# Plain-Translation Audit — Chapter 15: Keys Elsewhere

audit: plain_translation | stance: skeptical editor, generative-not-evaluative | target: `output/chapters/chapter_15.md` (integrated revision, post-tic-audit)

Forms present per reading guide: close-third June narration (all narration; single-POV chapter), phone conversation (June/Nia), text-message exchanges (Asha, group thread, Theo). No assignment card, no documentary insert beyond quoted note/receipt text. Samples compared, by name: **June close-third sample** (optical, clipped, exact, dry; perception first, judgment second, self-rebuke third), **Nia dialogue sample** (practical, concrete, direct money/time/key details, no advice-oracle lines), **Asha text sample** (work-network shorthand, blunt rates/lead times), **Theo text sample** (logistical tenderness, concrete care without confession).

Pre-check against the mechanical gate report: 0 open, 0 allowlisted, WATCH-only; the WATCH rows (repeated descriptor, em-dash list, shopping-list recital) are adjudicated below where they touch register.

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## Per-paragraph verdicts

**P1.** `LOCKED — skipped, listed under calibration's inviolable text` (chapter title).

**P2.** HOLDS — "The tote strap quit on the third-floor landing..." — sample compared: June close-third sample — binding-register rewrite is worse because: rewrite attempt ("The tote strap broke on the landing and June carried the catalogs the rest of the way") loses the failure mechanics ("a single stitch at the seam, popping with a sound like a knuckle") and the body logistics ("chin clamped on the top spine"), which are the sample's optical-exact mode doing the opening-in-action the packet ordered. Equal fidelity, lower density.

**P3.** HOLDS — "Inside, she discovered that her apartment had no place for them..." — sample compared: June close-third sample — binding-register rewrite is worse because: this *is* the binding register — measured surfaces (eight inches vs. ten and a half; thirty by forty), dry procedural framing ("took four minutes to establish"), and the dropped fact that carries the threat ("the returned column blank"). A generic-clarity version would summarize "the catalogs didn't fit," deleting the loan pressure and the painter's-eye measurement habit. The gate's repeated-descriptor WATCH ("against" ×5 chapter-wide) does not concentrate here.

**P4.** HOLDS — "She stacked them on the floor by the table..." — sample compared: June close-third sample — binding-register rewrite is worse because: the paragraph executes the card's interiority rhythm exactly — perception ("a quarter inch of cream against gray"), judgment ("She told herself that was about weight distribution"), action-as-rebuke (turning the stack to the wall). Rewriting toward plain statement ("she hid the slipped volume") names the feeling the original earns through object handling, violating the feelings-through-object rule.

**P5.** HOLDS — "Then she made the call station..." — sample compared: June close-third sample — binding-register rewrite is worse because: the colon-led inventory ("The call station looked like this:") is the voice card's stress behavior (sorts, aligns, prepares) rendered as form; "flattened and set to the left like a reference swatch" is a sanctioned craft analogy. The em-dash lead insert (gate WATCH, line 9) carries Asha's lead data at full density; unpacking it into separate sentences adds words and removes the swatch-board effect. No new em-dashes should be added per the tic audit, but these hold.

**P6.** HOLDS — "The mineral spirits jar went on the windowsill, unopened..." — sample compared: June close-third sample — binding-register rewrite is worse because: "which was not yet an accomplishment" is judgment-then-self-rebuke in six words; the crossed-out *what happens if no* converts the chapter's fear into a written object. The plain version ("she still hadn't opened it; she avoided the hardest question") is strictly worse on drama and identical on information. ("It was developing a presence" was already excised in integration; the replacement attention-sentence is clean.)

**P7.** *(high-risk comparison shown)* HOLDS — "It was eight-forty on Thursday night..." — sample compared: June close-third sample — binding rewrite attempted: *"June had spent Wednesday on an invoice and Thursday at Marchetti Rooms. Both were real. Neither had taken until eight-forty."* The chopped version is arguably more clipped-June, but the original's single-breath paired clause ("both of which were real, neither of which had taken until eight-forty") delivers the self-indictment in one exhale, which is the sample's third-position self-rebuke; the rewrite fragments it into emphasis the moment hasn't earned. Not measurably better → original stands. Cleared as a balanced-construction candidate, narrowly.

