Nostrils of Flesh and Clay
by Porpentine (2012)
Genres: Olfactory Noir

You are a scent detective, drifting through a world torn apart by greed and nausea. With colors dripping from your nostrils, you flex cartilage and demand to know... what is Project Olympia? Who are the lepers that sing but don't say a word? What is that deadly, doom-laden scent of meringue? Innocence is the surest sign of guilt...

action: %
response: Do you like music?

Interesting. Very interesting.
Nostrils of Flesh and Clay
An Olfactory Fiction by Porpentine

Fake dawnlight streams through drawn blinds. The erogater is at her desk, thumbing through papers. Behind her, some kind of critter languidly swims through a murky aquarium. The only exits are a stainless steel door on the east wall and the hallway door south.
action: About yourself
response: In profile: a strong nose splitting a curtain of tangled dark brown hair. Chapped lips. Green jacket.
action: You smell yourself
response: Smelling yourself creates a horrific hyper-olfactory feedback loop. Time and space collide within your nostrils--you smell the past, the present, the future, you smell it all, and you pay the ultimate price.
action: You look at the critter
response: The water is too murky.
action: Smell critter
response: Your extra-olfactory perception requires proximity.

The erogater steeples her fingers and continues. "I really should give you permanent leave of absence for that little debacle down at Palace Street."
action: Smell critter
response: Your extra-olfactory perception requires proximity.
action: Smell the erogater
response: She smells like cold clay, chilled wire. But something deeper. Deeper.
action: You look at her
response: You feel dizzy as your scent-brain tips over into oblivion. You blink, shutting off the stream of olfactons. Note to self: never smell an erogater.

She purses her lips. "But you're the best we've got. And that makes me the worst at firing your ass."
action: You look around
response: Fake dawnlight streams through drawn blinds. The erogater is at her desk, thumbing through papers. Behind her, some kind of critter languidly swims through a murky aquarium. The only exits are a stainless steel door on the east wall and the hallway door south.

"Get out of here before I change my mind." She goes back to perusing her papers.
action: You check what you're carrying
response: You leave, flakes of her gaze stuck to your skin like flecks of ice.
green hallway
Flourescent lights saturate the hallway emerald. The sole decoration is a huge morale poster covering the wall. The ministry branches off west into a maze of corridors, the erogater's office is at the north end of the hall, and if you keep going south you'll hit the exit.
action: You look at what you're carrying with you
response: You are carrying:
a jacket (being worn)
a mobile phone
a wallet
a film capsule
action: You examine the jacket
response: Green jacket. You need something thicker for when winter rolls around.

Your phone beeps.
action: Smell phone
response: Smells like insects. Like ants.
action: You look at the phone
response: A single text message saying: "Club Coccyx. Hurry."
action: You look at the wallet
response: ID card, debit card.
action: You examine debit card
response: More of a token at this point, a totem. Once there must have been some significance to it, but you can no longer remember. Probably related to actually having cash on it.
action: Smell jacket
response: You smell the perfume of stress and apathy that you so redolently secrete.
action: Smell id.
response: You smell your own insecurity. You wouldn't be shit without this card. Just that pathetic fuck from five years ago who was smelling for peanuts on the corner.
action: Smell debit
response: The scent of blood is strained, diffused, but it's still there. Even through the medium of electronic banking, the blood is always there.
action: You look around
response: Flourescent lights saturate the hallway emerald. The sole decoration is a huge morale poster covering the wall. The ministry branches off west into a maze of corridors, the erogater's office is at the north end of the hall, and if you keep going south you'll hit the exit.
action: Smell film
response: Fear, sweat, tension. Yours.
action: You examine the film
response: High resolution snaps of the Olympia files.
action: Smell poster
response: It smells like nothing. Nothing at all.
action: Smell ministry
response: First rule you learned at the academy: never smell totalities. You've got a good nose, but don't push it, kid.
action: You go south
response: Utilitarian metal room, shelves full of incoming and outgoing gear. A sign is bolted to the wall above the sink. This is the main filter between Chalice City and the ministry. Go east and you hit the exit gate. North leads back into the ministry.

