HOLY ROBOT EMPIRE
by Caleb Wilson (as Ralph Gide) (2014)
Genres: Science Fiction

You are going to find the Robopope and then kiss its papal ring, or your name isn't Morgen Santamore.

action: %
response: The day of the Robopope's visit has finally arrived. The Pontiff of Logic; Vicar of the Prince of Cyberspace; Ruler of the Holy C++; The Primal Prime Pope Fortran; here, in this very building.

(Or, to be precise--and you are always telling your students to be precise--this very building complex.)

Now that you have finished grading these student examinations, you are going to find the Robopope and then kiss its papal ring, or your name isn't Morgen Santamore.

The classroom is quiet now. The quiet has the frayed edges that indicate tumult and excitement just a few doors away. The lights are low. The metal walls of the classroom rise, bending at precise yet inexplicable angles as they are lost in the darkness forty, sixty, one-hundred feet overhead.

Your stainless-steel teacher's desk stands at the head of the classroom. Twenty-five student desks of molded wire, in five rows of five, sit empty before it. There is an exit to the south.
action: You examine the examination
response: A thin sheet of metal approximately 200mm by 282mm. It is engraved at the top with the student's name, and below that, his answers. At the very bottom is engraved the grade you have given it: 62.875%. Jon K. requires improvement.
action: You examine desk
response: (the teacher's desk)
It looks a little like it was extracted from the interior of a large, mysterious engine. It has gears and pistons. It is not particularly practical as a desk, but of course it is not the place of humans to question the mechanically perfect aesthetic sense of robot designers and architects.

There is a slot in the top of the desk.
action: Examine slot
response: A wide and narrow mouth fringed with a rubber baffle. It's sized to fit a 200mm wide sheet of metal.
action: You put examination in the slot
response: The examination begins to slide into the slot with a brief grinding sound... and now it is gone. Something inside the desk thunks, a pleasant sound, like the mating of important mechanisms.

There; you're done with your teacher's duties. And not a moment too soon--the crowd must already be thick around Pope Fortran.
action: You look at the student desks
response: You know from your own time as a student here--a decade ago now--that the students' desks are very uncomfortable, but for a reason: to focus the minds of the students on learning.
action: Pray
response: You mutter a quick prayer to learning and deference.
action: You go south
response: Midway between the dark, twisting corridors of the High School to the west, and the spacious extravagance of the Mathedral to the east. The ceiling is a high, reversed ravine crosshatched with light and spiny shadows.

Your classroom is to the north, one of countless nodes on the network of education.
action: Go east
response: And... yes, here's the crowd.

Looks like they got the jump on you.

A chaos of knees and elbows. The average person in this crowd seems to have, on average, five such protruding joints, and each attached appendage is flailing and threshing as the crowd packs itself tighter.

There is barely space to breathe here, but the crowd takes up just the bottom, say, 5% of the great portico. Above your head tower obtuse angles of gray-shining metal, each segment tilted a different way and so bearing a differing depth of shadow. Higher still a riot of white sunlight twinkles on geometrical patterns of rivets, and beyond, the ceiling is hidden in a glowing haze... presumably.

Doorways shaped like quartz crystals head east and west, south is a vaulted archway to the plaza, and north is the huge, tiered gateway to the nave.
action: Go north
response: If it appeared that the crowd could not be compressed any further... then appearances were deceiving.

When empty, you love the lower nave: mathematical branching archways, buttress building upon buttress. When it is packed as full as a magnet-tram at rush-hour--only without the motion towards home--not so much. (As for the upper nave, where vaults meet more vaults in fractal intersections: not crowded, but nobody can get there except for robots and drones with flight/hover capability...)

Someone has dropped their emergency tool kit; it's lying up against the south wall.

The crowd, a dense seething mass each unit of which is desperately trying to do exactly the same thing as you--approach Pope Fortran--is mashed together cheek to jowl.

Far to the north, near the chapel, you can see a broad head sticking up over the mass of adoring visitors: Pope Fortran location acquired.
action: You take the kit
response: Taken.
action: Examine kit
response: A box of soft black plastic. Written on the side in red are the words: "Emergency Tool Kit". It is closed.
action: You open it
response: You open the emergency tool kit, revealing a pair of wirecutters.
action: You examine Fortran
response: You'll have to get closer.
action: You look at the wirecutters
response: A simple metal tool used to cut wires.
action: You go to the north
response: You are sweatily rebuffed.

This isn't a crowd you're trying to penetrate so much as an impassable rampart made of people, which outmasses you by a factor of roughly 1,000.

You'll have to find another way to get to the chapel, preferably bypassing all these elbows, shoulders, hips and buttocks.

Isn't the chapel accessible from the crypt? If you can find a way down into it, you should be able to work your way through the crypt and up again clear across the nave, right where you need to be.
action: Go downwards
response: It's a battle, but by swinging your arms like hammers and donning a fierce, blank smile that implies joy arising from the act of violence, you forge your way back into the narthex.

A chaos of knees and elbows. The average person in this crowd seems to have, on average, five such protruding joints, and each attached appendage is flailing and threshing as the crowd packs itself tighter.

There is barely space to breathe here, but the crowd takes up just the bottom 5% of the great portico. Above your head tower obtuse angles of gray-shining metal, each segment tilted a different way and so bearing a differing depth of shadow. Higher still a riot of white sunlight twinkles on geometrical patterns of rivets, and beyond, the ceiling is hidden in a glowing haze.

Doorways shaped like quartz crystals head east and west, south is a vaulted archway to the plaza, and north is the huge, tiered gateway to the nave.

You can't go that way.
action: You go south
response: A chaos of knees and elbows. The average person in this crowd seems to have, on average, five such protruding joints, and each attached appendage is flailing and threshing as the crowd packs itself tighter.

