The Unraveling

Plano 01 (~10s, establishing)
A modern Foundation office, glass-walled, sunlit, present day. Francisco enters first, Tomas a step behind, the door closing as they walk in.
FRANCISCO: "I called you in because of Erudita. We need to talk about the game you're part of, and what it means for the Foundation."

Plano 02 (~10s)
FRANCISCO: "If the Seekers find our part in the Estado Novo, the nomination doesn't stall. It dies, not as a scandal, but as a crime."

Tomas names what's being asked outright, no euphemism needed. Francisco wins the argument on cold math before Tomas can find a counter.

Plano 03 (~8s)
TOMAS: "Do you want me inside the game? Are you asking me to become a saboteur?"

Plano 04 (~11s)
FRANCISCO: "Call it whatever helps you sleep. I'm protecting four hundred years of craft, and every woman still working those spindles today. One old ledger doesn't outweigh that."

Plano 05 (~8s)
TOMAS: "And the ones who didn't survive it? The ones the ledger's actually about?"

Plano 05b (~11s, added 2026-09-06, the human cost named rather than left as a category)
TOMAS: "There's a name in this ledger too, Francisco. Custódia Marques. Denounced through her own sister's stitch count, March of sixty-three. She never came home to correct it."

Plano 06 (~8s)
FRANCISCO: "They don't need protecting anymore. The living do. That's the only math that's ever mattered here."

Plano 07 (~5s, a long pause before he speaks)
TOMAS: "...What do you need me to do."

Francisco needed more than a won argument, he needed a reason. Plano 09b is the added silence, Francisco's own composure slipping for exactly one beat before he recovers it.

Plano 08 (~10s)
FRANCISCO: "There's a directorship opening at the museum once this clears review. I already see your name on that door, Tomas, if this goes the way I need it to."

Plano 09 (~7s)
TOMAS: "You're not asking for help anymore. You're buying it."

Plano 09b (~3s, no dialogue, added 2026-09-06)
Held on Francisco's face. He doesn't answer right away. Something flickers, recognition, maybe shame, gone before it settles. One exhale, and by the time he speaks his voice is fully composed again.

Plano 10 (~8s)
FRANCISCO: "Call it whatever you need to. The door's still there either way."

Plano 11 (~10s)
TOMAS: "The other players still have free will, Francisco. They could find it anyway. I can only make the trail harder, I can't make it disappear."

Plano 12 (~7s)
FRANCISCO: "Good. Then whatever happens, it was never only you."

The only two camera breaks in the whole scene, saved for the very end so they land as something slipping rather than a repeated device. Each runs long at a natural pace and is split in two, the same way DU_01's Esteves closing address was.

Plano 13a (~10s, Francisco to camera, first break of the scene)
FRANCISCO: "You want a monster. It's easier that way. But I've done this arithmetic my whole life, what a truth costs, against what it saves."

Plano 13b (~8s, Francisco to camera, continuous)
FRANCISCO: "Tonight it costs one man's conscience. That's not evil. That's just the only math this job has ever required."

Plano 14a (~8s, Tomas to camera, second and final break)
TOMAS: "Everyone calls it a line, until they're the one being asked to cross it. Then it's just a trade-off."

Plano 14b (~7s, Tomas to camera, continuous)
TOMAS: "A title for my silence. Free will for everyone else, so it isn't only mine to carry."

Replaces the earlier museum-label card entirely. No avatar, no HeyGen generation, a static graphic built in post, the same solution the old Plano 17 used for the same reason: AI video renders on-screen text as garbled almost every time. An early version of this image used a literal red-pill/blue-pill choice as a visual shorthand, replaced with the show's own object instead, since reproducing that specific film's imagery wasn't the right call.

Plano 15 (~6s, no dialogue, close on the display case)
Two bobbins of lace thread rest side by side on black velvet, one wound in deep crimson, one in indigo blue, otherwise identical, same weight, same craft.
ON-SCREEN TEXT: "Legitimate, or just legal?"

DU_03 did not exist as a dossier before this entry, only a locked title and hook in the Didactic Unit Library ledger. Built now as part of a project-wide pass bringing DU_00 through DU_05 to one common section structure. Concept and Cast were written from character material already established elsewhere in ERUDITA: Francisco Esteves (introduced in DU_01) and Tomas (introduced in DU_02, there as the unnamed saboteur character), the Museu das Rendas de Bilros' UNESCO World Heritage nomination, and the palilleiras' unknowing lace-pattern denunciations.

Decisions locked in this entry:

• Title: "The Unraveling," carried over from the ledger, unchanged.
• Hook: carried over from the ledger, unchanged.
• Cast anchor: Francisco Esteves and Tomas, both already-established characters, no new character invented for this unit.

Status at close of this entry: title, hook, concept and cast are the only sections with real content. Visual style, script, generation prompts, production pipeline, and every section from Lessons learned onward stay pending, following the same honest-placeholder pattern DU_05 used at this same early stage.

Received full character dossiers for Francisco Esteves and Tomas from the main ERUDITA game's design material and wrote this unit's script directly from them, rather than from the shorter cast summaries already in §02. Two details from those files became the scene's actual mechanism: the acquisition records' single-signature notation, "Documentos série NPC transferidos para arquivo privado da família, 1971, Documentos 001 a 147," which Tomas already carries at Level 1 of the main game, and the fact that the transfer went specifically to the Esteves family's own private archive, meaning Francisco's family, not the Foundation, is the one holding the missing pieces. Tomas' grandmother's line, "Our family name opened doors during those years that should not have been opened," anchors his two camera-address beats. Francisco's public-profile text, that history should be handled carefully because reputations can be destroyed by badly interpreted documents, became his justification for "handling it legally" rather than refusing outright.