**P8.** HOLDS — "She called. 'June Park,' Nia said..." through "...the official version." — sample compared: Nia dialogue sample + June dialogue card — conversation form, not plain-translated. "I had a thing with panels." / "For two days." / "They were complicated panels." is plain-speech-floor compliant deflection that is visible as deflection; "Tell me the official version" is a direct ask. Followability test passes: a cold reader can state what June stalled on and what she's now requesting.

**P9.** HOLDS — "'Okay.' ... 'You'd run the rooms.'" / "'Define run.'" / duties paragraph — sample compared: Nia dialogue sample — conversation form. The duties speech is the sample's register verbatim in spirit: grants, schedules, machine faults, "fix the boring things before the artists arrive." This is the packet's "job specifics without brochure prose" requirement met. One within-sentence echo flagged at the gate (see Verbatim-Echo below). "Define run." is June's compact-observation mass.

**P10.** HOLDS — "June was writing. *Vandercook—gripper, return stroke.*..." — sample compared: June close-third sample — binding-register rewrite is worse because: "Her handwriting had gotten neat" is perception→judgment compressed to seven words and plants the chapter's competence-as-avoidance runner. Nothing to translate; this is the floor the rest is measured against.

**P11.** HOLDS — "'What's the gripper doing exactly'..." through "'...Hypothetically. Keep going. Money.'" — sample compared: Nia dialogue sample + June dialogue card — conversation form. "This is why I called you and not the other names on my list" is respect via list logic, not flattery. June's spring-or-grease diagnosis followed by "Hypothetically" is the card's jokes-as-smokescreen under pressure. "June heard herself and stopped" adjudicated and cleared at the Dialogue Diagnosis Gate below.

**P12.** HOLDS — "'W-2, full-time, six months funded'..." through "*Kessler: 32 x 40 x 3 = 3,840 gross, paid Mar.*" — sample compared: Nia dialogue sample — conversation form. Forty-nine five, eleven-eighty, benefits at ninety days: money named without shame, per the card. "You know your current number better than I do" / "I can do math" keeps Nia off the pity line the card forbids. June's notebook math putting Kessler's gross against the W-2 is the no-montage finances the packet ordered.

**P13.** HOLDS — "Start date's likely January... It's in writing." — sample compared: Nia dialogue sample — conversation form. "I want to be clear that's in the actual job description, because I wrote the job description" — the internal repetition is emphatic self-citation (she is the document's author; that's the point), transformative, cleared. This paragraph is the offer's genuine-goodness load and it carries it in keys/hours/sink/wall nouns, exactly the sample's "keys, a paycheck, and a wall" triad register.

**P14.** HOLDS — "June wrote *keys / after 8 / wall / on the paper.*..." — sample compared: June close-third sample — binding-register rewrite is worse because: "She looked at the line. The pen sat at the end of it." renders wanting-and-stalling as two objects. Any naming version ("she wanted it and couldn't say so") is the exact drift this audit exists to block.

**P15.** HOLDS — "'Renewal?'" through "'...a detailed reference from me.'" — sample compared: Nia dialogue sample — conversation form. "We're two grants and a city line item" is infrastructure candor; the contingency chain ("the six months becomes a year and the year becomes a job") adjudicated and cleared at the Aphorism Gate below. June's "You're being very fair about the part where it might evaporate" is a direct sentence, floor met.

**P16.** HOLDS — "'Because I need the answer to hold up...'" through "*FRI DEC 4. NOON.* The date sat in the same neat handwriting as the gripper notes." — sample compared: Nia dialogue sample + June close-third sample. "I'm offering you work, June, not a rescue" adjudicated at the Aphorism Gate below (passes, calibration-licensed). The deadline speech is pure Nia mechanics: board Monday, search plan, postings, February reporting. The narration close — the deadline sitting "in the same neat handwriting as the gripper notes" — is the chapter's thesis delivered as a visual fact, not a thesis line; the plain version ("she treated the deadline like another repair item") states what the original shows and replaces nothing.