There is barely space to breathe here, but the crowd takes up just the bottom 5% of the great portico. Above your head tower obtuse angles of gray-shining metal, each segment tilted a different way and so bearing a differing depth of shadow. Higher still a riot of white sunlight twinkles on geometrical patterns of rivets, and beyond, the ceiling is hidden in a glowing haze.

Doorways shaped like quartz crystals head east and west, south is a vaulted archway to the plaza, and north is the huge, tiered gateway to the nave.
action: Go east
response: The east wall leans west, the south wall leans south, and the north and west walls are crooked in angular S-curves. There is a narrow gap in the north wall, and just through it, a hint of descending steps. The narthex is back to the west.

Carpet: that's rare in these halls. It is sea-foam green. Sea-foam is a type of green, isn't it? The carpet runs up the walls to a height of ten feet, and above that is blotchy steel.

The carpet is ratty, worn in a threadbare pathway before a cot along the east wall.

On the cot is a prayer helmet.

A large, flaccid pauper is standing near the cot.
action: Sing
response: You sing a verse of code, quite off-key.

The pauper winces. He says: "Sorry, I don't like a capella. Maybe there's an instrument around here somewhere you can play for me instead."
action: You look at the pauper
response: It looks as though he used to be fat, but recent deprivation has begun the process of his dwindling away like a snowbank in the spring. He's wearing a medley of colors and patterns; maroon jacket, houndstooth pants, green socks, paisley shirt. He looks a little bit familiar.
action: Go north
response: As you climb down the steps, a cold atmosphere smelling of rust and burnt electronics drifts up the steps to meet you.

The light lessens, of course. The low-power bulbs along the stairway to the crypt give off little more than a faint, rotten, brownish phosphorescence.

You are encrypted.

Actually a slight inaccuracy. Though maybe it used to be a crossway, with four brick tunnels branching out beneath a groined vault, now only the northwestern and southwestern passages are open. The others have collapsed and are full of broken bricks. A staircase heads upwards.
action: About you
response: Your name is Morgen Santamore, and you are an instructor in robot decorum at the Mathedral of the Heavenly Code High School.

You are carrying:
an emergency tool kit (open)
a pair of wirecutters
action: You go to the north-west
response: You gain another layer of encryption...

A rutted ground of rotted bricks. The ceiling is low, lumpy with whitish nitre. The walls are very close and crooked, but not by any mysterious robot design. They're just ancient--and were shoddy to begin with. Brick passageways lead southeast and northwest.

You can see a plexiglass cabinet (closed) (in which is a mangled saint (in which is a holy fuse)) here.
action: You open the cabinet
response: (first unlocking the plexiglass cabinet)
You lack a key that fits the plexiglass cabinet.
action: You look at the fuse
response: Small, square. Although this fuse, taken from the body of Saint 9, must be nearly 400 years old, it doesn't seem to be burnt out.
action: You examine the Saint
response: A 10cm by 30cm plaque identifies this as Saint 9. Apparently in the year 23 ARA this poor peaceable holy machine was pushed into a trash compactor by a mob of unvirtuous pagans. (And then crushed therein.)

What's left of Saint 9 is bolted to the back of the plexiglass cabinet. Streaks of clotted oil have dripped down around a crushed metal shell. The saint's semi-conical, mantisoid head rests on its shoulder.

In Saint 9 is a holy fuse.
action: Go northwest
response: By God, something reeks over this way.

And here, the rotten brick floor has partially collapsed--there appears to be a level below the crypt. You could probably climb down to it if you really wanted to...

Or, if you skirt the hole, the hallway continues to the north. The hallway also runs southeast.

A woman in a rust-red jumpsuit is leaning against the shabby, filthy wall, just across the hole. Her shoulders are right in a mass of cobwebs--she must not care.
action: You examine the hole
response: A nasty, jagged hole.

She smiles crisply, as if realizing you are not a threat, and says: "A civilian. Good. I'm commandeering your help. I'm following a lead on a reported heretical item somewhere around here--I suspect it's further down. You're a deputy Inquisitor now; neither of us are going anywhere until we uproot that heresy. Got it?"
action: You look at the woman
response: Not very many people wear rust-red jumpsuits--pretty much only Inquisitors.
action: 2
response: She says: "It's most likely printed material."
action: 2
response: She says: "Somewhere down that hole, mostly likely."
action: 2
response: She says: "You must think I just tell everyone who wanders by about my work, don't you? Well, I don't."

do?"
action: 2
response: She says: "My Inquisitorial work is classified. You won't need to know anything about it, unless one day we are called upon to interview you."

your office might have."
action: 2
response: She says: "You remind me a bit of a client we had in the Interrogation Chambers last week. He wouldn't stop babbling, at least at first. Then eventually he did stop babbling. It was nice."

Inquisitor after I graduated."
action: 2
response: She says: "We are very particular about who we accept."
action: 1
response: She says: "Do you have a physical condition? Or perhaps a mental one?"

She seems interested in what you're saying for the first time.

legs."
action: 2
response: She shudders, and says: "You've healed, I presume?"

believed."
action: 1
response: She says: "That's lucky, for you. But please don't talk to me about miracles."
action: 1
response: She says: "Have you ever heard of the Cult of the New Version?"
action: 1
response: She says: "A sect of heretics; they believe that the universe is currently running from a outdated version of the Heavenly Code. They point to miracles, or seemingly unsupported features of the universe that still function, as 'previews' of their heretical new version."

be a heretic? How sad."
action: 1
response: She shrugs, and says: "My job isn't to not be sad. It's to crush heresy wherever I find it."
action: 1
response: She says: "That's exactly what everyone says, including heretics."
action: 1
response: She says: "You can't. One of the Inquisition's biggest challenges is that there's really no way to prove that kind of a negative. So maybe you should stop talking now, while you're still free."
action: You say something
response: (to the Inquisitor)
[Use TALK TO to interact with characters.]
action: Go southeast
response: A rutted ground of rotted bricks. The ceiling is low, lumpy with whitish nitre. The walls are very close and crooked, but not by any mysterious robot design. They're just ancient--and were shoddy to begin with. Brick passageways lead southeast and northwest.

