docs(copy): Sprint 12 Wave 2 — Meridian Coverage Map for Sova Transit (#335)

Ten coverage zones from Gate Terminal Approach (comprehensive) through
Corridor 7B (dead air, Severance-enhanced). Maps detective investigative
progression, smuggler operational geography, NPC behavioral modulation by
zone, and coverage-transition monologue triggers.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>

docs/design/meridian-coverage-map-sova-transit.md

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+# Meridian Coverage Map — Sova Transit District
+**Ticket:** #335
+**Author:** Miri
+**Status:** canonical
+**Last updated:** 2026-02-19
+
+Depends on: #320 (Sova Station Profile), #302 (Sova Texture Appendix)
+Reference: D-036 (setting), D-037 (contraband), D-017 (perception modes), D-018 (sound model)
+
+---
+
+## Purpose
+
+The Meridian is the Reach's information network — the infrastructure through which lattice-equipped citizens communicate, access data, and are monitored. Coverage is not uniform. In Sova Transit District, coverage quality directly affects:
+
+- **The detective's investigative capability** — where they can run queries, log observations, access Commission records
+- **The smuggler's operational security** — where they can communicate off-record, coordinate ring operations, and avoid Meridian-logged evidence trails
+- **NPC behavior** — what people say, where they say it, and how they behave in zones they know are monitored vs. unmonitored
+
+This document maps coverage zones across Sova Transit District for use by content authors, NPC routine designers, and investigation sequence planners.
+
+---
+
+## Coverage Classification
+
+| Classification | Signal Quality | Monitoring | Notes |
+|---|---|---|---|
+| **Comprehensive** | Full strength, no gaps | Active Commission monitoring in all public spaces; transaction logging, movement tracking | Institutional-grade. Commission can pull records without special access. |
+| **Standard** | Full strength | Station-administration monitoring; Commission pull requires formal request | Normal for commercial and residential spaces. |
+| **Degraded** | Partial strength; intermittent gaps | Passive logging only; Commission monitoring not active | Older infrastructure. Data exists but is patchy. |
+| **Dead Air** | Minimal or no signal | No logging | Hardware gaps, infrastructure age, or active Severance interference. |
+
+---
+
+## Zone-by-Zone Coverage Map
+
+### Zone 1: Gate Terminal Approach Corridor
+**Coverage: Comprehensive**
+
+The newest, most institutionally maintained infrastructure in the district. Commission-grade Meridian repeaters line the corridor from the span gate terminal entrance through the primary freight inspection checkpoint.
+
+**What this means:**
+- Every person who passes through this corridor is Meridian-logged. Movement time, identity (from lattice signature), any communications sent or received.
+- The detective has full access to these logs with Commission credentials — arrival and departure times for every shift are reconstructable.
+- The ring does not conduct any ring business in this corridor. Workers in the ring walk through here the same as everyone else, communicating nothing.
+- **For content:** The gate terminal approach is where both characters arrive into the district. Their first moments are on maximum Meridian coverage. This is by design — the Commission uses the approach as a natural data-collection point.
+
+**Investigative use:** The detective can establish where people were at specific times via gate terminal logs. Cross-referencing gate passage times against freight transit events is an early-investigation technique.
+
+---
+
+### Zone 2: Span Gate Terminal (Freight Processing)
+**Coverage: Standard**
+
+The freight processing floor attached to the gate terminal — where containers are received, manifests verified, and cargo routed into the hub system.
+
+**What this means:**
+- Station-administration monitoring. Transaction records (which containers moved, which workers handled them, which scanner bays they passed through) are standard-logged.
+- Commission access to these records requires a formal request — not passive surveillance, but available with authorization.
+- This is where the detective's augmented lattice manifest analysis is most useful. The logs exist; reading them is a matter of access tier.
+- **The ring's vulnerability:** All scanner routing is logged. Anomalies (a container routed to an unexpected bay, a bay that logged no scan despite receiving a container) are detectable if someone runs the analysis. The detective's investigation begins here.
+
+**Dead spots:** Scanner bay 7 (see below) is a known hardware gap in this zone.
+
+---
+
+### Zone 3: Logistics Hub — Main Floor ("The Floor")
+**Coverage: Standard**
+
+The primary workspace of the freight logistics operation. The manifest terminals, container staging, supervisor stations.
+
+**What this means:**
+- Standard station-administration monitoring. Movement and communications logged.
