Let's Play: Counterfeit Monkey

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[Chapter VI, continued]

Maybe I’m overthinking this?

>type password

“Password incorrect.”

Well, that didn’t work, but in a sense, I’m pretty sure the password here is “password” – I just need to make it, rather than type it. We’ve already got a word hanging about from deconstructing the crossword, so we just need a pass, which shouldn’t be too tricky:

>remove i from pastis

We reset the device to i. The pastis gives way to the now-familiar pasts.

>remove t from pasts

We reset the device to t. There is a mad-scientist cackle, and the pasts turn into a pass. A Bureau of Orthography visiting pass, a very valuable commodity in these parts. Forging one is grounds for imprisonment. There is a picture on the front that looks more or less like us, though with considerably more hair.

Ah, two birds with one stone – we’ll recover that once we’re done with the password, and it plus the wig get us that much closer to satisfying the Bureau’s entry requirements.

Back upstairs we do the deed:

>turn on synthesizer

The synthesizer hums like a microwave oven for 43 seconds, then pings. Inside there is a password.

A glowing series of numbers and figures in the air, which changes and flickers now and then. Probably responding to its surroundings. It seems unstable just now.

Ah, so it matches whatever the strongest local idea of “password” happens to be – much the same thing must have happened with the code way back at the beginning.

(It occurs to me that it’d be an Atlantean security best practice to always have multiple user logins on each computer, so a simple hack like this wouldn’t cohere to a single state).

As long as we’re up here, let’s see if we can unlock the secretary’s computer in the department office:

\ >x password

Under the influence of the secretary’s computer, the password has settled down and now reads “brownishott”.

Rawr. Told you he was cool.

>type brownishott

The password field vanishes.

We can type search terms to look for data records.

…I’m not quite sure why we’re doing this, but let’s see what we can look up:

>type brown

The search turns up the following results:

Brown’s homepage: Professor Brown’s homepage describes an assortment of personal interests I very much doubt he has time to pursue (such as salsa dancing) before delving into an impenetrable description of his research aims and goals.

There aren’t any records for ALEX or ROSEHIP, for better or worse.

>type higgate

The search turns up the following results:

Higgate’s homepage: Professor Higgate’s homepage is illustrated by a picture of herself smiling enigmatically out in the university oval, followed by links for various courses she teaches, such as Interlingua and Advanced Klingon Certification. There is also a long bit praising the value of learning constructed languages, and a scanned copy of her Bureau stamp of certification to use and teach non-English tongues.

>type waterstone

The search turns up the following results:

Waterstone’s homepage: Professor Waterstone’s webpage contains his CV (long) and a list of his future speaking engagements, including one set for tomorrow on homonym shame.

That’s all I can think of to search for – maybe it’s just a bit of added color? Regardless, crime:

>x password

Under the influence of the reclamation computer, the password has settled down and now reads “4tsaj39nbtz”.

>type password

We carefully key in “4tsaj39nbtz”. The password field vanishes.

At the top of the screen is the message STATUS: REMOVING LEGAL LIMITS ON ANIMAL-CREATION.

The following options are visible on the screen:

1: RESTORE ABSTRACTION LIMITS
2: REMOVE ABSTRACTION LIMITS
3: RESTORE ANIMAL-CREATION LIMITS
4: REMOVE ANIMAL-CREATION LIMITS
5: QUIT

Oh, baby.

>type 4

The reclamation machine slides open. The computer gives a warning noise that appears to mean “If you are really sure, okay…”

>put remover in machine

We drop the letter-remover through the machine. There’s a brief flash and hum from the machine, just as though it were making a photocopy. Then a recording of a woman’s voice speaks, loudly and cheerily: LIFTING LEGAL LIMITS NOW – a point that might draw undesired attention our way if it weren’t masked by the noise outside.

The letter-remover comes out again looking exactly the same as when it went in. But it should now be able to make living creatures at need.

The reclamation machine clanks shut. The security program comes up again on screen.

[Your score has gone up by three points and is now sixty.]

Boo-yah! I’m not sure why we did this, besides the hubristic desire to attain godlike powers, but hey, it’ll sure help us get our j- and z-removing badges!

>remove j from jotter

We reset the device to j. We acquire the jotter.

With a distinct whiff of fish and sea air, the jotter turns into an otter. Sleek, black, whiskered, and somewhat out of place on dry land.

The otter is too awkward for us to carry, and half-falls, half-jumps to the floor.

I’ve taken Prof. Brown’s lecture sufficiently to heart that I turn him right back, though.

We leave, turning the peal back to a pearl as we go. Now that we can create animals, I wonder whether we can make something naughty out of a cat?

>remove o from coat

We reset the device to o. With a distinct whiff of clean animal, the coat turns into a cat. Full-grown, American, and a little stupid, as felines go.

>pet cat

It rubs itself pathetically against our hand.

Huh, this is not as fanatically pro-cat as most pieces of IF tend to be.

Anyway the potentially-naughty thing about a cat is changing its label rather than its substance – this is a family thread so I won’t spell out what I mean – so I don’t think this is a solution to our problem.

Casting our eyes through the inventory once again, I do find the members, which are nice and suggestive, though I can’t think of a transformation that would make them less risque – I can take the s off, but that doesn’t make much difference. In frustration, I turn out our wrap into a rap, as I previously threatened:

>remove w from wrap

We reset the device to w. There is a smell of anise, and the wrap turns into a rap. A pulsating ball of angry air.

The rap includes the phrase “colder than a rifle shot, restoration to the real”.

…OK that’s not bad (and another possible concealing sound, I’d guess).

>listen

The rap describes the pleasures of stealing a depluralizing tank for a joyride.
…
The rap details the singer’s dislike of suspicious Bureau men who only give trouble to guys with accents.

…

The rap describes the pleasures of a swimming pool full of Cristal.

…

The rap details the singer’s dislike of gold-diggers.

Oh right, this came out in Kanye’s pre-Nazi days.

Hmm, this is tough. Maybe we can get back into Waterstone’s office to get a hint?

>knock on door

Waterstone glares at the member. Then he picks up a marker and writes on a piece of paper, “Yes, but how to change its name to something innocent?” Having held up this sign for a minute, he crumples it and goes back to work.

If he were a cartoon there would be a thundercloud over his laptop.

The rap includes the phrase “my words hit like an anagram bullet”.

(I neglected to mention that X DOOR indicates there’s a small window in it, which is why this interaction is possible).

So that’s an indication that yes, we’re thinking on the right track with member.

(I like that bit of rap, too – anagram bullets could be quite scary!)

As I consider what to do, I de-depluralize the member, with memorable results:

>put gel on member

We squeeze out a pea-sized quantity of gel and rub it gently onto –

No, let me rephrase. We clinically and distantly apply some of the restoration gel to an innocent portion of the object in question. With an audible SPLORT, the member becomes some members.

Good catch!

I spend yet more time staring at my monster inventory and eventually come up with one more candidate – have you spotted it? We got it a long time ago, and it’d already been transformed once…

>remove l from clock

We reset the device to l. We pick up the clock.

With a distinct whiff of something objectionable, the clock turns into a cock. It stares back at us malevolently through one eye.

The cock lets out a half-crow.

Aha! This definitely feels like the direction we need to head, given the obvious double-entendres plus the fact that we could only make this happen after solving the password puzzle. So if I understand the rules right, I should restore this back to a clock and then show it to Waterstone as an example of how you can defang a naughty word:

>put gel on cock

We squeeze out a pea-sized quantity of gel and rub it gently onto ?

No, let me rephrase. We clinically and distantly apply some of the restoration gel to an innocent portion of the object in question. With an audible SPLORT, the cock becomes a clock.

Still funny the second time.

>show clock to waterstone

Waterstone is unable to hear you through the closed door, which is presumably the purpose of closing it, so let’s try knocking instead.

Waterstone inspects the clock through his monocle a moment. Then he picks up a marker and writes on a piece of paper, “It was always a CLOCK. I need something where the original was naughty.” Having held up this sign for a minute, he crumples it and goes back to work.

Oh, oops, I got it backwards. I can make the cock look like it was always a cock via the origin paste, of course, but what transformation can I apply to that? “ok” is too abstract and removing the other letters doesn’t get me anything.

Those of you cleverer than I will have immediately figured it out, but in the event I spent a fair bit of time flailing around before the answer clicked. Some selected highlights of this interlude:

1)Turning the severed arm back to an army, and then making Amy:

We reset the device to r. With a distinct whiff of deodorant, the army turns into an Amy. She smiles at us when we look at her. She has an air of confused good will, as though she means well but isn’t quite paying attention to this plane of reality.

The Amy looks rather awkward, and clambers out of our ineffective hold onto solid ground

Eeek eeek eek, Brownie was right, gel gel gel.

  1. Learning that Waterstone does not consider “ball” to be naughty (if only we had a pluralizer!)

  2. One statement the lie cycles through is “Brock has no feelings for Andra.”

  3. Waterstone likewise does not consider “piece” to be naughty (you know, like “piece of ass”? No?)

  4. We can remove the z from the kudzu – yeah, I wandered back to the beach to see if that would jog any ideas:

We reset the device to z. With a distinct whiff of sweaty animal, the kudzu turns into a kudu. It’s a creature like an antelope, with tall, twisting horns and a little white tuft of beard.

The kudu looks at us cleverly for a moment and then bounds away.

Welp, guess he’s living his life now. And now we can do this:

>look behind bushes

Hunting behind the bushes reveals something I vaguely remember seeing when I was a child, but not noticing again since: built into the wall is what looks like a very ancient sort of shrine.

>x shrine

There’s a niche dug into the stone of the wall, above a low relief of three ladies. It’s not very good work to start with, and has been eroded by a lot of weather, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this weren’t its original location; it probably stood somewhere else and was brought here.

Huh, that’s quite interesting! I wonder…

>remove r from shrine

We reset the device to r. It won’t do any good, you see: this is an artifact of another time and language, and it has never been neutralized by authorities, so it won’t respond to English-language tools. Quite likely it’s in a language so old that it can’t be manipulated at all.

I wonder why it hasn’t been removed, or fixed; but I’d guess the reason is that very few people come this way.

Ah, that makes sense – we haven’t had many reminders of the limits of Atlantean power, so it’s arresting to be brought up short like this.

>x ladies

It looks like three ladies dancing on the surface of waves. They’re probably meant to be nymphs, if I had to guess. They have bare breasts and fluttering garments, but the carving was done by someone who has not the slightest idea how to make limbs appear under sculpted cloth, so it all looks clunky, as though they don’t have hips or legs at all, just randomly swirling skirts as their lower halves.

All the same, there’s something appealing about it.

Huh, I’m getting a bit of a Minoan vibe, maybe? Anyway this just seems like a bit of color, but an intriguing one.

  1. We can also get our k-removal badge:

>remove s from stick

We reset the device to s. With a distinct whiff of summer heat, the stick turns into a tick. A flat, black, blood-sucking insect. It’s also tiny, smaller than a match. Considering its size I’d be surprised if we manage to hold on to it for two minutes without losing it.

That is, of course, if it doesn’t attach to our skin and give us Lyme disease.

>remove k from tick

We reset the device to k. There is a mauve cloud, and the tick turns into a tic. It is manifested as a bit of reflective mylar that flashes and changes shape spasmodically. I can’t look at it without wanting to blink and rub my eyes.

Just missing q and v, now.

  1. A letter can be made naughty:

>remove t from letter

We reset the device to t. We pick up the letter.

There is a flash of red light, and the letter turns into a leer. It is a good-humored, slightly-drunk kind of leer, but it’s unmistakable.

But this likewise seems to hit a linguistic dead end.

  1. I am a moron. I’ve just been thinking about letter-removal as a possible transformation for the cock and/or member, but of course our palette has expanded over the course of the last few sessions – given the nature of the problem, the homonym paddle is no help, but we can synthesize our way out of this. Let’s check that inventory again:

We are equipped with the following essentials: a backpack, a flash drive, your K-remover (upgraded to handle animates and abstracts), a monocle, some Origin Paste, a pan (really the smuggled plans in disguise), a roll, and a tub of restoration gel.

