Start of a transcript of Standing on the Shoulders of Giants An Interactive Fiction by Ilmur Eggert Release 1 / Serial number 200925 / Inform 7 build 6M62 (I6/v6.33 lib 6/12N) Identification number: //51085BD3-B867-43FE-97D8-BF50332F956C// Interpreter version 2.1.7 / VM 3.1.2 / Library serial number 080126 Standard Rules version 3/120430 by Graham Nelson >l By the Cottage Isaac stood south of the front door to a dilapidated cottage. There were no windows, at least not on this side of the cottage. No grass or plants were growing in this clearing. It seemed very deserted. Isaac could leave by going south. >i Isaac was carrying nothing. >x me Isaac was wearing the most expensive and fashionable clothes from 1673. >x isaac Isaac was wearing the most expensive and fashionable clothes from 1673. >open door Isaac found it impolite to enter without knocking first. >knock door Isaac knocked on the door. "Come in!" a voice shouted from inside the cottage. >in (first opening the wooden door) Isaac entered the cottage. "Please close the door again," said an old, small woman seated in a rocking chair against the north wall. "I am very sensitive to drafts. Have a seat." Isaac closed the door and sat down on a stool in front of the old woman, who was obviously Anna Dalton. Inside the Cottage (on the stool) Isaac was seated on a stool in the witch's cottage. Here, from the inside, the cottage did not seem dilapidated at all. Probably a trick to avoid thieves entering her cottage. There wasn't a lot of furniture in here, only the stool, the rocking chair where Anna Dalton was seated and then a small table in the west end of the cottage. However, there were many shelves on the walls with jars, plants and stuffed animals. "That was easy, to lure you in here!" Anna said with a nasty smile on her face. "Feel free to leave anytime - the phenomenon has already happened. You'll see. By the way, you might become very thirsty - it is a side effect..." >talk to anna Isaac tried to get some more information from Anna but she just shook her head and said, "I am sure you can figure this out on your own. Good luck!" >ask anna about anna Isaac tried to get some more information from Anna but she just shook her head and said, "I am sure you can figure this out on your own. Good luck!" >x me Isaac was wearing the most expensive and fashionable clothes from 1673. >x stool The stool seemed a bit rickety. >search it There was nothing on the stool. >take it It did not belong to Isaac. >x chair The rocking chair looked comfortable unlike the rickety stool. >search it Anna Dalton was seated on the rocking chair. >take it It did not belong to Isaac. >move it It was fixed in place. >rock it That's not a verb I recognise. >x table It was a rather small table. Currently, nothing was on it. >search it Isaac found nothing of interest. >look under it Isaac found nothing of interest. >x jars The shelves were filled with jars, plants and stuffed animals. Isaac was not interested in those. >x anna Despite being quite old, Anna looked healthy. She had a mysterious smile on her face. Isaac did not know if he could trust her. >u (first getting off the stool) (first opening the wooden door) Isaac stood up and left the cottage, closing the door after him. The air felt warmer, almost as if it was summer. He walked south out of the forest along a path. But he didn't walk for long before he saw something was different. A lot of small houses appeared in the distance. Isaac was sure they weren't there before. Isaac kept walking until he reached a road stretching east and west. Right on the other side of this road, there were some strange small houses, a building style which Isaac had never seen before. Furthermore, the road was not of ordinary cobblestone but made of a material that Isaac recognized as asphalt. How strange... North of a strange road Isaac stood at the south end of the forest path by a strange road made of asphalt. He could go north back to the cottage or cross the road by going south, whereas he had no incentive to go east or west along the road. Isaac could see a road sign. Isaac would have had to get out of North of a strange road first. Isaac began to feel very thirsty. >x sign On the sign was written 'Epping Road'. Isaac was still thirsty. >s Isaac crossed the road. Epping Road 1218 Isaac stood on the pavement in front of Epping Road 1218. It was a strange house but the neighbouring houses were similar. He could go south onto the porch, north across the road or follow the road east and west. Isaac felt even more thirsty. >s On the porch Isaac was standing on the porch right beside the front door. Next to the door was a window. The house seemed to have been painted recently in black and white colours. The house was well kept and the atmosphere was nice. Isaac could leave the porch to the north. Isaac began to feel uncomfortable. He was now extremely thirsty. >x window Just as the door, the window frame was painted white. The curtains were drawn and the window was closed. Isaac began to feel dizzy and he was still extremely thirsty. >knock door Isaac knocked on the front door but nothing happened. Isaac's vision became blurry. All he could think of was water. >open door (first unlocking the front door) Isaac lacked a key that fits the front door. Everything became black. Isaac had become unconscious. . . . (press any key to continue) Isaac woke up with a headache and looked around. He was lying on a bed in a small room. He sat up. "What happened?" he was thinking to himself. Isaac stood up, opened the door and entered a big living room. In one corner of the room, a young woman was seated in a sofa. "Great, you are awake," she said. "I'm