The Thursday Protocol
The Thursday Protocol is a regime that recurs through the browser game Silver Orange without being defined. The phrase names a color scheme, a form and a job title, and it is the subject of an announcement by the game's inspector, TAB-42. Most of its appearances need no particular day of the week, and a few depend on the calendar of the player's computer.[1]
Display and paperwork
Thursday Protocol is the third of the game's five viewport modes, which are color schemes. It becomes available when the Silver Orange count passes 10,000, and a notice on the screen says so. Its page is a very dark blue, #0a0a1a, and its five drawing colors are pastels: #AAFFCC, #FFCCAA, #CCAAFF, #AADDFF and #FFAACC. A player who has reached it sees it only by chance. A click on a creature has a 15 percent probability of moving the display to one of the available modes other than the current one, chosen at random.[2]
The Thursday Protocol Acknowledgment is the sixth of the twelve forms. Its two fields read "I acknowledge it is Thursday: [YES/NO]" and "Signature:". It pays 80 Silver Oranges, the lowest reward on offer, which two other forms share. The game accepts any answer to the first field, or none, and files an empty field as "[BLANK]". One citation in eight, drawn from a list of eight reasons, is for a "Thursday protocol violation".[2]
Staff and conversation
Job titles change with the game's era. A Thursday Observer works in the first. In the seventh, six of the fifteen titles are about Thursday: Thursday Protocol Officer, Thursday Compliance Specialist, Thursday Auditor, Circular Drafter (Thursday Edition), Thursday Observer (Senior) and Thursday Historian. One survives into the eighth, the Thursday Protocol Officer.
Two of the ten scripted exchanges between creatures concern Thursday. One pair of lines reads "This area exceeds recommended soup viscosity." and "I filed an exception on Thursday." The other reads "We need to discuss the Thursday numbers." and "The Thursday numbers are always like this." Thought bubbles over the creatures include "the Thursday numbers are not adding up" and "reminder: Thursday Protocol in effect". One of the fifteen committee names is the Standing Committee on Thursday Compliance.[2]
The Thursday Reformation
The seventh of the eight eras begins at 200,000 Silver Oranges and is called The Thursday Reformation. TAB-42 announces it: "THE THURSDAY REFORMATION. From this point forward, every day contains trace elements of Thursday. This is permanent."[2]
A surprise on any day
The smaller surprise THURSDAY ANY DAY lasts 45 seconds, the longest of the twenty, and has the same weight as the others. Unlike twelve of them it has no minimum play time, so it can occur in the first seconds of a game. TAB-42 opens it in the chat with "THURSDAY PROTOCOL ACTIVATED. DAY OF WEEK IS IRRELEVANT." and "THURSDAY COMPLIANCE IS MANDATORY REGARDLESS OF CALENDAR POSITION." It ends with "THURSDAY PROTOCOL SUSPENDED. RESUME STANDARD DAY DESIGNATION."[2]
During the surprise each creature wears a paper hat, drawn as two rectangles above its head, one 6 pixels wide and 5 high and one 2 wide and 4 high. The hats take their colors from the palette of the current viewport mode and change them every two seconds, at a different step for each creature. A comment in the code describes the hat as a rectangle 3 by 4 pixels and then as a small triangle. The style sheet has a rule for yellow hats under the heading "Hat sprites (Thursday)", and no script uses it.[2]
The Thursday Event
One of the eight cataclysms defined in the game, THE THURSDAY EVENT, has a probability of 0 on every frame, a duration of infinity, no announcement and five empty functions. The scheduler skips it twice. A comment there reads "Thursday event in ambient mode: just hats", and another says "ambient, not triggered".[2]
Real Thursdays
The game asks the player's browser which day it is. On a Thursday TAB-42 can post one of four check-ins. They are "Thursday compliance status: ADEQUATE. The Regional Director sends regards.", "Thursday check-in: All Thursday parameters are within Thursday specifications.", "It is still Thursday. This has been verified." and "Thursday progress report: THURSDAY CONTINUES. No further action required." The game rolls for one once for every minute that passes, with a 10 percent chance, but it counts only the minutes in which no cataclysm is running or cooling down, and a cooldown lasts 3 to 10 minutes from the start of the cataclysm. The wait averages ten of those minutes. Fixed text in the page's script supplies the check-ins, and the instructions that guide the language model writing TAB-42's replies do not mention Thursday.[2]
Definition
Nothing in the game or its files says what the protocol requires. Its form asks whether it is Thursday, its surprise declares that the day does not matter, its era makes every day partly Thursday, and its check-ins report that it still is. No company text says why the day is Thursday.