Yeah, I found the other way through and never even bothered to attempt to chart all the connections. In fact I’m not even sure you can get enough items to mark all the rooms without finding the item that gives the real solution…
2 Likes
I just started playing a little bit and there is a LOT of junk in the garage: you might want to try searching some more because a bunch of it seems potentially useful…
2 Likes
I don’t think I realised there was a brief mode - the location descriptions can be really useful, and it’s worth seeing them more than once so that you have ideas of what else to examine/ideas of where you might be able to go.
2 Likes
Part 6 - Going underground
We finished our last installment stranded in a maze-like forest, but it turns out my mapping was not quite careful enough. @Rax confirmed that I’d made a mistake, and indeed, although my notes say that going west from where we left the crowbar should take us to the location with the car key …
In the forest
The woods surround you on all sides. You can hear the soft gurgling of a stream nearby, but the foliage is so rich and dense that the sound of it is dispersed. The foliage is so rich and dense that you can barely keep your bearings straight. Each direction looks the same as every other.You see a crowbar here.
When we actually try it:
>W
In the forest
The woods surround you on all sides. You can hear the soft gurgling of a stream nearby, but the foliage is so rich and dense that the sound of it is dispersed. The foliage is so rich and dense that you can barely keep your bearings straight. Each direction looks the same as every other.
That’s a new, unvisited location! Presumably we’re still deep in the maze?
>N
In the forest
You see a garage door opener here.
That’s yet another link back to a previous location. The lazy and uncivilised way to map this new location is to avoid caring about which map connections are one-way and which are two-way and instead just:
>UNDO
(Undoing one command)
We try each of the other seven directions, and confirm that all of them take us back to a previous location except for northwest.
>NW
In the forest
The woods surround you on all sides. You can hear the soft gurgling of a stream nearby, but the foliage is so rich and dense that the sound of it is dispersed. The foliage is so rich and dense that you can barely keep your bearings straight. Each direction looks the same as every other.
We should probably carry on dropping stuff to help with our mapping, assuming we have any inventory left.
>I
You are carrying:
a library book
the time machine manual
a tourist map
some money (five dollars)>DROP MAP
Dropped.>N
In the forest
You see a newspaper here.
>UNDO
(Undoing one command)
Then we repeat the ritual, and discover that this time, it’s every direction except northeast which takes us back to somewhere we’ve already marked.
>NE
In the forest
The woods surround you on all sides. You can hear the soft gurgling of a stream nearby, but the foliage is so rich and dense that the sound of it is dispersed. The foliage is so rich and dense that you can barely keep your bearings straight. Each direction looks the same as every other.>DROP MANUAL
Dropped.>SW
In the forest
You see an old tennis ball here.
I went southwest to see if we could backtrack to the location we’d just come from, to which it turns out the answer is no, but at this point I realise that we’ve left one location (the first one we found this session) currently unmarked, and I panic that this is going to come back and bite us somehow, so we retrace our steps through the maze:
>SE
In the forest
You see a blank here.
>S
In the forest
You see a newspaper here.
>NE
In the forest
You see a school pencil here.
>NW
In the forest
You see a crowbar here.
>W
In the forest
This is the location where we forgot to drop anything, although our inventory is looking rather slim:
>I
You are carrying:
a library book
some money (five dollars)>DROP BOOK
Dropped.
Now, where were we?
>NW
In the forest
You see a tourist map here.
>NE
In the forest
You see the time machine manual here.
And back to exploring …
>N
In the forest
You see an old tennis ball here.
>UNDO
(Undoing one command)In the forest
The woods surround you on all sides. You can hear the soft gurgling of a stream nearby, but the foliage is so rich and dense that the sound of it is dispersed. The foliage is so rich and dense that you can barely keep your bearings straight. Each direction looks the same as every other.You see the time machine manual here.
We return to the ritual of trying each direction, noting down where it does, then undoing; north, south, east and west lead us nowhere remarkable, and neither do northeast or northwest, but, with our inventory almost exhausted, all of this rigmarole finally pays off:
>SE
Flowing stream
The foliage parts at last to reveal a sparkling forest stream. Light dapples gently through the leaves to highlight slick, wet rocks and the bright green of fresh growth. The stream flows, about half a meter wide, from the north to the southwest.[ Your score just went up by 4 points. ]
Finally, we’re through the forest! North presumably leads us towards where the house will eventually be, so let’s check out the southwest branch first.
>SW
Grotto
The multiverdant greenery fed by the churning stream seems to end here in a place of stillness and serenity surrounding a deep pool of clear water. Even the very air itself seems to obey the call to quiet. The only exit is northeast.
Well, the pool seems to be the main attraction here, so let’s check it out.
>X POOL
The water in the pool is clear and clean. The slick brown-green algae at the bottom covers the smooth limestone bowl of the pool. It deepens considerably at the northern end, the bottom disappearing underneath a lush growth of ferns.>SEARCH POOL
You find nothing of interest.>SWIM
(the pool)
You should probably leave your things here before you do that.
Fortunately, we have hardly any possessions left in any case!
>DROP ALL
some money (five dollars): Dropped.>SWIM
(the pool)
As you step into the cool water pool, you find it difficult to keep your footing. You move slowly towards the deeper end, and suddenly the bottom takes a sudden drop. Losing your balance, you slide under the water, pulled along by a deep current you didn’t imagine was lurking under the still surface.
Uh oh, I think I saw a public safety announcement once about not doing what we just did, for exactly this reason.
Looking out through the water’s surface, you see the sunlight disappear. Air returns to your lungs just as the light goes away, and you feel your body sluicing down into groundwater caverns.
I have a hard time visualising what’s happened here, possibly because I now realise I’m less confident about the meaning of the word “sluice” than I thought I was. I think the current dumped us out onto basically what’s a big underground waterslide?
When the motion stops, all you hear is the dripping of shallow water. You crawl forward and find a hard but dry spot. It is not completely dark here, but it takes a few minutes for your eyes to adjust. In the misty light you find yourself in a …
Limestone crawl
You are in a tiny crawlway carved by the flow of ancient waters through soft limestone. The natural groundwater springs are drying up, and soon will be gone. A current of dark but shallow water swirls nearby. Light leaks down from a vertical sluice that leads up into the deep end of the grotto. You can leave through careful navigation up the sluice, or follow the crawlway, which leads north.
Oh man, we’ve found ourselves in an old-school cave adventure!
The bit about how the springs are drying up and soon will be gone sounds a bit like a wrong that needs to be righted, but we can’t travel any further into the past than this (as far as we know), so maybe this is just flavour?
>N
Narrow north-south crawl
You are in a narrow north-south crawlway that bulges slightly, giving you more room to maneuver. The crawlway heads north and then bends, making it difficult to see farther ahead, and slopes downward to the south.>N
Tight bend
The tunnel you have been following makes a tight bend here. Chalky dust swirls in the damp air, stirred up by your arrival. The crawl widens to the south, and turns here to the southeast, making a sudden drop as it does so.>X DUST
Chalky dust swirls in the damp air, stirred up by your arrival.
Is this dust important? It seems odd for a space this wet to be dusty as well.
>SMELL
The room smells of wet limestone.>SE
Crumbling tunnel
Eroding limestone has caused the floor here to give way recently. You find your footing on the crumbling chunks of limestone, but only after making a scary drop of about four feet. The walls of the tunnel sport all manner of jagged cracks, but you don’t feel any shifting or settling. Perhaps it is safe to continue, but probably not much farther. The limestone shelf is up and back to the northwest. The tunnel continues forward to the north, descending even further as it does so.