You can see a plexiglass cabinet (closed) (in which is a mangled saint (in which is a holy fuse)) here.
action: Go southeast
response: Though maybe it used to be a crossway, with four brick tunnels branching out beneath a groined vault, now only the northwestern and southwestern passages are open. The others have collapsed and are full of broken bricks. A staircase heads upwards.
action: Up
response: The east wall leans west, the south wall leans south, and the north and west walls are crooked in angular S-curves. There is a narrow gap in the north wall, and just through it, a hint of descending steps. The narthex is back to the west.

Carpet: that's rare in these halls. It is sea-foam green. The carpet runs up the walls to a height of ten feet, and above that is blotchy steel.

The carpet is ratty, worn in a threadbare pathway before a cot along the east wall.

On the cot is a prayer helmet.

A large, flaccid pauper is standing near the cot.
action: Go west
response: A chaos of knees and elbows. The average person in this crowd seems to have, on average, five such protruding joints, and each attached appendage is flailing and threshing as the crowd packs itself tighter.

There is barely space to breathe here, but the crowd takes up just the bottom 5% of the great portico. Above your head tower obtuse angles of gray-shining metal, each segment tilted a different way and so bearing a differing depth of shadow. Higher still a riot of white sunlight twinkles on geometrical patterns of rivets, and beyond, the ceiling is hidden in a glowing haze.

Doorways shaped like quartz crystals head east and west, south is a vaulted archway to the plaza, and north is the huge, tiered gateway to the nave.
action: You go to the south
response: Going south would be contrary to the common will of the crowd. Even as you waste time more people are squeezing into the narthex from the plaza, that is, they are forcing their way north. Besides, Pope Fortran isn't in the plaza; it's somewhere further inside the Mathedral to the north.
action: You go to the west
response: On a normal day, yes. Those dim and tangled passages would be confidently strode, by you; the auditorium, the principal's office, the server lounge, all the important rooms and zones. But today the High School will have to run itself without your help.
action: 2
response: He says: "I'll give it to you if you play me a song."
action: 1
response: He told you he would give it to you if you played a song for him.
action: 2
response: He says: "Just head down those stairs to the north. I'm not sure why the almshouse is so close to the crypt; it's rather eerie..."
action: 2
response: He says: "I'm afraid not. I just got here."
action: 1
response: He says: "Probably not. I was a choir boy in this Mathedral, but that was years ago. You most likely recognize me from my acting days."
action: 1
response: He says: "My name is Barry West. I was a child actor who played a role on the popular historical entertainment show 'Robo Crush Saga,' which was about pioneers in the early years after the Robot Apotheosis.""
action: 2
response: He says: "Everyone did."
action: 1
response: He says: "I played a character named 'Earl Porterhouse,' who was a vile little sneak, cheat, brat, bully, snob, and anti-robot bigot."
action: 1
response: He says: "I wasn't Earl. The character Earl wasn't me and I wasn't him, but everywhere I went, people hated me like they hated him. As I grew older, and grew fatter, and said goodbye to cute while somehow never finding handsome, the public's hatred of me grew as well."
action: 1
response: He says: "You have to ask? For a few years I had plenty of money from acting. No matter how I spent it, the public hated me more and more, for what I had seemed to be, but had not really been. I was madly profligate, trying to buy their love, until I went broke, and then they hated me all the more for being destitute. The public thought my fall served me right, payback for what the fictional Earl had done on a scripted entertainment. My only choice was to come here and become a professional beggar of alms. It seems the only people who don't hate me now are robots."

it depends on whether robots do or do not hate you as well."
action: 1
response: He shrugs and says: "Kind of you, but it doesn't really matter any more."
action: 2
response: He says: "Ah, yes, played by Michelle Roark. She alone of all the cast was always kind to me. A pity she died during the unrest of '99."
action: 1
response: He told you he would give it to you if you played a song for him.
action: You go southwest
response: Fragments of brick stick from the walls and ceiling like snaggle-teeth. The ground is a thick carpet of dust, soft under your feet. The tunnel bends here, heading northeast and southeast.

You can see a plexiglass pedestal (on which is a saint's severed head (in which are an LED eye and a piece of wire)) here.
action: You examine the head
response: A metal head shaped like a dented canister. A 10cm by 30cm plaque identifies this as the head of Saint 43. It seems that in the year 87 ARA this poor robot was beheaded by immersion in a vat of acid. (Though technically that would be the exact opposite of beheading...) The head is bolted to the plexiglass pedestal.

In the head of Saint 43 are an LED eye and a wire.
action: You examine the eye
response: The eye of Saint 43. It provides light, like a tiny, incorruptible star.The eye is attached to the head with a short length of wire.
action: You take the head
response: That's fixed in place.
action: You talk to the head
response: Generally, it's best to talk to living things.
action: You cut the wire
response: (with the emergency tool kit)
The emergency tool kit is not sharp enough.
action: You take the wirecutter
response: Taken.
action: You cut the wire with it
response: You snip through the wire, detaching it from the head of Saint 43 and from the LED eye.
action: You take the eye
response: [Your score has just gone up by one point.]
action: You look at the eye
response: The eye of Saint 43. It provides light, like a tiny, incorruptible star.
action: You look around
response: Fragments of brick stick from the walls and ceiling like snaggle-teeth. The ground is a thick carpet of dust, soft under your feet. The tunnel bends here, heading northeast and southeast.