We are also carrying some ale, an army, some asparagus, a ball, a banana, a band, a pair of Britishizing goggles, a cat, a cock, a cross, a crumpled cocktail napkin, a draft document, a funnel, a god, Guidebook to Anglophone Atlantis, a heel, History of the Standards Revolution, a honey pastry triangle, a jigsaw, a jotter, Journal of Third-World Economics, a keycard (which opens the small door), a leaflet, a leer, a lie, Lives of the Lexicographers, a map of Slangovia, a May, a member, a mug, some oil, a password, a pearl, pi, a pocket-bread, a poppy, a rap, a rash, a ring (which opens the sturdy iron gate), a shopping bag, a shred, a shrimp tail, a shuttle, a sill, a silver platter, a sin, a sop, Studies in Primary Language Acquisition, a stuffed octopus, a tic, some toes, a watch, a wig, and some yogurt.

Of that collection, the asparagus, the flash drive, the funnel, the heel, the leaflet, the May, the mug, the Origin Paste, the roll, the stuffed octopus, the toes, the tub of restoration gel, and the watch are packed away in the backpack, which is gaping wide open so everyone can see what’s inside.

The ball is in the shopping bag.

We are wearing the ring (which opens the sturdy iron gate), the monocle, the wig, and the backpack.

There it is!

>put cock in synthesizer

We put the cock into the synthesizer.

The cock makes some attempts to flutter out of the synthesizer, but doesn’t get much lift and gives up for the moment.

>put poppy in synthesizer

We put the poppy into the synthesizer.

>turn on synthesizer

The synthesizer hums like a microwave oven for 43 seconds, then pings. Inside there is some poppycock.

A great deal of drivel. Or, no: more the concept of drivel, as regarded by a previous age.

Curiously, therefore, the concept manifests itself as a little floaty cloud in which a flustered gent with Victorian mustaches, verging on apoplexy.

…you know, this is clearly a much greater crime against God and nature than the risk that a chicken might make someone think about a penis, but whatever, I’m ready to be done here so we yoink the little guy.

>show poppycock

Waterstone is unable to hear you through the closed door, which is presumably the purpose of closing it, so let’s try knocking instead.

Waterstone looks at the poppycock, briefly arrested by some thought. He gets a monocle like mine out of his drawer. He looks through it at the poppycock, notes the poppy and the cock; grins. He gets up and comes out of his office.

“This is perfect,” he says. “One more example to put into my talk – but I really should be going – should be able to get a ride from my wife – if I leave now – Here, you can have this if it interests you. I won’t have time to use it.” He sets an invitation down on the desk.

“Come back and talk to me again later,” he adds. “We can discuss your goals as a student. And now I really have to go – should have gone hours ago.” (There, see: he can be a nice man. More or less.)

He locks his door again and goes out. I think he is actually humming something.

Whatever we do next:

Before we can do anything, Waterstone pops his head back in. “What you did there – not strictly within the rules. But I admire, shall we say, Realpolitik. You’ll go far. Ignore Brown, but you’d probably do that anyway. Never talk to Higgate at all. I will see you later.”

And he pops back out.

That’s a nice stinger, but all I can think is: isn’t Realpolitik German?

>take invitation

We get the invitation.

“STUFF! POPPYCOCK!” The imaginary man is beet red and his mustaches quiver.

[Your score has gone up by ten points and is now seventy.]

Jesus! That’s a good amount of points, but we should really get gel on that poppycock stat – oh, and get the pass back out of the password.

…This has been a big session, but I think we’ve got everything we need for the Bureau raid, so I can’t help testing if we’re ready. But as we exit to the Oval:

There are a couple of officers lounging by the university gate. We won’t be able to go by without being seen.

As I’m taking this in, you notice hubbub behind us. We move out of the way as more officers escort Professor Higgate from the building.

“There’s been a mistake,” Higgate is saying coolly. “That conversation was conducted under a special license for research in constructed languages. I can produce a copy ?”

The officer leading her says, “We’re acting on information.” He gives a quick, revealing glance in the direction of Professor Brown, who is also coming out of the building.

Uh oh, let’s get out of here!

>nw

We might not want to attract attention if we can help it.

“ARRANT NONSENSE,” shouts the angry poppycock-gentleman.

And that juxtaposition of scripted plus systemic content made me laugh very hard. Yes, good thing we’re being so sneaky!

“Alex Rosehip,” says the officer with Higgate. The back of my neck prickles. “What can you tell me about his constructed language?”

Higgate stops moving forward and the officers stop with her. “It really is a masterpiece – the root words are all based on resources common in the tropics. Dirt and mud are highly productive terms, as are many common pests. The syllables are consonant-dense but still relatively easy to pronounce. In my view, it’s the most credible proposal ever put forward in utopian linguistics.”

The officer smiles faintly. “Isn’t that a bit like ‘the world’s most credible proposal for a perpetual motion engine’?”

I feel bad for Higgate, but let’s try to lower our profile.

>put gel on poppycock
put gel on poppycock
We dip out a pea-sized quantity of gel and rub it gently onto the poppycock. With an audible SPLORT, the poppycock becomes a cock and a poppy.

The rap describes the pleasures of driving a Chevy Impala down the coast road to Maiana.

Oh, crap, I forgot I had the rap going too!

“Whether it works or not, I am sure it’s not intended as an attack on the Anglophone efficacy,” Higgate says. “Alex has a fine mind but very little gumption. And he loves Atlantis.”

“As far as you’re aware,” the officer replies.

“Obviously,” Higgate snaps. “I can only tell you what I know of Alex from five years of close supervision.”

The officers look at one another, then back at her. “We’re going to need to continue this conversation in depth.”

A stricken expression crosses Higgate’s face.

Oof, we might have one more rescue op to carry out tonight, huh?

>z

Time crawls by. We’re looking as harmless and inattentive as humanly possible.

The cock lets out a half-crow.

YOU’RE STILL MAKING NOISE TOO?

“I’d like to make a call,” Higgate says.

“Not possible,” says the man at her elbow.

“I assert my right to a friendly witness,” she says firmly. They ignore her.

The officers sweep Higgate away into a windowless van. “Mobile Conversation Unit,” says the side of the van in bright cheery letters. “The Bureau Is Listening to YOU!”

The van pulls away into traffic. Brown strolls away in the other direction, not meeting anyone’s eye. It’s not easy getting tenure around here.

A brutal scene of an authoritarian regime disappearing an academic, good thing that doesn’t happen in America!

(Well, at least when it happens here there isn’t rapping, clucking, and enraged Brits shouting, typically).

I go to Brown’s office to confront him for being an informer – which is likely a bad idea, since it might prompt him to take a closer look at us and realize he’s got even more valuable information to sell to the Bureau – but luckily for both of us, he’s nowhere around:

>sw

The whole area is likely under inspection after Brown’s little Judas act back there. Who knew he had it in him? Is he seriously expecting to get her position?

It’s now sunset, by the way. It’s definitely getting to be time to finish all this. We make our way to Tall Street, just outside the Bureau, and things have changed with the time:

>Tall Street

Tall Street is full of families, some reaching as far as the old park at the east end of the street.

They’re gathered around a hanging cardboard figure in front of the Bureau of Orthography. The children, and a few of the adults, are taking turns hitting it with sticks, hoping for a shower of comma-shaped candy. This is a common holiday activity, but from the disgruntled comments and the petulant expressions of the children, it has already been going on longer than is strictly fun.

Another child takes a whack at the hanging figure. She bounces away from the blow, but does not break.

Ah yes, the classic birthday-party activity of hitting a “hanging cardboard figure” – these people are so pathetic they’re threatened by a piñata.

>x figure

The figure is made of cardboard and papier-mâché, designed for children to hit with sticks until candy and treats fall out: it’s what would be called a piñata, if that weren’t a dangerous loan word.

This particular one is made in the shape of Atlantida. She wears Bureau blue and a surreal smile and her eyes have been painted on wrong.

Anyway, this is nothing to do with us:

>s

The Bureau entrance is temporarily blocked by all the excited families on the stairs, trying to destroy the cardboard figure of Atlantida.

Among a general rumble of assent, one of the fathers gives Atlantida a hard smack with a baseball bat. She doesn’t crack.

Well, couldn’t hurt to get some aggression out of our system right now. We have a surfeit of potential weapons in our inventory now, let’s see which we pick:

>hit figure

(with the sill)
It’s not sporting to strike the figure unless we are blindfolded; it’s part of the rules. If no official blindfold is forthcoming, we might be able to make do by wearing some appropriate strip of cloth.

The latest child’s attack swings wide of the figure.

That’s easily solved:

>wear swatch

We gently remove the monocle.

We pull off the wig and smoothe down our hair.

We tie the swatch over our eyes. To be honest, it only partially obscures our vision; we still have a pretty good idea where everything is.

The next child doesn’t seem to have been properly blindfolded and connects with surprising dexterity and sureness, but the thing doesn’t break.

>hit figure

(with the sill)
We take a good swing with the sill and connect, finally, with the hanging Atlantida figure.

There is a resounding crack!

The crowd roars with approval, and dozens of small bodies surge around us so that I almost lose our balance. We push our swatch up out of our way.

The ground is covered with glitter and candy and confetti; the Atlantida has broken open at the torso.

The children gather their heaps of candy and a few scoops of glittery confetti as well, but eventually trickle away again with their parents, returning through the park or down side streets or to their cars.

[Your score has gone up by three points and is now seventy-three.]

We readjust our look – taking off the blindfold, putting the wig back on – as the fireworks go off:

A silver rocket shoots up into the sky and bursts into a dozen tiny pinwheels like floating silver asterisks.

…

Four red jets of fire appear over the old city turret. They shape into a cloud of red smoke, curling into very plausible quotation marks before dissipating.

>x confetti

Blue, white, and silver glittery confetti is all over the place. The individual bits look like punctuation marks, commas and periods and the odd hash sign or ampersand.

This will make for a great visual in the eventual prestige-TV miniseries adaptation!

We go in and make our way to the checkpoint:

>s

The cat would probably give us away if we carried it around. Best take care of that first.

The sky is temporarily very quiet.

Good point. We gel the cat, and take the opportunity to stash everything we’ve got in the backpack and close it, too. That lets us go back into the Antechamber, where we can review the notice:

>x notice

Please note that those wishing to enter must have a PASS suitable for visitors, which must include an UP TO DATE photograph closely resembling the subject. Passes that do not look like their possessors will be rejected.

Visitors will also need an additional proof of their business in the Bureau, such as a letter of invitation from a Bureau authority.

All credentials will be subject to inspection with an authentication scope.

Anyone attempting to enter the Bureau with a falsified pass or lack of proper credentials may be subject to FINES and INDEFINITE DETENTION.

I think we’re all good there, right?

>e

We show our pass to the secretary.

Thoughtfully the secretary peers through the Regulation Authentication Scope at the wig, then frowns. “I hope that came with a money-back guarantee!” she remarks.

That is, that’s what would have happened if we had done something so foolish. Shall we suppose we didn’t? >>

Ooops, rookie error! Let’s back up (though if we let the death stand, we learn that 73 points makes us a “Subversive Element”) – this time we paste up the wig and the pass too, for good measure. This time:

>e

We show our pass to the secretary.

The secretary raises her Authentication Scope to look at the pass. There is a moment of silence. The scope does nothing.

“That will do,” the secretary says of our pass. Then she inspects the invitation with the monocle. “Most of the visits were earlier in the day,” she says. “Quite a fracas there was this morning.”

“The invitation doesn’t state a particular time,” we say.

She deflates momentarily and goes back to inspecting. “There’s another problem. This invitation is for Professor Waterstone. They’re watermarked individually to avoid fraud. You’re not Professor Waterstone.”

“He sent me to do some research in his place. I’m a student of his.”

She frowns. “Invitations to inspect highly secure machinery are not transferrable,” she says. “And how should I know whether you stole it?”

Gulp. I’m not sure what to do here, but whatever I type results in “I’m handling this,” which I think means Alex has an idea. Sure enough, if I try waiting a couple of times:

Sure, hang in there. I’m pretty sure that what we need here is to act as much like Professor Waterstone himself as humanly possible.

“Professor Waterstone is a busy man,” I say. “If you want me to tell him you wouldn’t cooperate, I’m just as happy not to work on Serial Comma Day. But if DCL wants his endorsement or advice, they’ll have to work within his schedule. If you are going to turn me away, however, I would like the opportunity to speak with your manager.”

The secretary scowls. “Fine. I’ll contact Waterstone.” She places a call – on speakerphone, no less – glaring all the time.

