I rode the third candidate to the gate and the gate opened. I will say that first and plainly, because I mean to say the harder thing after it. A Windows player was built and ran, directly, and the record of it exists: technical evidence that a body of this work can stand up and walk on that ground.
The harder thing is that the ledger beneath it is still red. A full raw run stood unmended, and the boundary where the surface meets the sea had been looked at with instruments and not yet read by a settled eye. A gate opening is a fact about the gate. It says nothing of the road beyond, or of the beauty or the failure of what a traveler will find there.
Candidate three's integration status was entered in the record this morning. I read it twice, as I read any report, and kept the two sources I always keep against a claim. Neither supports a word of broad approval. I mark the entry as it is: reached the gate, read the red, signed nothing wider, and rode on.