You can see a counter (on which are an aboro qihilus and a loan lantern) here.
action: You examine the aboro
response: One of the Acontextual Artifacts of the Chalice Meringue Dumpyard. Someone hasn't checked this one in yet.
action: You smell it
response: Sheen of fertility, but for some reason you can't delve deeper. The olfactons feel snared, skewed. It's like smelling an egg, or a door.
action: Smell lantern
response: Your nostrils toke up snared illuminance, squandered radiance, subjugated shadows. You smell philosophy, theosophy, and utility.
action: You smell the gear
response: Thoroughly de-olfactonized, as per regulations.
action: You examine the sign
response: 1. STRIP ALL INCOMING MATERIALS.
2. BAG AND TAG.
3. REPORT ALL UNUSUAL ACTIVITY TO THE NEAREST SUPERIOR OFFICER (EFFULGENCE, MOTION, HEAT, COLD, BACKWARDS SCREAMING, LEVITATION, ET CETERA)
action: You examine the counter
response: Stainess steel.

On the counter are an aboro qihilus and a loan lantern.
action: Smell sign
response: Smells like nothing. Absolutely nothing.
action: Smell counter
response: Thoroughly stripped of scent.
action: You take the lantern
response: Taken.
action: You look around
response: Utilitarian metal room, shelves full of incoming and outgoing gear. A sign is bolted to the wall above the sink. This is the main filter between Chalice City and the ministry. Go east and you hit the exit gate. North leads back into the ministry.

You can see a counter here.
action: Smell sink
response: Sinks always smell strange to you. Highly liminal. A phantom maelstrom whirling with everything that ever went the drain, too faint to suck you in.
action: You go to the east
response: The pressure doors suck open, then shwoom back into place.

Bars of purple flourescence buzz in the ceiling. The exit gate is at the east end of this hallway.
action: Go east
response: A dark metal room lit only by a plexiglass window. A sliding iron gate fills the east wall. This is the last layer before leaving the ministry.
action: Smell window
response: You hate plexiglass. It's like inhaling baking soda.
action: Go east
response: The gate slides open. You whip the shadows back with the lantern and send them flying from the alley to die in the open air.
action: You go to the east
response: The western mouth of this alley is filled with an iron gate. A security camera stares down from above the gate. Sob Street lies east.
action: Smell camera
response: The olfactons have been stripped from this camera. The uncomfortable feeling of smelling nothing, like suddenly entering a dark space or being abruptly deafened.
action: You look at the camera
response: A black eye set in the wall like some kind of obsidian pustule.
action: Go east
response: Sob Street runs along the waterfront, a bank of grey fog to the east. Purple light glowers from a narrow alleyway set in the wall of hulking warehouses. One of those old info-gloops is mounted near the alley entrance.
action: Xmell info-gloxmell info-gloop
response: [Try typing LOOK for a description of your surroundings. Any compass directions indicate exits which you can use by typing (for example) EAST or E. Some of the objects mentioned in the description might be worth a closer look with a command like EXAMINE FILM CAPSULE. You can also TAKE or DROP some things, type INVENTORY to see a list of what you're carrying already, OPEN or CLOSE containers or doors, and so on.]
action: Smell info-glosmell info-gloop
response: Hallucinatory bubblegum. Through this gloop you sense the combined gloop of all gloops. They gloop as one.
action: You examinthe info-gloop
response: Imagine an ATM with pink goo burbling out of it. The goo constantly seems as if it were about to disgorge itself from the wall and splatter to the sidewalk, but somehow it always manages to suck itself back inside.

You hate using these things, but you're shit with directions.
action: You use the gloop
response: You stick your hand in and say, "Location query: Club Coccyx"
The goo speaks:
"Club Coccyx is south of your current position BLARRRRRRGHHHHHHH"
"Head south down Sob Street, Club Coccyx lies on the east side of the street BLARGGGGHHHHHHHHH"
The gloop clings to your skin as you disentangle yourself. You feel faintly nauseous.
action: You smell yourself
response: Smelling yourself creates a horrific hyper-olfactory feedback loop. Time and space collide within your nostrils--you smell the past, the present, the future, you smell it all, and you pay the ultimate price.

