughed in private and were now done laughing.
---
Afternoon clinic - triage becomes ritual
Liana drafted a triage ticket: SOAP/GEL/WATER/BIND/REST with checkboxes and a line for "return to work at." She taught two neighbors to use it on each other rather than waiting for a queen. Stripe posted it inside the clinic door with tape that forgives antiques. The clinic began to sound like a place that charges boredom before it charges blood.
A man arrived with a cut on his palm and a crown painted on his cheek like he had lost a bet with a wall. Liana cleaned it with the contempt of a professional and told him to carry water for forty minutes for penance if he wanted the hand to remember him fondly. He did. He returned his own ticket with a smile that embarrassed him. He left the crown unpainted the next day without making a speech about it, which is the correct amount of politics for a clinic.
---
Evening - ambulants in pairs, and a Seer insulted by cardboard
At 19:00 the shoulder rose. Two ambulants tested the RN-7 lane with the curiosity of dogs who had learned arithmetic. Mira worked the shin line with a patience that made physics polite. They turned away, offended that a hallway could tell them a story.
Then a Seer appeared at the far curb, sniffed the air, and tilted its head toward the west relay. It did not see a mirror face. It saw cardboard and felt. It saw a bar in the stair. It saw a Public Board with writing that did not flash. It stepped into the lane, hunting edges. Kael pulled DRY GRAY at the clinic gutter for a soft veil. It paused. Renn dangled the Dummy Light once, far and wrong. The Seer considered the glint and then dismissed it as if insulted by a cheap trick. Good. Trick for men; geometry for Seers. The Seer left, uninterested, which is victory disguised as a shrug.
[System: Variant Behavior]
Seer ignored Dummy Light; denied by veil + lack of edges; moved on. Effect: +model update.
Kael wrote: decoy is for humans; baffle is for math.
---
Night run to A5 - make the room remember
They carried a mattress at the 23:00 shoulder: Kael and Nox front, Mira and Eli back, Renn on corners with a broom handle pretending to be a sword. The city allowed it because it enjoys watching heavy things move correctly. In A5 they set the mattress on the frame that had once been an argument and was now furniture. They pinned the bar and unpinned it twice to teach muscle memory to wood. They hung the latch tag: HERE/NOT HERE. They left water and a note: FIRST SLEEP OWED TO SOUTH FAMILIES WHEN READY. Rooms like notes when they are promises.
On the way back, Blue walked past with a bag and a face that meant nothing personal. They did not look at A5 because A5 did not look like a noun yet. They looked at the Public Board in the lobby and frowned as if literacy had personally insulted them. They left. Kael allowed himself to enjoy bureaucracy's teeth again.
---
Quiet Court - tricks are still rules
Battery Crate hummed with the contentment of electrons who had been allowed to be reasonable.
- Dummy Mirrors v0.1 delivered west; training posted; rumor seeded correctly.
- Codebook Hygiene Pro unlocked; macro rotated; old strips burned.
- A5 seeded: strap, bar seat, Pebble Curtain, latch, Mobile Bar cache; squares posted; mattress delivered.
- Corridor extension: RN-7 established; manhole ring baffle; lane dots/squares; pram returned with receipt.
- Bread Receipts deployed; clinic posted; first filled by Aunt Mara.
- Dummy Light decoy used to draw Blue off a seizure; tickets issued.
- Seer probed; denied by veil + lack of edges; decoy ignored (as planned).
- Clinic triage tickets drafted; neighbors taught; water penance used without speeches.
- Doctrine: repeated.
[System: Audit Complete]
+1 PC (dummy training), +1 PC (codebook hygiene), +2 PC (A5 seed), +1 PC (corridor), +1 PC (bread receipts), +1 PC (discipline), +1 PC (doctrine).
Total PC: 94.5.
Advisory: With 94+ PC, next unlocks: Energy T1 Pack Diagnostics, Bio/Chem T1 Surface Disinfectant, Info T1 Map Semantics (shared symbols), Engineering T1 Mobile Bar v0.2 (single-person set). Threat horizon: preacher likely to pivot to confession theater; Blue quiet seizures escalating to night ladder grabs; Seer mapping baffles by taste and patience. Recommendations: build west dummies x 2 more; pre-cut felt visors; finalize A5 dorm v0.1; design "ladder denial" (rope cutouts + oil cloth); consider public reading of Bread Receipts at shoulders to starve mercy stories.
Mira let her eyes close while standing, then opened them because standing is a rule and rules do not nap in hallways. "We are lying correctly," she said. "To thieves, not to ourselves."
"We are teaching with props," Kael said. "The lesson is still math."
Nox leaned the Mobile Bar against the wall like a friend after a long day. "Tomorrow we make another," he said.
Eli held the copper figure-eight up to the light and smiled. "Tomorrow we teach the west that dummy mirrors are a favor to their future selves."
Liana washed her hands and dried them on the cloth that said DRY. "Tomorrow I want disinfectant," she said. "Gel is kissing. Disinfectant is cleaning the room before you invite gel over."
Renn pointed at the ceiling. The cat on the roof blinked back. "Tomorrow I write a receipt for the cat," he said. "For patrol of gutters."
Kael placed his palm on the ledger. "We do not need to be brave," he said.
"We need to be correct," the house answered, and A5 heard, a floor away, and promised to learn the sentence by heart.
Outside, Blue chased glints and caught foil. Inside, boards hosted handwriting that fed discipline. The Seer, insulted by cardboard, decided to be offended elsewhere. And the line from stair to clinic to west tower brightened a fraction, as if the city had decided to allow a small network powered by schedules and stubbornness.