CADRE: Centralized Administration, Data & Reporting Environment

The weekly ration is raised from two hundred and twenty grammes to one hundred and ninety grammes. The masses are invited to celebrate the increase. They celebrated. The queues did not get shorter. They did get quieter.A turn-based political simulator. You are the Chairman of a fictional state, for a term of ten years — forty quarters. The harvest, the borders, the newspapers, and the past are yours to manage. There is a great deal you can do: move grain, post garrisons, sell land, print money, build railways, investigate colleagues, amend records.

The one thing you cannot do is find out what is actually happening. Every edict comes with two textsBefore you issue it, you read the Stated Purpose. After the quarter settles, the archive records what actually happened. The two never meet, and the distance between them is the game."STEEL FROM EVERY HOUSEHOLD"Stated: A furnace in every yard. A girder out of every pot. Actual: Output tripled. Quality did not. Three existing bridges have been reclassified as ornamental features."NEIGHBOURHOOD HARMONY COMMITTEES"Stated: Volunteers assist their neighbours with paperwork, mediate disputes, and unify thinking.

Actual: Denunciations rose fourfold. About one in five was substantiated. The remainder concerned parking. You approve the stated version. You cause the actual one. Ten years later, the historians read both. There is no national figure — only what the provinces report"National sentiment" is not an independent reading.…