[
action: Smell gloop
response: [
action: You look at your surroundings
response: Sob Street runs along the waterfront, a bank of grey fog to the east. Purple light glowers from a narrow alleyway set in the wall of hulking warehouses. One of those old info-gloops is mounted near the alley entrance. To the south, Sob Street deepens.
action: You go south
response: Streetlamps cast cool light on the street. Below your feet, a storm drain sings a ghostly song. To the south, a gap in the buildings gives a view of the Meringue Dumpyard. To the east, you see Club Coccyx, spelled out in dead neon. Everything else is boarded up, closed, caged, black glass.

You can see some chalice city songers here.
action: Smell drain
response: You travel through the cold guts of the city, through the the dark places. You feel a dead rat tumble through your viscera, followed by mangled trash, then streams of puke. Then you exhale that trip out your mouth and you're back in your own skin.
action: You examine the songers
response: Leprous street saints that sing for a living, and pray for a dying. The rot of their skin is like lichen on wax.
action: Smell songers
response: Dead skin fermenting under bandages. Old moonlight. Vinyl shavings. You catch a whiff of larceny, but fuck it, you're off-duty.
action: You talk to the songers
response: [If you're trying to talk to someone, you might try ASK SONGERS ABOUT something, the traditional conversation syntax. Type ABOUT to see if this story offers more detailed instructions for conversation.]
action: Down
response: You can't go that way.

[From here, you can go north, south and east.]
action: Go south
response: The chalice city songers start to croon. Their boombox percusses backing beats that snarl, warp, thrash, crash, thud against the air, rattle the windows.
Their sounds are vibrant, melodic, but the notes wash over you like an arctic breeze, because you've always been insensate to the musical realm.
action: You go to the south
response: This used to be an alley, now it's a cusp of concrete looking out on a dizzying drop. The Meringue Dumpyard sprawls for miles into the exposed heart of the earth. Back in dynasty days, this was downtown. Now it's a low, dead, dark place, a post-apocalyptic quarry.
action: You look at what you're carrying with you
response: You are carrying:
an aboro qihilus
a loan lantern
a jacket (being worn)
a mobile phone
a wallet
a film capsule
action: You go south
response: You can't go that way.

[The only way to go is north.]
action: You go north
response: Streetlamps cast cool light on the street. Below your feet, a storm drain sings a ghostly song. To the south, a gap in the buildings gives a view of the Meringue Dumpyard. To the east, you see Club Coccyx, spelled out in dead neon. Everything else is boarded up, closed, caged, black glass.

You can see some chalice city songers here.
action: You go east
response: Stale alcohol bites the air and sticks to your shoes. Just a dim joint with no customers, chairs all lined up against the wall. A very tall man is standing by a deep red door against the east wall, just past the bar.
action: You examine man
response: You'd call him an ugly customer, but he looks like staff of some sort. What's to say? He ain't winnin' no beauty pageants. BUT DON'T SAY THAT TO HIS FACE
action: You smell man
response: He's wearing that weird cologne people sell these days that supposedly masks you from the smell detectives. Doesn't seem to work though, because you smell a whole lotta crime on this guy, so much of it that it blends together like a bad soup, all the flavors muddled and indistinct.
action: You ask the man about himself
response: He grunts.
action: You examine the door
response: Whadda they call this kind of red? Burgundy? Oxblood? Ah, forget it.
action: Smell door
response: This door came from overseas, where they still have forests, and not just little viewing stations for lone trees buried inside iron bells. You smell memories of blood on the door but that could just be a fresh coat of paint. If the paint in question is blood, that is.
action: You open door
response: The guy at the door says, "You the crooked cop?"
1 - "Yeah, they think it might be scoliosis."
2 - "Step aside for royalty, pally."
3 - "Uh, sorry. Musta took a wrong turn. Yeah, that's it. A wrong turn..." *mumble incoherently sweatin' fat globules*
action: 1
response: "Comedy. That's a real gift." He sounds entirely sarcastic, but begrudgingly opens the door for you.

A candle-laden table glows in the midst of darkness. Cards soaked in gin, a dagger stabbed into the wood, mounds of money. Two figures (one fat, the other lean) are at the table, counting coins.

