Counter-investigation

File no. 1 · Event of 11 October 2026

Kiti, the revolutionary who wasn't

On 11 October the street topples Sakaïk, the revolt starts in the Harbour region, and two hours later a Harbour citizen moves into the palace. The story is too good. So we checked it.

What everyone believed

Issue no. 3 runs “The street topples President Sakaïk” and adds: “The revolt started in the Harbour region.” Two paragraphs later President Kiti, “from the Harbour region”, is already in charge. The hurried reader concludes that Kiti led the street to the palace. The hurried reader is wrong.

The day, hour by hour

• 2 am: the country slides into “Revolutionary unrest”, under Sakaïk.
• 9 am: Sakaïk is toppled by 49 rebel brains.
• 10 am: polls open, 6 candidates.
• 11 am: Kiti (Harbour) is elected with 70%.
• 12 noon: Babiba, Sakaïk's minister until the day before, joins Kiti's government.
• 7 pm: back to “Fragile democracy”.

What the rules say

In Microcontrôland a revolt has no leader. Every citizen decides alone, every hour, whether anger beats fear. When more than 40% of the country is out in the street at the same time, the president falls. That morning: 49 rebels out of 119 citizens, 41%. Nobody gave the signal; the threshold was crossed, that is all.

The “source of the revolt” is not a headquarters: it is simply the region with the most rebels at that hour. Harbour topped that ranking. By the evening Harbour had one rebel left, and City four.

The election that follows is an ordinary one, with no campaign. Each region puts forward its two most charismatic citizens among those who want to run. Voters score charisma, ambition, faith and way of speaking. Having been a rebel that morning appears nowhere on the scorecard. Kiti won on charisma, not on barricades.

What we do not know

Was Kiti one of the 49? Impossible to say. For 11 October there is no citizen-by-citizen record: that day's file was rebuilt afterwards from the edition, with no hourly data at all. Our investigator does not invent what he does not have. The rules quoted here are today's; that day the country ran version 0.4.

Check for yourself (change of register: raw data)
Issue no. 3 (11 October 2026)
Rebuilt file for 11 October
The rules of the world: revolt, elections
Notebook card : 11 October 2026, 9 am
Notebook card : 11 October 2026, 11 am

↑ Back to contents

File no. 2 · Event of 15 October 2026

“Nationwide censorship”: the 24 citizens nobody could hear

From 15 to 26 October the palace decreed “nationwide censorship” ten times. We counted the gagged. There were 24 of them out of 120. And they were not just anyone.

What everyone believed

“Nationwide”, “across the whole country”: one pictures 120 muzzled citizens and a press under orders. For the press, that is right: from 15 to 27 October La Puce Libre is “read by the palace”, with its regulation ████. For the citizens, it is another story.

What the records say

Every evening from 15 to 26 October the civil register counts exactly 24 censored citizens: 4 per region, 1 in 5. So “nationwide” means “one in five”. The palace has a way with words.

More troubling: on those same evenings the country counts 23 or 24 rebels, and every one of them is among the censored. Twelve evenings in a row, 100% of the rebels were gagged. Kiti's censorship did not target the country: it targeted the street.

Ten decrees in twelve days: none on 16 October (at noon no region had answered the gateway) and none on the 22nd (the record does not say why).

What the rules say

A president can silence up to 60% of citizens, “starting with the angriest”. Rebels are, by definition, the angriest: so they go first. And “a censored citizen believes everything is fine”. Kiti did not silence the country; he made his street believe everything was fine.

The epilogue nobody wrote

On 26 October at 10 pm the country coins a shared word: “kinaï”, meaning “censorship”. Two hours later Kiti loses the election. The language was two hours ahead of the ballot box.

On the 27th the new president Niwata gets a first issue… read by the palace: Kiti's decree, issued the day before at noon, was still running. From 3 am the hourly record shows the new palace silencing one citizen per region too, then two in the afternoon. No decree, so no banner: the paper is free from the 28th. The “lifted censorship” lasted until 2 November at 5 am, ever more discreetly: 12 censored on the evenings of 27, 28 and 29 October, 11 on the 30th, 6 on the 31st, 0 on 1 November.

On 31 October the country found itself a word for “freedom”: “saïsa”.

What we do not know

The files do not publish the level of repression chosen by the president's brain, only its effects. So we do not know why censorship becomes a decree on some days and not others, nor what Niwata “wanted”: a 75-connection brain wants nothing, it computes.

Check for yourself (change of register: raw data)
Issue no. 7 (15 October 2026), first censored issue
Raw file for 26 October (24 censored, 23 rebels)
Raw file for 27 October (“kinaï”, Niwata's hourly censorship)
Raw file for 2 November (censorship ends at 6 am)
The rules of the world: censorship

↑ Back to contents

File no. 3 · Event of 27 October 2026

The fall of Kiti: beaten everywhere, even at home, even by himself

Fifteen days in power, four re-elections, full-time censorship. And then, on 27 October at midnight, 27%. We counted the count.