“Waterstone here,” says the phone. There’s background traffic noise. Waterstone must be on the road already. Figures he would have a car phone. Most people aren’t allowed, here.

“I have a student here attempting to use your invitation to enter the Bureau,” says the secretary. “Was it stolen?”

“What? Oh that. No.”

“You’re saying you gave your invitation away.”

“Yes I did,” says Waterstone. “And I have been a research partner to DCL since before you were born.”

“Sir, you are aware that this is highly irregular!”

The secretary is still talking. “You personally vouch for this student? You know her well and are sure of her trustworthiness?”

“Known her for years,” lies Waterstone, annoyed. There’s a click as he hangs up.

“What a delightful man,” remarks the secretary.

He’s growing on me, to be honest.

She looks over our other visible possessions (the ale, the sill, and the oil) and deems them acceptable. She makes us sign a book, for which we use a signature of your invention. Finally: "Go in, descend to the basement, and present yourself at the secure section downstairs. Be advised you will be under video surveillance as you approach. Any attempts to modify or steal Bureau property, to gain access to rooms to which you have not been expressly invited, to eavesdrop on conversations of Bureau employees, or to leave objects of your own behind in the Bureau, may result in your arrest and prosecution.

“Have a nice day!”

[Your score has gone up by five points and is now seventy-eight.]

That collection of items still seems kinda suspicious to me, but I guess in the world of no-holds-barred linguistic research they might not be too out of the ordinary.

Anyway, we’re in!

Gulp.

Score:

You have earned 78 points:
3 points for lifting animate limits on the letter-remover
10 points for acquiring a sought-after invitation
3 points for breaking the Spirit of Atlantis (in cardboard form)
5 points for passing the secretarial test
1 point for using the letter-remover
3 points for passing through the temporary barrier
3 points for winning the gel
1 point for using the gel
3 points for opening the locker
3 points for retrieving the backpack
1 point for using the spinner
3 points for fueling our car
3 points for repairing our car
5 points for traveling by car
3 points for winning a barroom bet
3 points for arranging contact with Slango through his lady friend
5 points for meeting Slango
1 point for using the Origin Paste
3 points for visiting the dead drop
1 point for getting a product of the homonym paddle
3 points for reading a legend
3 points for lifting abstraction limits on the letter-remover
3 points for gaining access to the synthesizer
2 points for returning a library book to its proper home
1 point for using the synthesizer
3 points for acquiring a keycard

You have not yet removed q, or v from anything.

(Extraneous serial comma here, but I suppose it is Serial Comma day).

The achievements you have accomplished so far include:

Finished tutorial mode
Igor Rosehip award for creating at least five body parts in one playthrough

>goals

Here’s what we think we need to do:
Find Brock

No “Rescue Higgate”? Cold.

Inventory:

We are equipped with the following essentials: a backpack, a flash drive, your K-remover (upgraded to handle animates and abstracts), a monocle, some Origin Paste, a pan (really the smuggled plans in disguise), a roll, and a tub of restoration gel.

We are also carrying some ale, an army, some asparagus, a ball, a banana, a band, a pair of Britishizing goggles, a clock, a coat, a cross, a crumpled cocktail napkin, a draft document, a funnel, a god, Guidebook to Anglophone Atlantis, a heel, History of the Standards Revolution, a honey pastry triangle, a jigsaw, a jotter, Journal of Third-World Economics, a keycard (which opens the small door), a leaflet, a leer, a lie, Lives of the Lexicographers, a map of Slangovia, a May, a member, a mug, some oil, a pass, a pearl, pi, a pocket-bread, a poppy, a rash, a ring (which opens the sturdy iron gate), a shopping bag, a shred, a shrimp tail, a shuttle, a sill, a silver platter, a sin, a sop, Studies in Primary Language Acquisition, a stuffed octopus, a swatch, a tic, some toes, a wig, a word, a wrap, and some yogurt.

Everything we carry is in the backpack except the ale, the oil, the pass, the ring (which opens the sturdy iron gate), the sill, and the wig. The backpack is closed for greater concealment.

The ball is in the shopping bag.

We are wearing the ring (which opens the sturdy iron gate), the wig, and the backpack.

Transcript:

CM session 6 transcript.txt (258.2 KB)

Next: the belly of the beast.

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Another famous conlang—and another one with somewhat utopian ideals behind it, though rather than achieving world peace, this one wanted to remove all ambiguity from language and thus make people better thinkers and communicators. How well they succeeded is up for debate, but it’s a fascinating experiment all the same!

Yep! Esperanto and Volapük are two competing attempts to make a language everyone in the world can speak, with a bit of a rivalry between them; Esperanto is very Romance-centric and Volapük very Germanic-centric, and Esperanto took an early lead and never really lost it again. Now Volapük is mostly mocked (somewhat unfairly) for sounding awful and being incomprehensible (e.g. volapukaĵo means “gibberish” in Esperanto), but asking speakers of every world language to pronounce the German Ü and Ö sounds (IPA /y/ and /ø/) was probably not the smartest choice.

Quenya is Tolkien’s most famous elvish language (he made a whole family of them), and Toki Pona is sort of the opposite of Lojban: a deliberate challenge to communicate using only 120-some highly-ambiguous words and very simple syntax, designed around Daoist philosophy. It’s meant to make you break down your thoughts in new ways and simplify them before speaking.

(If you want to get into conlangs, this one you can learn in like a week, and I have it on good authority there’s going to be a Spring Thing game written in it, so it’s a good place to start!)

Fukhian exists, but I know nothing more about it; Royeship I’ve never heard of and the only Google hit is the CM source, so I’m guessing that one’s fictional. Perhaps that’s what Alex is working on, given his last name?

Another hard-mode solution! The easy-mode solution is to order a screwdriver at the bar, then gel it.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense—I imagine the Bureau computers probably have something like that in place.

Hard mode solution spoiler, don’t read yet: I find it funny that this came right after making the CAT, because one possible hard mode solution is to synthesize a CAT and a MEMBER into CAMEMBERT.

The shrine is one of my favorite bits, just in how it hints at so much about the world.

I think we’ve lost a verb here?

And this is why the CLOCK becomes a BROKEN CLOCK when it hits the ground in hard mode: to rule out PEACOCK, POPPYCOCK, and various other permutations.

I want some!

HA!

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Oh, as a side note: I’m curious if Counterfeit Monkey has fixed the long-standing bug in Inform’s parser that makes it choke on serial commas (DROP APPLE, PEARL, AND PASS). It would be very ironic if it hasn’t, given Serial Comma Day!

(Dialog has the same bug, but I submitted a PR to fix that one at least. I hope Inform can fix it too someday. Though it is very funny that the system made by an Oxford lecturer can’t handle the Oxford comma!)

84

Any suggestions as to which verb would be the intended one here, and where it should go? I guess “in which is a flustered gent” would work.

85

I thought the verb here was just “mustaches”, and was delighted.

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Agreed. Let’s leave it like that.

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If that’s the intent, I think you need to rearrange the “with” part: how about “in which a flustered Victorian gent m[o]ustaches furiously, verging on apoplexy”?

My guess would have been something like “in which a flustered gent with Victorian m[o]ustaches rages and raves, verging on apoplexy”.

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For those curious, these items also have comments on their writing process.

(And no, I am not checking every item as @DeusIrae finds them. These just come to mind from having read through the code before. It’s a memorable work.)

The password

[One of the things I set out to do with the puzzle system in my previous game Savoir-Faire was to duplicate all the dull standard puzzles I was sick of seeing, but with some new twist on them that hadn’t been done before. The one that there was really no way to include, however, was the password puzzle: too many IF games use password puzzles as a form of riddle (where you have to guess on the basis of some hints) or a cheap search puzzle (where the answer is written down on a note near the computer). Never in IF does anyone follow good security protocols with strong passwords that aren’t written down.

So, I thought, what about a puzzle where people do use fairly unguessable passwords, but the whole concept of a ‘password’ is compromised by some other law of the universe?]

The rap

[Originally the rap riffed on the lyrics of the handful of songs I know at all well. The results were so painfully square that Sam Ashwell responded by schooling me with a 38K email entitled ‘A Very White Person Summarises Hip-Hop Themes’.

The results do not live up to his efforts, but you should know that he really really tried and, hey, the Sir Mixalot joke is gone.]

Amy

[The original Amy was a light Amy Winehouse reference, chosen by the expedient of typing ‘Amy’ into Google and seeing what the first match was. (Surely the most popular figure would be the one to be reified by linguistic tools.) When her namesake died suddenly, however, it felt like that was in bad taste, so I revised. This Amy is based on the actress Amy Acker, in particular her role as Winifred on Angel.

I also considered Amy Pond, but as I find her kind of annoying, I couldn’t bring myself to do it.]

And regarding this,

I agree with “in which is a flustered gent”.

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Oh, I don’t use “infodump” as a pejorative, and it’s definitely fair, I’ve known some grad students in my time (and heck, I’ve been this guy on occasion; last weekend my brother-in-law asked an innocuous question having to do with how Islam spread through the Middle East – it was Persian New Year so we were talking about the holiday – and I subjected him to a 15 minute mini-lecture on the history of Byzantium. And that’s not even one of the things I’m especially nerdy about!)

Oh, given the physical impossibility I never tried!

> kiss me
That would have worked better if you’d asked three days ago.

> kiss me
I wouldn’t have, of course.

> kiss me
It’s not that I’m not interested. I’m just… not interested.

> kiss me
It’s like this: you’re attractive, but you’re also scary. I’m not a big risk-taker, which is why I needed you in the first place.

> kiss me
Could we stop talking about this?

Yeah, Alex’s type definitely seems mousier than Andra, from what we’ve seen – I wonder if that’s part of why our mom seemed so taken aback when she barged in on us?

What about the monocle and the gel? [on the cafe food]

Oh, hadn’t thought of that!

…transposed over the honey pastry triangle is a faint,
greenish image of some baklava.

…transposed over the pocket-bread is a faint, greenish image
of a pita.

Sometimes a wrap is just a wrap, though.

If we gel up these two:

With an audible SPLORT, the honey pastry triangle becomes some baklava. Sweet and positively dripping with honey and nuts.

With an audible SPLORT, the pocket-bread becomes a pita. A round, brown pocket-bread.

These descriptions do seem a bit more delicious than the originals!

“gavagai problem”

That’s fascinating! I’ve definitely noticed the gears in my son’s brain whirling along these lines when he was littler – thinking all women were mommies and all men were daddies.

Sadly, I think the use-mention distinction would keep an E-inserter from being useful here. These are the words SHAPLY CHAIR, but the actual Shaply Chair is somewhere else entirely.

Ah yes, but the words mean that this picture is framed (literally) as depicting the Professor in his role as the Shaply Chair. If instead it depicted him in his role as a shapely chair instead…

Oh, that would be fascinating . Obra Dinn-style archaeological expedition, looking at the most interesting event of each location and piecing them together?

Yeah, and then you could do psychocontextual engineering to zero in on the exact thing you’re looking for – like, engineer a betrayal among friends at the Forum Romanum to peek at Caesar’s assassination…

I mean I did notice that they used Papyrus :slight_smile:

Ah, that’s interesting! I hadn’t heard gooseberry used in that context before, but back-porting the association makes sense.

a grad student with a long-running crush on Alex, which he’s never quite reciprocated. He’s not that into her…

Alex not wanting to date a fellow grad student but being super into an impressionable undergrad sure fits what we know of him :slight_smile:

That strikes me a more dystopian – language shorn of ambiguity and nuance would be a poorer thing. Though I suppose if it existed as a sort of trade- or technical-language sitting alongside the ones we’ve inherited, that could work (wouldn’t be good for lawyers, though!)

Color me intrigued, I’ll keep an eye out for that!

Oh, funny, I had a sense a screwdriver would be an alternate solution, but I thought that was going to be the hard-mode one since it’s subtler (similarly, I was pretty sure the member would be the hard-mode naughty object, so I’ll look at your blurry-text after I give that a shot).

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For a particular example:

  • .i separates sentences
  • xu marks what follows as a yes-or-no question
  • do means “you”
  • se swaps the X1 and X2 arguments of the following word
  • bangu means “X2 uses X1 to express X3”
  • Thus, se bangu means “X1 uses X2 to express X3”
  • la means “the thing named…”
  • Thus, se bangu la lojban means “X1 uses the thing named Lojban to express X3”
  • And, do se bangu la lojban means “you use the thing named Lojban to express X3”
  • Without an X3 supplied, it means “you use the thing named Lojban to express arbitrary things”
  • Thus, xu do se bangu la lojban means “do you use the thing named Lojban to express arbitrary things?”