Lisa. I gave you a lot of water earlier, but you were barely conscious. Who are you?" "Newton. Isaac Newton." Isaac looked around. Everything seemed so strange. So many strange materials. And objects. "Where am I?" Isaac asked. "We found you on our porch. So you are still on Epping Road," Lisa said. "What is the name of this city?" Isaac asked. "You don't know that you are in London? You are in London," Lisa replied with a puzzled expression on her face. "Strange, I've never heard of Epping Road," Isaac muttered to himself. "Have you seen the news?" Lisa asked. "Something very strange has happened today! Come and sit, I will show you." Isaac sat down in the sofa beside Lisa. Lisa took a rectangular piece of metal from the strange sofa table and pointed at a big black box, which was placed against the wall. Then light poured out from the box. What Isaac saw was breathtaking: A man who was obviously too big to be inside the box was talking to them! Isaac did not listen. He was paralyzed. What was happening? "They have been sending this the last couple of hours," Lisa said, "and it just gets more and more strange. Maybe five hours ago, my phone stopped working. I was visiting a friend and her phone stopped working too. We switched on the telly but it also didn't work. I went home and found that our TV didn't work either. I then went to the basement and fetched our old CRT TV. It worked. They say that most electronics are not working and that the problem is global. All the best engineers and scientists have been looking into the problem. But none of them remember how the malfunctioning equipment is supposed to work! They do remember how the working equipment functions though. It's mainly older electronic equipment that works. It is soo strange..." Despite his high intelligence, Isaac was still baffled but managed to ask, "What year is this?" "You must have hit your head seriously! We are in 2020!" Lisa said. "You better stay here until you feel better. I will go and get some groceries and cook some dinner for us. Hopefully, you will feel better then. Please feel at home." Lisa left the room and shortly after Isaac heard the front door slam. Then he started listening to the guy in what Lisa called a TV: Scientists say that something must have happened to physics! Unfortunately, they cannot remember how physics used to be. We could really use a scientist like the late Albert Einstein now. Never before, and never after, has there been such a genius, the man who wrote the scientific masterpiece 'Die mathematischen Grundlagen der Naturphilosophie' which is German for 'Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy'. Luckily, all the physics Einstein described, seem to be intact. But most modern scientists and engineers have forgotten what they were working on. It is a mystery why. Isaac thought deeply about this and ignored the rest of the speech coming from the TV. How and why had he arrived in the future? And why was the future a mess? Were these two things connected? Had it something to do with that guy Einstein's 'Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy'? After all, the title was practically identical to the book Isaac had considered writing in Latin (Philosophić Naturalis Principia Mathematica), had he had the necessary calculus at hand. Isaac stood up and found his shoes and jacket in the hallway. He had to talk to Anna Dalton again. He unlocked the door and left. He crossed the road and walked north into the forest. Once again he stood in front of the dilapidated cottage. By the Cottage Isaac stood south of the front door to a dilapidated cottage. There were no windows, at least not on this side of the cottage. No grass or plants were growing in this clearing. It seemed very deserted. Isaac could leave by going south. >knock door Isaac knocked on the door again. "No need to knock again. Come in!" a voice shouted from inside the cottage. >in (first opening the wooden door) Isaac entered the cottage. Inside the Cottage Isaac stood in the witch's cottage. Here, from the inside, the cottage did not seem dilapidated at all. Probably a trick to avoid thieves entering her cottage. There wasn't a lot of furniture in here, only the stool, the rocking chair where Anna Dalton was seated and then a small table in the west end of the cottage. However, there were many shelves on the walls with jars, plants and stuffed animals. "I demand to know what is going on!" Isaac shouted. "Easy my friend," Anna said calmly. "You just have to find out what is wrong with the future before I can send you back. I don't know what is wrong, that is why I brought you here, the biggest genius in history." >talk to anna Isaac tried to get some more information from Anna but she just shook her head and said, "You need to figure this out on your own. However, I feel that you might need to find a specific object to solve the problem. Good luck!" >take all There were none at all available! >s Isaac left the cottage and walked back to the road. He was about to cross it when some strange vehicle approached from the east. It wasn't drawn by any horses, but as it passed Isaac, he noticed a man inside of it. Isaac watched in admiration as the vehicle drove further west. Suddenly Isaac thought to himself, "I must get a ride into the city!" and so Isaac waited for another vehicle. After a while, another vehicle approached from the east. Isaac waved at the car. Unexpectedly, the car pulled over and the driver rolled down the window. The driver, who was an older woman, said, "You need a ride?" "Please bring me to the city!" Isaac almost shouted. "I need to find a library!" "Sure, hop in," she said. Isaac managed to open