# Hertz Quest: After Hours — Director’s update

September 23, 2026. Thirteen playable locations across seven territories; nine main chapters and three financing endings. The original four core concepts, Marina’s delayed jellyfish reveal and the yacht finale remain the spine of the night.

## New locations and cast

**Ocean Drive / After Hours** connects directly to South Beach and appears in the South Beach territory. Roxy Riviera is an adult nightclub hostess in emerald satin, with playful confidence and a firm grasp of the rate card. Dex Valet is a suave, silver-haired valet whose dry delivery punctures Lucky’s assumptions. The optional rate-card activity compares $60 × 20 paid days with $75 × 15 paid days: $1,200 versus $1,125 before costs. This is a fictional example. Use slides 5, 18, 19 and 24 to connect it to reported rental economics and explicit sensitivities.

**Mack’s Service Workshop** is a separate room reached from Nina’s counter or the Arrivals territory. Mack Piston is the mechanic introduced in the counter comedy. His optional express-repair decision recovers two $45 contribution days at an extra $70 cost: $20 net benefit, assuming waiting demand. Use slides 8, 13, 14, 25 and 37. The workshop is accessible on foot before collecting rental keys; driving still requires the keys.

Mack’s physical counter gag is comic slapstick. The workshop gives him a continuing role beyond the gag. His expertise, like Val’s, matters to the operation. Roxy and Dex expand the adult comedy without changing the core chapter requirements.

## Recording controls

- **F / Cinema** enlarges the 16:9 scene and puts response controls beneath the picture.
- **Clean take / Tab** hides controls and fills the recording frame with the world and speech bubble. Press Tab again while the canvas has focus, or F to exit.
- **1–9** chooses a numbered dialogue response. There is no automatic dialogue timer.
- **Why it matters for HTZ** opens a short scene briefing: the joke, the business mechanism, the evidentiary boundary, and direct slide links.
- In the enlarged slide viewer, **left/right arrows** move through the selected slides. **C** or **Clean slide** hides the toolbar. Move the pointer to the top to recover the controls, or press C again.
- Use the music controls before entering Cinema. Music ducks during dialogue/research and pauses in a hidden tab. The new workshop uses Full-Size Funk; Ocean Drive uses Neon Mileage.

Lucky’s name remains green. Women’s names use magenta; other NPC voices use blue. Character labels are placed outside protected face areas. Speech remains large enough for a desktop recording.

## Research continuity

Every playable location has a curated briefing. The Palantir scene distinguishes recorded events from inference and links to the disclosed operating workflow. The autonomous scene separates Tesla Cybercab, Avis–Waymo and Hertz/Oro–Uber–Lucid–Nuro. The Matchmaker separates disclosed data practices from an unproven Google or Palantir resale deal. The final bill connects operating improvement to cash, debt and dilution.

V6 retains all 60 original slide numbers so existing NPC links remain valid. Slide 2 now uses the September 23, 2026 close: HTZ $1.74; FMP market cap $549.37M; 52-week range $1.45–$8.18; 2026/2027 annual revenue consensus $9.192B/$9.558B; daily RSI(14) 34.6. Price zones are interpretations. The separately dated valuation illustration on slide 53 is retained with its mixed-date qualification.

The PPTX retains native tables, ten editable charts and their embedded workbooks. V6 PDF and 1920×1080 slide images provide matching visual reference copies. Eight original chart workbooks are preserved byte-for-byte; the two market charts use refreshed FMP literal snapshots. Raw provider responses and validation records are in `source/`.

## Art provenance and production limits

The two new backgrounds were created with built-in image generation. Exact prompts and local source paths are recorded in `source/director_art_prompts.json`. Final PNGs are `game/world/assets/ocean_drive_v1.png` and `service_workshop_v1.png`; published WebP copies preserve their pixels losslessly.

The game remains a playable illustrated adventure prototype: layered walking and idle animation, live speech clouds, activities, source-linked research and music. Some major story payoffs still use the approved storyboard panels. Recorded voices and fully animated cinematic versions of those boards remain future production work.