You can see a plexiglass pedestal (on which is a saint's severed head (in which is a piece of wire)) here.
action: You examine Saint
response: A metal head shaped like a dented canister. A 10cm by 30cm plaque identifies this as the head of Saint 43. It seems that in the year 87 ARA this poor robot was beheaded by immersion in a vat of acid. The head is bolted to the plexiglass pedestal.

In the head of Saint 43 is a holy wire.
action: You take the holy wire
response: Taken. (That's a holy relic; be careful with it.)
action: You go southeast
response: A forgotten clutter of bricks and broken ductwork. There is barely room to move. Light from the LED shines in rainbows on drippings of oil. The sole exit is to the northwest.

You can see a plexiglass coffin (closed) (in which is flattened saint (in which are two relics (a red music chip and a white music chip))) here.
action: Open coffin
response: (first unlocking the plexiglass coffin)
You lack a key that fits the plexiglass coffin.
action: You examine Saint
response: A 10cm by 30cm plaque identifies this as the body of Saint 71. In the year 133 ARA this robot, designed for the peaceful task of playing music, was slowly run over by a steamroller, playing hymns all the while.

Now the saint's body, which once was rotund and perhaps even "cute", is flattened and misshapen.

In Saint 71 are two relics (a red music chip and a white music chip).
action: You examine the coffin
response: In the plexiglass coffin is Saint 71.
action: You look at the chip
response: Which do you mean, the red music chip or the white music chip?
action: Red
response: A small, round music chip. Written on the side in minuscule type are the word "The DOSology."
action: You look at the white
response: A small, round music chip. Written on the side in minuscule type are the words "Ave Machina."
action: Inventory
response: You are carrying:
two relics:
a holy wire
an LED eye (providing light)
a pair of wirecutters
an emergency tool kit (open but empty)
action: You go to the northwest
response: Fragments of brick stick from the walls and ceiling like snaggle-teeth. The ground is a thick carpet of dust, soft under your feet. The tunnel bends here, heading northeast and southeast.

You can see a plexiglass pedestal (on which is a saint's severed head (empty)) here.
action: Go northwest
response: And here, the rotten brick floor has partially collapsed--there appears to be a level below the crypt. You could probably climb down to it if you really wanted to...

Or, if you skirt the hole, the hallway continues to the north. The hallway also runs southeast.

A woman in a rust-red jumpsuit is leaning against the shabby, filthy wall, just across the hole. Her shoulders are right in a mass of cobwebs--she must not care.
action: You go to the north
response: The Inquisitor stops you with the almost palpable force of her gaze. Like she said, she's not going to let you past there until you help her find this "heretical item."
action: Go downward
response: Hands and feet on slippery, fragile brick, descending into a deep, rank darkness--

The Inquisitor calls after you: "Search carefully down there. I'll continue the investigation up on this level."

--and then you fall.

So... it was only three feet. Still, you could easily have twisted an ankle.

This was probably a culvert once. Muddy, dim. Just breathing the air here is like kissing a grave. The bowed ceiling (cinderblocks? ancient masonry?), which curves down to become the walls, is riddled with fissures, from which protrude dead black roots.

The old culvert runs east and west, and a ragged chimney leads up into the relatively clean air of the crypt.
action: You examine the roots
response: Just the scraggly, twisted roots of long dead plants.
action: Go east
response: The ground crunches and shifts wetly underfoot.

Unhealthy stems grow lush here. They have woven themselves into a pliable mesh between floor and ceiling. The roots are sunk into a putrid matrix of muck and shattered bones.

Your LED's light gleams in pale splinters off the stems. The growth is crushed down in paths heading east, west, and south.
action: You examine the bones
response: They were shattered an age ago. In another age they'll be dust.
action: You examine the stems
response: Some kind of colorless subterranean weed.
action: You go to the east
response: White stems frame a tilted lintel stone. Beyond it is a flicker of feverish light. You duck through.

A cramped stone cubicle. The walls are shaggy with cancer-like scales of soot. An iron basket of smoldering dirt clods hangs from the ceiling. The air, mostly smoke, stinks like the filth of millennia. The exit is west.

A hermit covered in white felted frizz hunches against the back wall.

On the floor before the hermit is an open-topped cardboard box. Scrawled on its front panel is the phrase: "Everything's a dollar in this box."
action: Examine box
response: In the cardboard box are a plexiglass key, a paperback book, a clarinet, and a bowling ball.
action: You talk to the hermit
response: The hermit makes a strange gesture with his right hand: index and middle fingers extended, pointing up at a shallow angle.
action: You look at the basket
response: Burning dirt in a hanging iron basket might be the least sophisticated method of generating light and/or heat you have ever encountered. For his own safety, the hermit should really just get some modern appliances down here.
action: You ask the hermit about dollar
response: [Use TALK TO to interact with characters.]
action: You go west
response: Unhealthy stems grow lush here. They have woven themselves into a pliable mesh between floor and ceiling. The roots are sunk into a putrid matrix of muck and shattered bones.

Your LED's light gleams in pale splinters off the stems. The growth is crushed down in paths heading east, west, and south.
action: Go south
response: The ground rises--unstable heaps of rubble--while the ceiling doesn't.

You go to hands and knees until, suddenly, the ceiling is gone.

At your best guess, this was the bottom of a garbage chute. There is a faint blur of illumination high overhead, but whatever gleaming expanse of civilization is up there, is out of reach. Trash, dumped down the chute since forever ago, has heaped up under the mouth of the chute in the shape of a shallow cone. The ground drops away to the north.

