Audit written to `output/critiques/claude/chapter_20.plain_translation_round2.md`. The completed document:

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# Plain-Translation Audit — Chapter 20, "No Advice / Keys Here" — Round 2 (verification)

id: plain_translation | tier: risk | trigger: every-revised-chapter + flag:register-drift | round: 2 of 2
Inputs verified: chapter (`output/chapters/chapter_20.md`, post-repair), round-1 audit (`output/critiques/claude/chapter_20.plain_translation.md`), reading guide §§1, 2, 5, 6, 8 (`premise/READING_GUIDE.md`), voice cards (`output/style_and_voice.md`), calibration (`output/tics.md`, `output/model_prompts/claude/chapter_draft/chapter_20.md`), adjacent summaries (`output/rolling_summaries/chapter_18.md`, `output/rolling_summaries/chapter_19.md`), mechanical gate (`output/critiques/codex/mechanical/chapter_20_quality_gate.md`, 0 open findings, 23 WATCH).

Stance: skeptical. No praise. This round verifies the three round-1 orders were executed without substitute drift, re-runs full comparisons on the repair sites and the round-1 highest-risk blocks, and re-sweeps both gates against the named families. A repair that installs a new quotable, a new echo, or a voice-bleed is a new DRIFTED, not a pass.

**Form identification (re-confirmed, unchanged from round 1).** Close-third June narration throughout (compare: June voice card, not generic clarity). No assignment-card epigraph — correct for an off-Tuesday decision chapter. Documentary forms checked only against themselves: the receipt (`FRI DEC 4 / NOON`), notebook left/right pages and fills, the index card, text threads (Sam 9:52, Asha post-call, Dana 11:20), the Kessler email summary, the landlord notice. Dialogue exchanges: Ruth/Sam visit, Asha call, Nia call. Locked text: chapter heading only. No amplification direction declared; no chaos_up handoff.

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## Round-1 order execution

1. **ORDER 1 (REPLACE, narration, line 13) — EXECUTED VERBATIM.** The chiasmus ("...as if distance might fix a drawing problem, when the problem was in the drawing") is gone. Current text: "She had kept stepping back from paintings all fall as if the problem were viewing distance." The ordered wording, exactly. Downstream plant chain verified intact: line 157 "stepped back from it into the kitchen doorway, the distance she'd have at Dana's between the window and the wall" → line 159 "She stepped in once, looking for where the corner failed. The corner stayed." The plant still pays literally and in reverse. Knock-on quotability of the replacement interrogated below (P13 verdict) — clear.
2. **ORDER 2 (REPLACE, dialogue, line 129) — EXECUTED VERBATIM.** "The line it wins on doesn't fit in a column. Ten feet, north window." is gone; the string, the shape, and the column-capping move do not appear anywhere in the chapter. Current text: "I know. I want the wall anyway. It isn't about the program. If the program ever needs freelance install, I itemize and I'm fast." The receipt turn (Marchetti header, faded total) and the freelance offer are untouched, as ordered. The fifth spec recitation did not return: "ten feet" stands at exactly 5 (lines 11, 83, 99, 125, 151), all diegetically distinct per the round-1 clearance. Knock-on checks (new "wall" instance, new "I know" doubling) interrogated below — clear, one WATCH logged.
3. **ORDER 3 (VARY, dialogue, line 87) — EXECUTED VERBATIM.** "The room's not pretty. Cheap enough to forgive." is gone; the Ch09 sample string does not appear. Current text: "The room's ugly. At $340 you'll forgive it." Agent shifted (the room's cheapness forgives → the tenant will forgive), rate anchored, second person — the ordered transformation, exactly. Residual "forgive" coin and the "ugly" diction interrogated below — clear, family retired.

No unordered dialogue changes found: every dialogue line quoted in a round-1 HOLDS verdict was spot-checked against the current text and is verbatim-unchanged (Ruth lines 25/33/41/45/49, Sam lines 29/37/51, Asha lines 63–87 outside the ordered vary, Nia lines 103–139 outside the ordered replace, June throughout). The dialogue-change license was spent only where round 1 authorized it.

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## Per-paragraph verdicts (repair sites + round-1 highest-risk blocks, full comparisons)

LOCKED — "# Chapter Twenty: No Advice / Keys Here" — skipped, listed under calibration's inviolable text.