Locked the staging alongside the script rather than leaving it for a separate pass: an archive office at the museum, after hours, one lamp, the lace visible but never discussed until a closing museum-label card names what neither man considers, in place of a "you choose" style refrain. Unlike DU_01 and DU_05, where the dilemma still belongs to the viewer, and DU_04, where it belongs to the character alone, here both men have already chosen, badly, so the closing beat hands the moment to the one witness the conversation leaves out entirely, the uncatalogued maker of Panel 14, rather than to the audience or to either character.

Decisions locked in this entry:

• Visual style: archive office, after hours, direct-address technique, three cycles matching DU_01's rhythm.
• Script: 17 clips, roughly 2:43 edited runtime, all six direct-address beats identified for the avatar-chip check DU_00's Continuity case study exists to catch.
• Closing device: a museum-label card naming the palilleira the two men's deal omits, not a direct question to the viewer.

Status at close of this entry: script and visual style now have real content. Generation prompts, production pipeline, and everything from Lessons learned onward remain pending until this unit's first HeyGen generation.

Plano 03 originally called Henrique Francisco's great-grandfather. Corrected against the established family history: the Esteves Foundation's collaboration with the Estado Novo regime dates to 1936, and Henrique is the Foundation's founder himself, Francisco's grandfather, not an earlier ancestor. Plano 03's line now reads "Your grandfather's," and Plano 04 was tightened to state plainly that Henrique founded the Foundation, rather than leaving his relationship to it as an unstated thirty-year tenure. No other lines in the script referenced the relationship, so this was the only correction needed.

Status at close of this entry: family lineage now consistent across this unit. Nothing else in the script changed.

Walter supplied full character dossiers for Francisco Esteves and Tomas from the main game's design material, with corrected framing: Francisco is the Foundation's own founder's grandson, not a distant heir, and Tomas does not begin this scene already suspicious or already holding evidence, he starts as a genuinely good-faith player and is turned into Erudita's hidden in-game antagonist inside this scene, not before it. That reframing meant the whole script from Entry 2 was replaced rather than revised: setting moved from an after-hours museum archive to a modern, sunlit Foundation office, and the engine of the scene changed from two already-compromised men comparing notes to Francisco actively recruiting Tomas.

Built Plano by Plano with explicit approval at each step, per Walter's standing instruction that a script needs his sign-off, not just Claude's draft. The sequence that resulted: Francisco names the stakes (Planos 01 to 02), Tomas names what's actually being asked of him rather than letting it stay euphemistic (Plano 03), Francisco wins the argument on cold utilitarian math (Planos 04 to 06), Tomas folds (Plano 07), Francisco backs the won argument with a concrete trade-off, a museum directorship (Planos 08 to 10), and Tomas rationalizes his own complicity by noting the other players still have free will (Planos 11 to 12). The scene closes on two camera breaks, the only ones in the whole piece, Francisco's cynicism and Tomas's trade-off spoken straight to the audience (Planos 13 to 14), then a final image replacing the earlier museum-label card.

Two craft fixes added after Walter asked directly why the scene, as drafted, might not land emotionally on a viewer: the risk identified was that the whole conversation stayed rhetorical, an argument two skilled men win and lose cleanly, with the human cost discussed only as a category ("the ones who didn't survive it") and no moment where either man's composure actually breaks. Two additions were made without touching any already-approved line: Plano 05b, where Tomas names one specific woman from the acquisition records rather than leaving the cost abstract, and Plano 09b, a silent held beat where Francisco's face shows something before he recovers his composure, the scene's only moment where a clever line doesn't come and silence does the work instead.

Also resolved this entry: the closing device changed twice. The original museum-label card (the old Plano 17) named an uncatalogued lacemaker. Walter then asked for a viewer-facing question paired with a Matrix-style red-pill/blue-pill visual choice. That literal imagery was flagged and replaced: reproducing a specific film's recognizable visual device risked exactly the kind of copyrighted-reference problem this project has already been careful about elsewhere (Captain Costa's renaming, reference footage described rather than reproduced). The final image instead uses two bobbins of lace thread, red and blue, ERUDITA's own object doing the same visual and dramatic work. This also meant walking back the earlier design rule that DU_03 should carry no "you choose"-style device at all, since neither man's dilemma was meant to stay open, in favor of a sharper closing question, "Legitimate, or just legal?", that interrogates Francisco's own escape hatch (his repeated "handle it legally" framing) rather than asking the audience to choose a side.

Status at close of this entry: script complete, 16 Planos, roughly 2:15 edited runtime. Visual style, Cast, Open items and the chip row updated to match. Generation prompts, production pipeline, and everything from Known production problems onward remain pending until this unit's first HeyGen generation, with avatar performance direction for the four direct-address beats and the silent Plano 09b flagged as needing dedicated testing, not just a prompting note, before the pilot batch.

Walter asked whether Plano 15's shot description, the bobbins on black velvet, should be read aloud as voice-over while the viewer watches the image. Decided against it: that text is a shot direction, not a line written to be spoken, and DU_03 is the only unit this season that closes in silence rather than on a spoken address, DU_01 on Esteves' speech, DU_04 on "Sit with that," DU_05 on "You choose." Adding narration here would erase that distinction. Plano 15 stays as written, no voice-over, image and on-screen text only.