**Status.** A provisional contract for [Language Expedition](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Language%20Expedition), extending [Clues and Help](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Clues%20and%20Help) and [Oxygen and Observation](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Oxygen%20and%20Observation). It is neither owner canon nor a complete interface. The owner-required journal pause—including enemies and oxygen during combat—remains unchanged.

The journal preserves what was observed, supports comparison and records a voluntary test. It never grades freeform notes, labels a hypothesis supported/disproved or declares a word solved. For a route link it may record only **arrived at linked destination**, **attempt incomplete** or **arrived elsewhere**, with the actual place and interruption attached. Survivor help remains attributed testimony, not system truth.

This reversible feedback separates a completed traversal from an interrupted one while leaving later evidence free to change the interpretation.

| Test | Commit the link, leave the journal and traverse voluntarily | The location actually reached, or why the attempt ended before arrival | Whether the local route claim survived and what it says about language |

Capture, positioning, waiting and manipulation happen in running world time with its oxygen/exposure. Opening, comparing and annotating pause the world. A paused view cannot reveal a new angle, sample a later state, operate a control or complete capture.

1. **Comparison board.** The player pins records and highlights groups; links say “player-linked.” On-request visual suggestions are fallible recorder assistance, not automatic pairing or meaning.

These are proposed changes. Automatic semantic labels, a confirmed dictionary, batch completion and undiscovered-site hints remain excluded. All four additions survive return and death as knowledge, not cargo. A revisit never overwrites an old still or outcome: the player captures a new state beside it, so an earlier arrival remains historical rather than promising the route is unchanged.

Walking the ways is voluntary and costs ordinary oxygen/exposure. In the left room, pumps are bolted and plumbed to terminate there while cable trunking merely crosses between walls. In the middle, cables terminate in banked connections while one pump serves only that room’s cooling loop. Token order therefore correlates with what terminates rather than passes through. This supports a purpose-and-order reading over meaningless order, while compound place names remain a live rival. The bare `TAAN` above a stair-only vestibule is another consistent case, not proof. The journal records the places reached; it never marks `KETH` as “pump,” asserts a grammatical subject or upgrades the note to fact.

The player separately records a visitor threshold half ending `OSH·a` plus a further token beside the middle doorway. Earlier, they recorded and walked another visitor pair end to end; across that pair, its further tokens consistently marked the end entered from and the end moved toward. That is an observed precedent for this register, not a rule for the entire visitors’ language.

Much later, beside a far bay whose builder run begins `SORAN`, the player finds `OSH·b` with the corresponding “from” placement, while the junction half carries the “toward” placement. They can pin both halves and manually link them. An on-request recorder suggestion may surface the visually similar bracket token, but does not assert a semantic pair or direction; recognising how the further tokens correspond to the traversed precedent remains interpretation.

The visitor pair suggests a route from the junction toward the bay; the builder runs independently suggest both concern cabling. The player previously turned back at the junction on supply, so the passage continuing beyond it remains untraversed. They may link that continuation to the far-bay record and attempt it. The test completes only by continuously traversing the continuation and emerging at an identified outlet. Reaching the far-bay anchor records **arrived at linked destination**. Reaching a terminal outlet at another persistent anchor records **arrived elsewhere**. Neither event translates `OSH`, proves every pair is a route or confirms the builder grammar.

**Withhold structured result records.** The player relies on the world and their notes, with no arrival/test status. This keeps interface authority low and allows ambiguity, but does not uniquely create ownership: explicit help or an observed result can still leave comparison, generalisation and action to the player. Its cost is later diagnosis; oxygen, damage, missing power and contextual exceptions can make an unfinished test look like a failed reading.

**Bounded observation and help — preferred.** Record the reached place, visible control state or incomplete condition, and keep testimony attributed. The player chooses what to compare, words the hypothesis, judges whether the observation bears on it, reconciles human knowledge and pays the world cost of acting. The cost is authored outcome states, comparison consistency and a risk that even factual status labels feel more authoritative than intended.

[Language Design Evidence](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Language%20Design%20Evidence) describes shipped uses of uncertainty, candidate meanings, repeated contexts and validation, but provides no public dataset proving transfer to this oxygen-limited station. Its multiple-context precedent supports planned redundancy, not a mandatory instance count or guarantee.

Reopen the provisional choice if later authorised observation shows players treating arrival records as language answers, cannot diagnose attempts, or use comparison as clerical transcription. Stronger confirmation or fully withheld structured feedback would then be real alternatives. Nothing written here establishes comprehension, fun, authoring feasibility or campaign duration.