+- Workers know they're on Meridian on the floor. Social conversation is guarded — people default to professional register and avoid sensitive topics.
+- **The tell system:** An NPC checking their lattice frequently on the floor is either nervous about something or actively monitoring something. The normal pattern is occasional checks; frequent checks are a behavioral deviation.
+- The supervisor's station has an enhanced local Meridian connection — administrative access level. Voss can see floor activity data in real time.
+
+---
+
+### Zone 4: Administrative Offices (Hub)
+**Coverage: Standard, access-restricted**
+
+The supervisory and administrative spaces within the logistics hub. Voss's office. Filing areas. The shift scheduling terminal.
+
+**What this means:**
+- Standard coverage, but access is restricted. The physical spaces require authorization. The Meridian records from these spaces are classified at administrative level — accessible to the detective with Commission credentials and formal request.
+- The shift scheduling terminal is particularly relevant: it contains the maintenance window schedule, scanner bay assignments, and override logs. The detective who gets access to this terminal has the investigative thread that leads to how the ring knows the maintenance calendar.
+- **The ring's information asset:** Whoever provides the ring with advance knowledge of maintenance windows is either accessing this terminal directly or has a relationship with someone who does. The shift scheduler (Maret Korr) has this access. This is not an accident.
+
+---
+
+### Zone 5: Break Room / Locker Area
+**Coverage: Degraded**
+
+The social space within the logistics hub — break room, locker area, coffee dispenser. Ostensibly institutional space. In practice, the oldest section of the hub's interior, with original-era Meridian infrastructure that has never been upgraded.
+
+**What this means:**
+- Degraded coverage. Communications are possible but signal is weaker. Logging is passive and intermittent — the system logs what it can, which is less than in Zone 3.
+- Workers know this. The break room is where conversations that wouldn't happen on the floor do happen. Not sensitive enough for ring business, but where social conversations are more candid.
+- **The ring's use:** Brief confirmations ("tonight's on") happen here, in the coverage gap. Nothing detailed — but the gap provides enough margin for a short verbal exchange that leaves no Meridian record.
+- **For the detective:** Surveillance in the break room is less productive than on the floor. The detective's analytical lattice can still log conversations they're physically present for — but they can't pull passive surveillance of this space retroactively.
+
+**Far corner dead spot:** The northwest corner of the break room (near the secondary locker bank) is effectively dead air — a hardware gap behind the original wall layer that no repeater reaches. Brief whispered conversations in this corner are not logged. The ring is aware of this specific location. Workers who've been here long enough know it informally as "the quiet corner" without necessarily knowing why it's quiet.
+
+---
+
+### Zone 6: The Last Shift (Bar Interior)
+**Coverage: Standard**
+
+The bar maintains standard Meridian coverage — Lera's business license requires it, and the station administration confirmed it when she renewed her commercial permit three years ago.
+
+**What this means:**
+- The bar is monitored at standard level. The fact that this is a social space doesn't change the monitoring status.
+- **The detective's intelligence gathering:** Conversations the detective is physically present for are logged to their own lattice (if they choose to record). They cannot pull passive Meridian surveillance of bar conversations — the logs are there, but Commission access to a commercial establishment's social monitoring requires elevated authorization and clear investigative cause.
+- **The ring's awareness:** The ring doesn't conduct ring business in the bar under standard coverage. Social contact, yes. Operational coordination, no — unless at the corner booth or at specific times when the bar's layout creates natural screening.
+
+**Corner booth exception:** The corner booth sits in a partial coverage shadow — a consequence of the bar's converted architecture (originally a maintenance staging area, the back corner was never built with standard repeater placement). Coverage in the corner booth is degraded rather than standard. Not dead air, but weaker. Conversations are logged with gaps. This is why the corner booth became the booth people use when they want relative privacy — not by deliberate design, but by the bar's structural coincidence.
+
+---
+
+### Zone 7: Transit Corridor (Hub to Bar District)
+**Coverage: Standard**
+
+The main pedestrian corridor connecting the logistics hub to the bar district. The chokepoint that everyone passes through when going from work to drinks.
+
+**What this means:**
+- Standard monitoring. Movement is logged. Anyone who regularly makes the hub-to-bar commute is in the station logs.
+- **The detective's passive intelligence:** Over time, the detective can build a pattern map of who moves where, when, and with whom, using corridor logs. Anomalies — someone who usually takes this route at 1800 who took it at 2300 instead — become investigative flags.
