Andrei POV
April 1976
The manuscript for the third Lionel the Cat book lay open on my desk, illuminated by a green-shaded lamp. The success of the first two had been quiet but firm, and Penguin's request for a third was a contract, not a question. After the British Museum trip, the setting chose itself. But the plot required more than whimsy; it needed the satisfying click of a perfect mechanism. It needed to be a system.
The working title was Lionel the Cat and the Pharaoh's Maze. The inciting incident was simple: a priceless, fictional "Scepter of Thoth" had vanished from the Egyptian Sculpture Gallery, replaced by a single, cryptic clay tile. Lionel, visiting with his school, would find it.
The heart of the book wouldn't be a chase, but a constructed logic maze. The thief, a disgruntled former curator, hadn't stolen the scepter to sell it. He had hidden it within the museum itself as the ultimate puzzle, leaving a trail of artifact-based clues that only someone who truly understood the connections between civilizations could solve.
This was where my mind, the System, and the recent Library scans merged. I didn't just describe the Rosetta Stone; Lionel had to understand its principle—a single idea expressed in multiple languages—to decipher a clue hidden in a mosaic of Greek, Latin, and hieroglyphic patterns near the Roman Britain exhibit.
The maze wasn't physical, but intellectual, woven through the museum's layout. A clue on a Mesopotamian cylinder seal about the "river between two lands" pointed not to the Tigris and Euphrates, but to the museum's own twin staircase. There, a stain on a knight's armor in the Medieval gallery, when viewed from a specific step, aligned with a constellation painted on a Greek urn, pointing towards the Astronomy collection.
The System helped me keep it internally consistent, running a low-level logic check on the puzzle chains.
[ CREATIVE MODULE: ACTIVE ]
[ Narrative Construct: 'Pharaoh's Maze' logic path. ]
[ Checking for internal consistency... ]
[ Error: Clue 3 (Celestial Navigation) requires prior knowledge from Clue 7 (Antikythera Mechanism). ]
[ Re-sequencing suggested. Re-routing narrative pathway... ]
[ Consistency achieved. ]
It was intricate, demanding for a child, but designed to make the reader feel like a genius for following the breadcrumbs. The final clue led not to a dusty corner, but to the Museum's own, publically accessible Printing and Maps Archive room. The Scepter of Thoth, the god of knowledge, was hidden in plain sight, displayed as a "replica" among the working models of Gutenberg presses. The thief's statement was clear: true knowledge wasn't in the gold of pharaohs, but in the machinery that distributed ideas to the masses.
I wrote the final chapter late one night. As I described Lionel explaining the solution to the bemused Chief Curator, a new thought struck me. This wasn't just a story. The clues—the clay tile, the patterned mosaic, the knight's shield, the constellation chart—were discrete, physical objects. A reader could hold them.
Query to System: Feasibility analysis: Adaptation of narrative puzzle mechanics into a physical board game format. Market potential for children's educational games, mid-1970s.
Data streamed: the rise of strategy games, sales figures for Mastermind, the educational toy sector. The probability was favorable. The "Pharaoh's Maze" could be a boxed game. The board: a map of the British Museum. The playing pieces: Lionel tokens. The core mechanic: drawing clue cards (an artifact image, a puzzle text) and racing to be the first to connect them and reach the correct room.
It was a trinket with purpose. It would extend the book's life, create a new revenue stream, and—most importantly—train young minds in lateral thinking and historical connection. It was the Harris Directive applied to play: building foundational cognitive skills.
The next morning, I presented the completed manuscript to Mum. She read the final chapters, her finger tracing the intricate clue descriptions. "It's clever, Andrei. More than the others. It treats the reader as an accomplice, not just an observer."
"It needs to be," I said. Then, I slid a second, thinner folder across the breakfast table. "And I believe it can be more."
She opened it to find rough sketches of game boards, card designs, and a one-page business proposal: "Lionel's Museum Mystery: A Game of Wits & Discovery."
Mum was silent for a long moment. Then she looked at me, not with the surprise of a mother, but the assessment of a partner. "You're not just selling a story. You're selling a system."
"Yes," I said simply. "The book explains the system. The game lets you use it. They reinforce each other."
She leaned back, a slow smile spreading. "We'll need to speak to Penguin. The book rights are theirs. The game rights, if we were careful, are held by Lioncrest. This would be a licensing deal. A test case for future... expansions."
That was the true breakthrough. Lionel the Cat was ceasing to be just a series of books. It was becoming a platform. A testing ground for intellectual property strategy. A book could lead to a game. A game could cement a brand. A strong brand could one day support a television show, where the visuals of the museum maze would come alive.
Later, in my room, the System confirmed the strategic leap.
text
[ PROJECT ANALYSIS: LIONEL THE CAT ]
[ Status: EVOLVING FROM NARRATIVE TO PLATFORM. ]
[ New Venture Identified: Educational Game. ]
[ Strategic Value: Diversifies revenue, strengthens brand engagement, creates IP leverage. ]
[ Long-Term Goal Synergy: Provides practical case study in media franchising and ancillary rights monetization. ]
I looked at the manuscript and the crude game sketches. The museum had given me history. I was giving it back a puzzle. And in solving that puzzle myself, I had found the next piece of my own blueprint: every story must be built with doors that lead to other rooms, other games, other forms. A legacy wasn't a single line of text. It was an interconnected maze, and I was just learning to draw the map.
A/N
The "Museum Mystery" game concept is born, representing Andrei's first step into multi-platform storytelling. How will Penguin react to a licensing proposal from a child via his holding company? And will this success make Andrei bolder in applying this "platform" thinking to his other, secret plans?