Sticking up out of the trash heap is the corner of a paper envelope.
action: You examine the envelope
response: A dirty paper envelope in the old style. It's sealed shut.
action: You get it
response: Taken.
action: You open the envelope
response: You open the paper envelope, revealing a dollar bill.
action: You examine dollar
response: A small wrinkled white bill. Curving text on the bill reads: "Monopoly", and below that, "1".
action: You go east
response: A cramped stone cubicle. The walls are shaggy with cancer-like scales of soot. An iron basket of smoldering dirt clods hangs from the ceiling. The air, mostly smoke, stinks like the filth of millennia. The exit is west.

A hermit covered in white felted frizz hunches against the back wall.

On the floor before the hermit is an open-topped cardboard box. Scrawled on its front panel is the phrase: "Everything's a dollar in this box."
action: Examine book
response: The pages are yellow and full of their own little labyrinth of worm holes. On the cover, a ridiculously improbable painting of a robot. It is almost as if whoever designed the cover for this "I, Robot" by one "Isaac Asimov" had never seen an actual robot.

Your breath takes a hitch. This book, which seems to contain uneducated nonsense about the inner workings of robots, is almost certainly heretical.

You can almost visualize the heresies swimming around, seeping from page to page until the whole thing is saturated; swarms of blurry, corrupted type.
action: You examine the clarinet
response: A poorly-maintained electro-clarinet. Along the side of the instrument are a square fuse slot (containing a dead fuse) and round hole for a music chip (containing nothing).
action: You examine the ball
response: A purple-swirled bowling ball around 22cm in diameter and weighing around 7kg.
action: You get the book
response: You take the the paperback book from the box, handing a dollar bill over to the hermit in exchange.
action: You check your inventory
response: You are carrying:
a paperback book
a paper envelope (open but empty)
two relics:
a holy wire
an LED eye (providing light)
a pair of wirecutters
an emergency tool kit (open but empty)
action: You go west
response: Unhealthy stems grow lush here. They have woven themselves into a pliable mesh between floor and ceiling. The roots are sunk into a putrid matrix of muck and shattered bones.

Your LED's light gleams in pale splinters off the stems. The growth is crushed down in paths heading east, west, and south.
action: You go west
response: This was probably a culvert once. Muddy, dim. Just breathing the air here is like kissing a grave. The bowed ceiling, which curves down to become the walls, is riddled with fissures, from which protrude dead black roots.

The old culvert runs east and west, and a ragged chimney leads up into the relatively clean air of the crypt.
action: Up
response: The rotten brick floor has partially collapsed, allowing access to a level below the crypt. You can climb down, or you can skirt the hole and go north. The hallway also runs southeast.

A woman in a rust-red jumpsuit is leaning against the shabby, filthy wall, just across the hole. Her shoulders are right in a mass of cobwebs--she must not care.
action: You give the book to Inquisitor
response: The Inquisitor snatches the paperback book out of your hands.

She says: "Aha! Heretical material!"

She glares at you for a second, almost as if she blames you for the existence of this heresy. Then she cracks her knuckles and walks swiftly away into the crypt.

You feel a wash of relief as she takes the evil text around the corner and out of sight.
action: Go west
response: The ground drops away in a gentle slope. Each footstep sinks into the mire.

Not much light at all, just a few knife-edges of shuttered candle gleam coming from the hodge-podge of alleys and houses. Though--my God--houses isn't the right word for them. Shanties? Hovels? You are appalled that people could possibly be allowed to live down here.

Maybe they aren't people. Though you don't see any residents at the moment, the buildings are not perfectly quiet. Little noises of creaking wood. Whispers, too, perhaps.

Decayed alleys run in many directions, but seeing as how you don't want to die in a trackless labyrinth of abject poverty, you should probably stick to traveling east, back towards the culvert, or north, where a sturdier structure of stone stands amongst the ramshackle dwellings.
action: You listen
response: You hear a faint creak of wood.
action: You go to the north
response: Your footsteps echo on still-solid stone.

Four thick square columns near the corners. Your LED makes elongated shadows dance out behind each one as you move. The central space is empty. Maybe once there were seats or pews, but if so they've rotted entirely away. It may be ancient, but this tiny building has nice proportions. The architect was human, no doubt, but probably had robotic assistance. The exit is south.

Near the north wall is a huge oblong block of stone with a smooth top.

On the block of stone are a tarnished silver plate (in which is a dollar bill), a tube of glue, and a broken idol.
action: You examine the stone
response: A block of stone as large as a table.

On the block of stone are a tarnished silver plate (in which is a dollar bill), a tube of glue, and a broken idol.
action: You look at the plate
response: An old collection plate.

In the tarnished silver plate is a dollar bill.
action: You examine tube
response: A half-used tube of glue. Small text along it reads: "Suitable for most materials. Do not sniff."
action: Sniff
response: It smells like cold stone.
action: Sniff tube
response: Smells like chemicals.
action: You examine the idol
response: A peculiar ancient idol. It is about six inches high, and depicts a woman in a blue shawl holding a baby. It has been cracked across the middle, and is in two pieces.
action: You get all
response: tarnished silver plate: Taken.
dollar bill: Taken.
tube of glue: Taken.
broken idol: Taken.
action: You glue the idol
response: (with the tube of glue)
You squeeze out a bit of glue and repair the broken idol.
action: You examine the idol
response: A peculiar ancient idol. It is about six inches high, and depicts a woman in a blue shawl holding a baby.
action: Pray
response: You mutter a quick prayer of protection against disease.
action: You put the idol on the altar
response: You put the ancient idol on the block of stone.
action: Look around
response: Four thick square columns near the corners. Your LED makes elongated shadows dance out behind each one as you move. The central space is empty. Maybe once there were seats or pews, but if so they've rotted entirely away. It may be ancient, but this tiny building has nice proportions. The architect was human, no doubt, but probably had robotic assistance. The exit is south.

