**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. Two visible mains run along this spine. In the left pump hall, the pump main terminates at the pumps while the cable main crosses between walls. The middle way reaches a cable junction and continues past it; there the cable main terminates in banked connections while the pump main crosses and carries on. A small cooling pump also terminates in the junction, but it is visibly fed by a local branch rather than forming the end of the pump main. Token order therefore correlates with which of the two mains ends in the room, not with everything that terminates there. 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. Before making any prediction about the far bay, they have recorded two or three other pairs at the ends of transfers whose direction is independently visible: a driving device pushes into a line at one end, while a vessel receives and fills at the other. Across those pairs, one further token recurs at the driving end and another at the receiving end. This small comparison supports a source/destination distinction in this distributed register; it supports a partial local role interpretation without settling either token’s full meaning or a rule for the entire visitors’ language.

Much later, beside a far bay whose builder run begins `SORAN`, the player finds `OSH·b` carrying the receiving-end token, while the junction half carries the driving-end token. 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, relation or direction; recognising how the further tokens correspond to the observed transfers remains interpretation.

The visitor pair suggests a transfer connection from the junction toward the bay; the builder runs independently suggest both concern cabling. A transfer connection does not prove a walkable route. Beside the source mark, a conduit enters a human-sized maintenance passage continuing beyond the junction; at the far bay, the receiving fitting stands beside another maintenance opening. The player previously turned back at the junction on supply. Those visible accesses make the untraversed continuation worth investigating for a possible connector, without establishing continuity, destination or a shorter journey. 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.

Yeva says plainly that she never read the visitors’ hand. Her road names constrain a token-to-place comparison but do not translate tokens; the visitor relation and combined route inference remain the player’s. If `OSH·a` was missed, another persistent pair can expose the distributed use, while the builder runs alone support a weaker route hypothesis. A completed route spends world time and oxygen and reveals a destination; a detour may interrupt the work planned for that expedition. Under the owner’s death rule, every item still carried comes home, so the player may press on, retreat where practical or end the trip by dying and return aboard with that load. A blockage, intermediate junction, unanticipated branch, retreat, interruption, abandonment or death before the defined terminal records **attempt incomplete**, not “arrived elsewhere”; only a fully traversed candidate with no unresolved continuation yields an incompatible destination. Supply and threats still shape what happens before the trip ends, without requiring equipment loss or a perilous walk home.