HOLDS — "She had kept stepping back from paintings all fall as if the problem were viewing distance. She squared the receipt against the notebook's edge..." (line 13, repair site) — sample compared: June card ("interiority rhythm: perception first, judgment second, self-rebuke third"; visual analogies used sparingly) — binding-register rewrite attempted: "She had spent the fall stepping back from paintings that weren't working. She squared the receipt against the notebook and ran the math again: the left page won." — the rewrite is worse because: it deletes the self-diagnosis ("as if the problem were viewing distance") that the close pays twice in object terms (the doorway distance at Dana's, the step IN at line 159), and it collapses "She'd done it four times and it came out the same every time" — the verdict priced as repeated arithmetic, her exactness turned against her own preference — into a single vague run. Quotability of the repaired sentence interrogated: no balanced inversion survives; "viewing distance" is an optical noun requiring the paintings antecedent; detached, the sentence makes no portable claim about avoidance — it states a specific mistaken behavior over a specific fall. The repair killed the epigram without installing a new one.

HOLDS — "'It is,' June said. She turned the receipt over so the print side was up, the Marchetti header, the faded total. 'I know. I want the wall anyway. It isn't about the program. If the program ever needs freelance install, I itemize and I'm fast.'" (line 129, repair site) — sample compared: June card ("allowed plainness: 'I don't know,' 'I liked it,' 'I can't do this' can land without ornament"; §2 plain-speech floor: "the strongest beats in this book are direct ones") — binding-register rewrite attempted: "'It is,' June said. 'But I'm taking the New York option. It's not about your program. I'm available for freelance install if you ever need it.'" — the rewrite is worse because: it deletes the receipt turned print-side-up (Marchetti facing her as she refuses the safer room — the object beat carrying what the cut aphorism used to over-carry), converts a stated want into a stated option (the exact register §2 protects is the want said plainly, and "I want the wall anyway" is the chapter's one unguarded want in dialogue — the card's "I don't know what to do with wanting it" finally resolved into wanting it out loud), and flattens "I itemize and I'm fast" — competence in her own diction, which seeds Nia's recognition of Asha six lines later ("She itemizes") — into generic availability. Gate checks on the repaired line: "I want the wall anyway" is not portable (detached, "the wall" has no content; the referent is the counter she read off the page one turn earlier); the "wall" instance is a want pointing at the spec, not a sixth recitation of it. Verified: the removed "Ten feet, north window." creed fragment did not return in any form.

HOLDS — "'Take the crating if you get it. It's indoors.' Someone shouted Asha's name off-phone. 'Send Nia my number. The room's ugly. At $340 you'll forgive it.'" (line 87, repair site) — sample compared: Asha card ("short, information-bearing"; "money/time specifics; no mystique"; tics: invoice/rate specifics) — binding-register rewrite attempted: "'Take the crating. Send Nia my number. The room isn't much, but it's cheap.'" — the rewrite is worse because: "It's indoors." prices December crating by weather in two words (deadpan spec, her exact register); the off-phone shout is the freight world pulling her back, which pays "Asha hung up before the word was finished" two lines later; and "At $340 you'll forgive it" runs her invoice brain on aesthetics — forgiveness quoted at a rate — where "isn't much, but it's cheap" is any character's sentence. Ch09 echo verified dead: "Not pretty. Cheap enough to forgive." appears nowhere; the surviving "forgive" coin is re-agented and rate-anchored per the order, which is transformation, not repetition — and the family is now retired (no third forgive-the-room coin, any speaker, Ch21+). "Ugly" interrogated as June-card bleed (her word list includes it): cleared — shared working-painter bluntness, and the sentence's syntax (price-anchored second person) is Asha's, not June's compression; Asha's card licenses blunt job details.

HOLDS — "'I want to say one thing,' Ruth said. 'This fall I noticed things. I kept them to myself and called it manners.'... 'Some of it was easier for me.'" (line 41, round-1 highest-risk, re-verified verbatim-unchanged) — sample compared: Ruth card ("Sam thinks I waited too long."; partial-truth clocker with cost; one editorial-sharp line per appearance) — binding-register rewrite attempted: "'I should have said something this fall,' Ruth said. 'I'm sorry I didn't.'" — the rewrite is worse because: it loses "and called it manners" (the mechanism of her silence named — privacy as cover, her card's exact hinge), loses "Some of it was easier for me" (audit, not apology — an apology would hand June the job of managing Ruth's feelings, which the scene refuses), and loses the strap-straightening between admissions (her card's stress tell where a softer draft would put a sigh). Cap re-checked: "I kept them to myself and called it manners" remains her one sharp line this appearance, 1/1.