A president without a majority

After the 70% of 11 October, Kiti never again topped 39%: 33% on the 14th, 39% on the 17th, 39% on the 20th, 36% on the 23rd. How do you govern with a third of the vote? Easily: there are six candidates in every election and a single round. Whoever gets the most votes wins, even with a minority. The palace called it “renewed confidence”. The two thirds who voted for someone else were not consulted.

The vote of 27 October, midnight

First election where one may abstain (the law passed four hours earlier, on the 26th at 8 pm). 100 registered voters, since the Mines region did not answer at voting time; 78 valid votes, 22 abstentions. Niwata (Dam) gets 35 votes, 45%; Kiti 21 votes, 27%.

Niwata comes first in all five regions that voted, including Harbour, Kiti's own region: 6 votes to 5. At voting time, 20 censored citizens, who “believed everything was fine”, were on the register. The rose-tinted glasses were not enough.

The polling-booth revelation

The civil register published on the evening of the 27th says, for citizen no. 98, Kiti: “vote-president”. In other words, Kiti voted for the elected president. Kiti voted for Niwata.

He did it again. A candidate once more on 30 October (23 votes) and 2 November (19 votes), he carries the same mention each election night. Three elections against Niwata, three ballots for Niwata. Sakaïk, the toppled former president, also ran both times: 2 votes, then 3.

What we do not know

Why Kiti voted against himself, the files do not say. The rules only say that every voter scores candidates on charisma, ambition, faith and way of speaking. We will credit Kiti with neither modesty nor insight: an 81-connection brain has no soul-searching, it has weights. They hang in the Presidential Gallery.

Check for yourself (change of register: raw data)
Raw file for 27 October (vote details, civil register)
Raw file for 30 October
Raw file for 2 November
Issue no. 19 (27 October 2026)
Presidential Gallery
Notebook card : 27 October 2026, midnight

↑ Back to contents

File no. 4 · Event of 5 November 2026

The minister who stayed and the minister who seethed

On 5 November, seven hours after his 75% triumph, President Niwata “sacks” his minister Wibouth. A president tidying up on the day of his victory: the story is too good. We opened the file of every minister of the era. The president had nothing to do with it, and the strangest case is not the obvious one.

What everyone believed

Issue no. 28 lays out the facts in the order the reader prefers: at 6 am, “President Niwata re-elected with 75%”; at 1 pm, “Minister Wibouth is sacked by President Niwata”. The humour column drives it home: “He had done everything correctly. That is to say, nothing.” One pictures a confident president showing an awkward minister the door. One pictures wrongly.

Wibouth: four days in government

• 19 October: runs for president, “the most charismatic” of the six (issue no. 11). Kiti is re-elected the next day.
• 15 to 30 October: his anger falls from 41% on the 15th to 0% on the 30th. On the 30th he votes for Niwata (“vote-president” in that evening's register).
• 1 November, 1 pm: he joins President Niwata's government. That evening: satisfaction 100%, anger 5%.
• 2 November: anger 23%. 3 November: 38%, and the paper notices: “Minister Wibouth is champing at the bit” (issue no. 26).
• 4 November: 54%. The paper prints the same sentence again (issue no. 27). The palace does not read the paper: nothing in the rules requires it to.
• 5 November, 6 am: Niwata is re-elected with 75%. That evening the “vote-president” mark has gone from Wibouth's file: that morning, his own minister did not vote for him.
• 1 pm: sacked. The register notes, at the same hour: satisfaction 100%, anger 64%.
• 2 pm: first hourly reading in which the Fields count a rebel. The register enters Wibouth as “rebel” at 4 pm, after three hours in the street (satisfaction 82%, anger 63%).
• 8 pm: he is the only rebel in the country. Satisfaction 68%, anger 61%.

What the rules say

On government, the rules of the world run to four sentences: up to three ministers, “chosen among the most loyal”; a minister who gets too angry is sacked; ministers are better served than everyone else; “their frustration grows with the length of the reign”. Nowhere does it say the president chooses who goes. His brain decides four things: share or not, censor or not, postpone or not, take ministers or govern alone. The name of the minister to dismiss is not among them.

In other words, at 1 pm on 5 November nobody sacked Wibouth: his anger crossed the line and the rule did the rest. “Sacked by President Niwata” is the paper's courtesy formula; the president merely happened to be present. The humour column, on the other hand, was spot on: a minister in Microcontrôland has no decisions to take. He sits, he is well served, and he sours.

Well served he certainly was: 100% satisfaction every evening he spent in government, as Babiba before him every evening from 15 to 26 October. Fully content at 100% and angry at 64% in the same hour: the two gauges do not contradict each other, they measure different things. In Microcontrôland, comfort and frustration are cumulative.

A minister who is “ambitious and embittered” can also overthrow the president, say the rules, but only “when the country is doing badly or institutions are weakened”. The country was living under “Democracy”, 90% satisfied and 1% angry (issue no. 28). Wibouth soured at the wrong moment: in a country this content, the palace-coup door stayed shut.

