Only one more door is reachable: Mars, god of war. No points for guessing what might be behind this one:
>e
The BendAn exhausted stream trickles into a river that bends to the south and east. The opposite shore is veiled behind a thick mist.
Paths meander off in many directions from the river’s edge.
A dark shadow lies across the ground.
>e
MoorTall, solemn cattails line the banks of a great river that flows eastward across the silent moor. A dense fog on the water obscures your view of the opposite shore.
A pair of giant toadstools is growing among the cattails. The larger one has an open white door set into the stem.
A triangular shadow lies across the ground. Its sharp point rests exactly on the open door in the toadstool.
Cattails tend to grow in the water, right? I can’t imagine wading through the waters of the River Styx is very good for our health, but any attempts to examine the water or the river just gives the room description again.
>in
You pass the threshold of the white door…
Dun dun dun… (This is where the game prints 23 line breaks to make the last part scroll away before the next part appears.)
… and step into empty air.
Thin Air
You’re fourteen hundred feet above a small city, falling straight down at a velocity of seventy miles an hour.
A white door is dwindling away in the sky overhead.
UH OH!
The wind in your ears becomes a roar as you plunge faster towards the city below. You close your eyes for the last few hundred feet.
And that’s the end. We have exactly one turn to act before we go splat.
My first thought was to pull a Mary Poppins using that umbrella:
The closed umbrella’s handle is carved in the shape of a parrot’s head.
But just to be sure, I had to confirm that the movie does in fact predate this game: it’s from 1964. Somehow I’d always thought it was later.
And sure enough, if we use our one turn to:
>open umbrella
The umbrella snaps open and nearly flies to pieces in the fury of your descent. But a sympathetic breeze fills the cloth panels with air, and your death-plunge slows to a leisurely drift.The city below draws closer. You glimpse a river, railroad tracks, streets busy with horses and bicycles, a playground…
Crunch.
Playground, in a sandpile
A set of children’s swings moves slowly back and forth in the humid breeze. Behind them stands a long building, its windows hung with flowers and birds folded from colored paper.
Mounds of dirt are heaped around a dark opening to the east. It appears to be a shelter of some kind.
Several small children are happily chasing dragonflies north of the swing set. Turning south, you see a group of adults (schoolteachers, by the looks of them), wearily digging another shelter like the first.
Somewhat shaken, you rise to your feet in a child’s sandpile. In the pile you see a splinter (providing light) and an umbrella.
Well, there are two options for where we are, right?
>x hiroshima
“Nope. Wrong city,” grumbles a voice in your ear.
Oops.
>x nagasaki
“Got it,” whispers a voice in your ear.
Which means we have until 11:02 local time. Our watch says we came through the door at 10:54:15 AM. So let’s move!
>x children
The children tumble over one another as they leap to catch the elusive dragonflies.
This gets us a new box quote:
The love of posterity is a consequence
of the necessity of death. If a man
were sure of living forever, he would
not care about his offspring.– Nathaniel Hawthorne
It looks like, after Hiroshima, they’ve started making preparations for another nuclear attack.
>x shelter
All you can see is a mound of dirt, with a dark opening leading downward.
Will it be enough?
>d
[climbing out of the sandpile first]You descend into the darkness.
Shelter
You wouldn’t want to spend much time in this wretched hole. The bare floor is damp and filthy, and the corners reek of urine. Luckily, there’s an opening to the west.
A spade is leaning against the wall.
The spade seems potentially useful for our quest. But is this shelter really going to accomplish anything?
>get spade
Taken.[Your score just went up by 1 point. The total is now 38 out of 100.]
>x it
It looks sturdy enough.
I’m glad something is, at least!
>w
You ascend into daylight.Playground
A set of children’s swings moves slowly back and forth in the humid breeze. Behind them stands a long building, its windows hung with flowers and birds folded from colored paper.
Mounds of dirt are heaped around a dark opening to the east. It appears to be a shelter of some kind.
Several small children are happily chasing dragonflies north of the swing set. Turning south, you see a group of adults (schoolteachers, by the looks of them), wearily digging another shelter like the first.
A child’s sandpile covers the ground at your feet. In the pile you see a splinter (providing light) and an umbrella.
A little girl races between the swings, hot on the trail of a dragonfly. She trips and sprawls across the sand, laughing with hysterical glee. Then she sees you.
At first, you’re sure she’s going to scream. Her eyes dart back and forth between you and the teachers; you can see a cry forming on her lips.
Suddenly, the umbrella at your feet catches her eye. You watch her expression soften from fear to curiosity.
It’s been quite a while, but remember where we got the umbrella in the first place? An elderly Japanese woman with a horribly scarred face lost it in Kensington Gardens in the 1980s. It seemed to be precious to her, and she left in tears when she couldn’t retrieve it.
Looks like the right moment for us to set up a little time loop.
>give umbrella to girl
You’re not holding an umbrella.
Oh come on, game! You clearly understand implicit actions in other places!
>get umbrella
You take the umbrella out of the sandpile.The girl can’t keep her eyes off the umbrella.
>give umbrella to girl
The girl’s mouth opens into a little “o” at the magnificence of your gift. She humbly accepts the umbrella, smiles shyly and descends into the shelter with her prize.
Which means at least one person is going to make it through this. Can we persuade the others to join her in the shelter?
>n
You walk a little closer to the children, but hesitate when it occurs to you that they might not take kindly to your presence.Are you sure you want to go that way?
[Please type YES or NO.] >y
The children cry out in surprise and fear at your approach.
One teacher, a young woman, sees you coming and shrieks something in Japanese. Her companions quickly surround you, shouting accusations and sneering at your vacation shorts. You respond by pointing desperately at the sky, shouting “Bomb! Big boom!” and struggling to escape into the shelter.
This awkward scene is cut short by a searing flash.
Oops. That didn’t end so well. The same happens if you approach the teachers, or if you just wait:
You’ve noticed a faint sound coming from somewhere overhead. The children and teachers stop to stare at the sky.
>x watch
Your wristwatch says it’s 11:01:30 am.The sound overhead grows louder. There’s no mistaking the drone of aircraft.
Muttering with exasperation, the teachers drop their spades and begin to trudge in the direction of the shelter.
Followed by the same scene as above. Nothing I’ve tried will persuade them.
But we have another problem, ourselves:
>x door
You can’t see the door from here.
The door is…if it’s at the place where the bomb exploded, that’s about 500 meters above the ground. (While searching for that, Wikipedia tells me that the Shinkozen Primary School was turned into an emergency medical facility in the aftermath, so that may be where we are here.)
How are we going to reach that—especially once we’ve given away our umbrella?
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