That’s the simplest way to ask “do you speak Lojban?” Basically every content word (brivla) is defined in terms of a certain number of arguments (sumti), and the grammar consists of arranging the arguments in the right way that they fit into the functions.

A lot of these projects started because of something known as “the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis” (though Sapir had nothing to do with it, his student Whorf just stuck his name on it for prestige) or “strong linguistic relativism”—the idea that the language we speak confines the way we think. Which it does, in some ways! Different languages break up the color spectrum differently, for example—“red” and “pink”, and “orange” and “brown”, are separate categories in English, but “cyan” and “indigo” are both just seen as shades of blue, while in Russian they’re separate things—and people are significantly better at perceiving distinctions across category boundaries than within a category. There’s also been some fascinating work on “conceptual metaphor”, which…I’ll save that infodump for later.

Anyway, these effects are rather limited, and there’s no evidence that you can actually control how people think by controlling their language. But before that was proven, there were a lot of experiments in “can we make people think differently by engineering a language to have them think the way we want?” That’s where Orwell’s Newspeak comes from (well, that and a direct jab at Esperanto, which he hated). That’s the tradition that Lojban comes from. (And specifically, Lojban is an attempt to make a logical language that’s permissively licensed, after the previous Loglan project exploded due to copyright disputes and the original author wanting to take his ball and go home.)

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I’ve wrapped up my (first?) playthrough, but wouldn’t mind a hint on what might be the Last Lousy Point (there might be hints for this in the Invisiclues, but I didn’t see any in the main body and I don’t want to get too deep into spoiler territory trolling through the achievements yet):

So upon getting to the yacht and seeing Brock’s laptop, I of course restored a save and reconstituted the password so I could try to get into it. And it seems like it should work, except this is what I’m getting:

>x password
Under the influence of the expensive laptop, the password has settled down and now reads “2!ch_nqrx@v”.

>type 2!ch_nqrx@v
“Password incorrect.”

I’m wondering if this is a Gargoyle input error or something like that? Would appreciate a nudge on whether this is a dead end before I try to mess around with other interpreters, though!

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Regarding the password: You can’t enter any computer passwords this particular password verbatim in this game. EDIT: Actually, it should work, so this is in fact a bug. Possibly something that should be implemented. Solution: TYPE PASSWORD

Regarding the last lousy point: The most common reason players end up one point shy of the full score seems to be that they created the cord using the alternative solution.

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If it helps, there’s not (to my knowledge) actually supposed to be a Last Lousy Point—all the points come from puzzles you’re supposed to solve while playing through normally. But there’s one puzzle that’s worth one point, which has an alternate solution that doesn’t give the point, so that ends up becoming an accidental LLP.

A very broad, general hint: You get one point each time you use a letter-removing tool for the first time.

A more specific hint: There are a lot of tools in the Bureau basement. Did you try all of them?

The answer: As Angstsmurf said, I’m guessing you didn’t use the umlaut punch. It’s the only one of those tools that’s useful to you, but an alternate solution lets you beat the game without it.

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The password bug is fixed.

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Chapter VII – Has All Folks

So we were at the part of the movie where someone whispers “we’re in” as a bead of sweat trickles down their forehead – past the Bureau checkpoint, ready to find Brock and yell at him for whatever idiot idea had him… do the exact same thing we’re doing now.

Bureau Hallway
This is a long hallway with many doors leading off, the business of the bureau being varied and all-encompassing; it is for all essential purposes the chief organ of government in Atlantis, since only a few topics are brought to citizen referendum.

We can go east, west to the Antechamber, and down from here.

I’m actually intensely curious about how the referenda are chosen – it seems like it’s driven by the Bureau rather than citizen signature-gathering, and it likewise seems like there’s no written constitution or inviolate charter of rights or anything guiding the selection, but surely there are some consistent principles they apply?

Oubliettes are usually down, so let’s try east first:

>e

All-Purpose Office
There’s a front desk at which a receptionist meets with members of the public and assesses their needs; beyond that, the room is crowded with dozens of stations for the use of the All-Purpose Officers, and stretches back some distance. It looks like an old-fashioned newsroom.

Fully half the stations are empty, due to their owners being away on call somewhere on the island, but the rest are fully occupied – many of them by people who wear authentication monocles routinely.

I’m pretty sure that hanging out here is the best way to get caught in a hurry, though, so let’s duck back out, shall we? Maybe one of the other rooms will offer us better prospects.

And we’re immediately shunted back to the corridor.

>d

Bureau Basement South
We have descended into a windowless underground passage. The hallway runs north from here, and for an eerily long way – the tunnels must extend well beyond the above-ground profile of the building.

Propped in the corner are some articles that were probably meant to be used as part of the Serial Comma Day Fair, but got confiscated instead: a seer automaton and a plywood cutout depicting Atlantida.

We can go north and up to the Bureau Hallway from here.

>x cutout

It’s one of those plywood cutouts where a tourist sticks his head through and someone else takes a photo showing the tourist a funny pose. This one puts the tourist’s face on Atlantida, complete with flowing blue robes and expansive bosom.

It seems like the public has been using Atlantida as a folk figure of populist resistance, while the Bureau wants her to remain an austere authority figure, so I guess that’s why this got taken.

>x seer

It’s a robotic head inside a glass box. When turned on, it gives out fortunes. There’s an old-fashioned carnival feel about the thing, and the fact that it’s a portable size makes it a good candidate for traveling fairs.

The seer automaton is currently switched off.

This just seems creepy. Wonder if it’s plugged in?

>turn it on

The seer cranks to life, looks us up and down with painted wooden eyeballs, and in a tinny voice, says, “I predict you will become BIG. Much bigger than you were yesterday.”

Yup, that’s pretty much the one I was picturing:

image
image804×458 42.1 KB

(I actually remember thinking the video game in this movie looked really cool – it was a graphic adventure with a text parser – and tried to figure out what it was, only to be disappointed that it wasn’t real).

We can get some more fortunes:

The seer cranks to life, looks us up and down with painted wooden eyeballs, and in a tinny voice, says, “I predict you will escape.” Asthmatic whirring. “Possibly on the back of an interstellar whale.”

This might be a Hitchhiker’s Guide reference? I don’t think anything exactly like that happens in the books, but maybe it does in the game (I’ve never actually played it).

The seer cranks to life, looks us up and down with painted wooden eyeballs, and in a tinny voice, says, “I predict the Bureau won’t last past tomorrow.”

Welp, that’s why it got confiscated, then.

>n

Bureau Basement Middle
The hallway continues both north and south, flanked by doors painted immutable colors: hyacinth, celadon, chartreuse.

The cute security door at the north end is solidly shut.

An adorable video camera hangs in the left corner above the door.

Ah, another logical Atlantean security precaution – slapping some tricky adjectives in front of an object, so long as they stay connected, makes them extra resistant to traditional letter-removal tech (not that we want to try much in that line with a camera watching us).

>x cute

A thick iron door, decorated with Hello Kitty stickers. There is no handle and no access to the locking mechanism (though it is certainly locked). The door can only be activated by guards in another room, watching through a video camera.

>x camera

It has a lens, certainly, but it is also made of pink plastic and has cat ears. And it looks like it will recognize us if we approach, perhaps?

That feels like an action prompt, but let’s check out the other doors first:

>x celadon

A small plaque on the door reads “Liaison to Homeland Business Interests.” I don’t even recognize the kind of lock on this thing.

>x hyacinth

A small plaque on the door reads “Internal Security.” The hyacinth door is impervious even to N-insertion, should someone develop it.

(To prevent the door from turning into a donor, I suppose, though that wouldn’t exactly let you get through it).

>x chartreuse

A small plaque on the door reads “Overseer of Business Abroad.” I don’t even recognize the kind of lock on this thing.

Nowhere we need to be, even if we could get in.

>approach camera

The guards have apparently been instructed to allow us in, because as we approach, the door slides open.

The door seals behind us as soon as we are through.

Bureau Basement Secret Section
The heightened security on this side of the door is obvious everywhere we look. The floor is tiled in paisley tiles. The light fixtures give off pale pink light. The walls are covered in frog leather. The doors are locked with padlocks the size of handbags, locks decorated à la Louis Quinze, combination locks made of solid gold. There is not a bare noun in sight.

The cute security door at the south end is solidly shut.

The hallway runs from south (comparatively normal) to north (deeply frightening). Just west is the equipment testing room.

Actually the gold lock seems less secure than a plain vanilla one (turn gold to old, thwack with a synthesizer-made crowbar) but otherwise yeah they’re doing a good job tamping down the potential shenanigans here.

We take a second to peer around:

>x north

The hallway gets considerably stranger in that direction: you’ve only seen such places in movies. Or nightmares.

I also notice there’s an extra exit listed in the map, but it doesn’t currently avail us much:

>sw

Best to start looking for Brock where we know he went: the equipment testing room.

Fine, fine.

>w

Sensitive Equipment Testing Room
A room with no windows, no cameras, no recording equipment, and barely any furniture.

A rock sits in one corner of the room.

At the center of the room is a gleaming new T-inserter Machine. This is a state of the art device: letter removal has been well understood for decades, but insertion is much more dangerous and difficult, fraught with ambiguity.

…what kind of authoritarian regime captures a dangerous subversive and then just leaves him hanging around where they nabbed him? I mean sure, he’s not going anywhere by himself, but come on, this is Mickey-Mouse stuff (also: I am not a scientist but I’m pretty sure you want recording equipment in your test chambers, so you can be sure how your tests went!)

Just to confirm what we’re looking at:

>x rock

Heavy, dark, and roughly hexagonal, like a slice of basalt column.

There is a dismissive blatt from the monocle, and transposed over the rock is a faint, greenish image of Brock.

I think we called that they were going to turn him into a rock several updates ago, though the confirmation is still interesting, since it suggests that his cover was seriously blown – there’s nothing stopping them from just strapping subversives down and running through the alphabet one remover-setting at a time, of course, but since they zapped him in-situ that indicates they knew where to start.

Anyway let’s take a quick look around and get out of here.

>x inserter

Made of brushed steel, it resembles an industrial espresso machine, with a space in which to insert items. A dozen small nozzles poke into this space, and the grate beneath is ready to drain off any superfluity of T-ness. There is a tiny brass plate near the base of the machine.

>x plate

DENTAL CONSONANTS LTD – ABSOLUTELY NO PALATALS OR LABIALS – GUARANTEED

Looks fancy but now we’ve got the plans, we can build our own to mess around with out our leisure. We grab the rock, stash him in the backpack, and scarper:

>e

We better talk to Brock first and find out what happened. Let’s gel him.

Umm, really, Alex? I feel like we’ve got the broad contours of what happened, and the details can probably wait until we’re safely off-island. Still, I guess that’s how we’ve got to play this:

We dip out a pea-sized quantity of gel and rub it gently onto the rock. With an audible SPLORT, the rock becomes Brock. He looks a bit haggard to me, but I don’t think anything too horrible has happened to him. So perhaps you can stop worrying.

Brock stands, dusting himself off. He looks us up and down without expression, without any sign of recognition. “What day is it?” he asks.

“Still Serial Comma Day,” you say. “Brock, it’s me. And Alex, but I’m here.”

The waxen look melts and he grins. “Thank god. It’s harder than you’d expect being a rock.”

…was that a pun?

We could suggest we get out of here, complain about Brock’s recklessness, or rejoice that Brock is okay. Then again, we could just get to work so we can be out of here faster.

I want to complain, but honestly I’m mostly glad he seems all right.

>rejoice

“That was a lot narrower than I like,” you say. To my horror, we are tearing up a little. “I thought you might be in Cold Storage already.”

“Hey, hey. I’m here.” He puts an arm around our shoulder, hugs uncertainly.

I’d like to claim to be fine. Maybe it’s not worth it, though.

>claim to be fine

“Fine,” you say. “It’s like running in a three-legged race all day, and I don’t welcome the interference, but I’ll be fine.”

“Good.” He pauses. “New you is kind of hot, but I miss the old version.”

He knocks on the top of the T-inserter. “Nice backpack.”

He knocks on the top of the T-inserter. “First we should see whether this thing can reify abstracts.”

