Netwrck
What the Interpreter Said
His sentence lasted eleven seconds. Hers became the record.
- ~180 min
- 12858 words
- 55 scenes
- 10 branch points
- 5 endings
- Bellweather, April 2026 to January 2027
27 recorded plays (one per visitor per day)
No cover art yet · generated placeholder backgrounds and character art in-game · listing metadata: listing.json · counts: authored
About
At 10:17 on a wet Monday at Bellweather Crown Court, Ilyas Venn says one sentence in the language his mother taught him. Court interpreter Rahal Daryan gives the room an English sentence that is shorter, cleaner, and useful to the prosecution. The source words are not retained. Her English becomes the record. Rahal is fifty-two and has interpreted criminal proceedings for nineteen years without a substantiated complaint. She works consecutive, carrying a speaker's meaning through a private notebook and returning it in the first person. Ilyas, twenty-seven, is charged with a permanent assault at North Quay Cold Chain. The identification is weak. The interpreted sentence supplies the intention the rest of the case lacks. Elin Mora, a thirty-one-year-old legal-aid solicitor on her second Crown Court trial, notices that Ilyas answers Rahal rather than the barrister and begins asking what the interpreter left out. The trial has a vulnerable witness whose section 28 evidence cannot be remade without cost, a prosecutor who believes stable procedure is part of fairness, and an official transcript accurate only about Rahal's English. Her daughter Nadiya, twenty-four, interprets a different language and wants to know what the black triangle on page 36 means. It proves a departure. It cannot recover a sentence. What the Interpreter Said is an adult procedural tragedy about the power to make an official first person. Ten stateful choices and five endings carry one criminal case from plea hearing through conviction and an application without new source evidence. No route reveals the true sentence. Every route decides who destroys the last proof that another sentence once existed.
Content notice8 topics · tap to review
- wrongful conviction and imprisonment
- permanent injury and aftermath of workplace violence
- coercive institutions and professional misconduct
- destruction of evidence
- family rupture and language loss
- suicide referenced without depiction
- alcohol referenced
- bigotry shown through behaviour and consequence; no slurs written out
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Cast
- R Rahal Daryan protagonist; Sarrani-English court interpreter, nineteen years no portrait yet
- I Ilyas Venn defendant; night loader at North Quay Cold Chain no portrait yet
- E Elin Mora legal-aid defence solicitor on her second Crown Court trial no portrait yet
- M Marcus Haye senior Crown prosecutor no portrait yet
- N Nadiya Daryan hospital BSL interpreter; Rahal's daughter no portrait yet
- J Judge Celia Bann resident circuit judge no portrait yet
- T Tomas Pell second Sarrani-English interpreter no portrait yet
- M Mara Venn Ilyas's mother; hotel laundry supervisor no portrait yet
- J Joss Orr injured depot supervisor and section 28 witness no portrait yet
- D Derek Saye allocations manager at Lexicon Bridge Ltd. no portrait yet