Near the north wall is a huge oblong block of stone with a smooth top.

On the block of stone is an ancient idol.
action: You go south
response: Not much light at all, just a few knife-edges of shuttered candle gleam coming from the hodge-podge of alleys and houses. You are appalled that people could possibly be allowed to live down here.

Though you don't see any residents at the moment, the buildings are not perfectly quiet. Little noises of creaking wood. Whispers, too, perhaps.

Decayed alleys run in many directions, but you should probably stick to traveling east, back towards the culvert, or north, where a sturdier structure of stone stands amongst the ramshackle dwellings.
action: You go to the east
response: This was probably a culvert once. Muddy, dim. Just breathing the air here is like kissing a grave. The bowed ceiling, which curves down to become the walls, is riddled with fissures, from which protrude dead black roots.

The old culvert runs east and west, and a ragged chimney leads up into the relatively clean air of the crypt.
action: Go east
response: Unhealthy stems grow lush here. They have woven themselves into a pliable mesh between floor and ceiling. The roots are sunk into a putrid matrix of muck and shattered bones.

Your LED's light gleams in pale splinters off the stems. The growth is crushed down in paths heading east, west, and south.
action: Examine box
response: In the cardboard box are a plexiglass key, a clarinet, and a bowling ball.
action: You buy the key
response: You take the the plexiglass key from the box, handing a dollar bill over to the hermit in exchange.
action: Up
response: The rotten brick floor has partially collapsed, allowing access to a level below the crypt. You can climb down, or you can skirt the hole and go north. The hallway also runs southeast.
action: You open the cabinet
response: (first unlocking the plexiglass cabinet)
(with the plexiglass key)
Unlocked.

Oops. The plexiglass key must have been pretty fragile. It snaps into two pieces as you unlock the cabinet.

You open the plexiglass cabinet.
action: You look at what you're carrying with you
response: You are carrying:
a broken key
a tube of glue
a tarnished silver plate
a paper envelope (open but empty)
a pair of wirecutters
an emergency tool kit (open but empty)
three relics:
a holy fuse
a holy wire
an LED eye (providing light)
action: You glue key
response: (with the tube of glue)
You squeeze out a bit of glue and repair the broken plexiglass key.
action: You get the chips
response: red music chip: The plexiglass coffin isn't open.
white music chip: The plexiglass coffin isn't open.
action: Open coffin
response: (first unlocking the plexiglass coffin)
(with the plexiglass key)
Unlocked.

You open the plexiglass coffin.
action: You get the chips
response: red music chip: Taken. (That's a holy relic; be careful with it.) white music chip: Taken. (That's a holy relic; be careful with it.)
action: You look at the red chip
response: A small, round music chip taken from the body of Saint 71. Written on the side in minuscule type are the word "The DOSology."
action: Go northwest
response: A rutted ground of rotted bricks. The ceiling is low, lumpy with whitish nitre. The walls are very close and crooked, but not by any mysterious robot design. They're just ancient--and were shoddy to begin with. Brick passageways lead southeast and northwest.

You can see a plexiglass cabinet (in which is a mangled saint (empty)) here.
action: You go northwest
response: The rotten brick floor has partially collapsed, allowing access to a level below the crypt. You can climb down, or you can skirt the hole and go north. The hallway also runs southeast.
action: Down
response: This was probably a culvert once. Muddy, dim. Just breathing the air here is like kissing a grave. The bowed ceiling, which curves down to become the walls, is riddled with fissures, from which protrude dead black roots.

The old culvert runs east and west, and a ragged chimney leads up into the relatively clean air of the crypt.
action: You talk to the hermit
response: The hermit makes a strange gesture with his right hand: a fist with the fronts of his curled fingers displayed.
action: You talk to the hermit
response: The hermit makes a strange gesture with his right hand: fingers together, little finger extended.
action: Examine box
response: In the cardboard box are a clarinet and a bowling ball.
action: You talk to the hermit
response: The hermit makes a strange gesture with his right hand: index finger pointing up, thumb pointing sideways.
action: Continue
response: The hermit makes a strange gesture with his right hand: thumb over ring and little fingers, index and middle fingers pointed up, slightly crossed.
action: Continue
response: The hermit makes a strange gesture with his right hand: little finger and thumb sticking out to the sides, other fingers close to the palm.
action: Continue
response: The hermit makes a strange gesture with his right hand: index finger and thumb pinched together, other fingers raised loosely.
action: You go to the west
response: W. W.

This was probably a culvert once. Muddy, dim. Just breathing the air here is like kissing a grave. The bowed ceiling, which curves down to become the walls, is riddled with fissures, from which protrude dead black roots.

The old culvert runs east and west, and a ragged chimney leads up into the relatively clean air of the crypt.

Not much light at all, just a few knife-edges of shuttered candle gleam coming from the hodge-podge of alleys and houses. You are appalled that people could possibly be allowed to live down here.

Though you don't see any residents at the moment, the buildings are not perfectly quiet. Little noises of creaking wood. Whispers, too, perhaps.

Decayed alleys run in many directions, but you should probably stick to traveling east, back towards the culvert, or north, where a sturdier structure of stone stands amongst the ramshackle dwellings.