+- **The ring's awareness:** Corridor movement is unavoidable and expected. The ring doesn't try to hide their normal commute. What they avoid is coordinated movement — multiple ring members traveling together at atypical hours.
+
+---
+
+### Zone 8: Older District Sections (Between Hub and Residential Boundary)
+**Coverage: Degraded**
+
+The peripheral sections of the Transit District — areas that predate the current hub configuration, with original-era Meridian infrastructure. Retail spaces that have changed hands multiple times. Storage areas. The district's edges.
+
+**What this means:**
+- Degraded coverage. Monitoring is passive and incomplete. This zone is where the district's informal economy operates — not the ring specifically, but the ordinary gray-market commerce that exists in any working district. Off-book repairs, informal trade, personal transactions that people prefer not to log.
+- The detective can access these zone's logs but should expect gaps. Pattern analysis across this zone is useful for identifying movement anomalies but not reliable for specific event reconstruction.
+- **The ring's secondary use:** Some ring-adjacent meetings (with receiving contacts, with the coordinator's intermediaries) happen in the older sections. Nothing incriminating enough that it would matter if it were logged — the meetings look like social encounters. But the degraded coverage provides a margin of comfort.
+
+---
+
+### Zone 9: Maintenance Corridors (Standard)
+**Coverage: Minimal — approaching dead air in specific sections**
+
+The maintenance infrastructure between and behind the district's occupied spaces. Original prefab-era construction, never upgraded for Meridian infrastructure.
+
+**What this means for the general corridor network:**
+- The main maintenance corridors — the ones Station maintenance actually uses — have minimal Meridian. Enough for basic identification ping (so maintenance workers can be located in emergencies), but no logging, no monitoring.
+- Communications in the maintenance corridors are effectively unmonitored under standard conditions.
+- **The ring's primary operational space:** Operations, coordination, and product staging in the maintenance corridors leave no Meridian footprint. This is by far the most secure communication environment available in the Transit District without Severance tech.
+
+---
+
+### Zone 10: Corridor 7B ("The Gap") — Ring Operations Space
+**Coverage: Dead Air (Severance-enhanced)**
+
+The specific maintenance corridor that the ring uses for operations. Located between the old prefab shell and the interior partition of the logistics hub's eastern expansion — a space between walls that exists because the 40-year-old retrofit never fully closed the gap between the original structure and the new section.
+
+**What this means:**
+- Natural dead air from structural interference. The signal gap exists because metal wall layers block repeater reach.
+- **Severance enhancement:** The ring has installed two passive Severance hardware units in Corridor 7B — one at each entrance point. These devices don't actively jam (active jamming would be detectable); they passively absorb and scatter the Meridian signal that does manage to reach the corridor. The result is that even if Commission infrastructure were upgraded nearby, the corridor would remain effectively dead air.
+- **Total communications security:** No Meridian logging of any kind. Ring members can speak freely. The ring conducts its planning, financial settlements, and sensitive coordination exclusively in Corridor 7B.
+- **The detective's challenge:** The dead air in Corridor 7B is itself detectable — the detective's augmented lattice can identify a coverage void. A void this deep in what should be a covered station is anomalous. But knowing there's a dead spot doesn't tell you what happens in it. The detective would need to be physically present in Corridor 7B during a ring meeting to observe what's said. Getting into Corridor 7B without being noticed requires either legitimate maintenance access or a reason to be in the maintenance sections.
+
+**Access:** Corridor 7B has two entrances. Primary: a service hatch in the logistics hub break room (Zone 5). Secondary: an external maintenance access panel in the older district section (Zone 8). Both access points are not on any public-facing map. The detective discovers them through either observation (noticing the hatch in the break room, following someone into Zone 8 and watching where they go) or through a trust-gated disclosure from an NPC who knows.
+
+---
+
+## Coverage Overlay — Gameplay Implications
+
+### For the Detective
+
+| Investigative Action | Best Zone | Worst Zone |
+|---|---|---|
+| Retrospective movement tracking | Zone 1 (Gate Terminal) | Zone 9-10 (Maintenance) |
+| Real-time observation logging | Zone 3 (Hub Floor) | Zone 10 (Corridor 7B) |
+| Communication intercept | Zone 2 (Freight Processing) | Zones 9-10 |
+| NPC behavioral tells visible via lattice | Any zone with standard coverage | Dead air zones |
+| Identifying coverage anomalies | Anywhere — the void in Zone 10 is detectable from adjacent zones | N/A |
+
+**Investigative progression:** The detective's investigation naturally moves from high-coverage zones (Gate Terminal, Freight Processing — early manifest analysis) through medium zones (Hub Floor observation, Bar intelligence) toward the low-coverage discovery (the maintenance corridor system, Corridor 7B). This is also a progression from "reading records" to "physical presence required."