the door and got in. Half an hour later, the driver pulled over in front of a big red building with the word 'Library' written in big fat letters across the front. Isaac thanked the woman and got out of the car. In front of a library Isaac stood in front of the door to a big red building, which was a library according to the big fat letters above the door. The door was north of here but had no handle. In theory, Isaac could cross the road to the south, but it was much too busy and he didn't want to get hit by a vehicle. He could also walk along the road to the east and west but he had no incentive to do that at the moment. >n Isaac approached the door and to his surprise, it opened automatically. He hurried in. Front Desk Isaac was standing just inside the library. In front of him, there was a desk with the words 'Front Desk' written above and two signs pointed east and west. 'Kids' were east and 'Grown-ups' were west. Isaac could leave the library to the south. Isaac could see the people standing in line and the librarian behind the desk here. >talk to librarian "Sorry, but it ain't your turn Mister," the librarian said. "You have to stand in line like everyone else." >stand in line Isaac saw no reason to stand in line. He wouldn't be able borrow a book anyway, since he could not document who he was or where he lived. >w Among shelves with fiction Isaac was almost surrounded by shelves full of novels and short stories. He could go east back to the front desk or further west, deeper into the library. >w Among shelves with scientific books Isaac had reached the end of the library. He was almost surrounded by shelves with all kinds of scientific books. However, two shelf sections were empty. He could return to the fiction section by going east. >x sections The shelves were mostly filled with books. Isaac could SEARCH FOR an author if he could think of a science author. However, two sections were empty. One of them was called 'Theory of Relativity' and the other was called 'Quantum Mechanics'. >search for einstein Isaac found two books by Albert Einstein. The first was very thin and was called 'On a Heuristic Viewpoint Concerning the Production and Transformation of Light' and was written in 1905. The other book was very big and was published in 1925. It was called 'Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy'. >read principles The title of the big book was 'Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy' by Albert Einstein. Isaac felt that this book somehow was related to the strange problems happening in 2020 so he skimmed the table of contents. Amazing! This book described how the laws of gravitation were universal, i.e. they could explain mechanics here on Earth as well as they explained the so far empirical laws of planetary motion obtained by Kepler! If Isaac took this book back to 1673 he would revolutionize science. And Einstein didn't have to spend 20 years researching mechanics. Perhaps Einstein and his peers would then have time to discover the Theory of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. Isaac was certain that he had to return to Anna Dalton with this book as quickly as possible. >e Among shelves with fiction Isaac was almost surrounded by shelves full of novels and short stories. He could go east back to the front desk or further west, deeper into the library. >e Front Desk Isaac was standing just inside the library. In front of him, there was a desk with the words 'Front Desk' written above and two signs pointed east and west. 'Kids' were east and 'Grown-ups' were west. Isaac could leave the library to the south. Isaac could see the people standing in line and the librarian behind the desk here. >s Isaac approached the door, which opened automatically. Isaac went south. In front of a library Isaac stood in front of the door to a big red building, which was a library according to the big fat letters above the door. The door was north of here but had no handle. In theory, Isaac could cross the road to the south, but it was much too busy and he didn't want to get hit by a vehicle. He could also walk along the road to the east and west but he had no incentive to do that at the moment. >i Isaac was carrying nothing. >n Isaac approached the door, which opened automatically. Isaac went north. Front Desk Isaac was standing just inside the library. In front of him, there was a desk with the words 'Front Desk' written above and two signs pointed east and west. 'Kids' were east and 'Grown-ups' were west. Isaac could leave the library to the south. Isaac could see the people standing in line and the librarian behind the desk here. >w Among shelves with fiction Isaac was almost surrounded by shelves full of novels and short stories. He could go east back to the front desk or further west, deeper into the library. >w Among shelves with scientific books Isaac had reached the end of the library. He was almost surrounded by shelves with all kinds of scientific books. However, two shelf sections were empty. He could return to the fiction section by going east. On the book shelves were a very big book and a very thin book. >take principles Isaac took 'Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy'. He felt it was important. >e Among shelves with fiction Isaac was almost surrounded by shelves full of novels and short stories. He could go east back to the front desk or further west, deeper into the library. >e Front Desk Isaac was standing just inside the library. In front of him, there was a desk with the words 'Front Desk' written above and two signs pointed east and west. 