**P17.** HOLDS — "'Can I ask the gripper question differently'..." through "'That's a Tuesday.'" — sample compared: Nia dialogue sample — conversation form. The Tuesday walkthrough is hour-by-hour logistics ending on "at eight-fifteen you're alone in a shop with working ventilation, a wall, and your own key" — the calibration sample's own noun set. "That's a Tuesday." is plain close, not a pull-quote; cleared below.

**P18.** *(high-risk comparison shown)* HOLDS — "June looked at what she'd written. The line that interested her was *true up the Vandercook.* Not the wall. The press." — sample compared: June close-third sample — binding rewrite attempted: *"The line that interested her was true up the Vandercook — the press, not the wall."* The rewrite smooths the two fragments into an appositive and loses the beat-by-beat order the sample mandates: perception (which note pulls her eye), then judgment (not the wall), then the next paragraph's vision as self-rebuke. The fragments are earned emphasis at the chapter's one realization, not false emphasis; the integration already stripped the echo-line version of this beat and what remains is the minimal form. Original stands.

**P19.** *(high-risk comparison shown)* HOLDS — "She could see the back room at eight-fifteen..." — sample compared: June close-third sample — binding rewrite attempted: *"She imagined the back room at eight-fifteen and saw herself at the press with a rag, not at the wall."* The rewrite preserves information but kills the dramatic content: "The version that kept returning put her at the press" makes the avoidance involuntary (the vision recurs; she doesn't choose it), and "the wall stayed clean and empty under the raking light" is the chapter's single deliberate light image doing the trap's work — the offer's gift unused, rendered as a surface. Measurably worse on drama → original stands. Light-image cap: one deliberate image; the sink fluorescent is scene-setting, not a second image. Within cap.

**P20.** HOLDS — "'June.' / 'I'm here. I'm taking notes.'..." through "'Noon. I'll send the description tonight.'" — sample compared: Nia dialogue sample. "If you say no, send me someone good. I still have a program to keep open" is the calibration sample verbatim — binding by definition. One echo defect in this exchange ("Noon." / "Noon.") — see Verbatim-Echo Gate, ORDER issued.

**P21.** *(high-risk comparison shown)* HOLDS — "When the call ended, the apartment was very quiet in the ordinary way..." — sample compared: June close-third sample — binding rewrite attempted: *"After the call she reread her notes. Everything on the page was good and she had no objection to cross out, which she had not expected."* The rewrite holds information and loses everything else: "read her own page like it was someone else's punch list" (the handler's eye turned on her own life), the recital of the notes as objects, and "despite the station, despite the pen that worked" — preparation indicted twice, in the sample's self-rebuke slot. "The whole thing was good" is allowed plainness; "the ordinary way—the radiator ticking, somebody's TV below" pre-empts active-silence drift by specifying the sounds. Original stands. (Gate's shopping-list WATCH on the recital: it is quoted notebook text, document-object, not narration drift.)

**P22.** HOLDS — "*Kessler confirmed. Armory load-in Jan 4...*" through "*...you'd love it, it's terrible.*" / "send pics of the terrible room" — sample compared: Asha text sample — text-message form, audited against its own sample only, not smoothed. Rate, lead time, net-45, the missing question mark on "do I give your slot to Dario" — blunt shorthand per card. June's "Don't give it to Dario. He overtightens everything" is work-peer concrete. "terrible"/"terrible" echo is June picking up Asha's joke — transformative, cleared. Per the lock, no order may literary-polish these messages.