You would probably get lost and die of starvation back there. Or at the very least die with a knife in your gut or crushed under a splintery deadfall. There is a path to the east, however, and a single safe-looking building, to the north.
action: You show the idol to the hermit
response: The hermit is unimpressed.
action: You put the idol in the box
response: You put the ancient idol into the cardboard box.
action: You get dollar
response: That seems to belong to the hermit.
action: Go upwards
response: Unhealthy stems grow lush here. They have woven themselves into a pliable mesh between floor and ceiling. The roots are sunk into a putrid matrix of muck and shattered bones.

Your LED's light gleams in pale splinters off the stems. The growth is crushed down in paths heading east, west, and south.

This was probably a culvert once. Muddy, dim. Just breathing the air here is like kissing a grave. The bowed ceiling, which curves down to become the walls, is riddled with fissures, from which protrude dead black roots.

The old culvert runs east and west, and a ragged chimney leads up into the relatively clean air of the crypt.

The rotten brick floor has partially collapsed, allowing access to a level below the crypt. You can climb down, or you can skirt the hole and go north. The hallway also runs southeast.
action: You put the key in the box
response: The plexiglass key drops into the box.

The hermit shrugs and hands you back your dollar bill.
action: You get the clarinet
response: You take the the clarinet from the box, handing a dollar bill over to the hermit in exchange.
action: You put the chips into the clarinet
response: white music chip: Done.
red music chip: There is no more room in the round hole.
action: You examine the clarinet
response: A poorly-maintained electro-clarinet. Along the side of the instrument are a square fuse slot (containing a dead fuse) and round hole for a music chip (containing a white music chip).
action: You put the fuse into the clarinet
response: (the holy fuse into the clarinet)
There is no more room in the square slot.
action: You get the dead fuse
response: You already have that.
action: You put the holy fuse in the clarinet
response: You put the holy fuse into the square slot.
action: You play the clarinet
response: You play "Ave Machina" on the clarinet.
action: You examine the smock
response: It inhabits the uncanny valley between garment and bodily growth.
action: Go upwards
response: Unhealthy stems grow lush here. They have woven themselves into a pliable mesh between floor and ceiling. The roots are sunk into a putrid matrix of muck and shattered bones.

Your LED's light gleams in pale splinters off the stems. The growth is crushed down in paths heading east, west, and south.

This was probably a culvert once. Muddy, dim. Just breathing the air here is like kissing a grave. The bowed ceiling, which curves down to become the walls, is riddled with fissures, from which protrude dead black roots.

The old culvert runs east and west, and a ragged chimney leads up into the relatively clean air of the crypt.

The rotten brick floor has partially collapsed, allowing access to a level below the crypt. You can climb down, or you can skirt the hole and go north. The hallway also runs southeast.
action: Go north
response: Brick steps lead up around a vertical square air channel.

A hallway runs south under a brick arch, back towards the crypt.

Your heart is thundering with anticipation. Any moment now you'll be in the presence of Pope Fortran.
action: Up
response: You climb up towards the glare and roar of the Mathedral. Your legs are shaky.

A V-shaped metal hallway. The bright walls and floor are covered with rubber wheel marks. The chapel is south; to the north, the hallway branches into a maelstrom of variously-purposed robot roads, paths, cyber-catwalks, and transport chutes. A hatch leads down into a lower level.

You can feel a vibration in the substance of the world to the south: the chapel must be running some heavy-duty prayer engines.
action: Go south
response: One step towards the chapel, and a stigmata forms, a drop of blood welling at your nostril.

The hum of those prayer engines: they have been cranked up to a awe-inspiring degree.

Get any closer to those prayer engines without wearing a prayer helmet and your brain will be, ah, nothing but stigmata.
action: Go down
response: Brick steps lead up around a vertical square air channel.

A hallway runs south under a brick arch, back towards the crypt.
action: You go to the south-east
response: The rotten brick floor has partially collapsed, allowing access to a level below the crypt. You can climb down, or you can skirt the hole and go north. The hallway also runs southeast.

A rutted ground of rotted bricks. The ceiling is low, lumpy with whitish nitre. The walls are very close and crooked, but not by any mysterious robot design. They're just ancient--and were shoddy to begin with. Brick passageways lead southeast and northwest.

You can see a plexiglass cabinet (in which is a mangled saint (empty)) here.

Though maybe it used to be a crossway, with four brick tunnels branching out beneath a groined vault, now only the northwestern and southwestern passages are open. The others have collapsed and are full of broken bricks. A staircase heads upwards.
action: You play the clarinet
response: You play "The DOSology" on the clarinet.

The pauper sings along in a high, sweet voice:

"Praise God, in whom all lines compile;
Grant read/write access, every file,
To him who writes the heavenly code;
Praise parser, prompt and debug mode.
Amen."

The pauper gestures to the helmet. He says: "Take it, it's yours."
action: You examine it
response: An industrial-strength prayer helmet, beige plastic with molded contours, stained with the marks of a thousand dirty fingers.
action: You go east
response: This was probably a culvert once. Muddy, dim. Just breathing the air here is like kissing a grave. The bowed ceiling, which curves down to become the walls, is riddled with fissures, from which protrude dead black roots.

The old culvert runs east and west, and a ragged chimney leads up into the relatively clean air of the crypt.

Unhealthy stems grow lush here. They have woven themselves into a pliable mesh between floor and ceiling. The roots are sunk into a putrid matrix of muck and shattered bones.

Your LED's light gleams in pale splinters off the stems. The growth is crushed down in paths heading east, west, and south.

A cramped stone cubicle. The walls are shaggy with cancer-like scales of soot. An iron basket of smoldering dirt clods hangs from the ceiling. The air, mostly smoke, stinks like the filth of millennia. The exit is west.

A hermit covered in white felted frizz hunches against the back wall.

On the floor before the hermit is an open-topped cardboard box. Scrawled on its front panel is the phrase: "Everything's a dollar in this box."
action: You put the clarinet in the box
response: The clarinet drops into the box.