HOLDS — "She put the right page beside it: $490, JAN 2--KEYS, ten feet of wall, FEB blank. If Tuesdays ended, if Theo never called, if the studio became a place she'd used to go, the numbers did not improve..." (line 99, round-1 highest-risk + this round's over-explanation gate, re-verified verbatim-unchanged) — sample compared: June card (perception first, judgment second, self-rebuke third; §8 earned-stay test) — binding-register rewrite attempted: "Even if Theo never called, New York was still the worse deal on paper. She chose it anyway." — the rewrite is worse because: it collapses the three escalating conditionals (Tuesdays → Theo → the studio itself) that run the earned-stay test as arithmetic — §8 demands the test be legible, and legibility requires it shown once — and deletes the ground inspection ("holes, thin patches, places where wanting had been scumbled over need"), the chapter's single self-analysis figure, priced one sentence later by "The $340 room barely held heat." "She left the page where it was" closes on non-action as decision. Over-explanation re-check under this round's special gate: the conditional is run once, in numbers; no narration claims independence as a virtue; no second run appears anywhere in the post-repair text. Clear, and the round-1 forward order stands — this test is spent and must not be re-run or referenced in Ch21+.

HOLDS — "'The part I keep wanting is the Vandercook,' June said..." through "'People would be waiting on the job every morning.'" (lines 113–121, round-1 highest-risk, re-verified verbatim-unchanged) — sample compared: June card ("uses visual/craft nouns instead of big feeling words"; self-interruption when vulnerable) — binding-register rewrite attempted: "She explained that she'd end up maintaining the studio instead of painting in it, because that was who she'd be in a building with her name on the key sheet." — the rewrite is worse because: it loses her finger on the crossed-out VANDERCOOK line (want touched through its own cancellation), the specific failure chain (proof press trueing before a class, the sink, "They'd call the key number. It would be my phone."), and the broken sentence "Or the sink would--" at the exact point the fantasy collapses. Nia's "That doesn't have to happen," keeps the strong rebuttal; June answers with probability and other people's mornings, not destiny. The no still earns its cost here; nothing in the ordered line-129 repair leaked backward into this block.

HOLDS — "The water jar came off the stack of studies..." through "...put the study up on her own wall, one nail, level enough." (lines 157–161, round-1 highest-risk + payoff of the ORDER-1 plant, re-verified verbatim-unchanged) — sample compared: June card (card sample "The left edge is good. Don't fix it."; precise unsentimental praise as care move) — binding-register rewrite attempted: "She turned the top study over, looked at it from across the room, and it was better than she remembered. She hung it up." — the rewrite is worse because: it loses the study's exact content (door's edge, rack, trestle table foreshortened hard, warm floor — the leaving-side series from Ch18 finally shown, in painting diction that passes §8's smallness test), loses "the distance she'd have at Dana's between the window and the wall" (the new room converted into a viewing instrument — the ORDER-1 plant paid in object terms), and loses "She had not believed that when she painted it. She stepped in once... The corner stayed." — belief tested by physical approach, the card's praise register turned on her own work for the first time. "The left edge was good. The value structure held all the way into the corner." is her sample sentence aimed at herself; the transformation is the arc, unnamed. The chapter still ends on an object and a sightline; no maxim survives the last line.

SWEEP CONFIRMATION — all remaining round-1 HOLDS verdicts (opening receipt paragraph through the closing block: 24 paragraphs including all documentary forms) were spot-checked against the round-1 audit's quoted evidence and are verbatim-unchanged in the current text. The three repairs touched exactly three sentences; no adjacent paragraph was rewritten. Round-1 comparisons therefore stand without re-litigation; no paragraph gained or lost a form assignment.

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## APHORISM-GATE (zero tolerance; round-2 sweep of the whole post-repair text)

Named families, current counts: **"line it wins on" 0** (killed by ORDER 2, verified — neither the string nor the doesn't-fit-in-a-column shape survives anywhere); **"wrong me" 0**; **"borrow anyone's apology" 0**; **"worse offer" present ×2 in one Nia turn — cleared, stands** (line 127: her verdict, her spreadsheet diction, spoken while losing a hire she is right about; detached it is a judgment missing its object; the doubling is same-speaker emphasis under a decision going against her — the cost the chapter card requires); **"clean answer" 0** (nearest strings: none; "clean" appears only as the literal washed dish and Asha's absence of it); **"honest light" 0** (light instances are the dish glaze, the painted floor, "north light steady" as spoken spec, and the photo's flat gray — none captioned, none moralized).

