003c — Y/N
T1 storyboard leaf
003c-t1-a · compiled from the T0 script · 9:16COLD OPEN — 0:00–0:10
Day. The field. Absolutely nothing happening — and over it, a countdown burning in the corner like a speedrun timer:
VO Seventeen hours until sunset. Three seconds of debug overlay. Which gives me — let me do the math — no margin for error whatsoever.
1/4
THE PLAN — 0:10–0:40
Montage: the sapling rehearses. The test-log gag from 002c returns, but the jokes are load-bearing now:
VO Eleven experiments in three seconds. Sure. And after that I'll refactor the sun. No — one window, one test. The label. The (?). Everything else on that overlay renders stable. I'm the only thing in this world the system isn't sure about.
The bird from 002c lands on him, settles in like it bought tickets.
VO Great. An audience.
2/4
THE WINDOW — 0:40–1:00
The sun touches the horizon. The world flickers to wireframe — grass lattice, low-poly rocks, the bird a labeled armature (npcambient · loop=daily) — and the timer slams to:
He finds his label instantly. A▓M▓N(?). And — the way he learned to push growth in 001, the way he pushed a root into the crack in 002a's sibling world — he pushes at the question mark.
The label stutters. Resolves. Not into an answer — into a prompt, rendering character by character like an old terminal:
VO Wait — what happens if—
The sun slips under. The wireframes collapse. The world snaps back to ordinary dusk.
3/4
THE HOOK — 1:00–1:25
Except.
Over his trunk, faint as an afterimage, the prompt is still there — the only piece of overlay that didn't fold shut. A cursor, blinking against the darkening sky. The bird looks at it, then at him, and pointedly relocates to a different tree.
VO It's still rendering. Sunset ended and it's still rendering. This isn't display anymore. This is a transaction, open, waiting for input.
Beat.
VO Y or N. Yes or no. Verify a role I never claimed, granted by a system I can't read, with powers I can't see — or refuse it and stay… whatever I am. One character. No docs. No undo.
The countdown timer reappears in the corner, but changed:
VO (quiet) …It gave me a deadline. Seventeen hours. The exact length of one night to decide who I am.
SMASH TO BLACK. The cursor blinks once more in the dark.
4/4