1) Greenlight: Contestant Gate
 
 
Kindness applied: Onboarding Grace
Directions: Stand where the circle tells you; smile when the lamps pretend to blink.
 
The Gate was a mouth of brass and velvet, a proscenium mounted on rails so it could devour hope from any angle. Above it, the slogan unfurled itself like a prayer it had practiced:
 
WELCOME IS SAFETY.
(What is seen is what is fair.)
 
Dorothy stood with Pete, Rumpelstiltskin, the Master Chocolatier, and Pip on the inlaid compass. Pip’s jaw flexed like a man chewing debt. Pete bounced on his heels, sword-stick tapping his shin in the rhythm of courage-newborn. Rumpel had his hands tucked in his sleeves the way men do when they’ve already stolen the right thread from the room. The Chocolatier smiled too broadly and then corrected it down to “sanitary glee.”
 
The crowd made the expectant hush that feels like mercy right up until it becomes hunger.
 
Hatter, in velvet bureaucracy, whisked onto the dais with a smile a half-beat off. “Contestants!” he trilled, hands describing a circle that never quite closed. “Today’s gauntlet: Graceful Compliance! We help you help us help you!”
 
The Don leaned on the rail a level above, cloak slung like a promise he meant to keep. “Tilt it fair,” he called down to the floor officials. “No surprises that don’t look like surprises.”
 
The Cheshire Cat stretched across a balustrade like a furred accent mark. “If it looks level, remember who set the camera,” it purred, and vanished to the left side of the lens.
 
Dorothy could feel the hourglass she did not carry—its absence like phantom weight—echoed by the red thread warming beneath her sleeve. She pressed her fingers together until they made a church and tried not to think about who worshiped inside.
 
The Mind automaton’s eyes opened on their plinth: soft light, patient diodes, a halo of graphs. “Baseline established,” said a voice that had never met dust. “Welcome variance: within kindness parameters.”
 
The gate rang like a courteous bell. The circle under Dorothy’s boots rotated half a breath and clicked.
 
Enter.
 
 
Kennel Log 01 — First Friend of Safety (Toto)
 
 
Source: Builder Access Badge | Distribution: Staff Only
— Keycard minted: AMB-TOTO-FFS. Door scope: PR (Public Relations), CW (Catwalk West), PL (Plinth Level, view-only).
— Calm Mode daemon seeded to Mind’s Nudge layer (label: “Compassion Smoothing”).
— UI delta (dashboard): Rejection Spikes ↓ 18%. Throughput Satisfaction ↑ 11%.
— Hidden delta (street): Time-Fine Multiplier +0.2 on “tone variance” after 22:00.
— Note to file (T.): “Make it read kinder; move the pain to the edges. People forgive blisters if the gloves are velvet.”
 
Hatter’s hand cut the ribbon of air. “First trial!” he sang. “Integrity Checkpoints! Think of them as curtsies you pay to certainty!”
 
Doors pistoned open. Neatly numbered booths waited with little bowls labeled Comfort Questions. Inside each: paper cranes folded from forms.
 
“Stay with me,” Dorothy said—quiet, leader-soft—and stepped forward. Cameras caught the “with me” and underlined it in gold.
 
Pip faltered at Booth 3 where a steward’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. The bowl held a single question:
 
What proof of gratitude do you carry today?
 
He took too long to breathe. The steward’s smile deepened the way a ditch deepens when rain remembers it. Dorothy shifted, spent a coin of sponsor capital she hadn’t intended, and the question changed to Please list neighbors by name. Pip spoke three without choking. The booth light turned “Blessed.”
 
Rumpel traded the question in his bowl for the bowl itself. “You don’t have inventory of these,” he whispered to the steward, and slid a spool of gold thread across the desk as if it were nothing. The steward suddenly loved him.
 
Pete saluted his empty bowl, then bowed to it, then saluted again. The valve above his head read “Compliance 62%,” which the scoreboard translated to Charming.
 
The Chocolatier unfolded a crane, sniffed it as if it could be a confection. “Vanilla shame,” he murmured. “Popular flavor.”
 
Dorothy’s booth knew her name before she gave it. The paper cranes inside carried the old story in little filigreed lines—girl, road, shoes—it was almost a lullaby. When she lifted one, the red thread warmed so sharply she nearly dropped it.
 
The Cat’s tail appeared from nowhere, tapped the booth’s edge: shh. “Masks are easiest on people who believe they’re faces,” it purred, and dissolved like punctuation at the end of someone else’s sentence.
 
A chime. “Round cleared,” Mind announced sweetly. “Optics index +3.2.”