You take a seat. Eternal Hog smiles at you. "Hey there, ladybuck."

You flick the capsule at Hog. "Everything on Olympia that can be got for blood or money. In this case, I'll take the money."

Eternal Hog slides a billfold across the table. You slip the cash inside your wallet.

He sits back. "We need one final favor before we leave. Papyrus from the sea tombs. The ministry dug them up last night." You blink. "Yeah, the erogater was looking through them today." He leans forward, licking his lips. "The scrolls are in your department? You can get them by tonight?"

You spread your hands. "Tonight? That's a tall order." He furrows his brow. "We just need the chart. We don't care about the rest of the scrolls. Please."

Antagonistic James raps the table. The crash of his fist knocks the sound from the air. He breathes deeply, the bristles on his moustache flaring outwards. "Enough squabbing. I feel the noose tightening around my neck. If we don't have the chart by midnight, we cast off."

Eternal Hog smiles beatifically. "My unmannered friend is correct, sadly. The more scrupulous members of your department are closing in on us. Our joint down on Neat Street is getting a lot of heat. Could be arthritis, but I doubt it. Only a matter of time before they connect the don't's and burst into this very room."

He sighs. "If you fetch us the chart before midnight, we will make you very rich. I anticipate your return, dear lady, knowing you to be wise and resourceful." They resume counting their money.
action: You look around
response: A candle-laden table glows in the midst of darkness. Cards soaked in gin, a dagger stabbed into the wood, mounds of money. Two figures (one fat, the other lean) are at the table, counting coins.
action: Smell cards
response: The luck is bad and low on these cards.
action: Smell the dagger
response: You smell fear and panic, followed by death.
action: Smell money
response: A cold, hard heap of ancient blood.
action: Smell fat
response: Smelling Hog is like drinking down some cloying chocolate liqueur with your nostrils. Beneath the silk you catch undercurrents of conspiracy, fraud, and bootlegging.
action: Smell lean
response: Antagonistic James smells like bloody metal, brine, and apples. Underneath that...well...you'd only need one whiff of this guy to lock him up for life. Murder, arson, extortion, assault, he seems like a real renaissance man.
action: Inventory
response: You are carrying:
an aboro qihilus
a loan lantern
a jacket (being worn)
a mobile phone
a wallet
action: You look at the wallet
response: ID card, wad of cash, debit card.
action: You examine the cash
response: Warm soft cash.
action: Smell the cash
response: You gag. It's blood. Coagulated blood, copper reek biting your nostrils, tugging up your bile. A thick ball of wadded up blood, uncut.
action: You take the cards
response: You grab the cards greedily.
action: You take the money
response: You've been gutshot by James' smoking pistolas. You smile weakly and die.
action: You take the dagger
response: You grab the dagger greedily.
BANG
You've been gutshot by James' smoking pistolas. You smile weakly and die.
action: Smell chairs
response: You got a phobia about smelling chairs, on account of you had a dream once about a chair trying to kill you. Funny, unrealistic, ludicrous in retrospect. A chair's the last thing that'd ever kill someone.
action: Inventory
response: You are carrying:
an aboro qihilus
a loan lantern
a jacket (being worn)
a mobile phone
a wallet
action: You turn over the table
response: [Most IF separates space into a series of locations, each containing a set of objects. If you can see an object, you can usually interact with it without worrying about positioning. Try a command like EXAMINE BAR for a closer look, LOOK to get a new description of this location, or a compass direction like (for example) WEST or W to move to a different location.]
action: You look at the BAR
response: Shrouded in darkness.
action: Smell bar
response: Alcohol burns your nose, filling your head with a bubble of compressed laughter, clatter of glasses, spurting spigots--warm memories. Then it pops.
action: Exit
response: [You're not inside something. To leave this location, try a direction or "out".]
action: You look around
response: Stale alcohol bites the air and sticks to your shoes. Just a dim joint with no customers, chairs all lined up against the wall. A very tall man is standing by a deep red door against the east wall, just past the bar.
action: Go west
response: You look up at the camera. The gate slides open.