'Kids' were east and 'Grown-ups' were west. Isaac could leave the library to the south. Isaac could see the people standing in line and the librarian behind the desk here. >s Isaac was about to leave when the librarian behind the front desk shouted, "Hey! Even though our electronic systems are down, you still have to register that book. You must stand in line like everyone else." Isaac knew that he wouldn't be able to borrow the book as he didn't have any documentation on who he was, so he didn't bother to stand in line. >e Kids Section Isaac saw a lot of shelves with books for children. There was also a low but wide table in one corner surrounded by lots of small chairs. However, no one was seated at the moment. Instead, a lot of children were running around, playing with each other. Isaac found them very noisy. The only exit was west towards the front desk. On the chairs were some small school bags (closed). Isaac could also see a lot of children and a kindergarten teacher here. >take school bag The kindergarten teacher would surely notice if you took one of the school bags. >put principles in school bag The small school bags were closed. >open school bag When no one was looking, Isaac opened one of the school bags. It contained a lunch box. >take lunch box Isaac had no need for the lunch box. >x lunch box Isaac saw nothing special about the lunch box. >open it Isaac didn't need to open the lunch box. >put principles in box The lunch box was closed. >put principles in bag First Isaac had to make room for the book, so while no one was looking, Isaac hid the lunch box behind some books. Then he quickly slipped the big book by Einstein into the bag and closed it. Shortly after the kindergarten teacher called the children and asked them to listen carefully. She instructed them to put on their bags and prepare to leave. She then told them to stand in two lines and hold hands with the child next to them. Luckily the boy carrying the bag with the book was last in line. The kindergarten teacher and the children went towards the front desk and then further out onto the street. Isaac followed them closely, keeping an eye on the boy who was carrying the book in his school bag. Suddenly the boy shouted, "Angela, my bag is so heavy!" "Don't be silly. You could carry it to the library so, of course, you can carry it back," the kindergarten teacher said firmly. Then she led the kids west along the street. Isaac kept following them. Following the kids Isaac was further down the street following the kids. The boy who was carrying the school bag with the book was right in front of Isaac. The kindergarten teacher was way up ahead. Isaac could see the boy carrying the bag with the book here. >talk to boy Isaac did not want to draw attention so he decided not to talk to anyone. >x boy Isaac was only interested in the boy carrying the bag with the book. The boy was right in front of him. >z Time passed. >l Following the kids Isaac was further down the street following the kids. The boy who was carrying the school bag with the book was right in front of Isaac. The kindergarten teacher was way up ahead. Isaac could see the boy carrying the bag with the book here. >open bag As carefully as possible, Isaac opened the boy's school bag and pulled out 'Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy' by Albert Einstein. Shortly after the boy who had carried the book yelled, "Angela, my bag isn't heavy anymore." The kids kept on walking but Isaac had stopped. Triumphantly he looked at the book. "This must be it!" he thought to himself. Isaac tried to hitch a ride but no one stopped. He realized that he had to walk back to the forest. As the weather was good, that wasn't going to be a problem. Isaac walked for a little more than an hour before arriving at Anna Dalton's cottage. By the Cottage Isaac stood south of the front door to a dilapidated cottage. There were no windows, at least not on this side of the cottage. No grass or plants were growing in this clearing. It seemed very deserted. Isaac could leave by going south. >in (first opening the wooden door) Once again Isaac entered the cottage. He closed the door, as he remembered that Anna was sensitive to drafts. Anna started to talk, "Welcome my friend! I can feel the energies surrounding you are very positive now. I think it is time to bring you back to your own time. But first, please show me the object you found." Isaac showed her the book. "A science book!" Anna exclaimed. "Of course! Well, let's get you back to your own time." Anna made an apparently insignificant move with her right hand and continued, "Now leave. When you go out that door you will be back in 1673. I am sure you will know what to do with that book." Isaac said goodbye and left. He found that everything was back to normal in London. Well, except for that book. Isaac hid the book well for many years and started to translate it into Latin. The final title was 'Philosophić Naturalis Principia Mathematica' and it was divided into three volumes in case some poor child would have to carry some of it in a school bag someday. Isaac decided to publish the book on the 5th of July 1687 and he burned the original by Einstein. With gravity and mechanics in place, Isaac felt confident that Einstein and his peers sometime in the future would master the Theory of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, and as a consequence, everything would be back to normal in 2020. The publication 'Philosophić Naturalis Principia Mathematica' was a huge success and Isaac became known as the greatest scientist ever, while he was still alive. Isaac had truly been standing on the shoulders of a giant. *** The End *** Would you like to RESTART, RESTORE a saved game, QUIT or UNDO the last command? >