The heat wins. Everyone knows it before anyone says it.
So the machine builds the sanctuaries — undersea cities, deep-ground arcologies, stations already turning in orbit — and the paradise inside them is real. Behind the gates, extinct animals are grazing. A cure is cultivated from a vine that no longer exists in soil.
Every berth is priced by the same score that priced everything else. The good are simply waved aboard. The rest go inside.
The game is back, and this time it is honest. Rebuilt, audited, corrected. Choose better this time, or defend what you chose. The changed may board. Some of them genuinely are.
Then a boarding officer starts comparing the results to the manifests — and finds people who passed crossed off the saved list, and people who never played waved through the gate.
The game is finally true. The list is not.