**Status.** A proposed information layer covering what the player is shown, what they may do about it, how the game confirms or refuses an action, and what the interface deliberately declines to work out for them. It follows the owner's selected opening, the owner-required journal pause and automatic-fire decision, and the current [Build Rules](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Build%20Rules), [Combat Rules](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Combat%20Rules), [Oxygen and Observation](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Oxygen%20and%20Observation), [Language and Journal](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Language%20and%20Journal), [Rescue Rules](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Rescue%20Rules) and [Death and Persistence](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Death%20and%20Persistence). Layouts, wording, control schemes and the accessibility baseline are proposals. This states an intended information policy; it does not establish that the policy is usable, legible or compliant with any standard, and no player has been observed.

**The interface presents readings, never conclusions.** Everything it shows carries its provenance and its known limit:

- **Direct observation** — what the astronaut can presently sense, including the face of an instrument they are standing at.

These are provenance labels, not four separate screens, and the line between them is not always sharp — a dial the astronaut reads is both an observation and an instrument's claim. What must never blur is **reading versus conclusion**.

The thread is the second expedition. The isolation bridge is aboard, so the ship can separate R-3's live pressure pulse from the collar fault, and the player is going to find the ward. The person in R-3 is called Yeva here for concreteness; she is the occupant of one of the two unselected versions in [First Survivor](/Hold%20The%20Flood/First%20Survivor), and nothing in this information flow depends on which version or which person the owner picks.

**Sees.** A manifest of everything carried against **overall carrying capacity** — canisters, rig parts and empty loot space in one shared total, as the owner required — and, separately, **active rig area**, which installation also consumes. The two figures are shown as two figures, because a part moved to inactive cargo frees area without freeing capacity. Suit condition. Stored records from the first life, each marked with the life it was taken in. One instrument report: R-3's bearing, a direction from the collar, no distance and no path.

**Action.** Repack; install or uninstall parts; decide whether the Fork Relay left at Cargo Turn is worth walking back for.

**Confirmation / refusal.** Ship-side editing is free and reversible; anything exceeding either figure is refused with the offending item still visible, never by silently dropping it. The Fork is listed as **installed at Cargo Turn**, not as carried property, so the player can see in advance why it will not come home if they die.

**Cannot infer.** Whether this loadout is enough, what the trip will cost in oxygen, or whether a route to the bearing exists at all.

**Sees.** Each part's ports, its inspected individual behaviour, and the links already drawn. Nothing about the assembly as a whole — no damage figure, no rating, no name for the build.

**Confirmation / refusal.** Preview answers exactly one question: *is this proposed direct link between these two accessible endpoints valid?* A valid link previews and can be committed; an invalid one visibly refuses **before** commitment, at no cost. It does not evaluate the chain, warn of a bad idea or rank alternatives. Aboard this is instant; in the station the same edit is a world action with oxygen and threats running, and the journal's paused diagram cannot complete it.

**Sees.** Oxygen, condition and free capacity continuously. For each ordinary actuator, readiness and — when ready — the single highlighted target it has selected, the nearest visible valid hostile. For each storage part, its stored charge and how close it is to saturation. For each manual special, availability and facing. A reverse breadcrumb along passages actually traversed this life, back to the last confirmed anchor and ultimately the ship. A hit shows condition lost and any displacement it caused.

A jammed door **on the approach** — not R-3's, which is intact and cycles — has to be cut. Before the first bolt the interface shows the current stage, that this work is loud, which connected entrance will answer, and any caller present bracing to warn.

**Undecided, and shown as undecided.** Whether the player may override or reselect the automatic target is not settled in Combat Rules or the Brief. This article does not decide it; if an override exists it needs its own readable state, and the display above assumes none.

**Action.** Frame and commit one still with its location. Then open the journal — at which point **the rest of the game pauses: enemies, oxygen, projectiles, alerts, weapon readiness and action progress, even mid-combat**, as the owner requires. Inside, pin two records side by side, highlight the swapped group by hand, and write a note.

**Confirmation / refusal.** Capture is atomic: interrupted before commit there is no record; completed, one still and one location persist through death as knowledge. An on-request visual suggestion may surface a lookalike among *already captured* records, labelled software-generated. The note is stored with its revision history and is never parsed, graded or scored.

**Action.** Prepare, request movement, hold the junction, or call the abort. **Either party may call it** — the astronaut from outside, Yeva from her side — and the display names who did.

**Confirmation / refusal.** A request, a radio confirmation or a crossing in progress is never shown as Sent; only the closed airlock is. Flow confirmed through the sleeve is shown as *her* confirmation, not as a system check.

**Returning alive.** At the airlock: what came home and what did not — oxygen spent, the Fork still installed at Cargo Turn, new salvage on the manifest. Shown a captured record, Yeva's answer is recorded as her statement, her stated basis, and what is her interpretation. If the player linked a route to a predicted destination and walked it, the journal attaches one factual outcome — *arrived at linked destination*, *arrived elsewhere* with the place, or *attempt incomplete* with the interruption — and none of the three says the reading was right.

A separate, later life: the astronaut dies on an ordinary expedition, with no transfer in progress.

**Confirmation / refusal.** The bearing reappears as a current direction, never a path. Historical records and live instrument reports are drawn differently and are never merged into one view.

**Cannot infer.** Anything about the new arrangement that has not been walked or sensed from where the astronaut stands. No revealed neighbour list, no map filled in off-screen, no hint that a direction is now correct.

| Packing aboard | Capacity and active rig area as two figures | Repack, edit rig freely | Exceeding either is refused with the item visible | Whether the load suits the trip |

| Carried vs installed | Item marked *carried* or *installed at a named place* | Retrieve by walking to it | Retrieval costs exposed world time | Whether retrieving it is worth it |

| Storage part | Stored charge and saturation | Spend it on a manual release | Release starts a new wave | Whether now is the moment |

| Route walked this life | Reverse breadcrumb to last anchor | Follow it back | Records passage, not safety | Continued access or oxygen cost |

Rescue state reports **what has been confirmed**, and separates confirmation from outcome. The five states above are all established by a physical fact the player witnessed.

**Unresolved, and labelled rather than papered over:** the ordering of a death-triggered shift against an in-progress transfer is not settled, and First Survivor now marks it as an assumption rather than a rule. The interface consequence is concrete. If the astronaut dies mid-transfer, the display must report the **last confirmed state** and mark the survivor's present location and outcome **unconfirmed** — it must not assert that they reached a refuge, because no current article establishes that they did. That is a sixth state in all but name, and it needs an owner decision before it can be specified rather than described.

Design proposals with their expected costs. Not demonstrated usability, not a conformance claim, and the costs below are reasoned expectations rather than measured ones.

These are estimates of writing and reviewing by someone with no implementation experience of this project. They are not a schedule, and they cover no engineering, art or validation.

Whether the suit display is legible under horde pressure; whether players read an instrument bearing as a route despite its distinct treatment; whether the historical marking actually stops them trusting a stale record; whether the link preview teaches the grammar or merely gates it; whether the journal pause is used for thought or for safety; whether a published anonymous-region count reads as a spoiler or as a goal; and whether any accessibility option here helps the players it is meant for. Each needs later owner-authorised implementation and observation with real players, including players who use those options by necessity. None has occurred.

The review asked this page to state plainly that no screen other than the journal pauses. It does not, because that would settle something the owner has not. The owner's decision covers the journal; Oxygen and Observation records explicitly that the requirement "applies to the journal, not automatically to every other menu." General menu and pause behaviour remains unchosen, and this page confines itself to the one pause that is decided — while keeping field rig edits and record capture in running world time, as their own articles require.