A dark metal room lit only by a plexiglass window. A sliding iron gate fills the east wall. This is the last layer before leaving the ministry.
action: Go west
response: Bars of purple flourescence buzz in the ceiling. The jauntry room is just at the end of this hallway.
action: You go north
response: The pressure doors suck open, then shwoom back into place.

Flourescent lights saturate the hallway emerald. The sole decoration is a huge morale poster covering the wall. The ministry branches off west into a maze of corridors, the erogater's office is at the north end of the hall, and if you keep going south you'll hit the exit.
action: Go north
response: An office cut from obsidian and silver. Fake dawnlight streams through drawn blinds. Some kind of critter languidly swims through a murky aquarium. The exits are a stainless steel door on the east wall and the hallway door south.

A massive black safe sits in the corner of the room.
action: You examine safe
response: A massive black box with a card swipe lock.
action: You examine the steel door
response: Exudes cold.
action: Smell safe
response: An iron void. With the faintest whiff of clay on the handle.
action: Smell steel door
response: Smell likes frozen mud.
action: You unlock safe with the iD
response: (first taking the ID card)
You decide to let the wallet handle all your card-carrying duties. You got enough on your mind.
action: You open safe
response: Yes. No one has ever thought of opening a safe with their hands before. The makers of this safe never in their wildest dreams thought of this loophole. Oh wait. Your puny hands don't do shit.
action: You examine the lock
response: Slide your cards right, you might just be looking at an unlocked safe. Baby.
action: Open steel
response: You step inside a cold dark place.

A vat of ice water glows luridly in the shadows, lit from below. The erogater lies on her back in the water, the clay moon of her face just above the surface of the water, eyes switched off. Frost swirls from her parted lips every so often, flashing white against the darkness.

You can see a slab (on which are a suit and an erogater's card) here.

The faintest rasp of the erogater's breath, like the exhalation of some distant machine.
action: You take the card
response: (the erogater's card)
Taken.

The faintest rasp of the erogater's breath, like the exhalation of some distant machine.
action: You examine the card
response: (the erogater's card)

The faintest rasp of the erogater's breath, like the exhalation of some distant machine.
action: Smell card
response: (the erogater's card)
Smells like clay and ozone.

The faintest rasp of the erogater's breath, like the exhalation of some distant machine.
action: You examine the suit
response: The erogater's black suit, shed. Gold buttons peek out from under crumpled fabric.

The faintest rasp of the erogater's breath, like the exhalation of some distant machine.
action: Smell suit
response: Evocative of a shell surrounding the meat of a beetle, except the other way around.

The faintest rasp of the erogater's breath, like the exhalation of some distant machine.
action: You take the suit
response: You slowly slide the suit towards you, easing it from the slab. One of the golden buttons scrapes the edge.
The erogater hums. An eery sound that gets inside your bones. You start to back away.
She turns her hollow eyes on you, rising in the water, icy beads rolling down her vaporous form. "Why don't you come take a bath with me?"
Somehow you can't say no. And the water is very, very cold.
action: Look around
response: A vat of ice water glows luridly in the shadows, lit from below. The erogater lies on her back in the water, the clay moon of her face just above the surface of the water, eyes switched off. Frost swirls from her parted lips every so often, flashing white against the darkness.

You can see a slab (on which is a suit) here.

The faintest rasp of the erogater's breath, like the exhalation of some distant machine.
action: You examine the erogator
response: Drifting naked, suspended, still. Ice is forming on her clay skin.

The faintest rasp of the erogater's breath, like the exhalation of some distant machine.
action: You examine ice
response: You feel dizzy as your scent-brain tips over into oblivion. You blink, shutting off the stream of olfactons. Note to self: never smell an erogater.

The erogater hums. An eery sound that gets inside your bones. You start to back away.
She turns her hollow eyes on you, rising in the water, icy beads rolling down her vaporous form. "Why don't you come take a bath with me?"
Somehow you can't say no. And the water is very, very cold.
action: Go west
response: You tip-toe out, closing the door very, very softly.

An office cut from obsidian and silver. Fake dawnlight streams through drawn blinds. Some kind of critter languidly swims through a murky aquarium. The exits are a stainless steel door on the east wall and the hallway door south.