The game is warning us that this might be dangerous—all too right for exploring a previously-unexplored underground cave system alone and without any equipment—but what’s there to do except press on?
>N
Dark passage
The light you have been following darkens here, making you wonder how much faith you have in the ambiguous light source. You can no longer make out any colors, only grainy shades of light and dark, but there wouldn’t be many other colors to see even in full light. The passage continues ahead, zigzagging to the northwest, and to the south.>NW
Zigzag passage
The passage takes a series of sharp, zigzag turns here. As it does so, you feel your ears pop in adjustment to changing altitude. East you can discern a strange but growing brightness. This passage zigzags into the darkness to the southeast.
What exactly is this strange brightness?
>E
There is nowhere to go in that direction.>X BRIGHTNESS
I don’t know the word “brightness”.
Torture and tantalise your players by mentioning things they have no way to refer to!
>W
There is nowhere to go in that direction.>N
There is nowhere to go in that direction.>S
There is nowhere to go in that direction.
Um, this could be a problem, which way were we meant to be going, again?
>LOOK
Zigzag passage
The passage takes a series of sharp, zigzag turns here. As it does so, you feel your ears pop in adjustment to changing altitude. East you can discern a strange but growing brightness. This passage zigzags into the darkness to the southeast.>EXITS
East you can discern a strange but growing brightness. This passage zigzags into the darkness to the southeast.>E
There is nowhere to go in that direction.
Well, let’s try …
>NE
Ledge
The brightness coming from the bend in the tunnel to the north nearly distracts you from watching your footing. The sharp echo of a carelessly kicked stone, that rattles down for ten or twelve seconds before coming to a splashing halt, stops you in your tracks.You are standing on a narrow ledge at the south end of a jagged east-west gap in the cave floor. The gap plunges straight down, erosion having eaten everything away underneath. It is not a wide gap, and you are capable of crossing it without difficulty. However, you are aware that if you had stepped directly into it, your story would have ended here, in the darkness and the deep. Across the gap, the tunnel goes north and takes another bend, and on this side it exits to the west.
The game is continuing to remind us that this is a very dangerous place to be, but it doesn’t seem there’s anything stopping us from continuing on, so:
>N
You carefully cross to the other side of the gap and continue on.Bright bend
Bright blue illumination shines from the opening to a larger cavern to the east. The light shimmers and ripples on the walls, wavelike patterns that dance and intermingle, shining all the more brightly where they overlap. The cavern is east, and the tunnel bends south, where it meets a ledge.>E
Crystal cavern
You are in a large cavern that seems to be an enormous natural geode, with crystals as big as your head growing in splints and shafts from every direction. A pool of white water catches the reflected and refracted light and spins it back into the room, where it is caught and re-refracted. The original source of the light seems to be a series of pinholes in the roof of the cavern high above, but you don’t think it could be sunlight. You have lost track of how deep you have gone, perhaps twenty, perhaps forty feet under the surface, but too far down to see sunlight, you would have thought. It is possible that sunlight has periscoped down a set of small crystal encrusted shafts that lead far enough up to see the open sky. In any case, it is literally mesmerizing to be here. The only exit is a tunnel to the west.You see crystals here.
This has been an exciting adventure, but this being a parser game, it would have been disappointing not to come away with something tangible, so let’s check out these crystals:
>X CRYSTALS
Crystals as big as your head and as delicately small as your fingernail are growing in splints and shafts from every direction.>TOUCH CRYSTALS
The crystals feel like crystals.>TAKE CRYSTALS
You search for a crystal loose enough to take without breaking it or a larger crystal. After a short search, you discover a perfect blue crystal, which you take.[ Your score just went up by 3 points. ]
Right, can we get safely out again?
>W
Bright bend
>S
Ledge
You are standing on a narrow ledge at the north end of a jagged west-east gap in the cave floor. The gap plunges straight down, erosion having eaten everything away underneath. It is not a wide gap, and you are capable of crossing it without difficulty. Across the gap, the tunnel goes southwest, and it continues back north and takes a bend into the crystal cavern.>SW
You carefully cross to the other side of the gap and continue on.
Having made it over the ominous chasm, we have an uneventful journey back to …
Limestone crawl
You are in a tiny crawlway carved by the flow of ancient waters through soft limestone. The natural groundwater springs are drying up, and soon will be gone. A current of dark but shallow water swirls nearby. Light leaks down from a vertical sluice that leads up into the deep end of the grotto. You can leave through careful navigation up the sluice, or follow the crawlway, which
leads north.>U
It’s a somewhat torturous ascent, but with patience and resolve you manage to make your way up the sluice. Your head again goes underwater for a moment, but you follow the light. Your hands grope and find a hold on the shallow bottom of the pool. Emerging, you shake yourself dry as best you can.Grotto
You see some money (five dollars) here.
>TAKE MONEY
Taken.
So after our underground adventure, does the stream lead us to anywhere else we can explore in this time period?
>NE
Flowing stream
>N
Path in the woods
A natural path made by the stream winds through a natural grove of cedar and live oak trees. A large rock juts up out of the ground right in your way, and the stream does an abrupt curve around it. The stream runs from the northeast to the south, and a clearing is visible to the southwest.
It’s our old friend the rock! Presumably this means that from here we can get to:
>SW
You push your way into the clearing, opening your usual path once again.
Ah, and that very much sounds like a shortcut which will save us from doing all that business with the maze again.
Forest
You see a time machine here.
>NE
Path in the woods
>NE
Sloping wood
The ground slopes down here, eroded by the nearby stream. Grasses heavy with fresh dew and spring-saturated soil give the area a soft, spongy feel beneath your feet. The stream leads back southwest, and far ahead through the trees to the northeast, you can see a road of some kind.You see a soft spot here.
The sloping ground here highlights that this is the area which will one day be south of our house. The game hinted that we might want to plant a tree here, and just to make it extra clear:
>X SPOT
There is a spot here which is particularly moist and soft.>DIG
What do you want to dig in?>DIG SPOT
What do you want to dig in it with?>HANDS
You can’t dig with that.>DIG SPOT WITH CRYSTAL
You can’t dig with that.
We don’t have a digging implement yet, but we also don’t have anything to plant, so no matter!
>NE
Oakwood drive
This pleasant road wanders peacefully through the lush tree growths native to the area. In the intervening years, they’ll straighten the road and widen it, cutting down dozens of these thirty- to eighty-year-old live oaks. The road leads north into the old shopping village, and a path winds back into the forest to the southwest.>N
In the village
The little shopping village looks a lot different than you’re used to seeing it. The sandwich shop is there, to the north, but it doesn’t look like it’s open for business yet. To the west is the bank, which seems like it’s always been here and always will. To the east is an antique store, where the public library will be. The road leading back is south.>N
The sandwich shop is there, to the north, but it doesn’t look like it’s open for business yet. A sign on the shop says: “Grand Opening in 1 Week!”
It’s a shame our time machine only allows us to choose our destination in increments of ten years, then!