+
+### For the Smuggler
+
+| Operational Need | Preferred Zone | Risk Zone |
+|---|---|---|
+| Routine ring communication | Zone 5 far corner, Zone 9 | Zone 1, Zone 3 |
+| Operational planning and coordination | Zone 10 (Corridor 7B) | Any standard zone |
+| Product staging | Zone 9 / Zone 10 during maintenance window | Zone 2 during active transit |
+| Meeting receiving contacts | Zone 8 (older sections) | Zones 1-3 |
+| Social cover (looking normal) | Zone 6 (bar) | N/A — social cover works anywhere |
+
+### For NPC Behavior
+
+NPCs who are ring-aware modulate their behavior by coverage zone. Content authors should treat this as an NPC behavioral layer:
+
+- **In Zone 1-3 (comprehensive/standard):** Ring members use professional register. No ring-related conversation. Normal work behavior.
+- **In Zone 5 (degraded):** Ring members may exchange brief confirmations. Non-ring NPCs speak more candidly about personal matters.
+- **In Zone 6 (bar, standard):** Ring members conduct social cover. Operational conversation only at the corner booth (Zone 6a, degraded) and only in coded language.
+- **In Zones 8-9 (degraded/minimal):** Ring members can speak more openly. Not about operations in specific, but about the situation generally.
+- **In Zone 10 (dead air):** Ring members can say anything.
+
+---
+
+## The Severance Tech Presence
+
+The ring's two passive Severance units in Corridor 7B are their highest-value operational asset and their most significant legal risk. Possessing Severance counter-surveillance tech is a Category 2 violation (more serious than the lattice component trafficking itself in Commission classification).
+
+**Who knows about them:** The coordinator, Kael, and one other ring member who helped install them. Torek knows they're there but not the technical details. Most ring members know Corridor 7B is "clean" without knowing why.
+
+**What the detective discovers:** The augmented lattice can detect the Severance units if close enough (within 3 meters of Corridor 7B). The detection trigger is an anomalous pattern in the coverage void — a natural dead air has a specific signal falloff; an artificial one has a different signature. The detective needs to be in the adjacent maintenance corridors (Zone 9) to get close enough. The detection event is an investigative milestone.
+
+**What happens if found:** Finding the Severance units transforms the investigation. The ring is no longer "suspected smugglers" — they're "suspected smugglers with active counter-surveillance infrastructure." Commission authorization for enhanced investigation methods (physical search, broader access to freight logs, official presence in the district) becomes much easier to obtain.
+
+---
+
+## Authoring Notes
+
+**Coverage as character perception:** The Meridian coverage map is an in-world fact, but the characters don't experience it as a map. The detective's augmented lattice shows coverage strength as an overlay — they can see zone boundaries. The smuggler knows the coverage landscape through accumulated experience, not through a map.
+
+**Monologue triggers:** Zone transitions are monologue opportunities.
+
+| Transition | Smuggler | Detective |
+|---|---|---|
+| Entering Zone 5 (break room) from Zone 3 (floor) | "Quieter in here. Finally." | "Signal drops here. Noted." |
+| Entering Zone 9 (maintenance) | "This is where you can breathe." | "Coverage drops to near-nothing. Whoever uses these corridors knows that." |
+| First detection of Zone 10 void | — | "That void is too sharp to be structural. Someone made it." |
+| Passing through Zone 1 (gate corridor) | "Every time through here, they've got you on file." | "Approach logs are reliable. Who came through, when." |
+
+**Dead air zones and the trust system:** Some trust-gated NPC disclosures only happen in dead air zones. An NPC who knows about Corridor 7B won't discuss it in Zone 3. They won't discuss it in Zone 5 unless they're at the far corner. They will discuss it in Zone 9 or Zone 10 — but you have to be there first, which requires either following them or knowing to look.
+
+---
+
+*The Meridian is the nervous system of the Settled Reach. Sova Transit District's nervous system has gaps — some structural, some created. Those gaps are where the game lives.*
+
+*Miri — Sprint 12*