New candidates created by the repairs, interrogated:

- CLEARED — "I want the wall anyway." — want statement with an anaphoric referent; detached, "the wall" is contentless. It is the §2-protected direct register (a want stated plainly), not a maxim about wanting. Three plain clauses, no inversion, no cap of anyone's metaphor.
- CLEARED — "as if the problem were viewing distance" — antecedent-bound to the fall's paintings; no chiasmus, no balanced halves; states a behavior, not a truth. The tattoo-able version is confirmed dead.
- CLEARED — "At $340 you'll forgive it." — meaningless without Dana's room and the rate; an invoice line, not wisdom.

Strongest surviving candidates re-quoted and re-cleared (unchanged from round 1, re-checked in post-repair context): "places where wanting had been scumbled over need" (craft-pinned, third item in a diagnostic list aimed at a notebook page, priced by the cold room one sentence later — with both orders executed this remains the chapter's single self-analysis figure, inside the card's "visual analogies, used sparingly"); "the radiator is decorative" (deadpan spec about a specific radiator, immediately priced by the coat instruction); "I kept them to myself and called it manners" (Ruth's 1/1, referent-bound to the preceding sentence); "That's not an opinion. That's a hand truck." (unintelligible without June's line two turns up); "The corner stayed." (two-word optical fact bound to a painted corner); "It would be my phone." (the Tasker fantasy collapsed into a phone number); "It's indoors." (a fact about December crating). None detaches.

**Gate result: 0 findings.**

## VERBATIM-ECHO (round-2 sweep of the eight ordered gate words + repair residue)

- CLEARED — **math** ×1 (Nia, line 107: "I ran the math with you three weeks ago") vs. June's "I ran it four times" (line 109) — transformation: her math becomes June's four runs; the concession keeps the count and drops the noun. Unchanged from round 1.
- CLEARED — **wall** ×10, three literal referents: Tasker's north wall (line 95 — dies inside the deleted email), Dana's wall (11, 81, 83 ×2, 99, 125, 129, 151), June's own apartment wall (161 — the study hung). The arc is the transformation: the fantasized wall deleted, the cheap wall wanted out loud, her own wall used before the chapter ends. The new line-129 instance is a want, not a spec recitation; "ten feet" verified at exactly 5 post-repair (11, 83, 99, 125, 151 — text-to-notebook, spoken terms, page re-read, literal read-off to Nia, photo verification), each diegetically distinct. **At ceiling: the round-1 retirement order stands — Ch21 does not inherit "ten feet"/"north window" as diction.**
- CLEARED — **keys** — "keys day one" ×3 (9, 65, 109): contract language, verbatim by nature across notebook / terms-to-Asha / concession-to-Nia; against it: `JAN 2--KEYS` (notebook 91 → index card 155, a plant/copy), "Key handoff January 2" (83), "I'll take the key Jan 2" (151), "Twenty-nine days until Dana's key" (161). "Keys clicked at her end" (135) is keyboard keys — different referent, not a family member. The title argument stays performed: offered keys declined, one cheaper key accepted and dated. At ceiling; rests as diction in Ch21.
- CLEARED — **clause** ×3 (9, 67, 135) — three speakers, three functions: provenance fact → Asha's isolation request → Nia's disavowal ("I didn't put the studio clause in to sweeten it. I meant it."). No flattening.
- CLEARED — **good** ×5 — GOOD (notebook, 9) → GOOD looked at during the shame check (77) → "The job's good, Nia" (109, spoken concession) → "Send you someone good" (133, completing Nia's own card line) → "The left edge was good" (159, her card's praise sample turned on her own study — new referent, and the arc). Register and referent change at every instance; the capitals stay documentary.
- CLEARED — **worse** ×3 — Nia's doubled column verdict (127, same-speaker emphasis, cleared above) → "The front room was worse than described" (151): the column word migrating into accepted lived cost. Transformative; complete; no Ch21 inheritance needed.
- CLEARED — **room** ×~10 — all literal referents (Dana's back/front room, the proof press's back room, "$340 room", "The room's ugly"). The Ch19 standing order (room/side/reach at ceiling, must pivot) remains honored: no incantation, no his-side/her-side inheritance; "leaving side" ×1 and "print side" are different coins.
- CLEARED — **Tuesday** ×5 — the dish's clock (5), the bank date (11), the delivery promise (35), the absence (43), and the one thematic use inside the spent earned-stay conditional (99). Distinct referents; the thematic use does not recur.
- CLEARED — **repair residue: "forgive"** — the Ch09 string is dead; the single surviving coin (87) is re-agented, rate-anchored, and second-person per the executed order. Transformation confirmed; the forgive-the-room family is retired for the book.
- CLEARED with WATCH — **"I know" ×2 (June, 117 and 129)** — the strongest candidate this round, created by ORDER 2: line 117 concedes the clause's writtenness ("I know. That's why this is hard."); line 129 concedes the columns ("I know. I want the wall anyway."). Interrogated as same-speaker function-parallel doubling: cleared — non-adjacent (twelve turns apart), functional modal speech the style contract requires ("at least half of dialogue should be functional, incomplete, or unquotable"), and the doubling is the call's structure: June concedes twice and refuses anyway, which is how the no costs. Nia's "I know her invoices" (135) is a different object and different function. **WATCH: no third bare "I know" concession-opener from June in Ch21.**
- CLEARED — "feel less bad" ×2 cross-speaker (75, 77) — charge → owned confession, tense-shifted, full-form "did" per her contractions policy. Unchanged.
- CLEARED — "in writing" ×4 + "written" ×2 — argument-bearing (the clause's writtenness vs. its lived mornings is the Nia-call disagreement); Nia's line-115 redeploy is rebuttal, a function change. At ceiling; retires after this chapter per round 1.
- CLEARED — "Two minutes." / "Two minutes is right." (25, 27) — limit → endorsement of the limit. Unchanged.
- CLEARED — "I'm not asking for an opinion... I'm not asking." (47) — same-speaker contract-setting emphasis. Unchanged.
- CLEARED — "itemize"/"itemizes" (129, 135) — different referents (June's freelance offer; Asha's invoices); the working-professional marker passing between speakers as recognition; ORDER 2 preserved this pair intact, correctly.
- CLEARED — "Noted" ×2 (53, 131) — spent at 2 per the Comedy Doctor; verified no third.
- CLEARED — "Okay. No chair." (97) — documentary quotation of the Ch18 record, unopened; records exempt.
- WATCH (no order, carried from round 1) — "thumbs up" ×2 in adjacent beats (147, 151) — documentary texture; vary the next reply-reaction.