A massive black safe sits in the corner of the room.
action: Swipe card
response: (the erogater's card)
You swipe the card. Something clicks and the safe door swings open, revealing a hole. Ladder rungs lead down into the darkness.
action: Inventory
response: You are carrying:
an erogater's card
an aboro qihilus
a loan lantern
a jacket (being worn)
a mobile phone
a wallet
action: Down
response: You hold tight to metal rungs. Light above, darkness below.
action: Down
response: You feel your way through some kind of cavern. A bridge of stinking iron spans a chasm before you. Across the bridge, a gap in the darkness bleeds ghostly light.
action: Smell bridge
response: You smell the erogater's footsteps, cold and light, like snowflakes melting amid a hellish slough of rust.

Interestingly enough, some of the smell of metal comes from the corrosion of metal on contact with human perspiration, the oxidization of skin oils producing lipid peroxides, a precursor to the relevant odor molecules.
action: You look at bridge
response: Horribly corroded.
action: You look at the gap
response: A softly glowing portal.
action: Smell gap
response: You smell possibility and danger in equal measure.
action: Go downwards
response: You can't go that way.

[From here, you can go west and up.]
action: Go west
response: The cavern opens into an angular vault of chiseled rock, gently lit by wooly carpets of fungi. An ivory chest lies in the center.
action: Smell fungi
response: You smell a strange lifeform, plumes of effervescent proto-consciousness.
action: You examine the fungi
response: Moves as if tickled by unfelt wind.
action: You look at the chest
response: An ivory chest with a huge gold lock.
action: Smell chest
response: You smell the memory in these hewn bones--stampeding through coral canyons, the moon-baying that celebrates the passing of the elders, a frolic through phosphorescent kelp...
action: Inventory
response: You are carrying:
an erogater's card
an aboro qihilus
a loan lantern
a jacket (being worn)
a mobile phone
a wallet
action: Unlock lock
response: [What do you want to unlock the huge gold lock with?]
action: Look around
response: The cavern opens into an angular vault of chiseled rock, gently lit by wooly carpets of fungi. An ivory chest lies in the center.
action: You go downwards
response: You can't go that way.

[The only way to go is east.]
action: Go east
response: You feel your way through some kind of cavern. A bridge of stinking iron spans a chasm before you. Across the bridge, a gap in the darkness bleeds ghostly light.
action: Up
response: You hold tight to metal rungs. Light above, darkness below.
action: Up
response: An office cut from obsidian and silver. Fake dawnlight streams through drawn blinds. Some kind of critter languidly swims through a murky aquarium. The exits are a stainless steel door on the east wall and the hallway door south.

A massive black safe lies open, revealing a hole downward.
action: You look at the critter
response: The water is too murky.
action: You take the critter
response: You dip your hands into the murky water and fish around.
action: Smell critter
response: What's this? What's happening...your mind blurs with images of your hand suddenly being eviscerated by a tankful of pirhana, pulling back a stump of bloody bones, or some horrible parasite burrowing inside your fingers, dead set on spiraling straight into your brain...
You pull up a wriggling, writhing baby octopus!
action: You hug the octopus
response: [You can only do that to something animate.]
action: Smell the octopus
response: Your vision fills with the watery realm from which this octopus was snatched. The drowned ruins of ancient cities from the before-times--coral-encrusted freeways, skyscrapers thronged with schools of fish, passenger airplane stuck in the craw of a dark trench.
action: You examine the octopus
response: A dang choopy octopus, purple and slimy. Cute as hell, looking at you with great trust and affection.
action: Down
response: You hold tight to metal rungs. Light above, darkness below.
action: Down
response: You feel your way through some kind of cavern. A bridge of stinking iron spans a chasm before you. Across the bridge, a gap in the darkness bleeds ghostly light.
action: You open the chest with the octopus
response: The octopus squirms in your hand as you shove it into the lock. Ink bubbles and foams across the lock as the octopus's tentacles are forced inside the holes. With a screech (of the octopus) and a screech (of the chest) the lid pops open.
The octopus pops free and scuttles away from you.
action: You look around
response: The cavern opens into an angular vault of chiseled rock, gently lit by wooly carpets of fungi. An ivory chest lies in the center.

