Episode Zero: The Intake

The warrant seized a machine along with a name. The seized files live in this building, and this year we take the machine apart. Ledgers that double on schedule. Washes that shrink the evidence. Rate tables with a signature buried in the denominator. Somebody out there is doing arithmetic in the dark, and the county wants it done in the light. That is the job. That is the whole job.

DR. R. VEGA: "Welcome to the Compound. I do not care what math class you came from. In this building there is the machine, there is the mathematics, and there is the difference between them. Your work is the difference. Decode it whole. A machine you can write down is a machine you own."

YOUR FIELD KIT Requisition slip, signed: Pippa George, Quartermaster. Issued to each crew member: pencil, paper you do not erase (cross out, keep the trail), and the Field Book if the trail runs cold. Pippa stocks every case this season and signs every voucher. If a requisition looks wrong, she already knows.

HOW THE SEASON RUNS Cases open on Mondays, on the class schedule, one every four weeks. Each case is ten markers of real case math, worked on paper, answered on the page. Points ride a plain one to five: hints cost, clean runs earn. Finish a case and its voucher files a LEDGER ENTRY, one of eight. Between cases, the Yard stays open: drills and term walks earn tickets, and the open games are just for the fun of it. At midseason the Quartermaster posts a twenty-check audit. And in May the whole crew brings all eight entries to GROUND TRUTH, in class, together.

THE PROMISE: by the last week of the season you will have closed eight cases, filed eight entries, and stood one signature away from the name behind all of it. Marker one is waiting.