Key Locations

Each site below anchors events in Dark Recipe. Descriptions are drawn from public record, field telemetry, and open-source research; details are generalized where required for security and narrative focus.

Theodore Levin U.S. Courthouse, Detroit
Theodore Levin U.S. Courthouse, Detroit — photo courtesy U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Michigan

Theodore Levin U.S. Courthouse — Detroit, Michigan

The Art-Deco courthouse on West Fort Street has witnessed some of Detroit's most consequential federal trials. Proceedings tied to the 2009 attempted airline bombing—the so-called "underwear bomber" case—were held here, placing the building at the center of a global counter-terrorism narrative. Decades earlier, engineering and intellectual-property disputes such as the Klein windshield-wiper case highlighted how innovation and litigation often intertwine in the industrial Midwest.

In the novel, hearings within Levin Courthouse echo those histories: public on the surface, yet threaded with sealed exhibits and expert testimony on systems few jurors could truly comprehend.

Public building — federal cases cited are historical and used here for contextual grounding.

Robert J. McNamara Federal Building, Detroit
Robert J. McNamara Federal Building, Detroit — photo via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Robert J. McNamara Federal Building — Detroit, Michigan

Rising beside the riverfront, the McNamara Building houses multiple federal agencies, including the Departments of Labor, Commerce, and Homeland Security. It served as a regional coordination point during investigations that followed the courthouse proceedings, linking law enforcement, cyber-analysis units, and industrial-espionage task forces.

In Dark Recipe, the McNamara complex represents bureaucracy's hidden circuitry—the place where data from engineers, agents, and analysts converges before decisions move upward into Washington.

Referenced investigations correspond to real federal cases; specific agency offices are not enumerated.

Ronald Reagan Building, Washington D.C.
Ronald Reagan Building, Federal Triangle, Washington D.C. — photo by AgnosticPreachersKid via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Washington, D.C. — Federal Interface Zones

A mosaic of inter-agency conference rooms and subcommittee chambers rather than a single landmark. Here, policy meets technical consequence: briefings, funding approvals, and quiet rivalries among departments determine which threats gain attention and which vanish into classification.

Public buildings — no classified facilities are depicted or implied.

NCSA Building, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
NCSA Building, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign — photo by Ragib via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign — Illinois

Home to the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) and advanced machine-learning research groups, UIUC stands as one of the world's premier computing campuses. In the story, Knox visits Urbana on his way to Chicago, seeking partners and insight from researchers whose open-source architectures quietly seeded later industrial systems. It's both a literal stop and a metaphorical crossroad between academic curiosity and corporate ambition.

Public institution — research centers cited are factual; narrative use is fictionalized.

█████
CLASSIFIED
Dual-Seal Facility — Access Restricted

FAC-17 — Cyber Intelligence Research Facility 17

A classified dual-seal site referenced throughout the Field Guide. It symbolizes the blurred frontier where state security, private research, and automation technology intersect.

Fictional designation used for analytical comparison with real-world organizational structures.

Narrative Geography

How these locations connect within Dark Recipe.

  1. 1 Detroit — Legal Proceedings Midwest
    Levin Courthouse and McNamara Building anchor the federal investigation. Sealed exhibits, expert testimony, inter-agency coordination.
  2. 2 Urbana-Champaign — Research Corridor Research
    NCSA and UIUC campuses provide the open-source architectures and machine-learning foundations that seeded the compromised industrial systems.
  3. 3 Washington, D.C. — Oversight & Policy Federal
    Inter-agency briefings, funding decisions, and classification directives flow from D.C. down to the field offices in Detroit.
  4. 4 FAC-17 — The Classified Nexus Classified
    The dual-seal facility where state security, private research, and automation technology converge — and where the attack vectors originate.
Narrative Geography — Location Network
flowchart LR subgraph DETROIT["Detroit — Federal Hub"] COURT["Levin Courthouse\nLegal Proceedings"] MCN["McNamara Building\nAgency Coordination"] end subgraph ILLINOIS["Illinois — Research Corridor"] UIUC["UIUC / NCSA\nTechnical Origins"] end subgraph DC["Washington, D.C."] FED["Federal Interface\nPolicy & Oversight"] end subgraph CLASSIF["Classified"] FAC["FAC-17\nDual-Seal Facility"] end COURT --- MCN MCN -->|"intel flows to"| FED FED -->|"oversight directives"| COURT UIUC -->|"research pipeline"| FAC UIUC -.->|"open-source roots"| MCN FAC -.->|"attack vectors"| COURT classDef midwest fill:#0e2230,stroke:#4cc9f0,color:#e8eef5; classDef research fill:#0f2210,stroke:#9fe870,color:#e8eef5; classDef federal fill:#261a0f,stroke:#ff9d4d,color:#e8eef5; classDef classified fill:#221a30,stroke:#9966ff,color:#e8eef5; class COURT,MCN midwest; class UIUC research; class FED federal; class FAC classified;
"These places form the map beneath the narrative—real coordinates threaded with imagined consequences."