**P23.** DRIFTED — original: "...Asha's voice from the loading dock at Kessler's, hands full of strap: *If you pass on Philly, send Nia my name. I can do the boring parts and still paint at night.* Asha, who said it like it was nothing, who would walk into the Tasker building and have the gripper freed by Friday and a wet canvas in the back room by the Friday after." — binding-register version: "...Asha's voice from the loading dock at Kessler's, hands full of strap, not even setting it down: *If you pass on Philly, send Nia my name. I can do the boring parts and still paint at night.* Asha would walk into the Tasker building, have the gripper freed by Friday, and a wet canvas in the back room by the Friday after." — What the rewrite preserves: the quoted voice-card line intact, the dock action, the gripper-vs-wet-canvas contrast that is the whole ethical weight (Asha is the maker June isn't). What drift it removes: "who said it like it was nothing" is narration characterizing delivery — a zero-tolerance Dialogue Diagnosis hit (§2/§6 of the reading guide: any instance, any speaker's mouth or narration about speech); the casualness must live in the strap-hands, not in a caption. The rewrite is not worse on density, drama, or fidelity — **ORDER: REPLACE** (cross-listed at the Dialogue Diagnosis Gate).

**P24.** HOLDS — "June did not type Asha's name into anything..." — sample compared: June close-third sample — binding-register rewrite is worse because: it is already the binding register at maximum compression — refusal as a typing non-event, the scrap's position on the table, phone face down. The packet's "remember the possibility, feel its weight, don't act" is executed in three sentences of object handling.

**P25.** HOLDS — "It buzzed twice more anyway. The group thread..." — sample compared: June close-third sample (narration) over Priya's print-shorthand text — binding-register rewrite is worse because: "in classrooms and coffee shops where she'd never check the hang" is installer vocabulary carrying exposure-dread, and "they were not surprised. That was the trouble with it." is perception (her own eyes read optically, as an image) then four-word judgment. The plain version ("the photo showed she had real feelings") deletes the blind-POV-test pass. Gate's eyes-WATCH (line 101) is June reading a photograph — sanctioned optical use.

**P26.** HOLDS — "*Six pm count done. 41 chairs, 9 occupied, one occupied by a coat that I ruled counts...*" through "'That's going in the label notes'" — sample compared: Theo text sample — text-message form, audited against its own sample only. Chair counts, a ruling, a promise kept, "The ground's faced and drying" — logistical tenderness with zero confession, exactly the sample; no offer leakage (packet contract intact). One Aphorism Gate hit inside June's reply — see below, ORDER issued. The narration "answered the part that was a fact" is cleared at the Dialogue Diagnosis Gate (content sorting shown by what she does — she answers the coat ruling and ignores the flyer — not delivery captioning).

**P27.** HOLDS — "She washed the two dishes..." — sample compared: June close-third sample — binding-register rewrite is worse because: "because facing them at the wall had been melodramatic and the slip was just paper" is self-rebuke correcting P4's action — the runner closing its own loop; "a thumb-wide drag of burnt earth on gray canvas" is pigment-named cuff description per the painter's eye; "She knew. She left it." is the desire tell from the packet checklist executed in five words. Plain translation would have to say "she kept the paint mark because of Theo," which the chapter correctly never says.

**P28.** HOLDS — "The receipt was in the jacket's left pocket..." — sample compared: June close-third sample — binding-register rewrite is worse because: the receipt is inventoried as evidence (Marchetti Rooms, the twelve-by-sixteen ground, "Theo's blocky register print") so that writing the deadline on its back means what it means without narration saying so. Full density, no drift.

**P29.** PARTIAL LOCK — the inscription `FRI DEC 4 / NOON` is calibration-locked as a hard object and survives untouched. The frame sentence HOLDS — "she wrote, in the neat handwriting, the letters squared off like a label draft" — sample compared: June close-third sample — the label-draft simile ties the deadline to the After Class label work, new information; "the neat handwriting" is the runner's third beat (see Verbatim-Echo, cleared with a no-fourth-use caution).

**P30.** HOLDS — "She sat with the pen over the paper until the radiator clicked twice..." — sample compared: June close-third sample — binding-register rewrite is worse because: the radiator-click duration is the integration's concrete replacement for "a long moment" and must not regress; "in case the rest of the answer came from the same pen. It didn't come." is dry procedural irony closing the pen-that-worked runner, with the crossed-out question and *wall, on the paper* persisting as page-objects. Plain version adds nothing and loses the runner.