>W
In the bank
No new room description, so this is literally the same bank as when we were here in the other time period, ten years from now. (Which is ten years in our original past. It would be handy to have some names for the time periods, to avoid having to do this clarification every time, but the game hasn’t given us any canonical ones. I think the game is meant to be set in 1994, so we could refer to them by their actual year, but I’m not totally certain the year is right and we might get sidetracked by trying to reconcile the events of the game with real-world history …)
>S
New accounts
The new accounts area is a clean little area in the corner of the bank. The lobby is back to the north.Laura, a bank employee, is sitting at the new accounts desk.
Here’s Laura! All we needed to do to find her was to travel ten years into the past! I guess she’s a loyal enough employee to have been working at the same bank for at least a decade (although if this is the 1970s or 80s then staying in the same job for much of your career was more common than it is now, right?).
>ASK LAURA ABOUT ACCOUNT
Laura asks, “Yes, would you care to open a new account?”>>YES
Laura says, “Okay. We require a minimum deposit of $100 in order to open your account. Is that all right?”
Drat. We have only five dollars, but we can always try?
>>YES
Laura frowns. “I’m sorry, but can’t help you if you don’t have the money to open a new account,” she says.
Ok, having been excited that we had enough money to afford a sandwich, we now need a cool hundred dollars to be able to put our plans for compound interest shenanigans into action.
>N
In the bank
>N
At the Teller window
The bank teller is standing behind the teller window.
The teller says, “Good morning. Would you care to make a deposit or a
withdrawal today?”>>NO
The teller says, “Have a nice day.”
In the bank
Not sure we can do anything else here until we have more money, so let’s go check out that antique store.
>E
In the village
>E
Antique store
Stocked full of knickknacks and ancient collectibles, this shop is pervaded by a rich, musty odor. Taking a look around, you are somewhat ashamed to admit that you really can’t tell one item from another. None of it looks any more valuable or rare than the collection you keep heaped in your garage. The only exit is west into the village.The antiques merchant is here, puttering around her shop.
She says, “Good morning. Feel free to browse around.”
>X KNICKKNACKS
The collection of antiques is disordered, and most of it doesn’t look important. You think you might turn something up if you gave it a good search, though.
Hint taken, thanks!
>SEARCH COLLECTION
You find a lightning rod!>X IT
It is a long spear of conducting metal.>BUY IT
Don’t waste the merchant’s time. You don’t have enough money.
No idea what we might need this for, unless we’re going to have to do a Back-to-the-Future style powering of our time machine with a thunderstorm at some point.
Now, @JoshGrams alerted us earlier in the thread to a slightly devious aspect of the need to SEARCH things in this game: not only should we be searching them, but if we found something, we should search again to check if there’s anything else. (Inside Woman, the game I did a big Let’s Play thread for this time last year, had a single instance of double-searching being required; as we’ll see shortly, this game definitely has more than one.)
>SEARCH COLLECTION
You find a metal suitcase!>X IT
It’s a solid suitcase with a shiny aluminum case, capable of transporting a volume of material securely. The metal suitcase is closed.>OPEN IT
Opened.>LOOK IN IT
There’s nothing in the metal suitcase.
Hm, the suitcase would have been more tantalising if we hadn’t been able to open it until we bought it, but the description hints that we might need to transport something “securely” at some point, whatever that means.
>SEARCH COLLECTION
There’s nothing else in the antiques.>BUY SUITCASE
Don’t waste the merchant’s time. You don’t have enough money.
Not sure if there’s anything else we can do here right now, so we make our way back to the forest.
Forest
You see a time machine here.
>STAND ON PLATFORM
Okay, you’re now standing on the time machine platform.
Speaking of searching things, I was satisfied previously when we searched the junk in the garage and found a crowbar, but we might have broken off that particular line of enquiry too early as well, so let’s return to our present and take another look.
>SET KNOB TO 5
Okay, it’s now turned to 5.>PRESS BUTTON
You push the big red button. Click!The time machine vibrates and heats up like a toaster oven. A blinding purple light envelops you. The world around you spins into a wild vortex that suddenly vanishes, leaving you to find yourself in a …
Clearing
You see a time machine here.
We return to the garage without incident, and …
In the garage
You see an opener button here.
>SEARCH JUNK
You find a can of WD-40!>X IT
It’s an ordinary can of WD-40, the all-purpose lubricant.>TAKE IT
Taken.
Perfectly reasonable thing to find in a garage, and maybe we’ll need to lubricate something at some point to get it to move?
>SEARCH JUNK
You find an old pillowcase!>X IT
It’s got a 70’s flower pattern, but the colors have faded. The old pillowcase is open. There’s nothing in the old pillowcase.>TAKE IT
Taken.
This doesn’t sound immediately like it should be useful, except that that last sentence is another of those meta hints that results from knowing a little of the behind-the-scenes mechanics of parser games. More on that later.
>SEARCH JUNK
You find a handful of cobwebs. Bleah!>X IT
You wiped them off on your pantleg.>TAKE IT
You wiped them off on your pantleg.
I don’t think the cobwebs are really an item. So does that mean we’ve found all the useful stuff?
>SEARCH JUNK
You find a deflated soccer ball!>X IT
A World Cup fan you aren’t. This thing is in sorry shape.>TAKE IT
Taken.>SEARCH JUNK
You find a broken tire pump!>X IT
I know what you’re thinking – you can pump up the soccer ball with this baby. Nope. It’s just a piece of junk.>TAKE IT
Taken.
Being good adventurers, we grab everything the game will let us grab, even if it’s clearly useless.
>SEARCH JUNK
You find a wasp nest!>X IT
Dratted mud-daubers! It looks dead, but you’d better leave it alone.
I recently learned that mud-dauber wasps were probably responsible for an aviation disaster in 1996 involving the loss of a Boeing 757 with all its passengers and crew. Thanks to @Encorm for opening my eyes to the fascinating rabbit-hole of air crash investigation blogging.
>TAKE IT
It looks dead, but you’d better leave it alone.>SEARCH JUNK
You find a 2x4 plank!>X IT
This plank must be a leftover from some spring project. It’s about a yard long.>TAKE IT
Taken.
Definitely more likely to be useful than the soccer ball or wasp nest.
>SEARCH JUNK
You find a can-opener!>X IT
One of the hand-operated kind. Junk!>TAKE IT
Taken.
Why is the game so emphatic about this being junk? Does the author have a grudge against hand-operated can openers?
>SEARCH JUNK
You find a moose head trophy!>X IT
What a piece of junk! Perhaps the ultimate. Be proud.>TAKE IT
You’ve already got your hands full.
The moose head seems much less likely to be useful than the can opener, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to let some measly inventory limitation prevent us from empty the garage of every named object in it. We’ll check out the rest of the contents and then figure out how we’re going to transport all of it.
>SEARCH JUNK
You find a shovel!>X IT
Okay, I admit this might come in handy. It’s a quality shovel.>TAKE IT
Taken.
We probably need this for the heavily-telegraphed acorn-planting puzzle, although we still don’t know how to get the acorn. The fact that the game lets us pick this up when we couldn’t take the moose head indicates that there’s some invisible size or weight quantity being used to determine how much we can carry rather than just the plain number of items (which we already concluded was probably the case when we tried and failed to pick up the four jugs of miracle-grow).
>SEARCH JUNK
You find a beat-up mattress!>X IT
Geez! Don’t you ever throw anything away?>TAKE IT
You can’t pick up the beat-up mattress.
I think this one might genuinely just be here for colour.
