World Builder
Paul Lee
space opera
You've built dreams and brought to life legends. But all that is useless compared to your beloved masterpiece, a creation of tremendous value that holds the keys to unlimited adventure -- as well as great peril. You are the World Builder.
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You go north
You've built dreams and brought to life legends. But all that is useless to you -- a means to an end. And now, the culmination of your long work is nearly finished.
You gingerly take the imager device from its dock, the final precautionary tests complete. The narrow strip of metal resonates deeply within you as you scrutinize it, a felt echo of your own essence. Now, all that is left is for the imager to be installed so your consciousness can be attuned with your creation.



January 11, 2012
IFID: 7D41B470-B518-4241-A71C-50D107E1EEEA
Hugo v3.1 / Library 31031

(Enter "ABOUT" to access background information and credits.)

Automatons scurry to and fro in the complex of interconnected machinery, which churns and whirls across the vast convex surface of the Sphere.
None of the sprawling apparatuses and cybernetic miracles are worth anything compared to the masterpiece that lies prone and powerless before you.
You examine the masterpiece
The figure of an artificial man stands rigidly, staring vacantly downward from empty eyes. The android is flawless, a perfect imitation of natural life -- except for the empty rectangular socket above his right brow, revealing circuitry that spoils the preternatural beauty of his human form.
About yourself
You are human, and you are the World Builder.
Inventory
You are carrying the imager.
You examine the imager
The device looks like a small, slightly-curved metal band, featureless and smooth on the outside.
You put imager in the man
You slide the smooth, rounded rectangular bar into the groove on the android's forehead. The invisible field draws the device into place soundlessly, recessing it to the level of the skin.
The figure of the android shudders for a moment, and then it raises
its head, its mechanical eyes opening wide to focus on you. The imager begins to blink in the forehead, the metal pulsing softly with white light.
You talk to the man
He hears, but he cannot listen. Not yet.
You look at the android
The android stands poised before you, its eyes locked onto your face. The imager insterted into the forehead throbs slowly, pulsing with bright white light.
You examine imager
The imager is a small silver bar above Hugor's right brow, hanging out over his scorched face.
Wait
Time passes...
You look at Sphere
The Sphere is what you call the hollow planetoid you constructed to serve as your workshop and laboratory. Miles of equipment and consoles stretch across the inside surface of the artificial globe, diligently attended by your robotic assistants. The transparent alloy of the outer wall beneath allows an unobscured view of the cosmos.
You turn on Hugor
You meet the android's cold gaze. Your nano implants detect the interface signal from the imager, rendering the transmission visible to your eyes in a sort of non-sight, separate from the three-dimensional world. You follow the signal through the imager, into the intricate being.
The imager flares brightly, and the android inhales deeply through
his nostrils. Suddenly, you are conscious of the android through your link to him. More than that, you can feel the echo of his consciousness of you.

"You are Hugor," you tell him. "Welcome, my son."
You talk to Hugor
"You were created for a very special purpose," you explain, still looking earnestly into his eyes. "You posses within you the key to endless wonders and mysteries. Together, we will have many great adventures."

The light of the imager diminishes to a faint but steady gleam.
Hugor opens his hands and looks at you, raising his right hand toward you vaguely.

"Father," he says. He blinks. "I am Hugor."
You talk to Hugor
"You were created for a very special purpose," you explain, still looking earnestly into his eyes. "You posses within you the key to endless wonders and mysteries. Together, we will have many great adventures."
You check your inventory
You're not carrying anything.

Hugor's arched eyebrows draw together. "Father... I do not understand," he says.
You tell Hugor about yourself
(Plese use the command "TALK TO (CHARACTER NAME)" to initiate dialog.)
You talk to Hugor
"You needn't, Son. Not yet. In time, you will learn to use your gift."
You motion Hugor over to a clearer area. "Come now," you say, "We won't be trying it out here in the Sphere, but you may as well begin to get a feel for how it works. Look around you. Your vision is as capable of rendering dimensional lines as it is of light photons. You can also touch those dimensional lines, as easily as you can bend down and touch the floor of the Sphere. Now, look inside yourself, feel the mystery that I created you to persue, and..."
Hugor suddenly whips his head around to look at you, jerking down the hand that he had raised in the air as you spoke. "No." He shakes his head, softly at first, but then wildly and vehemently. "No," he repeats, his voice crackling mechanically. "Does not compute. Error. Sequence abort." His voice is consumed by robotic monotony; no trace of the naturalness he possessed for a moment remains.
You talk to Hugor
"Hugor, stand by to receive autocorrect passcode," you say calmly, transmitting with your nanotide neural implants the sequence to initiate Hugor's debugging routines. The imager receives the signal, but in response Hugor only turns away from you with a hiss.

