The Beats

A beat’s clock entry is the latest it can happen. Conditions accelerate; time only backstops.

Act One, If Nobody Interferes
When	Beat	Where	Agenda
d0/dawn	Have you stood this morning	The Nine	Every one of this intake comes back
d0/dawn	Sling in the dead watch	The Nine	Beat the new one to every posting
d0/dawn	The kettle argument	The Ready Room	Every one of this intake comes back
d0/day	A short one, and it goes right	The Nine	Every one of this intake comes back
d0/dusk	Benno buys a round	The Nine	Buy the best of them
d0/night	Rill comes through	The Nine	There has to be something afterwards
d1/dawn	Calloway says the numbers out loud	The Ready Room	Get the children out
d1/dawn	Seven goes sticky	The Nine	Get the children out
d1/day	Benno on the gallery	The Nine	Buy the best of them
d1/day	Four and no more	The Nine	Get the children out
d1/day	How many of you are there	The Ready Room	Get the children out
d1/day	The first carry	Ladder	Get the children out
d1/day	The painted line at Ladder	Ladder	Get the children out
d1/day	The relay	The Nine	Get the children out
d1/night	It goes in the night	The Nine	Get the children out
d1/night	Nineteen asleep on the floor	The Ready Room	Find somewhere for the Ladder children
d1/night	What six-oh-two was	The Nine	Make somebody read the fifth report
d2/dawn	Pell Ivor’s board	The Nine	Get the children out
d2/dawn	Sticky in the stairwell	The Nine	Get the children out
d2/dawn	The watch reports	The Office	Make somebody read the fifth report
d2/day	A proposal dies in committee	The Nine	No funded study of straying
d2/day	Sep sends the fifth report	The Office	Make somebody read the fifth report
d2/day	Somebody with the Listen	The Nine	Get the children out
d2/day	Vantage reads the rim	The Nine	Get the children out
d2/night	Ladder’s answer	Ladder	Find somewhere for the Ladder children
d2/night	Meriel lines up the dates	The Office	Keep this station alive
d3/day	Ferren’s name goes forward	The Ready Room	Be the one they send to LHS 1140
d3/day	Tolk asks the wrong question	The Yards	We fit, and nobody can tell me why
d4/day	Benno makes the offer	The Nine	Buy the best of them

What everybody is trying to do

An agenda is a thing a person wants badly enough to spend something on, with a clock on it. When the clock fills, they get it — unless somebody is in the way.

Agendas and Their Clocks
Agenda	Held by	Goal	Clock	Status
Be the one they send to LHS 1140	Ferren	Secure the first-through posting for the opening of the new door	0/8	active
Beat the new one to every posting	Ferren	Arrive first, do the easy half, and be pleasant about it	0/4	active
Buy the best of them	Benno Raske	Keep a stable of first-throughs willing to take paid carries, and get the best one at the Nine	0/6	active
Every one of this intake comes back	Calloway	Get all four of the new first-throughs through their first year alive	0/6	active
Find somewhere for the Ladder children	Calloway	House, school and place nineteen children who arrived with nothing and have nowhere to go	0/6	dormant
Find the leak at the desk	Tallyman Captain Brace	Identify whoever at a Tally desk has been passing advance word of strays to the Second Hand	0/8	active
Get the children out	Tace Orun	Bring nineteen children off Ladder before the door strays	0/4	dormant
Keep this station alive	Meriel Koll	Hold the van Maanen’s office together on half the parts it is owed, and stop Sep sending another report	0/6	active
Make somebody read the fifth report	Sep Anwar	Get an analysis of the anchor failure distribution in front of a person with the power to act	0/5	active
No funded study of straying	Councillor Hale	Ensure no reliable method of predicting strays is ever developed, funded or published	0/8	active
There has to be something afterwards	Rill	Find any future at all that is not a desk and is not nothing	0/4	active
We fit, and nobody can tell me why	Tolk	Find out why two species forty light years apart are complementary halves of one function	0/8	active

Running them

Three habits, and they are the difference between this act working and this act being a lecture.

Let the beats fire out of order. The list above is what happens if nobody interferes, and somebody is about to interfere.

Never narrate a beat the player is not in. If an agenda advances offscreen, the player meets the consequence — a queue that has got longer, a sheet of paper in a drawer, somebody who has stopped being where they were.

One talking-in-a-room scene, then cut. The moment a beat becomes four adults agreeing about procedure, something physical happens instead. Paper is the key to a door. It is never the door.