>SEARCH JUNK
You find a divining wand!>X IT
Superstition has it divining wands can find water. To you, it looks like an ordinary stick, with a kind of forked end.>TAKE IT
Taken.
Aha! This was probably how we were supposed to get through the forest, rather than all that tedious brute-force mapping.
>SEARCH JUNK
You find a machete!>X IT
Oh, yeah. A souvenir from a trip to South America. The blade is old and dull, but with some muscle behind it, it could probably be used to hack through a jungle as good as ever.
Or maybe this was how we were meant to get through the forest, who knows?
>TAKE IT
You’ve already got your hands full.
Now we’ve hit the point where our inventory limit is preventing us from picking up even reasonably-sized items, it’s time to figure out if we can do anything about it. We noticed earlier that the pillowcase was implemented as a container, so can we free up some space if we …
>PUT ALL IN PILLOWCASE
perfect blue crystal: Done.
some money (five dollars): Done.
can of WD-40: Done.
old pillowcase: You can’t put the old pillowcase in itself!
deflated soccer ball: Done.
broken tire pump: Done.
2x4 plank: Done.
can-opener: Done.
shovel: Done.
divining wand: Done.>TAKE MACHETE
Taken.
Looks like that worked. I’m mildly intrigued to note that PUT ALL IN PILLOWCASE includes an attempt to put the pillowcase inside itself. Inform 6 had a special mechanism (the multiexcept token) to avoid this, but I guess TADS 2 (which predates it?) didn’t.
>SEARCH JUNK
You find a busted wheelbarrow!>X IT
This filthy beast from, apparently, the last century, has a busted front wheel. There’s nothing in the busted wheelbarrow.>TAKE IT
You can’t pick up the wheelbarrow. It must weigh 100 pounds.>SEARCH JUNK
You find a frisbee!>X IT
One of those little ones, for playing frisbee golf.>TAKE IT
Taken.>SEARCH JUNK
You find a cannonball!
Is this the game deliberately trolling us to find out what ridiculous objects we’ll try to take with us? Because if so, challenge accepted.
>X IT
Who knows where you found this sucker, or why you kept it. It’s a solid metal sphere, about 7 inches in diameter, with lettering stamped on the side.>READ IT
154th comp. Div. – US Steel – TM 1880.>TAKE IT
Taken.>SEARCH JUNK
You find the kitchen sink!>X IT
Obviously, you must have found everything there is to find if you’ve found this relic.>TAKE IT
You must be kidding.>SEARCH JUNK
You find absolutely nothing else! At last!!![ Your score just went up by 10 points. ]
Right, we’re done. Let’s check out our haul:
>I
You are carrying:
an old pillowcase
a perfect blue crystal
some money (five dollars)
a can of WD-40
a deflated soccer ball
a broken tire pump
a 2x4 plank
a can-opener
a shovel
a divining wand
a machete
a frisbee
a cannonball>LOOK
In the garage
This room is a total mess. No wonder you keep your car in the driveway. Sure enough, it took a long time to sort through the junk in here, and you have found everything including the kitchen sink, and there still doesn’t seem to have been much point to it. There is a garage door button on the wall. A closed door to the south leads into your house through the kitchen. The only other exit is the way you came in, which is open.You see an opener button, a wasp nest, a moose head trophy, a beat-up mattress, a busted wheelbarrow, and the kitchen sink here.
Objects which can be pushed around between rooms are a staple of parser games of this era, so let’s see if we can:
>PUSH WHEELBARROW N
You push the busted wheelbarrow to the north.North of house
You see a busted wheelbarrow here.
>S
In the garage
You see an opener button, a wasp nest, a moose head trophy, a beat-up mattress, and the kitchen sink here.
Now to figure out if there’s any circumstances in which we can transport this moose head.
>TAKE MOOSE
You’ve already got your hands full.>DROP PILLOWCASE
Dropped.>TAKE MOOSE
You’ve already got your hands full.>PUT ALL IN PILLOWCASE
machete: Done.
frisbee: Done.
cannonball: Done.>TAKE MOOSE
Taken.
Wouldn’t it be convenient if we could also …
>TAKE PILLOWCASE
Taken.
Yes!
3 Likes
Warning: pretty much the entire rest of this post is just futzing with inventory management in the way that drives some parser players wild with delight and puts other people off the medium forever. If that doesn’t excite you, you can fast-forward through the rest of the post without missing much apart from some more of my scintillating commentary.
>N
North of house
You see a busted wheelbarrow here.
>PUSH WHEELBARROW SE
You push the busted wheelbarrow southeast.Front of house
You see a doormat and a busted wheelbarrow here.
In games where there’s an inventory limit which stops you from just carrying every useful item with you at all times, it’s often helpful to assemble a stash of items in some convenient location so that you don’t have to worry about remembering where you left such-and-such—either you have it with you, or it’s in the stash.
>PUSH WHEELBARROW SW
You push the busted wheelbarrow southwest.South of house
You see a busted wheelbarrow here.
>G
You push the busted wheelbarrow southwest.Path in the woods
You see a busted wheelbarrow here.
>G
You push the busted wheelbarrow southwest.Clearing
You see a time machine and a busted wheelbarrow here.
I haven’t tried this out yet, but the time machine manual indicated pretty clearly that anything on the platform would travel through time with us—so if we pile all our junk on the platform, we can take it with us on every trip and not have to worry about going back to fetch something we left in another time period.
>PUSH WHEELBARROW ONTO PLATFORM
Done.>PUT MOOSE HEAD ON PLATFORM
There appear to be extra words after your command.>PUT MOOSE ON PLATFORM
Done.
Let’s make a trip through time to test it. We’ve left the other half of our inventory scattered around the forest twenty years in the past, so we need to go and retrieve it in any case.
>STAND ON PLATFORM
Okay, you’re now standing on the time machine platform.>SET KNOB TO 1
Okay, it’s now turned to 1.>PRESS BUTTON
You push the big red button. Click!The time machine vibrates and heats up like a toaster oven. A deep red light envelops you. The world around you spins into a wild vortex that suddenly vanishes, leaving you to find yourself in a …
Forest
You see a time machine here. Sitting on the time machine platform is a busted wheelbarrow and a moose head trophy.
Looks like our plan to cart all of this junk around with us went off exactly as intended!
The divining wand vibrates, pulling to the northeast.
And here we see how we were meant to navigate the forest.
>NE
(first getting off the platform)
Okay, you’re no longer on the time machine platform.Path in the woods
>LOOK
Path in the woods
A natural path made by the stream winds through a natural grove of cedar and live oak trees. A large rock juts up out of the ground right in your way, and the stream does an abrupt curve around it. The stream runs from the northeast to the south, and a clearing is visible to the southwest.
I think, now that we’ve found our way to the stream and re-opened the path back from the rock to the clearing, the divining wand is showing us the most straightforward route we can take. But hopefully we can still go through the forest the long way so that we can find all the stuff we left as markers.
>S
Flowing stream
The divining wand vibrates, pulling to the stream.
>N
Path in the woods
>SW
You push your way into the clearing, opening your usual path once again.Forest
You see a time machine here. Sitting on the time machine platform is a busted wheelbarrow and a moose head trophy.
The divining wand vibrates, pulling to the northeast.
>S
You almost lose your bearings again, but the divining wand seems to pull you through.In the forest
You see an old tennis ball here.
The divining wand vibrates, pulling to the southeast.
