goodenomics™

Journey 6 of 9 · Day three · 07:00 · The shelter gate

The Gate

Who decides for them?

The first scene of The Gate, as the game draws it: Day three. Two thousand people shelter behind one gate, and you decide who comes and goes.
A scene from the game, as it is drawn: one handwritten line at a time.

Two thousand people shelter behind one gate, and you hold the key. Enoch is seventy-eight, clear in his mind, and will not leave his house on the river bank. Nell is seventeen and offers to swim the cable across the river. A family arrives with a fever that may be nothing. A man tells the yard that the water tablets are poison.

Six calls about when you may decide for someone else, for their own good or for everyone else's. In the last, the committee decides for you.

Play The Gate Free. No account. Your place is saved on your device.

How it opens

The first scene, in the game’s own words. In the game each line is written into the drawing as you tap.

  1. Day three. Two thousand people shelter behind one gate, and you decide who comes and goes.
  2. One house on the river bank is still lived in, and the engineers give the bank 1 chance in 5 of giving way tonight.
  3. Enoch is seventy-eight and clear in his mind. “I was born in this house. I will take my chances.”
  4. You have two guards and a boat. They could carry him out in ten minutes.

What do you order?

The six calls

After the first, each call changes one fact, and one of them turns the question on you.

  1. He will not leave
  2. The fever room
  3. The phones
  4. She says no
  5. The list on the bus
  6. For your own good

The long night

When you have finished the journey you can play it whole: all twelve calls. These are the other six.

It happened

The valley is invented. This is not: Typhoid Mary: may a city lock up a healthy woman?

What the research says

This journey adapts questions that have been studied. These pages say what the studies found, with their sources.

Play The Gate Free. No account. Your place is saved on your device.

Next journey: The Reconstruction When should you obey?