[Chapter V, continued]
>e
Abandoned Park
In contrast with the parks in the more savory parts of town, this is a bit of patchy grass where local dogs occasionally come out to do their business. A granite war memorial is fixed at the center, which is why tourist maps optimistically call the place Monument Green. But the memorial is only moderately monumental and the grass hardly green at all.We step on a twig before we back away again.
It is a place that might have been developed long ago; only it is known that there are remains of Roman settlement here, and there is a risk that digging out the foundations would turn up some of those ruins, exposing a large number of Latin-language objects to the light of day. To prevent this catastrophe the whole area has been placed off limits to development.
We can go southeast and west to Tall Street from here.
Ooh, there are ruins here? Wonder if we can find any relics!
>dig
There does seem to be something metal just under the surface. A bit of scrabbling at the dirt is enough to excavate it: a dog, made of metal, which might be almost any age.
…I was not expecting that to work.
>x dog
A small, heavy metal figurine representing a watchdog. He looks ferocious, on the verge of attacking. The teeth are especially savage.
Illustrating the ancient Latin maxim of cave canem, I guess? We probably can’t do anything homonym-related with this, but I wonder if we can perform a mirror-assisted apotheosis, here? Let’s zoom over to Roget’s Close real quick:
>put dog on pedestal
We put the dog on the pedestal.
The mirror rotates in leisurely fashion, and when it is done there is a god.
A small, heavy metal figurine representing some pagan deity. He carries a bow and quiver, and looks prepared to use them.
Aww, that’s a little underwhelming, but I guess the heavens would get crowded real quick if we could get a real god from any dog. Or maybe instead of a little Monopoly-figure, we’d need to get a majestic St. Bernard or something…
Back to the park:
>x memorial
It’s a curious thing: it stands taller than a person and yet seems almost embarrassed and self-effacing. The lettering is cut quite small, and the names thereon are tightly spaced. Since 1829 there have been only thirty-five officially sanctioned surnames on the island, which means that, for reasons of space, the names have been truncated to numbers, and the result is a list that looks almost like a table of Biblical quotations: John 31, Mark 12, Paul 29.
The reason for all this compactness is that the memorial is dedicated to the dead of all wars. Deaths from the War of Secession and the Civil Dispute of Standardization, losses from islanders volunteering in the French Foreign Legion, and the hefty cost of World Wars I and II, all are crammed into the upper left corner, leaving room for a long and bloody future.
On the war memorial is a poppy.
>x poppy
Not a real, fresh poppy, but a construct of bright red fabric with a black heart.
Well that’s a disturbing amount of depersonalization, but it’s unsurprising that the mania for standardization is impacting the citizenry.
The poppy has been a symbol of war remembrance since World War I, due to a resonant bit of war-propaganda.
We yoink it – we’re not one to hold the memory of the dead especially sacred, and maybe we’ll eventually be able to turn it into a puppy? Without an abstraction-reifier and an attached “gevalt”, we sadly can’t turn it into an “oy”.
There’s something more productive here:
>x twig
Nine or ten inches long, very thin and somewhat flexible. There are no leaves left on it.
>take it
We take the twig.
>remove t from twig
We reset the device to t. With a distinct whiff of the faintest whiff of shampoo, the twig turns into a wig. A surprisingly realistic wig, cut to about the shoulder. It looks like our hair, but a good bit longer.
Might help with the photo-based impersonation to come?
>wear wig
We settle the wig on our head and adjust our hair underneath.
At any rate, now we’re doubly-incognito.
>se
Bus Station
A currently-desolate depot from which buses run seasonally to Maiana, the island’s other major town. The old station building is a low, rectilinear edifice from the 60s, all pebbled concrete and sheet glass, but it’s shut, leaving accessible only a series of empty bus bays and a wall-mounted schedule. The public convenience to the east is the only thing open, while the area to the northwest is open parkland.A dove flutters from one surface to another, occasionally stopping to stare at us.
A shed, rather ramshackle and unlikely, sits on the pavement, where it ought to be in the way of incoming buses.
You have a fleeting thought of leaving your family for the last time.
>remember family
Bus Stop
Your suitcase was next to your leg. It was nearly three in the morning. There were thirty more minutes before the bus would take you to San Francisco. Your mother would have warned you not to be in a place like that alone so late at night, but it didn’t feel, then, like anything that could happen to you would be worse than your mother’s behavior and her anger.Then we’re back in the present.
Having spent some time in bus terminals in the wee small hours, they can definitely get edgy, so yet more confirmation Andra’s parental situation wasn’t the best.
>x building
It’s the most pathetic thing imaginable: the future, as imagined by the past. No one is in there at the moment.
>x bays
There are three bays, though it’s rare for more than one to be in use at a time unless a chartered bus service is running on behalf of tourists or the schools.
>x schedule
The schedule is an intricate affair, and the deciphering of the various letter-codes and footnotes was actually a subject of study in my grade school. The buses run every sixty-two minutes during daylight in the winter, every forty-three minutes in summer, with every third bus running as an express without stops if the passengers of this bus do not vote otherwise.
During the run of the school year there is an extra inbound bus in the morning and outward in the afternoon; contrariwise the bus is on half-schedule Sundays and holidays, except major patriotic holidays when there is no bus at all.
Like today.
Guess the boat really is the only way out of here.
>x dove
It is pure white, probably a refugee from a group released at a wedding. People do occasionally get married on Serial Comma Day.
We can’t swap the dove for a doe due to that pesky restriction on creating life – it applies even when we’re starting out with a living animal, turns out.