My response would be to suggest we get out of here, complain about Brock’s recklessness, or discover why Brock got stuck here. Or, then again, there’s always finishing the job.

…is that really the first thing we should do? And why are you knocking on the thing twice?

>discover

“How did this happen?”

“How do you think? I hung back after a demonstration earlier, trying to collect the extra information I needed, but before I could finish, they’d noticed I was missing from the group and sent someone back to look for me. And better to go inanimate than to be definitely caught in human form.”

He eyes the member. “Oh for a homonym paddle.”

I’d like to suggest we get out of here or complain about Brock’s recklessness. Or, then again, there’s always finishing the job.

Wait, he zapped himself? Good Lord, Brock, you are not covering yourself with glory here.

>suggest

“You’ve been a lump of igneous all day,” you say. “It’s getting dark out there. If we don’t get out now, we’re going to get caught by some janitor with a privative affixer.”

“I didn’t have time to run the tests I wanted to run on the T-inserter. It’ll take three minutes and then we can go. We need to do abstracts, animates, and a stability check.”

He runs a hand over the small nozzles. “If it can’t do abstracts, the market value is going to be a lot lower because of the limited-depth trees.”

I’d like to complain about Brock’s recklessness. Or, then again, there’s always finishing the job.

(A privative is a participle that negates a word – like the “a” in apolitical. So I guess they sometimes clean up by negating all the junk they find? Not a lot of common nouns in English have privative forms, I don’t think, but maybe Atlantis’s version of the Crying Indian PSA involved spreading the idea of acans and nonpaper).

>complain

“This was rash, even for you,” you say. “Wandering into the heart of the Bureau with no back-up and no escape plan, when we had a timed extraction to complete? You could’ve taken me and Slango down with you.”

“Sweetheart, don’t,” Brock says. “Don’t do this now. You’re not yourself.”

He pauses, listening for noises outside. Brock goes on about the importance of abstracts.

That’s not much of an excuse, and I really don’t like how he’s trying to turn this back on us, but he’s not wrong that this is hardly the time or place.

Testing the t-inserter feels insanely risky since we know multiple people are or might be on to us – Alex’s dad, his mom, the people interrogating Higgate – and if we’re trying to resell the plans, “we think it might do abstracts” seems like a better thing to share than “it definitely doesn’t do abstracts.” But what the hey, it does look like a fun toy.

It’s easy enough to figure out how we test for animates and abstracts, since we’ve been making those with the remover for a while now, but I’m not completely sure what a “stability check” is – I think stability has been mentioned a couple of times before in the context of indeterminate results (like, an inserter can potentially put a letter in multiple places, where a remover can only give one outcome). Asking him about stability doesn’t get a response, so we’ll just need to figure it out when we get there.

Figuring out an abstract to try only requires us to look at the very first item in our current inventory:

>put ale in inserter

There is a loud and satisfying pop from the machine as it turns the ale into a tale.

It begins with “once upon a time,” and the letters scroll up delicately through the air when we start to read. It weaves a narrative as follows:

Once upon a time, a money-lender was in the middle of counting a stack of copper.

“Let me help you,” said a wailing spirit. “If you are with me, I cannot fail,” replied the money-lender.

So the two of them were counting a stack of copper side by side, when they were approached by a horde of depluralized merchants traveling as one man.

The wailing spirit brought forth a sound of an avalanche and used it to defeat the horde of depluralized merchants traveling as one man, while the money-lender watched in astonishment.

Then in a single moment, the wailing spirit completed the task that the two of them had set out to do. “Why did you need me?” demanded the money-lender, feeling hurt about his lack of agency in the whole task. “Because,” replied the wailing spirit, “I am forbidden to do anything unless there is a human who wishes it. But as your will was tested and proven, the deed too became possible.”

Achievement accomplished: Propper Rosehip award for talespinning!

Hey, an achievement, and a fun little folktale, too! I like the slightly off-kilter vibe, reminds me of some of the odder vignettes in the Exalted TTRPG.

Of course, there were other options there: the T-inserter could have made two words. But it seems to be disambiguating to the tale. The question now is whether it would do so consistently or whether its behavior is underdetermined; we don’t have time for a really thorough trial set, but checking a couple more times may be indicative.

Oh, that seems like a pretty direct hint for how to do the stability check! Because instead of tale it could have made tattle.

Too bad my eyes glossed over this paragraph when I first read it

“Right. It’s good on abstracts, then,” Brock says, contemplating the tale.

He’s looking at us, but when I look back, he cuts his eyes away. “I’ve half a mind to explore a little while we’re down here just about unsupervised,” Brock says reflectively.

I glare at him.

“I know there’s no time,” he says. “But there are supposed to be all sorts of things in the Bureau sub-basement that have never seen the light of day. DCL projects that went wrong, secret government experiments, possibly a buried command center.”

I’d like to ask what buried command center he heard of. Or, then again, there’s always finishing the job.

[Your score has gone up by one point and is now seventy-nine.]

…you know, I’m guessing this isn’t our first mission where Brock has fouled things up by wandering off in the middle.

>ask about command center

“Buried command center?” you ask. “Isn’t there a pretty unsecret command center above-ground?”

“Sure. But you hear rumors that the instructions come up from the sub-basement. Their chief leader, maybe.”

He stands back, regarding the T-inserter thoughtfully. “Next it would be good to see if this thing can build animates.”

Hmm, let’s see, we’ve got a band, can we make it into an ant?

>remove d from band

We reset the device to d. We get the band.

There is a daffodil-yellow cloud, and the band turns into a ban. The abstract concept of ban has become a cartoonish picture of a depressed computer moping for its friends.

This was a famous political cartoon a year or two ago; it represents in small the Bureau’s legislation against unauthorized access to parts of the internet outside our firewall. The artist hasn’t produced any further cartoons.

He watches us with a slightly disturbing intentness in his eyes. I look away again.

>remove b from ban

We reset the device to b. The device buzzes, puzzled. It is unable to create anything recognizable called “an”.

He pauses, listening for noises outside. “If it can’t do animates, that might be down to a legal restriction, of course, rather than a technical one, but I imagine that they’d be demo’ing a fully-capable product in this context.”

Ah, too bad – articles might be too generic to create (I think the same is true of prepositions).

We currently have a lie, which was originally a lime, but that still leaves us a p short of LIMPET. As I’m considering other possibilities, I come up with a fun idea:

>put rig in machine

(first taking the rig)
There is a loud and satisfying pop from the machine as it turns the rig into a trig.

A constantly moving figure of circles, triangles, sine and cosine graphs.

It’s moving, but not technically an animate, of course.

I wasn’t sure this was going to work when I tried it:

>put roll in machine

(first taking the roll)
There is a loud and satisfying pop from the machine as it turns the roll into a troll.

Grey skin, yellow teeth, green eyes. Legs as big around as tree trunks. A pot belly, speaking of a great deal of food eaten raw.

“No problem creating creatures,” Brock says judiciously.

He pauses, listening for noises outside. “As our next trick we need to look at the stabilization performance,” Brock says. “Inserters sometimes run into trouble if there’s a case where the same base word could be expanded to multiple derivatives – for instance, if you S-inserted CREAM, it wouldn’t know whether to make CREAMS or SCREAM or SCREAMS.”

The troll gets out of the T-inserter machine.

Well, there’s something with terrifying military or terroristic implications – you could turn any hamburger joint into a bloodbath with one of these.

We immediately gel the troll, of course, and now that Brock’s explained the stabilization thing and we already know ale might be an ambiguous input, we know what the try next.

…you would think, except I misunderstand the prompt and think that for some reason the way it should work is that I’ll see the machine flicker through possibilities if I put the right object in (whereas as that hint above indicated, you need to put the same object in multiple times to see if you get a different result).

I’ll therefore cut out a lot of flailing, though there were some highlights:

>put sin in machine

There are two small pops from the machine as it turns the sin into a stint.

The flickering images represent a period of time spent in the military: a young person in a uniform, smartly waving goodbye to hazily-sketched parents; a duration of training and mostly boring patrol work; release from service, with a few mild commendations and some pocket money.

>remove s from stint

We reset the device to s. There is a distinct spearmint flavor, and the stint turns into a tint. A bright shade of blue, as though someone had watercolored that bit of air.

>put sop in machine

There is a loud and satisfying pop from the machine as it turns the sop into a stop.

A metal key pried off a musical instrument. It’s not much use by itself.

We could reverse this further into some pots to go with our pan, if we wanted.

>remove s from stop

We reset the device to s. There is a smell of anise, and the stop turns into a top. One of those painted wooden tops given to small children. The plants and animals on the side are typically Atlantean: an Atlantean miniature donkey, a squid, an olive tree, and a humble chard plant. In fact, each of these is subscribed with a word; these are, respectively, PERSISTENCE, INVENTION, FRUITFULNESS, and RESOURCE.

I finally hit on one solid idea, which is that we can get the rap back, and try to turn it into either trap or rapt, but:

>remove w from wrap

We reset the device to w. We acquire the wrap.

\The wrap gives way to the now-familiar rap.

It includes the phrase “my words hit like an anagram bullet”.

Brock touches some gel to the rap. “Just in case someone out there is listening.” With an audible SPLORT, the rap becomes a wrap.

Brock, we just made a @$%$# troll, I think we could get away with five seconds of music. (He also gels the peal, so we can’t make a petal).

>put apple in machine

There is a loud and satisfying pop from the machine as it turns the apple into an applet.

An abstract representation. An anonymous browser window appears to hover in the air, streaming a public service message about keeping letter tools out of the hands of children.

Now that’s a deep cut!

Not sure where I was going with this next one, but it was memorably gross:

>remove t from stick

We reset the device to t. With a distinct whiff of stomach acid, the stick turns into some sick. It looks like half-digested pepperoni pizza, plus miscellaneous juices.

The sick drips out of our hands.

>put sick in machine

(first taking the sick)
The sick is not the kind of thing we can just pick up and carry away.

Finally I hit on my mistake:

>put ale in machine

There are three small pops from the machine as it turns the ale into a tattle. It is non-physical, but it sounds like a waspish playground voice recounting the sins of another child.

There now: the T-inserter has constructed both tale and tattle. Not very stable, it seems. Slango will be interested to know that.

“Daddy, David says he’s going to turn my cake into caca,” whimpers a small child.

“Check,” says Brock. “And that’s all we need here. Now…” He hesitates. “One person escaping is easier than two, I suppose.”

You start to object, but I say, “Yes, you’d better return to petrified form.” You know I’m right. He’ll be easier to carry.

A little grimly, he produces his own letter-remover and repeats the B-removal that made him in the first place. Once again we’re alone in a room with a rock.

[Your score has gone up by three points and is now eighty-two.]

Phew, glad that’s done with, and now we can just saunter on out of here (after grabbing the rock, shutting up the tattle, and shoving everything back in our backpack).

>e

Bureau Basement Secret Section
The heightened security on this side of the door is obvious everywhere we look. The floor is tiled in paisley tiles. The light fixtures give off pale pink light. The walls are covered in frog leather. The doors are locked with padlocks the size of handbags, locks decorated à la Louis Quinze, combination locks made of solid gold. There is not a bare noun in sight.

The cute security door at the south end is solidly shut.

The hallway runs from south (comparatively normal) to north (deeply frightening). Just west is the equipment testing room.

“Alex.”

I can’t help it: I stop and turn. It’s too ingrained in me. And it’s my father’s voice.

Ruh roh.

[continued]

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This is one of those things that seems like its name was too carefully chosen to feel natural. It’s also removed in hard mode, iirc.

I wonder, why would a HYACINTH DONOR be any more secure than a normal DONOR? Both seem like they’d be less solid than a DOOR.

Ah, but it’s a solid gold lock, so it would turn into a solid old lock—probably still crowbar-resistant, given the materials they made things out of back then!

Honestly, I’d just take some bolt cutters to it. Pure gold is soft enough you can leave a mark in it by biting, after all! Not a good metal to make structural elements out of.

My guess on the lack of cameras is they have all their recording equipment hidden in some fancy orthographic way, to make it obvious if an outside spy tries to hide their own equipment in here. But there’s no way they don’t have this room under observation, right?

No idea why Brock was left here instead of being put in their detention center, though.

What would they do to an “Alexandra”, one must wonder?