The hermit shrugs and hands you back your dollar bill.
action: You get the ball
response: You take the the bowling ball from the box, handing a dollar bill over to the hermit in exchange.
action: You examine the ball
response: A purple-swirled bowling ball around 22cm in diameter and weighing around 7kg.
action: Go upwards
response: Brick steps lead up around a vertical square air channel.

A hallway runs south under a brick arch, back towards the crypt.

A V-shaped metal hallway. The bright walls and floor are covered with rubber wheel marks. The chapel is south; to the north, the hallway branches into a maelstrom of variously-purposed robot roads, paths, cyber-catwalks, and transport chutes. A hatch leads down into a lower level.

You can feel a vibration in the substance of the world to the south: the chapel must be running some heavy-duty prayer engines.
action: Wear helmet
response: You put on the prayer helmet.
action: You go south
response: The walls, floor and ceiling are vibrating beige panels.

Ten prayer engines thunder, fringed with halos of divine radiation. You feel the hum of the engines in your skull, in your teeth, in your eyeballs. Fortunately the shielding of the prayer helmet prevents spontaneous spiritual hemorrhage.

Doorways are north and south.

A hulking antique crusader bot is standing just in front of the south doorway, blocking it.
action: You look at bot
response: An old-fashioned crusaderbot, eight feet high and four feet wide. It is made of fire-blackened steel covered with red and white decals.

An unobtrusive antenna is attached to the robot's chest like a medal.

The brainpan at the top of the robot's head has been opened. It contains nothing.

The crusaderbot speaks in a tinny roar: "DEAR MADAM OR SIR FIND ME MY BRAIN AND I WILL LET YOU PASS MY BRAIN IS ROUND."
action: You put the ball in the brainpan
response: The bowling ball settles into the brainpan with a thud.

The crusaderbot says: "DEUS VOLT! THANK YOU KIND MADAM OR SIR THAT FEELS LIKE MY MISSING BRAIN IT MUST BE MY MISSING BRAIN THANK YOU FOR FINDING IT."

It performs a clanking bow; in doing so it moves forward from the south door, allowing you space to pass.
action: You look at the decals
response: The decals depict the sacking of heretic cities.
action: You examine antenna
response: Though it must not realize it, the old crusaderbot doesn't have its own brain anymore. Instead its consciousness has been networked, and is now accessed wirelessly via this antenna.
action: Go south
response: You are filled with ecstasy.

Everything else is a sphere of irrelevance arrayed about you.

Pope Fortran is here.

On the pope's right grasping appendage is its ring of office.
action: You look at the Pope
response: Robopope Fortran is a towering intellectual mechanism. Its head looks like the blade of an earth-moving machine, and its body and limbs are a configurable mass of jointed metallo-muscles. It is wearing a cloak of purple fireproof cloth with a white-black checked human-hair fringe, shoes made of solid ruby-tinted titanium, and, on the end of its right manipulator appendage, its ring of office, the band of which is made of whiskered yellow ceramic and which holds a green and silver smartjewel.
action: You talk to the Pope
response: You quickly think of twenty-seven different things you might say to Pope Fortran, but just as quickly reject them all as unworthy.

Your mind isn't running quite straight at the moment.
action: Kiss ring
response: You kneel.

Pope Fortran's exorbitant stainless steel head--like the blade of a bulldozer decorated with dozens of bulbs and sensors--is aimed the other way. Maybe that's for the best.

As your dry lips move closer to the smartjewel of Pope Fortran's ring, you wonder what it was like for the faithful before the robots discovered the fractal code that underpins the universe and made it available to anyone who pledged obedience to them--a pittance to pay, for the reward of effortless certainty in the divine. Those vanished ages must have been dark and paranoid indeed. If faith might be misplaced, then it can be no comfort whatsoever.

Lips and jewel meet. A faint spark. A sense that you have as much relative meaning to the function of the universe as a single atom. The sound of sub-atomic particles screaming along unimaginable scraggly paths shaped like masses of melted hair. The searing stink of outer space.

Though maybe that's just your imagination.
action: Songs
response: List of songs influencing this game, albeit often flippantly, in approximate order of obviousness of influence, though perhaps obvious to nobody but the author:

Tom Waits - Soldier's Things
Quasimoto - Goodmorning Sunshine
Peter Gabriel - The Barry Williams Show
A Tribe Called Red - Electric pow wow drum
Saint Etienne - I was born on Christmas day
Aimee Mann - Calling it Quits
Bon Jovi - Livin' on a Prayer

Would you like to RESTART, RESTORE a saved game, QUIT, UNDO the last command, see the list of SONGS, or read the JOKES page?
action: Jokes
response: Here is your reward for winning:

Q. Why did the robot cross the road?
A. It is very unlikely that the robot needed to cross a road. Most robots do not use roads, and following the Robot Apotheosis the majority of human road systems rapidly fell into disrepair.

DID YOU KNOW that the Holy Robot Empire is neither Holy, Robotic, nor an Empire?

Q. How many robots does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A. This depends on the function of the robot.

A: Knock-knock.
B: Who's there?
A: Si.
B: Si Who?
A: Si Bernetic.
B: ... You cannot spell.

DID YOU KNOW that the final secret digit of pi is 6?

"I can go any cardinal direction plus up or down," said Tom movingly. "I run both Inform and TADS games," interpreted Tom.
"You are likely to be eaten by a grue," said Tom darkly.
"I just found the last lousy point!" said Tom winningly.
"I'm discovering a lot of bugs in this text adventure," said Tom testily.

Would you like to RESTART, RESTORE a saved game, QUIT, UNDO the last command, see the list of SONGS, or read the JOKES page?