>x shed
Sheds like this are typically cheap and very very temporary housing for the homeless. The policy of the Bureau is that no one is allowed to beg, and punishments for begging and homelessness are often quite stiff, so there is nothing in the way of an established shelter on the island and little recourse for those who might need it.
Atlantis is a rich society, but we’ve been told several times that land prices are high, and I’m guessing the overall demand for unskilled labor is generally low given how the economy runs on word-tech – I’m guessing there’s actually a significant number of houseless folks, so this is yet another inhumane set of policies.
Anyway it seems weird that the shed is just blocking the street, so I’m guessing it’s not usually here:
>put monocle on
(first taking the monocle)
Everything turns computer-monitor green when viewed through our right eye. And staring fixedly at anything will turn up its authenticity status.>x shed
Sheds like this are typically cheap and very very temporary housing for the homeless. The policy of the Bureau is that no one is allowed to beg, and punishments for begging and homelessness are often quite stiff, so there is nothing in the way of an established shelter on the island and little recourse for those who might need it.
There is a dismissive blatt from the monocle, and transposed over the shed is a faint, greenish image of a shred.
Ah, looks like maybe someone put this up when they needed a place to crash, and didn’t have any gel handy to break it back down? Might as well grab it in case we need something like this later.
>put gel on shed
We dip out a pea-sized quantity of gel and rub it gently onto the shed. With an audible SPLORT, the shed becomes a shred. Just a torn rag-end of cloth. It is white and blue, and bears every evidence of having been part of an obligatory-service uniform.
>take shred
We take the shred.
“Obligatory-service” sounds like forced work, so perhaps the person who used the shred for shelter was an escapee of some kind?
We’re almost at the dead-drop, now:
>e
Public Convenience
There are just the two toilet stalls and a couple of sinks, but the place has been kept up reasonably well, if one doesn’t count the graffiti.A soap dispenser hangs beside the mirror.
About knee-height in one of the stalls is a hole that runs right through the wall between the men’s and women’s restrooms. It’s here that you and Brock and Slango usually leave things for one another.
A faint smell of lavender lingers in the air.
I have a bit of restroom-related PTSD from my previous Let’s Play, but this place seems safe enough – though that lavender scent is a tell-tale sign Restoration Gel has been used, so we should keep an eye out for anything out of place.
>x stall
It is the usual beige metal dividers, the usual topical graffiti.
>x graffiti
We glance over the range of messages from past occupants and notice…
Some wag has drawn an arrow pointing to the toilet and written beside it: P-REMOVER.
>x graffiti
We glance over the range of messages from past occupants and notice…
There was a young lady from France
Who was wearing a plain pair of pants
'Til a linguistical gent
With indecent intent
Left the girl crawling with ants.
I uh don’t think this is the message Brock left us.
>x dispenser
It’s the kind where a squeeze will dispense new soap into the sink.
>get soap
We give the dispenser a squeeze. It deposits some soap in the sink – just viscous enough not to drain away instantly.
>x soap
Clear fluid for washing up with.
Handy as is, and we could make something of this:
>remove o from soap
We reset the device to o. With a distinct whiff of pine resin, the soap turns into some sap. Sticky and yellow-colored goo from a tree, rather than “sap” as in a person. But considering it comes from a dispenser, that was probably inevitable.
>take sap
The sap is too fluid and sticky to pick up easily.
>put sap in mug
The sap sticks to the bottom of the sink.
Oh, I guess that makes sense.
>put gel on sap
We just touch a coated fingertip of gel to the sap. With an audible SPLORT, the sap becomes some soap.
>put soap in mug
The soap sticks to the bottom of the sink.
Come on, is soap really that sticky? At least there’s a third way:
>remove a from soap
We reset the device to a. With a distinct whiff of stale wine, the soap turns into a sop. A hunk of bread dipped in something red-brown.
>take it
We acquire the sop.
I’m not sure that was worth it, but there we are.
>x hole
It’s too small to get a good look through, really, and usually cluttered with junk.
In the hole in the wall is some ash.
“Ash”, you say?
>x ash
It’s fine grey-white powder, and a fair quantity of it: too much to have come from a cigarette or two.
The monocle fails to make any sound or response at all, but no green image forms revealing the true nature of the ash.
That’s a bit of a giveaway, as if we needed more of a cue.
>put gel on ash
We just touch a coated fingertip of gel to the ash. With an audible SPLORT, the ash becomes some trash. Most of it’s junk: sweet wrappers, tissues, bus tickets. But there’s also, suggestively, an appointment card for Arbot Maps & Antiques.
[Your score has gone up by three points and is now forty-one.]
As the kids say, BOOM.
>x card
It’s a card from Arbot Maps & Antiques: FINE GOODS BY APPOINTMENT ONLY. The time scribbled at the bottom is 9 AM this morning. Looks like Brock’s handwriting. There’s also a tiny heart drawn in the corner.
Brock is the kind of guy who’d try to figure out how to put the unicode for the kissing emoji in enciphered communications; sweet, but kind of missing the point.
Anyway it’s well into the afternoon, so it’s doubtful he’s still at this shop even if he did make the morning appointment, but at least it’s a place to start. It’s on our map – just off the street running south of the roundabout, on the way to the university.
In the meantime:
>take trash
We take the trash.
>remove t from trash
We reset the device to t. We wave the T-remover at the trash and produce a rash, severed.
Achievement accomplished: Igor Rosehip award for creating at least five body parts in one playthrough!
>x rash
A patch of skin – it looks like human skin at that – and all red and itchy.
Yay, another achievement – some might say amassing a giant heap of body parts is its own reward, but it’s nice to get some external validation for our hobbies.
[continued]