**P31.** HOLDS — "June propped the receipt against the bottom of the catalog stack..." — sample compared: June close-third sample — binding-register rewrite is worse because: sightline engineering ("from the bed, from the stove, from the door") and the mechanical justification for the jar ("so it couldn't slide off or fold shut") keep the closing tableau practical rather than symbol-installed — which is precisely what licenses P32.

**P32.** *(high-risk comparison shown)* HOLDS — "Fifteen days. She turned off the big light and left the deadline pinned under the jar she hadn't opened." — sample compared: June close-third sample — binding rewrite attempted: *"Fifteen days. She turned off the big light and went to bed."* The rewrite is flatter and loses the two-object consequence (deadline pinned, jar unopened) that the card explicitly ordered as the close ("end on the physical deadline/object consequence"). "Fifteen days" is date arithmetic (Nov 19 evening to Dec 4 noon), a fact-fragment, not a maxim. The symbolic doubling of "the jar she hadn't opened" was the tic audit's flagged risk; it passes here because P31 gave the jar's placement a mechanical reason before the sentence asks it to mean anything. Original stands. Adjudicated again at the Aphorism Gate below.

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## Aphorism Gate (zero tolerance)

Checked by name, per the audit brief:

- **"The flaw wasn't in the offer"** — NOT PRESENT in the revised chapter. Verified absent (removed during integration along with the raw draft's broad-terms offer-goodness framing the tic audit flagged at raw line 87). Nothing to clear.
- **"I'm offering you work, June, not a rescue."** — PRESENT (Nia, renewal exchange). PASSES: this is a sanctioned variant of the Nia voice-card calibration sample "June, I am offering you work, not absolution" — the calibration artifact itself licenses the shape for this speaker. It is additionally context-bound: second person, name-anchored, and a direct answer to June's "You're being very fair about the part where it might evaporate." Condition: it must remain Nia's only maxim-shaped line in the chapter; revision must not add a sibling.
- **"both those things can be true"** — NOT PRESENT in the revised chapter. Verified absent.
- **"there was the yes that solved seven things..."** — NOT PRESENT in the revised chapter. Verified absent.
- **Final "Fifteen days" close** — PASSES (full comparison at P32): fact-fragment plus two physical actions on two mechanically-justified objects; not portable without the receipt/jar context; complies with the card's no-maxim-closer order.

New finding from the full sweep:

- `APHORISM-GATE — "Coats are people who left their position marked." — ORDER: de-quotablize.` June's text reply to Theo is habitual-present, general-subject, metaphorical-equivalence — epigram-shaped and quotable out of context, and the global voice rule licenses high-density memorable lines to Odile alone. The fact-answer and the label-notes handoff must survive; the generalization must not. Direction (not binding wording): *"The coat counts. Somebody marked their position and left."* Theo's "That's going in the label notes" still lands on the de-quotablized version. Note the text-logistics lock cuts the other way here — the fix must make the line *more* like a text message, not more literary, which the order satisfies.

Strongest counter-candidates considered and cleared: "the six months becomes a year and the year becomes a job" (anadiplosis shape, but contingent on a named grant and city line item — not portable; cutting it would cost Nia's renewal candor); "which was not yet an accomplishment" (self-aimed, bound to the jar); "That's a Tuesday." (plain summary tag, not a maxim).

## Verbatim-Echo Gate

Findings:

- `VERBATIM-ECHO — June: "December fourth," June said. "Noon." / Nia: "Noon. I'll send the description tonight." — ORDER: vary — cut the echoed "Noon." from Nia's reply (e.g., "I'll send the description tonight."). ` This is a paired echo confirmation between speakers — the exact spent family Chapter 14's guardrails name ("no paired echo confirmations like `It held` / `It worked`"). June's restatement already performs the confirmation; Nia's repeat is non-transformative.
- `VERBATIM-ECHO — "a Vandercook with a gripper bar that sticks on the return, an etching press with a bearing that knocks on the return" — ORDER: vary the second clause (e.g., "a bearing that knocks at the end of the pass"), preserving the mechanical truth.` Within-sentence verbatim rhyme; both faults are plausibly return-stroke faults, but the doubled phrase reads as constructed parallel, not punch-list speech, and June's own note already varies it ("gripper, return stroke").