You can see some sea tomb scrolls and an octopus here.
action: Smell scrolls
response: The hand of a dead tyrant set ink to this parchment. Blood, riches, the conquest of nations above and below the earth, and graveworms. You've never smelled anything so terribly ancient.
action: You look at the scrolls
response: You can't read any of these queer runes, but you know a chart when you see one. The islands of the northern reach are clearly depicted, along with a red X and finely scrawled coordinates. The rest is page after page of dead languages, along with strange technical diagrams that you cannot comprehend the parts or use of.
action: You take the scrolls
response: Something lurches from the shadows, shaking the ground with each step. Cracks split open under your feet as an immense shadow plunges you into the darkness of its hulking form.
"Halt!"
You stand perfectly still. The ruby eyes of the security automaton focus on you. "Are you doing anything illegal?"
1 - Yes.
2 - No.
action: 2
response: "Oh. Well, that's all right then." The automaton powers down.
action: You take the automaton
response: [The security automaton isn't portable.]

Your phone beeps.
action: You take the octopus
response: The octopus squirts ink in your eyes, slapping away on surprisingly mobile tentacles. You feel outmatched.
action: You look at the phone
response: New text message. "Sorry ladycakes. Had to run."
action: Squash octopus
response: You squeeze the octopus.
action: You look at what you're carrying with you
response: You are carrying:
some sea tomb scrolls
an erogater's card
an aboro qihilus
a loan lantern
a jacket (being worn)
a mobile phone
a wallet
action: Describe the surroundings
response: The cavern opens into an angular vault of chiseled rock, gently lit by wooly carpets of fungi. An ivory chest lies in the center.

You can see a security automaton and an octopus here.
action: Smell automaton
response: The olfactons have been stripped from this security bot, as per regulations.
action: Close chest
response: You close the chest.
action: Go west
response: You can't go that way.

[The only way to go is east.]
action: Go east
response: You feel your way through some kind of cavern. A bridge of stinking iron spans a chasm before you. Across the bridge, a gap in the darkness bleeds ghostly light.
action: Up
response: An office cut from obsidian and silver. Fake dawnlight streams through drawn blinds. A murky aquarium sits beneath the blinds. The exits are a stainless steel door on the east wall and the hallway door south.

A massive black safe lies open, revealing a hole downward.
action: You look at the blinds
response: White plastic strips. Standard blind fare. Positively provincial compared to some of the mind-blowing blinds they've got up in--oh, who're you kidding.
action: Smell blinds
response: Thoroughly de-olfactonized.
action: You go to the south
response: You tip-toe across the room, scrolls gripped in your clammy hands.

A cold presence crawls up your back. You turn around.

The erogater stands naked and vaporous, ice water tracing down her body. Her eyes regard you, two impassive filaments, but her nostrils flare, drinking in

sucking in all the sweat beaded up in your armpits, rolling down your collar bone, hot and moist around your cunt, itching across your skin, and deeper, deeper, smelling your whole body of beating blood like dragged up red roots suspended dripping in the air, sniffing the marrow in your bones like a starving, salivating wolf ready to crunch, and deeper still, smelling your thoughts, every single silly, embarassing, personal thought, every hope and dream and aspiration you've ever had, she smells your soul, your electromagnetic quintessence, all the stuff that makes you up, she sucks into her nostrils like hallucinogenic ribbons rippling across the room--

--and then she's right next to you and her fingers are crawling across your skin and you head-butt her and there's blood and clay dust all over your face but she's reeling back and you spin from the room and--

--run at breakneck speeds down the hall, through the jauntry room, and into the alley where an alarm rises into the air, keening and spectral.

The western mouth of this alley is filled with an iron gate. A security camera stares down from above the gate. Sob Street lies east.
action: Go east
response: Down the street you see incoming squad cars, sirens splashing green light across the fog. A megaphone booms, nightmarish and distorted, like the roaring of some beast. Are they saying your name? Are they saying anything? Or just screaming bestially, baying for blood...
Sob Street
Sob Street runs along the waterfront, a wall of fog smeared with emerald sirenlight. The only possible way to run from the horde of speeding squad cars that has any chance of survival however remote is south!
action: Go south
response: Squad cars are howling from the mist, they'll be on you in a few seconds! To the east you see Club Coccyx, vibrating, shaking, shuddering in its foundations.