(You can find out indirectly later in the game. They have you sit on a CHAIR and turn it into a HAIR; when you transform a container or supporter, anything in or on it gets transformed too. Which suggests that turning BROCK into a ROCK really was pre-planned!)

Palatals are sounds like the “ch” in “cheese” or the “j” in “jump”, and labials are sounds like the “p” in “pie”, the “f” in “fly”, and the “w” in “why”. Definitely not dentals, so we don’t want 'em!

Yeah, this whole sequence is pretty…on-rails, for cinematographic reasons.

I think the duplication is a bug, but part of our mission was to test the T-inserter and see how it works—if it can make abstracts, if it can make animates, how it handles ambiguity. And since we officially have permission to do that from the Bureau of Orthography, why not do it?

Ohh. Well, that explains why he was left behind, I guess? But I’d still think they’d send someone in to grab him.

That seems a bit more likely to work than toxi waste, at least?

This one has another source comment!

Here we want to suggest a timeless but suitably Atlantean fairy tale, which we assemble in pseudo-Proppian fashion. Themes hint at rampant xenophobia, problems with distribution of wealth, concerns about class and democracy, the roles of science and superstition, ambivalence towards organized religion, layers of polytheistic as well as Christian culture, superstitions about language, uncertainty about the behavior of abstract objects and beings, and other problems that presumably were emerging over the past several centuries of Atlantean history.

At the same time, the tale is generative and intentionally reveals its generative nature, rather than just being a cycling set of pre-written tales, for two reasons. One, I like some of the curious themes or idiosyncracies that arise from the automatic generation (e.g., a hero who defeats a robber… using something he himself stole; the hero gives up literacy to appease an angry demon and is rewarded with a mask of words…); two, many of the game’s abstracts do have a randomized, unstable quality and I wanted to continue that feel.

Conceptually, this passage also owes a little bit to Andrew Plotkin’s Matter of the Monster and to some blog comments from Ian Millington about generating semi-random content. It’s not, of course, a particularly elegant implementation of that concept.

I have no idea what “pseudo-Proppian fashion” is, though.

A tale-apex is a kind of value. The tale-apexes are t-defeats, t-tricks, t-escapes, t-converts.
A tale-protagonist is a kind of value. The tale-protagonists are t-fisherman, t-farmer, t-banker.
A tale-villain is a kind of value. The tale-villains are t-foreigner, t-thief, t-monster, t-multiple-creature.
A tale-helper is a kind of value. The tale-helpers are t-squid, t-ass, t-beggar, t-spirit.
A tale-gift is a kind of value. The tale-gifts are t-sword, t-dagger, t-gun, t-disguise, t-diversion, t-grace.

I don’t think we can make verbs or pronouns either, right? Only nouns.

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Likely a reference to this guy:

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Oh, I know this one! Vladimir Propp - Wikipedia. Fascinating work, though it always seemed to me that quite a bit was lost in the reduction…

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[Chapter VII, continued]

He’s wearing his ordinary work clothes, but he looks strained to the point of fracture. And someone could come out of any of these doors at any moment.

“Your mother told me about meeting your supposed girlfriend at your apartment. She was puzzled by that, but I knew what must have happened,” my father says, in a very low voice. “I deleted the record of your unauthorized synthesizer draining the power grid, which, by the way, could get me dismissed.”

We want to deny everything.

…okay, if we deleted the record we might not be totally screwed. Maybe we could get him on side?

>admit

That’s not a verb I recognize.

Come on, Alex, I don’t think we can bluff our way through this one.

>deny

“You must have me confused with someone else.”

He sighs. Not deceived even a little; weary that we tried.

Footsteps sound far away down the hall, but no one comes this way. "I didn’t tell your mother what I suspected, but when it comes out you’ve – defected – I won’t be able to keep this from her. And you’re giving up your career. Mine too, possibly; we’ll all be under suspicion, I suppose.

“It’s pointless. You could have done a great deal for the Bureau from within. I was trying to help you see that.”

I’m inclined to lay out our reasons or be comforting.

>be comforting

“It did matter to me that you tried to help,” we say. “But no one here is ever going to try my solution. I have to leave if I want to, well, to take my shot at saving the world, essentially.”

“That’s not?” He bangs his fist into the wall and pulls it away with a wince. “That’s not how it works. Jesus. Saving the world is boring and incremental and institutional. I mean, it will be for you too – if you want to do your crazy project the first thing you’re going to need to do is spend hours in meetings with NGOs.” No one speaks for a moment. The silence is almost eerie.

“So your partners in crime are, what, smugglers? Industrial saboteurs? That’s wonderful. Finally some role models.”

We could quibble or deny being a spy.

I mean he’s not wrong about the meetings, but since step one in his plan to save the world involves working for an authoritarian human-rights-violating regime, I think we’ve still got one over on him.

Again, denial doesn’t seem viable:

>quibble

“We prefer to think of it as ensuring that important technology does not remain the sole property of a restrictive hegemony,” we say.

“Okay, around here we still call that theft,” Father says. We all say nothing for a moment. “You’ve left enough traces that people will know someone came in here today.”

That’s definitely true…

shrug

We shrug. It feels like being a teenager again.

“Here’s what we’re going to do, Alex. You’re going in there–” (he points at a door to the southwest) "–and I’m going to call for backup to arrest the first person that comes out. That could be Alex, it could be whoever-else-you-are, it could be both of you in this same body.

“If it is Alex who comes back out, I can’t possibly save your university career, but we might be able to make a case for clemency.” What he means by that – oh. Yes. I understand now.

He gives us a hard shove. We’re half inside the room when we hear his last remark:

“Alex… don’t try to escape back through the Rotunda. If you really can’t come home, then head north. I’ve never seen it, but supposedly there’s an emergency exit up there.”

Then he’s gone.

Ergh. This is better than immediate apprehension, but we’ve now got a bit of a Sophie’s choice – we could send out Alex, and sounds like he’d probably avoid the worst-case scenario but would be in no position to continue his work, and would never be free of surveillance and control from the government (and his parents). We could send out Andra, but she’d be in far worse position and I doubt Alex could make it to the extraction point by himself. Or we could offer up Brock – honestly, it’s his fault we’re in this mess – but since we came here to rescue him that feels extra bitter.

But wait, where are we?

Cold Storage
Shelves on both sides of the room are full of objects on stands: objects that used to be men and women, and in a few cases even children. The stand labels preserve their original names.

A duty roster is posted prominently.

If this goes wrong, we could wind up living in here permanently. So we’d better figure whom to send out, and do it fast.

Wait, this is Cold Storage? Ugh, a spooky, terrible place to have to make this awful decision, all the more so that we apparently can tell they even do this to children.

>x roster

The roster records duty shifts once every two weeks, assigned to various people in the department, all of them very high-ranking.

“Be conscientious,” admonishes the roster. “Read each name clearly while looking at the item through a monocle. If you suspect an object of losing its original identity, contact the Curator. We have disposed of seventeen objects this year!!”

>x shelves

There’s room for more contents, to be sure.

>x labels

We pick out a name on one of them: Jon 19, born 1979, inanim 1999 on charge of attempted espionage.

>x jon

The stand labels preserve their names, and a few details such as birthdate and date of inanimation.

The nearest of the objects resolves, awkwardly, into the face of a woman. It’s hard to tell much about her, her age or her dress, from the faded image the monocle creates.

>put gel on jon

Hang on – are you sure you want to send one of these poor bastards out there? It would be cruel to get their hopes up just to have them re-arrested, not to mention that it would make my father look like a fool if he arrested a dissident who turned out to have been in storage all along. >>

Umm, no, of course I don’t want to wake up one dissident and send them out there – I want to wake up all the dissidents and send them out there. With numbers and surprise, I bet we could seize this secret command center, commandeer the Bureau’s tools and information, and finally bring down their regime.

Surprisingly, mass-uprising is not an implemented option here, though. I have another thought, at least, so let’s back out of this.

>>no

Okay then. There might be some other way.

I vote we gel Brock and send him out to my father. No, hear me out. Brock’s cover is probably not in great shape anyway. You might be able to rescue him later. And it would be a coup for my father to have a real big arrest to put on the record.

Alex, that’s a terrible idea, come on. Let me show you how it’s done:

>remove p from pearl

We reset the device to p. We acquire the pearl.

The pearl gives way to the now-familiar earl.

The earl looks at us in confusion. “OUT,” you say, pointing at the door.

I keep thinking: my father is going to look like a fool when it’s found he’s arrested a fake person; he’ll be disgraced.

I want to stop you, but you’ve got the upper hand now.

The earl backs out the door.

There’s a noise like the firing of a restoration gel rifle and the sound of the earl collapsing into a pearl. “Nice try,” shouts a voice from outside. “Next?”

…so much for cutting the Gordian Knot.

(Also I think there’s an extra space between “and” and “the” in that last paragraph there).

I guess we need to go with the least-worst choice and send someone back out to be re-arrested:

We gel the nearest of the objects, and it comes to life: a woman in her thirties or forties, at first so motionless that she looks like a statue, until she remembers that she can move.

“Thank goodness,” says the woman. “I felt like I was going to lose myself if I had to spend another minute in there. I don’t know who you are, but thank you, thank you! Is there a Bureau reprieve? Please tell me they’ve decided to let us all out!”

“No general reprieve,” you say. “Just you.”

This isn’t what I want. It’s not just unfair; it’s actually monstrous. “What were you put in for?” I ask.

“Italian,” she whispers.

“What?”

“I was learning Italian,” she says. “I wanted to read Manzoni. There was no sympathy from the officers; they thought it was an inexplicable desire. Is it daylight or night-time out there? Not that it matters. I haven’t seen either in so long.”

You gesture at the door. She looks at us once more, doubtfully, and goes.

From the corridor comes the sound of a shot being fired from a restoration gel rifle; the woman exclaiming in pain; officers gathering around her for the arrest. And she’ll be back here, I suppose, before the night is out. I suppose that allows you to tell yourself that it wasn’t a bad thing, what we just did.

A faint spell comes over you and you feel dizzy.

…well that was much crueler than I was imagining; I suppose if we’d told her the truth she might not have gone along with it, and tried to push us out first, but surely there was a kinder way to do that?

Also, huh, I wonder what that fainting spell was about?

>x me

It’s still our joint body, but it feels like you, and I’m riding along, somehow. Part of you, but alienated. Something’s wrong. I want to get out.

Hmm, that’s definitely different from what it used to be – wonder that just changed or has been that way for a while?

Nobody’s waiting for us outside anymore, but the location’s updated:

Going south through the security door isn’t an option; our only way out is north. Just west is the equipment testing room, and southwest is Cold Storage.

>n

Wonderland
The ridiculous décor continues, now so extreme that I cannot even put a name to the things around us. They might as well be extrusions from a nightmare by Dali, or by Dr. Seuss. Offices are accessed by hatchways that seem to have come from submarines, or through passages resembling the sphincter of a great whale, or up ladders decorated with human teeth.

An open archway leads to storage space east of here.

Hanging in the air at the north end of the hallway is an odor.

Curiouser and curiouser… I am going to ignore the body-horror in favor of the notably suspicious thing lingering where an egress might be:

>x odor

I can’t quite place it. There’s definitely a smell, but what is it like? Strawberries? Burning rubber? Freshly chopped chives? Every time I think I’ve pinned it, it goes again, sliding sideways to smell like something else.

>put gel on odor

You can’t actually touch the odor, seeing as it is, in fact, just a vapor in the air, a dispersion of molecules dispersed through the rest of the local atmosphere.

Blarg – I guess that’s fair enough, though I’m still quite suspicious.

>x hatchways

The name plaques identify such functions as “North-End Meeting Room” and “DCL Special Liaison,” but who knows whether the descriptions are remotely true. There is something very menacing about it all, as though one were going mad.

Yeah we’re trying to get into any of those places, so there’s only one sane option:

>e

Equipment Archive

The ceiling is mirrored, perhaps to make it harder for anyone to sneak around without being noticed among the shelves.

The equipment shelves here display an assortment of obsolete, broken, foreign, or otherwise unusual letter tools. On the equipment shelves are an accent flipper, an umlaut punch, a Catalan punt volat needle, some broken components, and some lamb granulates.

The functional area continues to the south, and the hallway is west.

Ha, this is a fun idea – of course other countries are going to have their own takes on this tech!

>x ceiling

It’s gleaming and shiny and very clean and I don’t want to look in it.