This is the first step on the route we took through the forest, and the wand is pointing us southeast, which is the direction we need to go for the second step.
>TAKE BALL
Which ball do you mean, the deflated soccer ball, or the old tennis ball?>TENNIS
Taken.>SE
You almost lose your bearings again, but the divining wand seems to pull you through.In the forest
You see a blank here.
The divining wand vibrates, pulling to the north.
>TAKE BLANK
Taken.
We retrace our steps through the forest maze, picking up the car key, garage door opener, newspaper, school pencil, crowbar, library book and tourist map, until (minor) disaster strikes:
In the forest
You see the time machine manual here.
The divining wand vibrates, pulling to the southeast.
>TAKE MANUAL
You’ve already got your hands full.
If we can’t pick up the manual now, we’re going to have to loop around again after freeing up some space in our inventory.
>PUT ALL IN PILLOWCASE
old pillowcase: You can’t put the old pillowcase in itself!
old tennis ball: You can’t fit that in the old pillowcase.
blank: You can’t fit that in the old pillowcase.
car key: Done.
garage door opener: You can’t fit that in the old pillowcase.
newspaper: You can’t fit that in the old pillowcase.
school pencil: You can’t fit that in the old pillowcase.
crowbar: You can’t fit that in the old pillowcase.
library book: You can’t fit that in the old pillowcase.
tourist map: You can’t fit that in the old pillowcase.>TAKE MANUAL
You’ve already got your hands full.
Of course, the pillowcase was already basically full of the other junk. The car key must be tiny, as we were able to slip that inside when nothing else would fit.
>I
You are carrying:
an old pillowcase
a perfect blue crystal
some money (five dollars)
a can of WD-40
a deflated soccer ball
a broken tire pump
a 2x4 plank
a can-opener
a shovel
a divining wand
a machete
a frisbee
a cannonball
a car key
an old tennis ball
a blank
a garage door opener
a newspaper
a school pencil
a crowbar
a library book
a tourist map>LOOK
In the forest
The woods surround you on all sides. You can hear the soft gurgling of a stream nearby, but the foliage is so rich and dense that the sound of it is dispersed. The foliage is so rich and dense that you can barely keep your bearings straight. Each direction looks the same as every other.You see the time machine manual here.
We’re only one step from the stream, so if we can get there, drop some stuff (where it will be reachable from the path, without going through the forest) and then backtrack back to here, we might save doing another full circuit. Which way was it, again?
>X WAND
The divining wand vibrates, pulling to the southeast.>SE
You almost lose your bearings again, but the divining wand seems to pull you through.Flowing stream
The divining wand vibrates, pulling to the stream.
The wand is doing its thing despite being inside the pillowcase, but we might need to take it with us to get back through the woods.
>TAKE WAND
You’ve already got your hands full.>DROP PILLOWCASE
Dropped.>TAKE WAND
Taken.>NW
You lose yourself in the forest again.In the forest
You see the time machine manual here.
The divining wand vibrates, pulling to the southeast.
>TAKE MANUAL
You’ve already got your hands full.
Despite containing a ridiculous amount of stuff, dropping the pillowcase didn’t actually free up enough of our carrying capacity to pick up the manual.
I think I got confused at this point, because it wasn’t until I was editing this transcript that I realised we never actually got the time machine manual out of the forest. We’ll have to go back for it in a later episode.
>SE
You almost lose your bearings again, but the divining wand seems to pull you through.Flowing stream
You see an old pillowcase here. The old pillowcase seems to contain a perfect blue crystal, some money (five dollars), a can of WD-40, a deflated soccer ball, a broken tire pump, a 2x4 plank, a can-opener, a shovel, a machete, a frisbee, a cannonball, and a car key.
The divining wand vibrates, pulling to the stream.
>TAKE PILLOWCASE
You’ve already got your hands full.
Oh, that’s right, we can’t currently carry the wand and pillowcase at the same time, unless the wand is in the pillowcase.
>PUT WAND IN PILLOWCASE
Done.>N
Path in the woods
>SW
You push your way into the clearing, opening your usual path once again.Forest
You see a time machine here. Sitting on the time machine platform is a busted wheelbarrow and a moose head trophy.
Success!
>PUT PILLOWCASE ON PLATFORM
I don’t see any pillowcase here.
Wait, what?
>I
You are carrying:
an old tennis ball
a blank
a garage door opener
a newspaper
a school pencil
a crowbar
a library book
a tourist map
We forgot to pick up the pillowcase again.
>PUT ALL ON PLATFORM
old tennis ball: Done.
blank: Done.
garage door opener: Done.
newspaper: Done.
school pencil: Done.
crowbar: Done.
library book: Done.
tourist map: Done.>NE
Path in the woods
>S
Flowing stream
You see an old pillowcase here. The old pillowcase seems to contain a perfect blue crystal, some money (five dollars), a can of WD-40, a deflated soccer ball, a broken tire pump, a 2x4 plank, a can-opener, a shovel, a machete, a frisbee, a cannonball, a car key, and a divining wand.
The divining wand vibrates, pulling to the stream.
>TAKE ALL
stream: That isn’t important.
old pillowcase: Taken.>N
Path in the woods
>SW
You push your way into the clearing, opening your usual path once again.Forest
You see a time machine here. Sitting on the time machine platform is a busted wheelbarrow, a moose head trophy, an old tennis ball, a blank, a garage door opener, a newspaper, a school pencil, a crowbar, a library book, and a tourist map.
The divining wand vibrates, pulling to the northeast.
Ok, we’ve made it back to the time machine with all of our stuff, except for the time machine manual, which I accidentally left behind as I earlier confessed.
>I
You are carrying:
an old pillowcase
a perfect blue crystal
some money (five dollars)
a can of WD-40
a deflated soccer ball
a broken tire pump
a 2x4 plank
a can-opener
a shovel
a machete
a frisbee
a cannonball
a car key
a divining wand
Let’s leave the most useless-sounding stuff here and pick up the things that seem like they might actually be useful.
>PUT SOCCER BALL ON PLATFORM
Done.>PUT PUMP, CAN-OPENER AND CANNONBALL ON PLATFORM
broken tire pump: Done.
can-opener: Done.
cannonball: Done.>TAKE TENNIS BALL, BLANK, NEWSPAPER, PENCIL AND CROWBAR
old tennis ball: Taken.
blank: Taken.
newspaper: Taken.
school pencil: Taken.
crowbar: Taken.>LOOK
Forest
The woods surround you on all sides, although there is enough space around you to consider it a clearing of sorts. Light streams prettily through the canopy of leaves above. The ground is hard and flat and clean.You can hear the soft gurgling of a stream nearby, but the foliage is so rich and dense that the sound of it is dispersed. You aren’t sure from which direction it originates. You can see your usual path through the grove of trees to the northeast.
You see a time machine here. Sitting on the time machine platform is a busted wheelbarrow, a moose head trophy, a garage door opener, a library book, a tourist map, a deflated soccer ball, a broken tire pump, a can-opener, and a cannonball.
Hm, a couple of those might still have some conceivable purpose?
>TAKE BOOK AND MAP
library book: Taken.
tourist map: Taken.
The last thing I want to do in this installment is check that the obviously-telegraphed thing to do with the shovel is, in fact, the correct thing to do with the shovel.
>NE
Path in the woods
>NE
Sloping wood
You see a soft spot here.