Hugor unsteadily backs away from you, throwing up his hands in front
of him as if to ward you off, fingers bent claw-like. Suddenly, the air before him shimmers and bends, being replaced for a moment by a small vortex of light. The area around the vortex erupts in blue energy, sending Hugor flying backward and vaporizing the nearest equipment.
You talk to Hugor
"Stop, Hugor!" you command. "You don't know what you're doing. You could both destroy yourself and cause grave harm to others!" But Hugor does not respond.

The instant Hugor smashes bodily into a console against a far wall,
he leaps back to his feet, looking around uncertainly. The right-most part of his face is burned off up to his nose, revealing his metallic internal structure beneath his human aesthetic. A tendril of smoke rises from the damaged imager. You look with your nano-sight, but the dimensional signal that linked the android to you is reduced to garbled jibberish, giving you a headache.
You take the imager
Taken.
You turn off Hugor
At the speed of thought, you initiate in your own mind the nano-signal to deactivate Hugor, but the broken imager spits out chaotic interference, failing to receive. You glance at a console, about equidistant between you and Hugor, from which you can initiate a stronger overide to bypass the imager. You lunge for the console, both physically and remotely through your nanotides. But with his super-human strength and reflexes, Hugor reacts faster, simultaneously sending out interference to block the signal from your implants and crossing the distance between himself and the console in a single jump to smash it to ruin with his arm.

Hugor runs to the nearest port along the Sphere, covering the
distance in moments. You signal the docking system to deny him access to the cruiser bay, and the nearest automatons shuffle towards him, hemming him in. He throws the robots out of his way and slams his scorched fist against the closed docking lift, but the reinforced alloy fails to yield even to his great strength. He raises his hands, and a shimmering field appears before the lift. The field expands horizontally toward the lift, which disappears in a burst of molten slag. Several loyal automatons fall into the vortex, and are gone.
The vortex disintegrates, and Hugor disappears through the hole he created.
How could he have gained so much control over his ability already?
You look around
Automatons scurry to and fro in the complex of interconnected machinery, which churns and whirls across the vast convex surface of the Sphere.
You examine the imager
The device looks like a small, slightly-curved metal band, featureless and smooth on the outside.

then explodes outward, and a star cruiser glides out of the breach as atmosphere and equipment vents out into space. The Sphere's central control system automatically closes the breach with a force field. Hugor's hijacked star cruiser disappears from light-based sight as it engages its photon engines.
Hugor is far too precious to lose. You must find him and stop him
from destroying himself!
Go outside
You enter the star cruiser's control pod and launch out through the Sphere's space port in pursuit of your lost creation, your lost child.

The stars evaporate in dim streaks as you leave light behind.
The interior of the control pod of your ship is a spherical room with four molded chairs facing the viewscreen that covers the enitre diameter of the wall. The viewscreen remains locked onto Hugor's cruiser.
You look at the viewscreen
The sheet of transparent aluminum wraps all around the diameter of the circular room, displaying a projection of the stolen star cruiser rendered by calculations based on photon emissions. A narrow strip below the screen displays panels to activate and control the targeting system, navigation system, and photon engines.
You look at the panels
The sheet of transparent aluminum wraps all around the diameter of the circular room, displaying a projection of the stolen star cruiser rendered by calculations based on photon emissions. A narrow strip below the screen displays panels to activate and control the targeting system, navigation system, and photon engines.

Hugor's vessel abruptly changes course and drops out of photon velocity. Your ship's computer immediately calculates Hugor's exit vector and makes corresponding course adjustments before entering sublight speed, and the stars snap into sharp focus on your viewport. But the stars are all you see as the computer wildly scans the
sector, searching for the renegade ship.
You look at the targeting system
The sheet of transparent aluminum wraps all around the diameter of the circular room, displaying a field of stars. A narrow strip below the screen displays panels to activate and control the targeting system, navigation system, and photon engines.
You look at the navigation
The sheet of transparent aluminum wraps all around the diameter of the circular room, displaying a field of stars. A narrow strip below the screen displays panels to activate and control the targeting system, navigation system, and photon engines.

Your shipboard sensors detect spatial distortion and photon displacement that was not present before. