Session 7 — Ten Years On

In-fiction: Fall 2025 — 30 OCT 2025. Ten years after the night-floors descent aired as an unfinished episode (The World Remade), Box 13 has become an HBO flagship — devoted following, critical acclaim season after season. On its tenth anniversary the cast is flown to Los Angeles for an awards ceremony celebrating the show's legacy.

The Anniversary Gala — Los Angeles

HBO arranged the travel; the flight from Texas was uneventful. The ceremony was a lavish Masquerade in a grand downtown auditorium — red carpet, TV crews, fans behind barricades. Full write-up: The Anniversary Gala.

Masked servers (faces concealed), champagne, decor in gold, crimson, and black — a royal masquerade, not an awards show.
A string arrangement of Queen of Old Argyle drifting through the hall — the night-floors record, again.
Outside, Taurus rising low in the east (Taurus Painting).
A muted bar TV playing the Fury–Klitschko bout — a fight from 28 NOV 2015, the date of the finale shoot.
For a moment, the crew was certain they saw Phil Horselover at the back of the masked crowd — then someone crossed the sightline and he was gone.
The night's emotional peak: a tribute to "the show's creator, Philip Horselover," treating him as departed — montage, reflections, a standing ovation.

The Room Was Tuned to the Case

Every signature of the McAllistor case reassembled around the cast at the moment they were being honored — a King in Yellow **masquerade**, the night-floors record, Taurus, and a **2015 fight looping in 2025.** The world **eulogizes Horselover as dead** while the crew watches him stand in the room — the same edit that cut the night floors out of the aired finale.

The Flight Home — The Red Book and Hastur

An 11 AM flight back to Dallas, gate C32. CW was called to the podium and, in the shuffle, bumped from first class to coach; Beckett switched seats so CW could ride up front. Getting up for the restroom from coach, Beckett found a copy of the Red Book — the same one from Michelle Vanatz's apartment. He read it, made a Sanity check, and the word Hastur rang through his head. See The Red Book, The King in Yellow.

The Book Follows, and Names Its God

The Red Book **manifested mid-flight**, ten years and two thousand miles from where it was found — the recurring-object trick again. And it delivered a **name: Hastur**, the entity behind the King in Yellow and the Yellow Sign. The play has stopped merely *opening* readers and started **naming its god** to them.

Back in Dallas — The Studio

The crew landed in Dallas and arrived at the studio to resume filming Box 13.

Tara's dream. Tara reported a dream of being forced into a hospital from which, try as she might, she could not leave — echoing David, the trapped tenants, and Kessler Asylum. The seam is reaching the assistant Cory anchored himself to.

"I quit." A strained argument carried from the north side of the studio wall — Amy and Alan Ladd. Alan, breaking:

"I'm not doing it any more! It's been 10 years, and no one has explained it to me. Is it a joke? I know what I saw. I quit!"

Amy stormed in and ordered everyone to places — the production continuing straight over the top of his resignation.

The Show Doesn't Stop for the People In It

Alan touched the night floors as himself (Session 4), came back fogged, and a decade later **remembers enough to try to walk** — *"I know what I saw."* Amy overrides a quitting director with *"places please."* The one who "does not leave" now **won't let anyone else leave either.**

Investigation — What the Crew Dug Up

Between the anniversary and resuming production, two research threads paid out:

Kip — The Marionettes Were Real Men (Carter and Burbach Records)

The wallet IDs Eric K. Carter and Ronald Burbach were real decorated veterans, murdered together 9 SEP 1955 at an unnamed NYC hotel — faces skinned off, beside gas masks and shotguns (the exact weapons the crew saw). Person of interest: Virgil Griffith.
The night floors were re-staging the men's real 1955 murder; the skinned faces match David's "faceless people."

Mordant — The Architect and the "B" Hotel (The Daribondi Books)

Asa Daribondi: Chicago "Thought Buildings," a 1921 "revelation," then nine mundane-looking NYC buildings that still stand (the McAllistor Building among them), a logbook of child deaths back to 1921.
A 1928 photo places him at an art deco "B" hotel facing Madison Square Park = the Hotel Broadalbin — one of his nine, the same hotel Abigail was mapping.

On-Screen — The Box at Box 13

Filming resumes. In the world of the episode, the crew arrives at Box 13 HQ to find Mr. M absent and a wooden box waiting: ~1 foot wide, 4 inches thick, pine (pine woodchips inside), stamped with customs marks from Portugal, Spain, and France — plus stamps matching no country. Inside: an ornate birthday invitation. Full clue: The Zielony Invitation.

The card invites the crew to Richard Zielony's 51st birthday at the Gateway Bridges Restaurant, 9011 Potash St, Boston, MA 02121, (617) 218-2099 — headed by a green triangle.
"Zielony" = Polish "green"; the green triangle reads as Special Agent Marcus's / the CDT's mark.
Gateway Bridges Restaurant = the "GBR" on Abigail Wright's Cocktail Napkin Diagram.
The phone number connects to a Dr. Barbus; a separate call confirmed the restaurant is open and the reservation real.
Peeling the backing revealed a hidden letter with a gold Goetic seal (style matching The Purson Seal). An Intelligence roll identifies the text as a common handwriting exemplar — a standard dictation passage used to collect a handwriting sample, so the "cipher" is likely a red herring and the hand itself is the clue.
Kip lifted fingerprints from the paper matching Dr. Barbus — a popular Massachusetts Crime Lab admin who withdrew suddenly five years before retirement into complaints, hearings, and mental-health questions. The number in his police file matches the invitation's number. A forensics document-examiner handled a handwriting exemplar, then came apart.
Handwriting profile: the exemplar's author is male, calligraphy-trained, right-handed — and Barbus is excluded as the writer. He handled it; someone else wrote it. A trained, ornate hand points toward Daribondi (or another calligrapher on the board) — pending comparison.

One Card, Three Threads

The invitation ties Abigail's GBR napkin, Marcus's green triangle, and a hidden **Goetic-sealed cipher** into a single Boston lure — delivered in a **pine box with impossible customs marks** to the crew's own set, with Mr. M conveniently absent. Boston is the case's first venue outside the Dallas/NYC axis.

The seal turns out to be beeswax — traditional ritual-seal matter, and an "herb" by the Hygromanteia's reckoning.

Boston — Staking Out Dr. Barbus (day before the party)

The crew traveled to Boston a day early and surveilled Dr. Barbus's House.

Neighbors: Barbus is "losing his marbles"; one saw a naked woman in the backyard; others heard machinery running inside. The neighbors are watchful of the crew.
The yard is overgrown — only ~two months untended.
Barbus arrived frazzled, smelling of oil and machinery; the crew learned little talking to him.
Overnight, he stayed up all night, moving room to room.

The Examiner Is Running Machines

A retired **document examiner** now **reeks of oil**, runs **unseen machinery**, and **never sleeps** — in a case whose people are part gears, part flesh and whose night floors are full of **mannequins** and a scissor-lift. The **naked woman in the yard** may be a hallucination, an intruder, or an **undressed mannequin.** He is **making** something.

Session End

(In progress — camped outside Dr. Barbus's House overnight; the Zielony party is tomorrow.)