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The Weather Inspector of Room Nine
Four nights, one sealed door, and a guest entry dated thirty-two years before the hotel it is filed in.
- ~99 min
- 24063 words
- 18 scenes
- 16 branch points
- 4 endings
- Future, 2231
27 recorded plays (one per visitor per day)
No cover art yet · listing metadata: listing.json · counts: authored
About
A night inspector on a ring-shaped orbital hotel certifies that the weather inside it is behaving. On the first night she finds rain falling upward in a suite that has never been let, a guest entry for that suite dated thirty-two years before the hotel opened and signed in a hand she writes in herself, and a clerk in 2179 who re-keyed four thousand guest records by surname. Third person close, one inspector, four nights, five decisions, four endings, and an unreliable narrator who never lies to the reader and only ever contradicts the record. Every record is printed on screen in italics inside square brackets, so every number in the book can be checked against the woman reporting it.
Content notice10 topics · tap to review
- an adult who is not certain of her own record
- a medical examination she would rather not have had
- discussion of a nine-minute episode of lost time
- a room that has been sealed for thirty-two years and has water in it
- a guest record dated thirty-two years before the hotel it is filed in, signed in the protagonist's own hand
- two explanations for that record, of which the story chooses neither
- a bath towel on a rail and a bed that is made, neither of which is explained
- a colleague who has been signing her name on a log for four years
- the protagonist losing her job
- the last line of the book is a sentence the narrator cannot finish, left unfinished on purpose
Cast
- I Ilse Varga Night inspector, nineteen years, the only person who sleeps while the hotel's weather is being certified no portrait yet
- T Teodor Vaas Day inspector and stores officer, has been signing the night sweep for four years because he signs it and nobody has asked him to stop no portrait yet
- A Anneke Ruhr Station manager, nine years; has signed the room-nine hold in some capacity for thirty-two years without once reading it no portrait yet
- N Nadia Ferrand Environmental systems, maintains the weather skin no portrait yet
- H Halvard Ostrem Station physician, the only physician on a station of 241 people since 2225 no portrait yet
- R Ruth Anker Guest relations, came aboard in 2179 with the index and the eleven modules, has run the desk for thirty-two years no portrait yet
- M Marek Ostrowsky Retired salvage supervisor, lifted the eleven modules off the Cassava Platform in 2179, off-station and on a call from a room in a yard no portrait yet