**Gate result: 0 findings, 2 WATCH (no orders).**

## Over-explanation gate (special: June's self-owned stay decision)

Swept the post-repair text for narration or dialogue that explains the stay decision or campaigns for its independence from Theo. Findings: the earned-stay conditional (99) runs once, in arithmetic, and closes on non-action ("She left the page where it was") — cleared above with the standing prohibition on re-runs. "I'm not asking for an opinion. I want to be clear that I'm not asking." (47) sets a contract with Ruth/Sam; it does not explain the decision and names no one. "It isn't about the program." (129) is addressed to the program's director about the program — Theo is not in the sentence, the scene, or the call. Theo's total on-page presence post-repair: a routing condition ("If Theo is there... If he isn't," 31), an unopened thread (97), and one conditional clause inside the spent test (99). No narration claims the choice as independence, self-choice, or growth; the choice is performed as a phone call, four payments, a W-9, a notice letter, and a nail. **Gate result: clear.**

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## Chapter verdict

**REGISTER-HOLDS (0 new orders; 3/3 round-1 orders verified executed verbatim).** All three repair sites were re-audited generatively and hold against their named samples; the repairs killed the named-family aphorism, the thesis chiasmus, and the Ch09 sample-line flattening without installing replacement-shaped drift; every other paragraph is verbatim-unchanged from the round-1 text whose comparisons stand. Both gates sweep clean at zero findings. The flag:register-drift condition is discharged for this chapter.

Forward obligations restated (binding on Ch21+, no action in Ch20):

1. Retired/at-ceiling phrases: "ten feet"/"north window," "keys day one," "in writing" — point at the notebook, do not recite; "Noted" stays at two for the book; the forgive-the-room coin is retired; "against" rests (mechanical ledger).
2. The earned-stay conditional has been run once and is spent: no re-run, no reference, no scene that explains the stay decision or certifies its independence.
3. Care-without-advice stays unnamed on the page (tics ledger marks it fragile); the blue dish goes to Mara's table Tuesday as an object, not a symbol.
4. One deliberate light image per chapter in Ch21 (this chapter ran one deliberate + literal color facts, defensible but at the line); no third bare "I know" concession-opener from June; vary the next text-reply reaction ("thumbs up" ×2 here); `FEB = coat` and "the boring parts" are spent.