The ceiling mirror is real enough, and the monocle pings approvingly.

But laid over the reflection we can see the two of us as we used to look: you a little shorter than our current body, me taller and male and needing a shave. I’m not sure whether it makes me feel better or worse to see us like that.

Oh, interesting – does that happen anytime we look in the mirror while wearing the monocle?

>x flipper

Not an Atlantean product at all, but a machine built by the state-subsidized French company Aigu. Its sole purpose is to convert accents or remove them entirely, not a function that much applies to English words. In form, it looks like a very small spatula connected by wire to a substantial battery pack.

You’ve heard of the congrès / congres scandal. One of these was responsible.

In theory this could help us mess with the weird doors in the hallway back there, which are implemented as “ridiculous décor”, but I can’t see any immediate use for that.

>x punch

A very heavy, solid object manufactured in Stuttgart. A wire basket holds the item to be punched; two sharp metal tines descend into the basket at the moment of use.

Or this – we could turn a naive person into a naïve one, but besides getting them into the New Yorker I can’t think of what that would accomplish.

>x punt

An infinitely delicate tool designed to slip between two Ls. It has no application in English.

Someone’s going to have to explain this one to me. These last two, though, could be more promising:

>x broken

A heap of parts from old machines: cranks, gears, buttons with letters and numbers on them, delicate hoops of silver wire, knobs from which all the markers have worn away.

Maybe not. Last one:

>x lamb

They’re tiny brown beads used to make lamb-stock gravy. Perhaps they’re left-over military rations of some kind.

There is a dismissive blatt from the monocle, and transposed over the lamb granulates is a faint, greenish image of some anagram bullets.

Oh, there we are! With something to shoot these, we might be able to make something of that odor.

>put gel on lamb

You dip out a pea-sized quantity of gel and rub it gently onto the lamb granulates. With an audible SPLORT, the lamb granulates become some anagram bullets. Heavy, high-impact stuff. Anagramming requires a great deal of force to break the linguistic cohesion of the word or phrase being modified. On the other hand, it’s the one process that is routinely effective even on adjective-adhering nouns.

Jackpot! And yeah, here’s where the adjective approach becomes self-defeating – long adjectives just mean there are more letters for the anagramming process to play with.

Of course we still need a gun, but there’s one more location to explore:

>s

Display Reloading Room

This area is more or less empty. Hazard tape marks off an area of the floor to indicate that you shouldn’t stand there.

A black and white tv monitor is embedded in the wall.

There is a small black push-button on the wall.

>x tape

It’s striped yellow and red, and describes an area on the floor. Come to that, there’s an area in the ceiling immediately above the hazard tape that looks separate from the rest of the ceiling.

Huh, interesting – I’m guessing we shouldn’t stand there.

(Sadly, even with the animate restrictions removed, I can’t make a hazard ape. Come on, he’d be a great sidekick!)

>x monitor

It is showing images of the Tools Exhibit upstairs, one of the few parts of the Bureau open to the public. A man is gazing curiously at the Model T.

(I also can’t remove the v from here to get a device monitoring the status of any t in the vicinity – too bad, since v and q are the last letters I need to remove to complete the alphabet!)

The button doesn’t have a label on it, but we didn’t come this far by letting a total lack of knowledge about the consequences of our actions stop us:

>push button

A heavy clunk sounds. On the tv monitor, you see the display case black out.

Then there is a groaning of moving metal, and part of the ceiling lowers. This is, apparently, how displays are swapped out for the tools exhibit upstairs: the display platform is lowering to our level, providing access. This brings the Model T, the Etymological Reversing Chamber, and the anagramming gun down into the room.

And there we are – come to momma/poppa!

>take gun

You get the anagramming gun.

>put bullets in gun

I would not know how to do this, but you have sufficient expert skill that we’ve got the gun loaded up in no time.

Back in Wonderland:

>shoot odor

(with the anagramming gun)
The gun fires ruggedly into the odor, which shatters and then reforms as a door. It is part of the north wall, and currently closed.

[Your score has gone up by one point and is now eighty-three.]

Secret command center here we come.

>n

Oracle Project

This is nothing less than the command center for a massive propaganda campaign. Paintings of Atlantida and polling charts cover the walls, dating back to the second world war and continuing straight through to the present.

On the long table are a paperweight and an inciting fable.

You can go south to Wonderland and east from here.

>x paintings

The paintings are old, 19th-century affairs, and they show Atlantida larger than life, typically wearing blue, with a sort of French academy face and bare feet. The squid is a frequent motif in the background, as it represents inventiveness, strength, and the ability to try many things at once.

Hmm, intriguing.

>x fable

It’s a short children’s tale, with illustrations. A young boy was left an orphan in a certain village. So he went door to door around the village, but none of the families would take him in, all having some excuse: there were too many children already, the house was too small, there was not enough food, the parents were too old for a new child, and so on.

Despondent, the boy was on the verge of giving up when a magician came to town. He went around door to door with the boy a second time, this time asking each household for just one letter. When he was done, he used a powerful machine on the letters in his bag, and transformed them into a LOVING FAMILY!

(The text ends here, but the illustration shows the boy beaming in the arms of a manufactured mother, father, siblings, hamster, and goldfish.)

There is a dismissive blatt from the monocle, and transposed over the inciting fable is a faint, greenish image of a filing cabinet.

Not too surprised about that.

>shoot fable

(with the anagramming gun)
The gun fires ruggedly into the inciting fable, which shatters and then reforms as a filing cabinet. There are numerous files, and they are organized chronologically, so that it’s possible to look up a specific year. They appear to begin in 1942.

Ooh, historical files – this is my catnip, library research is my favorite part of any game:

>look up 1942

Checking through the filing cabinet for 1942 reveals some images of Atlantida. Here is her militant 1940s rendition, where she stands bestride Atlantis; Axis planes are flying past her at head level. At any moment she might bite one and shake it, like a bulldog.

What about 1943?

There’s nothing much for 1943, but there are files for 1942 and 1951. Other promising-looking years are 1982, 1983, and 2003.

So the way this works is that those last three years are the highlights, but we can also just check for all the years that have any kind of file on the, so of course we do:

1951: Atlantida sits on a throne, wearing a blue dress and an incongruous string of housewifely pearls. In her right hand is the letter A with atom-like rings around it – as though to claim that letters are the true atoms of the universe.

1958: A sassy, security-conscious spirit of Atlantis, wearing a secretarial suit and putting a finger to her lips: the wink apparently means that it’s alluring not to tell things to spies.

1964: This dossier contains a political cartoon: under comic OOPS lettering, Atlantida is seen shoveling dirt back over an assortment of ancient-looking lamps, pottery, and broken columns. Probably a reference to that incident where a portion of a Roman villa came to light and caused a temporary disruption in the strength of local conversions.

1968: The 1968 edition was some sort of hippy goddess of plenty (flowing hair, flowing skirts, cornucopia of local fruits).

1972: From the year of the SALT I treaty comes an Atlantida aiming a depluralizing cannon at the world’s ballistic missiles.

1975: There isn’t any official propaganda for this year, only a contemporary magazine cover showing Atlantida arm in arm with Uncle Sam. Hard to tell for sure whether that was praise or criticism.

1982: A business-like, formidable Atlantida in the early 80s, looking Strong On Defense and Tough On Misspelling, with an olive branch in one hand and an anagramming gun in the other.

1983:This year’s folder doesn’t contain any official propaganda posters; instead it’s bulging with copies of a protest leaflet that shows a bare-breasted Atlantida leading rebels against the Bureau of Orthography, carrying placards in favor of more referenda and true individual liberty.

1989: Newspaper clippings only. In one cartoon, Atlantida is imprisoned, looking out of the bars of her cell at Czechoslovakian and Romanian revolutionaries in envy at their newfound freedom. Another is just a written column commenting on the bicentennial of the French Revolution and suggesting that the figure of Atlantida is now associated with the spirit of revolutionary change.

1991: Photographs of rioters in Deep Street show people carrying posters of a bare-breasted Atlantida.

1994: Print-offs from an the early days of the world wide web show Atlantida’s Home Page, plainly an organizing platform for those interested in overthrowing the Bureau and promoting the more frequent and rigorous use of referendum voting. One imagines the site was shut down shortly thereafter.

2003: The dossier for 2003 is very thick. Memos back and forth indicate that officials are increasingly concerned with Atlantida and feel it is time (for some reason) to reclaim the figure as a “government-positive” image. Consultations with an expensive New York advertising firm and a series of tv spots do not seem to have had the desired effect, however, because the project was canceled.

As mentioned before, Atlantida has certainly been a contested figure; this suggests there’s been a concerted campaign behind the Bureau’s side of that fight. There are plenty of real-world examples of this sort of thing, of course – CM has struck me as a game very much reacting to the aughts, and I can’t help think of things like the Bush-era reworkings of WWII propaganda posters to criticize the regime. A lot of them appear to have disappeared off the internet, but I had a version of this with “Ashcroft” photoshopped into the upper-right corner as my desktop for a while back in 2003:

image
image301×380 51.8 KB

(That’s Patriot-Act-loving former AG John Ashcroft, not the guy from the Verve, to be clear).

What else is here?

>x paperweight

Blue and white strands are swirled through the heavy, lens-like hunk of clear glass.

There is a dismissive blatt from the monocle, and transposed over the paperweight is a faint, greenish image of a paper and a weight.

>put gel on paperweight

You dip out a pea-sized quantity of gel and rub it gently onto the paperweight. With an audible SPLORT, the paperweight becomes a weight and a paper.

>x weight

Shaped like a headless pyramid. “0.5 kg” is stamped in the top together with the seal of the Bureau. It’s an official weight, intended to reassure citizens that they were getting a genuine standard measure.

Yeah, I’m guessing it’s the paper they were worried about concealing:

>x paper

It contains a memo, dated to May of 1983. “Attention,” it says. “Due to subversive counter-propaganda altering the abstract concept, Subject A must NO LONGER BE GELLED AFTER USE, since reconstructing her may produce anomalous results. She will from now on be housed in a continuous living state in the historic apartments.”

…now that’s an interesting office memo, especially when cross-referenced with the files.

(We’ll come back to the implications in a bit, but I’m pretty sure most players will have sussed out where things are headed from this).

Let’s keep moving.

[continued]

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100

[Chapter VII, continued]

>e

Surveillance Room
A surveillance computer is mounted on the wall, an impressive flat screen readout displaying current activity.

Another room lies to the east. The door you came through is west, and there is also a spiral staircase down.

Nice that Big Brother also has the holiday off. Wonder if there’s anything interesting we can see?

>x screen

The following options are visible on the screen:

Security Cameras
Power Grid
Requisitions
Access Records

>type cameras

You select the surveillance program. It brings up a menu of possible camera views. The following options are visible on the screen:

Statue
Customs House
Front Exit
Tools Exhibit
Interrogation Rooms Circuit
Cold Storage
Subject A Porch
Subject A Dwelling Space
North Exit

You can also select MAIN to return to the operating system.

We’ve been to most of these, but there are some new ones:

>type circuit

The screen shifts to displaying interrogation room A. Professor Higgate is standing next to a metal table. She is wearing her shirt, but for some reason her lower half is stripped to the underwear. She is speaking urgently to someone who is not shown.

Poor Professor Higgate :frowning: I don’t think we’re going to be able to come for her.

>type porch

The camera shifts to show a dimly lit corridor cut through sedimentary rock.

>type dwelling

Nothing shows but a steady field of static.

>type north

The camera shifts to show a bit of cliff overlooking the water. There’s a window cut into the cliff face – that must be the exit in question. Is that a hint of movement behind the window? It’s hard to be sure.

Hmm, not much more to go on about Subject A here.

What about the power?

The screen flashes up a schematic of the entire Bureau – the public rooms we’re familiar with, the basement, and the special section we’re in now. It appears that three different power supplies feed these, one for the public areas and one, more heavily backed up, for most of the basement. Both of these are running.

A third power supply is located east of here, and is currently shut down, leaving the eastern rooms dark.

No points for guessing we’ll need to start that up soon.

As for the records:

This selection brings up on screen a database of “Accesses.” Still visible for today’s date is a record labeled Inquiry on Civic Unrest.

You can type search terms to look for data records.

