Object
Pair of Small Books: The Royale Paperback and Richey's Diary
Two small, hand‑held volumes recovered from Richey’s suite: a dog‑eared mass‑market paperback titled The Royale Hotel with a creased spine and yellowing pages, and a slim personal diary—leather‑covered, thumbed, inked on several entries. WORF presents them to the away team; DATA runs an instantaneous scan over their text. Characters flip pages, exchange grim looks, and trace repeated clichés and plot beats. The paperback reads like formulaic pulp; the diary bears intimate, time‑stamped eyewitness notes. Both items are physically small enough to sit in one palm and show signs of prolonged handling and local storage in the suite.
2 appearances
Purpose
The paperback functions as a source of pulp fiction — entertainment and narrative text — while the diary records Richey’s personal observations and events; together they serve as tangible textual artifacts for inspection and forensic analysis.
Significance
These books serve as the primary clue that explains the hotel’s origin: the alien mercifully reified a badly written novel and a firsthand diary into literal reality. Their texts convert the problem from supernatural to rule‑bound fiction, revealing exploitable constraints and reframing the crew’s strategy to escape.
Appearances in the Narrative
When this object appears and how it's used