Named lexical sweeps, per the audit brief, instances quoted and adjudicated:

- **`keys`** — title (LOCKED); Nia "Keys on day one"; June's note "*keys / after 8*"; Nia "your own key"; recital "*Keys.*" CLEARED: the chapter card's metaphor plan declares keys/rooms/access the sanctioned comparison field; note instances are quoted document text; spoken instances vary number and speaker.
- **`wall`** — Nia "Big wall in the back" / "a wall"; June's note and recital "*wall, on the paper*" (×3 as page-object: written, reread, persisting); vision "the wall stayed clean and empty"; apartment wall "so it faced the wall" / "facing them at the wall had been melodramatic." CLEARED: studio-wall instances are quoted notes or the trap image; the apartment-wall pair is a designed reversal (hide the slip, then un-hide it) whose irony against the offered wall is functional. Caution: the page-object line appears three times; revision must not add a fourth.
- **`press`** — questions list "*pay, dates, scope, press*"; "etching press"; "Not the wall. The press."; "put her at the press with a rag." CLEARED: judgment-then-visualization across P18–P19 is transformative; remaining instances are equipment nouns.
- **`deadline` / `noon`** — "There's a deadline." (June, plain-speech floor); final "left the deadline pinned" (metonym for the locked receipt object); `FRI DEC 4 / NOON` and note recitals are LOCKED/quoted document text. One defect (the "Noon."/"Noon." pair) ordered above; remainder CLEARED.
- **`room`** — Nia "You'd run the rooms" → "somebody who can keep the rooms running": same-speaker near-verbatim, CLEARED as transformative — the first defines the job, the second states her requirement plus testimony ("I've seen you do that") under the fairness beat; "the room's yours" / "hold the room open" / Asha's "the Ridgewood room" are distinct referents.

Other candidates cleared: "taking notes" June→Nia (deflection → call-out, transformative); "the same neat handwriting" runner (×3, progressive: competence → equivalence-with-gripper-notes → label-draft; no fourth use); "the pen that worked" runner (procedural irony, escalating); "occupied" ×2 inside Theo's count (list logic); "job description" ×2 (authorial self-citation); "search plan" ×2 (term then definition); "by Friday / the Friday after" (deliberate escalation within one clause).

## Dialogue Diagnosis Gate (zero tolerance sweep)

Finding:

- `DIALOGUE-DIAGNOSIS — "Asha, who said it like it was nothing" — ORDER: REPLACE per P23.` Narration characterizing delivery (manner of speech rated as casual). The reading guide's rule covers narration about speech explicitly; the strap-hands action must carry the casualness.

Strongest candidates considered and cleared:

- "June heard herself and stopped." — registers that she spoke, not how; no characterization of sentence shape or delivery, and the perceptive work is done by what she does next (the spoken "Hypothetically"). Passes the do-something-with-it standard.
- "I know you're taking notes. I can hear the pen." — Nia names an audible activity, literal sound; not phrasing/rhythm/delivery commentary.
- "She read it twice and answered the part that was a fact" — content sorting shown by action (she answers the coat ruling, declines the rest); does not caption Theo's language.
- "Nia thought." — pause notation, not diagnosis.

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## Chapter verdict

The chapter's narration holds the June close-third register at every audited paragraph — no narration paragraph lost to its binding rewrite. The phone call holds the Nia sample throughout; the text exchanges hold the Asha and Theo samples and were not smoothed. The four defects are local: one delivery-caption in narration (REPLACE), one epigram in June's mouth (de-quotablize), and two non-transformative echoes (vary). Locked text untouched: title, `FRI DEC 4 / NOON`.

**DRIFT-FOUND (4 orders)**