>DIG SPOT WITH SHOVEL
The shovel bites a nice hole in the earth.>X HOLE
It’s the perfect size for planting a big, ripe acorn. Fancy that.
Well, that’s exactly what we expected. Once we’ve planted the acorn, maybe we need to fertilise it with miracle-grow&mdash:which we might be able to take with us now if we can carry the four jugs inside the pillowcase. But that’s academic unless we can figure out how to get the acorn from the squirrel. Any ideas? Or indeed, ideas for anything else to try!
3 Likes
I’ve gotten a bit further than this, but not *that* much further (partly because I was waiting to not get that far ahead of the thread). I might need to boot up the game again, then.
I’ve just been using the garage to dump all my stuff, probably because half of it was already in there. 
I didn’t think most post-Infocom games used the “object-size” model of inventory limits and just limited based on number? Was that the default in TADS games, or something? (My first IF-playing machine was ZCode-only, and I haven’t played that many TADS games since I got back into it.)
Yay, fun update! Your inventory isn’t yet Cragne Manor sized, but feels like it’s getting close…
The antique store makes me think we can sell something to get the stake we need to open the account and make a killing - maybe that cannonball with a prominently-stamped date of manufacture?
3 Likes
That’s a good spot (I hadn’t thought of selling anything to the antique store) but only a partial success:
>SHOW CANNONBALL TO MERCHANT
The merchant gives it a quick once-over with her expertly trained eyeballs.The merchant says, “Say, this cannonball is in good shape. I’ll give you $35 for it. Deal?”
So it gets us partway there, but we’re still sixty dollars short of being able to open an account.
4 Likes
I would just try all the junk. And also see if you can buy it back!
1 Like
Part 7 - Antiques roadshow
So since the last update we discovered the possibility of selling things to the antique shop. And having also just discovered a wheelbarrow, I can’t resist the imagery of rocking up to the antique shop with a literal wheelbarrow-full of assorted junk to see if we can flog any of it at a profit.
Forest
The woods surround you on all sides, although there is enough space around you to consider it a clearing of sorts. Light streams prettily through the canopy of leaves above. The ground is hard and flat and clean.You can hear the soft gurgling of a stream nearby, but the foliage is so rich and dense that the sound of it is dispersed. You aren’t sure from which direction it originates. You can see your usual path through the grove of trees to the northeast.
You see a time machine here. Sitting on the time machine platform is a busted wheelbarrow, a moose head trophy, a garage door opener, a deflated soccer ball, a broken tire pump, a can-opener, and a cannonball.
>PUT ALL IN WHEELBARROW
old pillowcase: Done.
old tennis ball: Done.
blank: Done.
newspaper: Done.
school pencil: Done.
crowbar: Done.
library book: Done.
tourist map: Done.>PUT MOOSE, OPENER, SOCCER BALL, PUMP, CAN-OPENER AND CANNONBALL IN BARROW
moose head trophy: Done.
garage door opener: Done.
deflated soccer ball: Done.
broken tire pump: Done.
can-opener: Done.
cannonball: Done.
Okay, we’re loaded up, let’s get to the shop.
>PUSH BARROW NE
You maneuver the busted wheelbarrow off of the time machine platform and push it northeast.Path in the woods
You see a busted wheelbarrow here.
>G
You push the busted wheelbarrow northeast.Sloping wood
You see a soft spot, a hole, and a busted wheelbarrow here.
>G
You push the busted wheelbarrow northeast.Oakwood drive
You see a busted wheelbarrow here.
>PUSH BARROW N
You push the busted wheelbarrow to the north.In the village
You see a busted wheelbarrow here.
>PUSH BARROW E
You push the busted wheelbarrow to the east.Antique store
You see a lightning rod, a metal suitcase, and a busted wheelbarrow here.
The antiques merchant is here, puttering around her shop.
The merchant greets you with a smile and a pair of raised eyebrows as you enter. “Back again, are we?” she says.
You notice that her gaze was drawn straight to your creaky old wheelbarrow the moment you wheeled the thing in. She eyes it up and down with interest.
And here’s the punchline: the thing that the merchant is most interested in is the wheelbarrow itself. The description did say that the barrow is “apparently from the last century”, so I did wonder if it might qualify as an antique …
>SHOW BARROW TO MERCHANT
The merchant gives it a quick once-over with her expertly trained eyeballs.The merchant takes a glance at the busted wheelbarrow and says, “Could I ask you to please take everything out of it? I can’t appraise it when it’s carrying things.”
Certainly, I would be happy to dump all of my worthless junk onto the floor of your shop.
>EMPTY BARROW
You empty the busted wheelbarrow, and everything in it spills onto the ground.>SHOW BARROW TO MERCHANT
The merchant gives the busted wheelbarrow the once-over with her keen pair of eyeballs.The merchant says, “Say, this wheelbarrow is as ancient as Methuselah. But the front wheel’s shot. It’d be worth more if it were fixed. I’ll give you $35 for it. Deal?”
>>NO
The merchant says, “Well, all right then. Have a nice day.”
Getting $35 for the wheelbarrow doesn’t solve any problems that we’re currently having, as we need to get at least $100 to be able to open a bank account and start perpetrating compound interest shenanigans. This implies that if we could fix the wheel, we might be able to get a better price.
>X WHEEL
It looks like you hit it on a rock and loosened the bolt, as well as twisted the axle out of shape.>X AXLE
It looks like you hit it on a rock and loosened the bolt, as well as twisted the axle out of shape.
It doesn’t look like we can interact with the broken wheel in great detail (the wheel and axle are implemented as the same object), so no obvious plan for repairing it presents itself. In the meantime, let’s see if the merchant wants to buy any of our other crap.
>SHOW PILLOWCASE
(To the merchant)
The merchant says, “I’m not interested in that.”>SHOW TENNIS BALL
(To the merchant)
The merchant says, “I’m not interested in that.”>SHOW BLANK
(To the merchant)
The merchant says, “I’m not interested in that.”>SHOW NEWSPAPER
(To the merchant)
It is dangerous to go around showing obvious artifacts from the future to
people in the past.
The merchant is similarly uninterested in buying the pencil, crowbar, library book, tourist map, moose head trophy, garage door opener, soccer ball, tire pump, can-opener, crystal, WD-40, plank, shovel, machete, divining wand, car key or frisbee, nor is she interested when we show her our money (which is admittedly a paltry amount). We do have one antique of relatively certain provenance:
>SHOW CANNONBALL
(To the merchant)
The merchant gives it a quick once-over with her expertly trained eyeballs.The merchant says, “Say, this cannonball is in good shape. I’ll give you $35 for it. Deal?”
>>NO
The mechant says, “Well, whatever. Have a nice day.”
We can get to a total of $75 if we sell the wheelbarrow and cannonball, but that isn’t enough to open an account, so I’ll leave it for now. Also, I can’t remember if we actually had a reason for wanting to make lots of money apart from the fact that that sounds like a generally useful thing to be able to do. We might be able to buy the metal suitcase or the lightning rod, but I don’t know why we need those things either.
Anyway, while messing with the wheelbarrow, another idea occurred. We gather our stuff back up and make our way to ten years in the future, when our house is being built:
Clearing
You see a time machine here. Sitting on the time machine platform is a busted wheelbarrow, a moose head trophy, a garage door opener, a deflated soccer ball, a broken tire pump, a can-opener, and a cannonball.
