Chapter 20: Where Carys Entered
The readers who had lost Carys were still in the room when I gave her ninety minutes to risk her job.
On Saturday, PageTurn’s revision workshop began with my anonymous v1 projected on the wall. PT-041 replaced my name.
Six readers sat behind score screens; none had my clinic record or Alistair’s diagnosis. They knew the numbered text, the four published criteria, and nothing about the marriage that had first made me open a new document.
The moderator read their shared finding.
“Narrative question: met. Immediate danger: met. Character agency: below threshold.”
Excellent fact had carried me only that far.
A countdown appeared: 01:30:00.
I opened a clean v2 beside the sealed first version.
The seventh call still had to pull the reader into Saltmere.
Carys now had to change what happened because she heard it.
I deleted two paragraphs explaining harbour retention policy.
The timer passed eighty-three minutes.
In v1, Carys photographed the altered ledger and went home. Nobody could discover her courage because she had not used any.
Worse, a supervisor could erase her photograph later without the harbour ever admitting she had challenged the lie.
I replaced the summary with the opening itself.
Carys Venn, harbour accounts clerk assigned to nightly incident reconciliation, could legally read the archived call and submit a named correction. She could not overwrite the source record.
Through the static, the caller said, “Mae Bell. Bell, with two l’s.”
The linked ledger entry still read WEATHER INTERFERENCE.
Carys opened CORRECTION REQUEST and typed: CALLER IDENTIFIES HERSELF AS MAE BELL. Her staff number appeared beneath the proposal.
Her supervisor’s key turned in the outer lock.
Carys heard it, looked once at the unchanged source entry, and clicked SUBMIT FOR REVIEW.
An audit alert filled the screen: CORRECTION PROPOSED BY CARYS VENN — ORIGINAL RETAINED — SUPERVISOR REVIEW PENDING.
The key turned again as the same alert reached her supervisor.
Her authorised action had not rewritten evidence; it had made her challenge visible to the man who could end her job.
The choice exposed her immediately and preserved the mystery: who had erased Mae, and why had the harbour denied her boat?
Forty-six minutes remained.
I cut the history of the signal tower. I cut an elegant explanation of ink oxidation.
Both had proved I could construct a puzzle.
Neither made Carys pay for entering it.
I replaced them with the supervisor reading her name from the audit alert as his key turned in the office door.
The revised action landed at word one hundred and sixty-three.
The moderator called twenty minutes.
I read the opening aloud once, hearing the point where the policy language slowed the footsteps.
That paragraph went too.
One reader stopped tapping his pencil when Carys clicked SUBMIT. Another leaned forwards at the audit alert, then covered her score without comment.
Nobody applauded. The silence had changed from waiting for information to waiting for the supervisor to enter.
At 01:17 remaining, I submitted SALTMERE_OPENING_V2 under PT-041.
The workshop system locked v2 beside v1 and generated a visible difference summary.
No timestamp moved backwards; no sentence entered the sealed first file.
The readers rescored only the announced thresholds.
Green marks appeared for narrative question and danger.
The character row stayed grey long enough for my hands to turn cold.
Then it changed to THRESHOLD MET — PROTAGONIST ACTION CREATES CONSEQUENCE.
PT-041 — CONTRACT CANDIDATE.
The status opened the next licence stage; it did not grant a contract.
For one breath, mine was the only candidate number lit. I let that fact belong to me.
Then PageTurn released the same result summary for the other project.
A second number illuminated beside mine.
The note said Pippa’s audio-first structure had met the bar; Oliver’s performance role remained separate.
I saw no opposing manuscript, score, or reviewer comment.
Two candidate numbers glowed on the wall: I had passed, and Oliver and Pippa had passed too.