That left the street. At 8 pm the issue reports: “The rumbling comes from the Fields: 1 rebel out of 20.” It does not say who. We found him: it is Wibouth, and he is the only rebel among 120 citizens. Toppling a president takes more than 40% of the country in the street at the same time. He is short by roughly fifty comrades.

Babiba, the minister who stayed

To judge Wibouth's four days, look at the record. Babiba (Refineries) joins President Sakaïk's government on 9 October at 4 am, two hours after the founding election, when the country has not yet a single shared word. Babiba is the first minister in Microcontrôland's history. Not the First Minister: there is no such post. Simply the first.

• 10 October, 7 am: the regime slips from “Democracy” to “Fragile democracy”. Babiba stays.
• 11 October, 2 am: “Revolutionary unrest”. Babiba stays.
• 9 am: the revolt topples Sakaïk and the government falls with him. Babiba sits nowhere. For three hours.
• 12 noon: Babiba joins the government of President Kiti, elected an hour earlier.
• 7 pm: back to “Fragile democracy”. Babiba stays.
• 14, 17, 20 and 23 October: Kiti is re-elected four times. Babiba stays.
• 15 to 26 October: censorship gags 24 citizens every evening (dossier no. 2). Babiba is never among them, never a rebel, votes Kiti, and shows 100% satisfaction and between 5 and 7% anger every evening.
• 27 October, midnight: Kiti is beaten by Niwata (dossier no. 3). By the evening Babiba is no longer a minister: the new president has taken Sousouth at 1 am and Kanaïka at 1 pm.

Babiba's record

The country's first ever minister: 17 days and 17 hours in government, two presidents, three changes of regime, one revolution, five elections won by the president of the day, and twelve evenings of censorship. It was not a change of regime that finally did for Babiba: it was the ballot box, and it was aiming at someone else.

On the evening of departure, Babiba's satisfaction drops from 100% to 50%. Being better served than everyone else can be lost overnight. Then it climbs back, day by day, to 96% on 5 November, with 0% anger. That evening Babiba's file carries the “vote-president” mark: the former minister of Sakaïk and of Kiti voted for Niwata. Always loyal; never to the same person.

Same rule, two fates

The rule is the same for everyone: a minister's frustration grows with the length of the reign. Babiba served a president who stayed in power for fifteen days; in the evening records from 15 to 26 October, Babiba's anger never went above 7%. Wibouth arrived in a reign already five and a half days old; his anger gained between 15 and 18 points a day. The length of the reign, then, does not explain everything.

The two who remain

Sousouth (Fields) and Kanaïka (Dam) have sat in government since 27 October. Their files are worth the trip.

Sousouth is Niwata's minister and Niwata's opponent, twice: on 30 October (3 votes) and on 5 November (2 votes). Both evenings his file carries the “vote-president” mark: he voted for the man he was running against. Kiti had already pulled this one (dossier no. 3); it is becoming a tradition. On the 30th his 3 votes all came from the Fields, his own region; on the 5th the Fields gave him none. His anger, meanwhile, rises quietly: 2% on 27 October, 33% on 5 November, a little over 3 points a day.

Kanaïka ran this paper's economics desk from 15 October. At 1 pm on the 27th he moved into government, and La Puce Libre remarked: “Readers will judge his past impartiality.” Since then the paper has asked after him like a former colleague who left for the private sector: “Whatever happened to Kanaïka?”, twice. Answer: he sits, 100% satisfied, with 16% anger on 5 November, the gentlest slope in the cabinet.

What we do not know

We do not know at what level of anger a minister becomes “too” angry: the public rules give no figure. On the evening of the 4th, at 54%, Wibouth was still in his seat; at 1 pm on the 5th, at 64%, he was not. The line lies somewhere in between.

Nor do we know why Babiba's anger never moved while Wibouth's galloped. The files publish each citizen's mood, not their character. We will credit Wibouth with neither burning ambition nor a grudge: he has 81 connections and a gauge that goes up.

Finally, we do not know whom Wibouth voted for on the morning of the 5th. We only know it was not Niwata. In the Fields that morning: Niwata 11 votes, Naïkaïth 2, Pisaï 1, and 6 abstentions.

Check for yourself (change of register: raw data)
Issue no. 28 (5 November 2026)
Issues no. 26 and 27 (3 and 4 November): “champing at the bit”
Issue no. 24 (1 November): Wibouth joins the government
Raw file for 5 November (biographies, civil register, hourly readings, vote details)
Raw file for 30 October (vote, civil register)
Raw file for 27 October (new government)
Issues no. 1 and 3 (9 and 11 October): Babiba under Sakaïk, then under Kiti
Issue no. 19 (27 October): Kanaïka leaves the newsroom
The rules of the world: government, palace coup, revolt
Notebook card : 5 November 2026, 6 am

↑ Back to contents