>PUSH BARROW NE
(first getting off the platform)
Okay, you’re no longer on the time machine platform. You maneuver the busted wheelbarrow off of the time machine platform and push it northeast.Woods
You see a busted wheelbarrow here.
>G
You push the busted wheelbarrow northeast.South of house
You see a busted wheelbarrow here.
There is a whoop from a nearby card game being played by a team of idle roof shinglers.
>PUSH BARROW NW
You push the busted wheelbarrow northwest.Behind house
You see a busted wheelbarrow here.
A somber man winds past, unfurling a length of thick cabling behind him.
>PUSH BARROW N
You push the busted wheelbarrow to the north.Outside workshed
You see a busted wheelbarrow here.
A set of floor tiles is laid out on the ground and inspected.
>G
You push the busted wheelbarrow to the north.Inside workshed
It’s kind of hot and stuffy in here, during the heat of the day. It is also hard for your eyes to adjust to the darkness. The materials that are locked in here at night must all be in use right now, because the shed is basically empty. The only exit is south.You see four full jugs of miracle-grow and a busted wheelbarrow here.
Previously we discovered that we can only carry one jug of miracle-grow out of the shed at a time, and after we visit for the first time, a guy turns up and takes all the others. But with this wheelbarrow, we might be able to take all of them at once!
>PUT JUGS IN BARROW
full jug of miracle-grow: Done.
full jug of miracle-grow: Done.
full jug of miracle-grow: Done.
full jug of miracle-grow: Done.>PUSH BARROW S
You push the busted wheelbarrow to the south.Outside workshed
You see a busted wheelbarrow here.
A slouching plumber trundles by, snapping his chewing gum.
Heist accomplished!
We start pushing the wheelbarrow back to the time machine where we’ve been stashing all of our stuff, but disaster strikes:
>PUSH BARROW S
You push the busted wheelbarrow to the south.Behind house
You see a busted wheelbarrow here.
A beautiful woman walks by, slips on a cable, and breaks one of her high heels. “Ooohh!” she yells, enraged.
>PUSH BARROW SE
You push the busted wheelbarrow southeast.South of house
You see a busted wheelbarrow here.
Someone cries, “Hammers! Hammers!”
Another voice replies, “Ol’ Meretzsky just went by!”>PUSH BARROW SW
You push the busted wheelbarrow southwest.Woods
You see a busted wheelbarrow here.
>G
As you turn the heavily-laden wheelbarrow to swerve around the rock, the busted front wheel twists horribly, then completely snaps off.
Uh oh. I can’t imagine that the merchant is going to be pleased that we broke this precious antique wheelbarrow, which might put a damper in our investment plans.
>UNDO
(Undoing one command)Woods
The smell of freshly-sawed wood wafts through this natural grove of cedar and live oak trees. A large rock juts up out of the ground right in your way. A construction site is to the northeast, and a clearing is visible to the southwest.You see a busted wheelbarrow here.
>TAKE JUGS
full jug of miracle-grow: You’ve already got your hands full.
full jug of miracle-grow: You’ve already got your hands full.
full jug of miracle-grow: You’ve already got your hands full.
full jug of miracle-grow: You’ve already got your hands full.>EMPTY BARROW
You empty the busted wheelbarrow, and everything in it spills onto the ground.
Fortunately, we’re now only one location over from where we wanted to bring the jugs, so we can just carry them one at a time by hand. I’ve cut this part out of the transcript because it’s unremarkable and goes off without incident, ending up at:
Clearing
You see a time machine here. Sitting on the time machine platform is a moose head trophy, a garage door opener, a deflated soccer ball, a broken tire pump, a can-opener, a cannonball, a busted wheelbarrow, and four full jugs of miracle-grow.
Do we have anything else that might be useful for fixing the barrow?
>FIX BARROW
What do you want to fix it with?
WD-40 is essentially magic, so maybe spraying it on the barrow will make everything better?
>WD-40
That’s not a tool you can use.
Can we whack it back into shape?
>FIX BARROW WITH CROWBAR
That’s not a tool you can use.
A check of our inventory reveals nothing else of obvious use, so we’ll have to keep mulling over fixing the wheelbarrow for a while longer.
In the meantime, a couple of people in the thread suggested that we should take another look around and pay careful attention to the scenery. We’ve visited most of the locations already and most attempts to examine things mentioned in the text get a generic “I see nothing special about …” message, but there are a couple of things of minor note:
Oakwood drive
This pleasant road wanders peacefully through the lush tree growths native to the area. In the intervening years, they’ll straighten the road and widen it, cutting down dozens of these forty- to ninety-year-old live oaks. The road leads north into the shopping village, and south in the direction of your house.>X OAKS
The aging live oaks rise to forty or fifty feet in height at their bushiest.>X ROAD
I see nothing special about the pleasant road.
This is the version of Oakwood Drive ten years in our past.
>N
In the village
The little shopping village looks a little different than you’re used to seeing it. Colored signs point you to this merchant and that. To the west is the bank, which seems like it’s always been here and always will. To the east is an empty plot of land. The sandwich shop is to the north. The road leading back is south.>X SIGNS
The colorful signs say “Bank ← to your left”, “Sandwiches straight ahead.”>X BANK
This VistaBank has been here as long as you can remember. In fact, it’s been around even longer than that, because here it is, and open for business.
I don’t think I’d noticed previously that the description when examining the bank changes depending on the time period (especially since the interior of the bank itself doesn’t!).
>X SANDWICH SHOP
This sandwich shop is the only one in the area, so it is heavily frequented by a few dedicated regulars. In fact, you ate here only this morning. The shop is open for business.
I assume “this morning” here is in our personal chronology, rather than actually the morning of the day we’re currently in, since we don’t even live in the area in this time frame.
>X PLOT
This plot of razed land is where the antique shop used to sit and where the library will someday be.
We travel another ten years into the past and look around again:
Oakwood drive
This pleasant road wanders peacefully through the lush tree growths native to the area. In the intervening years, they’ll straighten the road and widen it, cutting down dozens of these thirty- to eighty-year-old live oaks. The road leads north into the old shopping village, and a path winds back into the forest to the southwest.>X TREES
The aging live oaks rise to thirty or forty feet in height at their bushiest.
Not only are the oaks ten years younger, they’re also ten feet shorter!
>N
In the village
The little shopping village looks a lot different than you’re used to seeing it. The sandwich shop is there, to the north, but it doesn’t look like it’s open for business yet. To the west is the bank, which seems like it’s always been here and always will. To the east is an antique store, where the public library will be. The road leading back is south.>X BANK
This bank has been here as long as you can remember. In fact, it’s been around even longer than that, because here it is, and open for business.
We’ve travelled back to before the bank had its VistaBank branding, apparently.
>X SANDWICH SHOP
The sandwich shop is there, to the north, but it doesn’t look like it’s open for business yet. A sign on the shop says: “Grand Opening in 1 Week!”>X ANTIQUE STORE
This little antique shop sits where the library will someday be.
Then we travel back to the present to look around again. On the way from the time machine to the village:
Bend in path
You see a sewer grating here.
The divining wand vibrates, pulling to the sewer hole.
>LOOK IN SEWER
There’s nothing in the sewer hole.
I think this is just a bit of colour, since we’ve already got the five-dollar bill out of the sewer hole, but if the divining wand is supposed to vibrate in the presence of water, it makes sense that something ought to happen when we walk past the sewer.