I somehow missed that prompt when I was playing, but I just ducked back in to see what the Inquiry actually says:

Inquiry on Civic Unrest: The database records an inquiry by Julius Pleice, conducted mid-afternoon today. “No direct subject contact, per previous incidents. Oracle consultation conducted through grill. Question concerned response to civic unrest. Subject recommended immediate action and depluralization of protesters. Subject emphasized importance of preserving statue.”

We did hear something about a high-level consultation with the Oracle when the officer was clearing people off the statue, didn’t we? Guess this is the other side of that call.

There are no records for Brock or Slango, but Rosehip gives this:

?: There is no direct reference to me in here.

?: A quick search turns up no access attempts by my father. It would seem he doesn’t have access here, whatever that means.

(Searching for Andra just repeats that “no direct reference” line).

Higgate also doesn’t (didn’t?) have a record, nor does Brown, but Waterstone does:

Inquiry on University Maintenance and Fees: “No subject contact. Question concerned university funding. Subject recommended preferential funding for those departments ‘most likely to promote Atlantis’ pre-eminent standing and defense.’ List of departments submitted in paper form and approved by Subject A with three amendments as attached.”

Small spoiler for a reveal we’ll get to in a little bit: Atlantida results in “That name doesn’t appear. At all.”, while Subject A gets “By all appearances every entry concerns “Subject A” in some way or other, so that wouldn’t narrow things down much.”

Lastly, requisitions:

The screen brings up what appears to be a system for requisitioning and supply for this area. The recent entries are diverse and in some cases cryptic:

34224 eBook order at request of Subject A details attached
34223 toys and diversions order at request of Subject A, children’s jacks, balls, puzzles, games
34222 espresso beans for Subject A - previous order unacceptable see attached
34221 bakery requisition
34220 coffee beans resupply for Subject A
34219 berg resupply to boiler - previous supply melted - NB new supply is required even if not used
34218 rifle resupply for handlers for Subject A, new gel required as safety measure

…and so on, scrolling back and back and back.

Huh, whoever this Subject A is (come on, it’s pretty obvious), they have very specific, and persnickety, tastes.

I think we’re done here for now.

>e

Workshop

A room whose importance is obvious from how clean it is and how little furniture it is allowed to have.

A programmable dais sits in the middle of the room. It has the raw look of lab equipment rather than a nice smooth commercial instrument.

A specialized wall socket is built into the east wall, clearly not part of the ordinary power system for the Bureau.

You can go east and west to the Surveillance Room from here.

Ah, this is probably the area that’s currently de-powered.

>x dais

It’s a round black metal platform with substantial stabilizing coils visible underneath, five or six feet in diameter. This is experimental lab grade letter equipment, ferociously powerful, insanely dangerous.

>x socket

A power socket suitable for plugging a cord into.

>x lever

One of those big heavy levers you see at demolitions. You won’t be tripping this thing by accident.

The big lever is currently switched off.

>x switch

A large black switch with a red arrow painted on it. There are two stops, labeled with black marker on tape: swap homonym and synthesize. It is currently set to swap homonym.

Not sure we currently have a use for this, but given that both the synthesizer tub and homonym paddle are currently inaccessible, so it could well come in handy. We’ll need to reactivate overall power, and find a cord, before it works, though.

>e

Generator Room

The walls are lined with concrete. Yellow paint lettering says CAUTION: HIGH ENERGY EQUIPMENT and DO NOT OPERATE WITHOUT TRAINING.

A first aid station is built onto the wall. It is closed.

Most of the room is taken up with a gigantic boiler installation that is currently off. The locking mechanism is a brushed steel bucket, currently empty.

Here’s the first part of that equation, then. I suppose technically we don’t have training on this kind of thing, but we were a spelling bee champ, so.

>x boiler

This frighteningly massive contraption has pipes and compression tanks and steam gauges and dents and rust stains. All the gauge needles point to 0. A thick glass pane allows a view of one of the first chambers.

The boiler is currently switched off.

Oh, it’s switched off, is it? Well that’s an easy fix.

>turn on boiler

There is no obvious switch. They most likely keep this thing locked.

Curses. What else do we have?

>x station

It’s a large box mounted to the wall, with a red cross painted on the front of it.

>open it

You open the first aid station, revealing some balm.

>x balm

According to the label, it is designed to relieve the pain of severe burns.

Let’s hope we won’t need that! But we take it just the same (and try to remove the b, only to be told “the balm starts to turn into an old-fashioned coin representing the concept of ‘alm’; then it flickers out again uncertainly. Probably because ‘alms’ is not really a plural form and ‘alm’ is unattested in practice.” I’m not so sure about the first explanation – nobody says “the alms is…” – but the second is fair enough).

Let’s check out that lock, which is in the form of a … bucket?

>x bucket

Attached to the machine is a brushed steel bucket, with insulated walls; it looks like a large version of an ice bucket for chilling sparkling wines.

Around the outside of the bucket are all sorts of odd gears, sprockets, parts, and bits, which have been attached in a haphazard way with bolts, wire, and duct tape. Presumably this does something to items placed in the bucket.

At the lip of the bucket is a switch labeled REVERSE. The switch is currently off.

Yeah, your guess is as good as mine, but we might as well chuck something in.

>put may in bucket

There is a churning noise from within the brushed steel bucket and “mey” appears in letters of hot pink smoke. Then the smoke dissipates without result.

Oh, I think I get it. Let’s test something:

>turn on switch

The switch thunks over into the Reverse position.

>put may in bucket

You momentarily lift the May out of the brushed steel bucket and then drop it back in.

There is a churning noise from within the brushed steel bucket and “muy” appears in letters of hot pink smoke. Then the smoke dissipates without result.

Ah, so this is a vowel-rotator, going in AEIOU order (or backwards, if the reverse switch is set). I’m guessing that much like the mirror by the seaside, getting a valid transformation will unlock the mechanism.

I can’t resist seeing if we can turn our rock into a Rick, but luckily for Brock it doesn’t work (actually, shouldn’t it have turned him into a hay-pile? Can’t implement have everything). But it does work on our trusty old clock:

There is a churning noise from within the brushed steel bucket, and a moment later you see inside a click. It’s a sporadic, repetitive clicking noise as though someone were playing obsessively with a mechanical pencil.

This appears to have unlocked the mechanism. With a growl, the boiler comes to life.

CLICKETY CLICKETY CLICKETY clicks the click.

There’s a flash of light from within the boiler and all the meter needles flicker into the red.

[Your score has gone up by one point and is now eighty-four.]

>x boiler

This frighteningly massive contraption has pipes and compression tanks and steam gauges and dents and rust stains. It trembles a little. The needles of the gauges twitch, but stay out of the red. A thick glass pane allows a view of one of the first chambers.

The boiler is currently switched on.

>x pane

Water flows steadily through a large pipe. Floating on the surface of the water are bergs of ice; before they melt entirely, a zap from a b-remover converts them to ergs. Each time this happens, there is a flash of light and steam, and the pane of glass becomes temporarily too fogged up to see through. The steam gauge needles jump.

Gradually the passage of the water cools the pane down again.

That’s a cute strategy – especially since you could presumably use the boiler to operate an air-conditioning system… Anyway the dais should be working now, though we still lack anything to do with it (and a power cord). We head back to the surveillance room and check the power status to confirm:

A third power supply is located east of here, and is lit up like a Christmas tree with the tremendous amounts of power it’s channeling.

Let’s go down from here to get to the last unvisited area:

Tunnel through Chalk

This passage has been cut through natural cliff rock and looks older than the Bureau itself. The walls are rough-hewn, exposing sedimentary strata. Here and there it looks as though someone has actually excavated a favored rock or relic.

Blocking the far end of the corridor is a metal portcullis. It is currently lowered. From the pulley above the portcullis hangs a counter.

You can go east through the portcullis (closed) and up to the Surveillance Room from here.

A breeze along the passage stirs the dust.

I can’t resist:

>shoot breeze

I can’t see what you’re talking about.

Ah well.

>x portcullis

Heavy black metal bars, left from a much earlier state. It is currently lowered. From the pulley above the portcullis hangs a counter.

>x counter

One of those devices with a press-button to increment a number, to assist with counting things like the number of people attending an event. There’s also a loop to let the user wear it over one finger. The counter currently reads 17.

So now we’ve got a reason to care about the dais – splorting this counter together with the weight we liberated from the paperweight would presumably make a counterweight that would open that gate.

Just to check, we put them both on the dais platform, pull the switch to set it to synthesize, and pull the lever:

You pull the lever, but a lot of nothing happens. It doesn’t look like there is power flowing to the machine.

Yeah, definitely gonna need a cord. Where did we leave our chard?

You are equipped with the following essentials: an anagramming gun, a backpack, a flash drive, your L-remover (upgraded to handle animates and abstracts), a monocle, some Origin Paste, a pan (really the smuggled plans in disguise), a rock, a roll, and a tub of restoration gel.

You are also carrying an apple, an army, some asparagus, a ball, some balm, a banana, a band, a pair of Britishizing goggles, a clock, a coat, a cross, a crumpled cocktail napkin, a draft document, a funnel, a god, Guidebook to Anglophone Atlantis, a heel, History of the Standards Revolution, a honey pastry triangle, a jigsaw, a jotter, Journal of Third-World Economics, a keycard (which opens the small door), a leaflet, a leer, a lie, Lives of the Lexicographers, a map of Slangovia, a May, a member, a mug, some oil, a paper, a pass, pi, a pocket-bread, a poppy, a rash, a shopping bag, a shred, a shrimp tail, a shuttle, a sill, a silver platter, a sticky, Studies in Primary Language Acquisition, a stuffed octopus, a swatch, a tint, some toes, a top, a trig, a wig, a word, a wrap, and some yogurt.

Everything you carry is in the backpack except the anagramming gun, the balm, the clock, the L-remover (upgraded to handle animates and abstracts), the May, the monocle, the oil, the paper, the pass, the rock, the sill, and the wig. The backpack is gaping wide open so everyone can see what’s inside.

The ball is in the shopping bag.

Ah, right, the keycard! Some gelling and removing later, we’re the proud owner of a card, which we start shoving in the bucket (with the reverse switch on):

There is a churning noise from within the brushed steel bucket, and a moment later you see inside a curd. A soft white clump of cheese substance.

…

There is a churning noise from within the brushed steel bucket, and a moment later you see inside a cord. This is the heaviest-duty cabling I’ve ever seen in my life: thick as a snake, covered in yellow sheathing, with a massive plug at each end.

Boom.

Back in the workshop:

>plug cord into socket

You plug the power cord firmly into the wall socket. The other end remains free and not plugged into anything.

>plug cord into dais

You plug the power cord firmly into the dais socket. Both ends of the power cord are now plugged in, so the dais is connected to the wall socket.

>pull lever

The programmable dais glows vibrant blue for five seconds, leaving behind a counterweight.

A very substantial hunk of metal with a ring at the top end, suitable for attachment to a hook or rope.

Back downstairs – freedom is so close we can taste it!

>put counterweight on hook

You hang the counterweight on the hook. The portcullis shifts slightly but doesn’t rise on its own. Perhaps with a little help, though.

>pull it

You open the portcullis.

The air stirs with a breeze from the east.

See, the breeze must mean we’re close to that escape route Alex’s dad told us about!

>e

Personal Apartment

At a guess, this is a room hardly anyone ever visits, or even knows about. Though the ceiling and one wall are bare cave, the rest has been paneled and graciously decorated in the style of the end of the 18th century. Oil paintings on the walls depict great men and women of Atlantis gone by: Phyllida Shaply, Amelia Landison, Clarence Arbot, Jon Rosehip. An antique bed stands in the center of the room.

The metal portcullis guards the way back. It is currently raised. From the pulley above the portcullis hangs a counterweight.

There are a stack of files and a rubber stamp on the inlaid desk.

Air and sunlight stream in from the east.

This place seems nice, but let’s get to that sunlight!

…wait.

Please press SPACE to continue.

“Don’t move, Alexandra, or I’ll split you in two.”

A very tall woman with Bureau-blue eyes steps into the room from the east, carrying a restoration gel rifle. Her face is ageless, her mouth full-lipped but proud. We’ve never met, but you recognize her at once. The monocle sees her as a fake, a fossilized shellfish.

Atlantida moves the rifle a fraction and fires through the portcullis at the counterweight. With an audible SPLORT, the counterweight becomes a weight and a counter.

The weight falls to the ground.

The portcullis crashes shut.

I wasn’t expecting her to have a gun!

[continued]

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