The Clockwork Marionettes

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The Clockwork Marionettes

The two men who ran through the night-floors intersection — pursued by the gas-masked gunmen — are found dead where the shotgun fired: two marionettes, torn open by the blasts, spraying clockwork and red tissue. They are dressed in 1930s-style suits (Session 6).

The People Here Are Puppets — Part Flesh, Part Mechanism
The fleeing "men" were **marionettes**, and the wound reveals **both clockwork *and* red tissue** — machine and meat together. This reframes the **wooden-jointed mannequin behind the bar** and, potentially, everyone in the night floors: the "tenants" whose minds go up while their bodies sleep below (Michelle Vanatz, Thomas Manuel) may inhabit **constructed bodies** here. Are the night-floors people puppets of the sleepers — or is a person being *made into* one?
The Violence Is Staged
A shotgun chase that ends in **stage-blood and gears** is theatrical gore — a scene, not a killing. Consistent with the night floors being a **script** Cory half-remembers. The gas-masked gunmen may be as much "cast" as the puppets they shot.
Period Dress
**1930s suits** match the night floors' preserved-past feel (the 1920s men's-club smoking lounge, the Lundine-era building, the 1933 Hotel Broadalbin stationery). Time up here sits decades before 2015.

The Wallets — Two Named Men

Searching the marionettes, the crew found wallets with New York identity cards:

Puppets With Real Papers
The constructed bodies carry **real identities on 1950s NY ID cards.** As with Michael Witwer's boarding pass and the The Phone Nook Names (Johnson, Spedding, Helbert), the night floors keep producing **specific named people** in documents. Are Carter and Burbach missing men whose identities were taken to dress the puppets — the way tenants "move upstairs" — or names the machinery generated whole? The **1953 / 1955** dates sit in the post-refit, post-Lundine-death window.

Open Questions