>N
In the village
This little shopping village is attractively decorated with colored signs pointing you to this merchant and that. To the west is the bank, and to the east is the public library. Because it is late, the only thing open is the sandwich shop, which is to the north. The road leading back home is south.>X BANK
This bank has been here as long as you can remember. You haven’t had enough money to open a valid account here for as long as you can remember.
I guess this explains why we don’t already have an account. Although, we own a house, so did we really pay for it in literal cash or did we previously have an account with another bank that doesn’t have a branch nearby?
>X SANDWICH SHOP
This sandwich shop is the only one in the area, so it is heavily frequented by a few dedicated regulars. In fact, you ate here only this morning. The shop is open for business.
This one makes more sense when we’re in our own present.
>X LIBRARY
This is the library you left just a few minutes ago. It is closed for the night. A depository slot is the only thing of note.
I can’t remember whether we never previously examined the library or never further examined the depository slot, but:
>X SLOT
The library depository slot is for returning books after hours. Wedged just inside the slot are two books. Someone must have tried to cram them both in at the same time, because they should have slid down and out of reach.>X BOOKS
library book: Tonight, like every night, you brought home a book on time-travel theories. This one talks about the paradoxes involved in changing the future from the past, or some such.
wedged books: It’s hard to tell what either of the books are with them stiil wedged into the depository slot, because their bindings are facing downward.>TAKE WEDGED BOOKS
You grab ahold of the books and give them a few solid yanks. They pop free and tumble onto the ground.
What did we get?
>X BOOKS
library book: Tonight, like every night, you brought home a book on time-travel theories. This one talks about the paradoxes involved in changing the future from the past, or some such.
rare book: A rare scientific volume, detailing the mating habits of small rodents.
biology book: The title of this book is “Fun With Ferns” by Prof. Roy Hinkley.>READ RARE BOOK
You haven’t the slightest interest in the subject. Who would?>READ BIOLOGY BOOK
The only thing interesting about this book is that the author was apparently stranded on a small island in the Pacific for fifteen years while researching the material.>TAKE BOOKS
rare book: Taken.
biology book: You’ve already got your hands full.>PUT TENNIS BALL AND BLANK IN PILLOWCASE
old tennis ball: Done.
blank: Done.>TAKE BIOLOGY BOOK
Taken.
Trying to READ the books didn’t really get us anywhere, but with the time-travel book and the time machine manual, we had to LOOK UP stuff in order to find the interesting contents. I don’t know exactly what to look up in the rare book, but it’s about the mating habits of rodents, so maybe we should:
>LOOK UP RODENTS IN RARE BOOK
The book goes into somewhat lurid detail about the mating habits of squirrels, including a ream of bawdy, full-color photographs of female squirrels in heat. It’s really rather lascivious for a scientific volume.>LOOK UP MATING HABITS IN RARE BOOK
The book goes into somewhat lurid detail about the mating habits of squirrels, including a ream of bawdy, full-color photographs of female squirrels in heat. It’s really rather lascivious for a scientific volume.
There’s a squirrel on the roof of our house who we would like to distract from his acorn, but are we really supposed to find a bawdy female squirrel in order to seduce him away from it? This doesn’t seem like that kind of game.
As for the biology book, the only thing we know about it is that it was written on an island in the Pacific.
>LOOK UP PACIFIC IN BIOLOGY BOOK
I don’t know the word “pacific”.>LOOK UP ISLAND IN BIOLOGY BOOK
I don’t know the word “island”.
Any suggestions for what to look up in the biology book are welcome.
Since the rare book is specifically called out as being rare (and therefore valuable?), we take a trip into the past to see if it’s worth anything, but:
>SHOW RARE BOOK
(To the merchant)
The merchant says, “I’m not interested in that.”>SHOW BIOLOGY BOOK
(To the merchant)
The merchant says, “I’m not interested in that.”
So, we have a few more leads. The rare book is probably something to do with getting the acorn from the squirrel, and it’s possible that if we can find a way to fix the wheelbarrow, we can sell it for a better price and maybe reach the $100 we need to open an account at the bank. At which point we can possibly access infinite money very slowly by earning a few percent interest every time we deposit our money in the past and withdraw it in the future?
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Being in a civilised country, I keep in mind the (civilised) trope “distract the guard with pr0n”, but I don’t remember if I tried this trope back then… so, no guarantees on this nudge 
Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.
Great progress.
Did we ever figure out if you’re able to get back things you’ve sold? Especially if this “compound interest” gambit works…
There is (at least) one area you’ve overlooked so far that you could always get into in one of the time periods. It’s easy enough to overlook (as I almost did…)
Where are we finding anything salacious to offer the guard? Not that she seemed like the sort to abandon her post for the opportunity to flock through some saucy mags anyway, from the brief interaction we had with her.
Oh, I tested this out but I must have done it separately and not included it in the transcript. When you sell the merchant the cannonball, she puts it in a back room and it’s gone from the game. But when you sell her the wheelbarrow, she leaves it on the shop floor. You can attempt to buy it back, but the game says you don’t have enough money, so she must be charging more than $75 for it.
Is it mentioned in the location description and I’ve just failed to register it, or do we need to infer from some more subtle clue that we can go in a direction not explicitly mentioned? I haven’t been using the EXITS command since I saw that it basically just repeats text from the location description.
I think I know which location username5243 is referring to, and it’s the latter: it doesn’t explicitly say that you can go in that direction, but, when you think about how the place is described, from at least one direction (I think more than one) there is no barrier stopping you from going there.
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I think he means the book itself, since it’s got racy squirrel pics in it.
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Unfortunately the guard fails to be titillated by the sexy squirrel book:
>SHOW RARE BOOK TO GUARD
The security guard isn’t interested in looking at the rare book.>GIVE RARE BOOK TO GUARD
The security guard rejects the offer.
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We could show it to the squirrel?
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Yeah that’s what I thought we might want to do – for certain values of “want to”, of course.
Remind me that I have a friend who helped conduct some behavioral and cognitive studies on monkeys while he was in grad school, and he told me that those kinds of experiments used to rely on giving the animals treats when they did the thing the researchers wanted them to do, but that ran into the challenge that eventually they got full and/or bored of the particular treat. But then some bright soul realized that you could get around this, at least for the male monkeys, by showing them pictures of females in estrus as their reward, because apparently they’d never always be excited for more of that.
3 Likes
This is notably not something that Inform (6 or 7) or Dialog supports out of the box: pushing a pushable object onto a supporter. If this is default TADS, that’s a snazzy little feature.
Gen X had it so good…buying an entire house with less than $100 to your name…
Maybe it’s not just the player character who blushes at nude photos of squirrels! I’ve read enough fiction where the narrator/protagonist has weird tastes, but actually they’re not weird, everyone in the setting is like that.
Alas. The player character is just a weirdo. (Or was raised in the sort of environment that covers up anatomical diagrams of animals for decency.)
1 Like
oh, well. I have forgotten the actual guard. Sorry for the ambiguous nudge (age strick again, I fear…).
To be more explicit (in the hinting, NOT scientific, sense !!!) the guard I refer is the one guarding the acorn…
embarassed (twice in a day, and for the same reason !).
Time to add more fish to my Mediterrannean diet, I fear…
embarassed regards (twice !) from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.