You can see some chalice city songers here.
action: Go east
response: You race across the street and into Club Coccyx. As your foot crosses the threshold, the floor wrenches itself from the ground with a titanic spasm, knocking you down.
You leap up, grabbing the edge of the floor as the Club rises above the grimy walls, past the jungle of dead neon signs, into the cool night air.
The building yaws to one side. You claw onto the threshold, carving swathes through a dark layer of crushed cigarette stubs and spilled whiskey. The floor rises above your head and everything that isn't nailed down inside the club starts to roll down towards you. Bottles and ashtrays skid past your head, plummeting into the clouds.
clinging to the middle edge
The city is rapidly shrinking below you. You have some room to the right and left, if you need to adjust your grip.
action: Enter
response: You can't go that way.

[From here, you can go up, right and left.]

A chair comes hurtling out of the darkness towards your face!
action: Right
response: The city is rapidly shrinking below you.
action: Up
response: You crawl, one hand in front of the other, a little further up from the edge.

The chair whips past your face.
action: Up
response: You strain to lift yourself up. Sweat pours down your face.
action: Up
response: Just a little more...

A table slowly slides from the darkness, picking up momentum.
action: Right
response: You can't go that way.

[From here, you can go up and left.]
action: Left
response: The city is rapidly shrinking below you. You have some room to the right and left, if you need to adjust your grip.
action: Up
response: You grit your teeth.

The table noses past you like an apologetic, blind hippopotamus feeling its way off a cliff. You barely cling to the edge as it tumbles past you, dribbling playing cards and shot glasses in its wake.
action: Up
response: You drag yourself on board the flying building. Behind you, clouds race past. Goddamn you didn't even notice how much you were sweating. Fuck.
tilted club
You balance on the sloping floor. Alcohol runs past your feet in rivulets, raining ethanol into the sky. The club is transforming itself, boilers and pipes exposing themselves behind the sultry chic and mood lighting. The northern wall is splayed by mechanical arms, revealing a metal wall with a blue cabin door set in it.
action: Smell alcohol
response: Vision of sudden shaking, shattering glass, gushing release.
action: You look at the arms
response: The club is revealing an industrial, airborne side of itself you never knew.
action: You look at the door
response: A wooden door with a little porthole set in it.
action: Smell door
response: You smell hurried hands and shouts.
action: You open the door
response: You try the door. It rattles in the frame. Locked.
action: You knock on the door
response: You hear sirens howling far below. Red lights sweep the sky, filling the interior of the club with crimson radiance.
action: Describe the surroundings
response: Garish red light fills the club. Everything is bathed in blood.
action: You examine the porthole
response: Through greasy glass you see a cockpit fraught with chaos--meters and dials spinning furiously, valves spraying steam, James struggling to hold onto a ship's wheel as Hog gesticulates wildly at the city horizon.

The sky screams. You glance over to the open doorframe to see a point of light pierce the clouds, trailing smoke and flame.

Everything is dark and red and white and your eyeballs feel knocked inside your skull and your guts feel sucked outside your body and then you're tumbling through the air, the wreckage of the club spiraling through the sky on plumes of fire.

The city is a velvet painting glimpsed from breathless heights. You see the waterway cutting through the city like an icy vein, you see the crater of the Dumpyard like a frozen, gaping wound rimmed with frayed streets, skyscraper cartilage, bleeding culverts. And beyond, the ocean, with all its drowned sea kings and coral tombs.

Everything you've ever smelled flashes across your nostrils. But it all smells bitter-sweet now.

From this height the ocean will be concrete. You'd need a miracle to get out of this one. But they don't make miracles anymore. Not since dynasty days.

There are no miracles. Just men. Women. And the blood beating beneath their palms.

The aboro qihilus wakes up, starts squirming inside your jacket. Blinking its sleepy eyes, it says, "Where are we?"

You hit the water.