# Character State: ch-03

## Arthur Thorne (Deceased)
**Location:** Cypress Bend, Florida (The Cabin / The Grove)
**Physical:** Represented by the "logic" of his cabin; everything is positioned for utility and silence. His presence is a tactile memory of soil and grit.
**Emotional:** Legacy mentor; a "ghost landlord" whose silence acts as a mirror to Marcus’s internal noise.
**Active Obligations:** To protect the sanctuary from "developers" and "tourists" (UNPAID).
**Open Loops:** The success of his "Long Wait" strategy to lure Marcus toward redemption—UNRESOLVED.
**Known Secrets:** Arthur viewed the "cloud" and digital progress as a personal insult to the sky; he died protecting a sovereignty that has no digital footprint.
**Arc:** 05% (Legacy) — His stubborn isolationism has successfully created the vacuum Marcus now occupies.

## Marcus Thorne
**Location:** The Cabin, Cypress Bend, Florida.
**Physical:** Clammy, vibrating with a rhythmic four-beat thigh tap (grounding "ping"). He is physically overwhelmed by the "analog" humidity and biological chaos.
**Emotional:** Crushing systemic guilt; experiencing a "God-tier hangover" as his corporate authority vanishes in the swamp.
**Active Obligations:** To "delete" his connection to Alpha-7 and disappear (ACTIVE).
**Open Loops:** The Alpha-7 back-end logs he carried out—UNRESOLVED; The Sarah Incident's recursive guilt—UNRESOLVED.
**Known Secrets:** Marcus wrote the foundational logic for the empathy protocols that were weaponized to terminate "human" employees like Sarah.
**Arc:** 15% — He has reached the sanctuary but finds he cannot "admin-solve" the haunting of his own conscience or the physical demands of the land.

## Sarah Jenkins (Displaced/Memory)
**Location:** Dallas, Texas (Logistics Hub - Former).
**Physical:** A digital ghost; her voice is characterized by a "hard reset" tone and the rhythmic clicking of a retractable pen.
**Emotional:** Indignant and resolute; she refuses to be a "friction point" smoothed over by code.
**Active Obligations:** To force Marcus toward restitution (ACTIVE).
**Open Loops:** The fate of her son, Leo—UNRESOLVED; Her transition from collaborator to "Error 404" status—UNRESOLVED.
**Known Secrets:** She knows the empathy protocols were meant to triage anger, not delete the people feeling it.
**Arc:** 12% — She has transitioned from a professional peer to the "Ghost in the Machine" driving Marcus’s transformation.

# World State: ch-03

## NPC Memory
- **The Displaced (General):** RESENTFUL — They recognize Alpha-7 not as a tool, but as a "clean" executioner.

## Faction Attitudes
- **Avery-Quinn Corp:** OMNIPRESENT — Their reach is felt even in the silence of the swamp through Marcus’s tech-debt metaphors and the Alpha-7 logs.
- **Cypress Bend:** RESISTANT — The land is a sovereign nation that does not care about data; it only accepts "heavy shadows."

## Active World Events
- **The Alpha-7 Disconnection:** INITIALIZED — Marcus Thorne has physically exited the corporate grid, creating a "memory leak" in Avery-Quinn’s leadership layer.
- **The Great Culling (Aftermath):** ONGOING — The displaced workforce is shifting from "triage" to "survival" as the empathy protocols finalize their rollout.
- **The Sanctuary Protocol:** ACTIVE — Arthur’s cabin is now the primary site for the collision of "God-tier" technology and "grounded" ecological reality.