The characters of Case 07 differ in shape, gait and job, but they share one anatomy: a reflex brain onboard that can never wait for a network, an edge site one hop away that coordinates the fleet in under 50 milliseconds, and a training campus that turns the whole cast’s day into a better model overnight. Take any tier away and the character changes: slower, lonelier, unable to learn. That degradation is the plot of this article, and the stress test above is its rehearsal.
Every unit is declared, not modelled: a parts list of primitives on named pivots, anchors that carry the infrastructure story, a character sheet with a voice and a failure ladder, and two small functions for idle motion and the signature move. The hologram treatment, transitions, fleet link, stress test, markers and dossier are all shared. A delivery drone, an agri crawler or a surgical arm is a data entry, not a rebuild.
Declare the body. Compose the silhouette from primitives inside named pivot groups (shoulder, hip, axle, wrist). Pivots make the motion read as mechanical rather than floaty.
Write the character sheet. Name, callsign, persona, three log lines in its voice, spec rows, uses, and a three-rung failure ladder: what it loses when the edge goes, and what it loses when the cloud goes.
Write two motions. An idle loop (breathing, scanning, spinning) and a demo answering one question: how does this machine turn, roll, reach or drive.
// registering a new cast member
HoloLab.register({
id: 'courier-drone',
name: 'Courier drone',
callsign: 'DR-12 “SWIFT”',
persona: 'Brisk. Counts grams and seconds.',
logs: ['Winch clear. 41 s ahead of plan.'],
degrade: {
edge: 'No corridor slots. Holding pattern.',
cloud: 'Weather model stale. Range cut 20%.' },
build(H) { /* primitives + pivots */ },
idle(t, R) {}, demo(d, R) {}
});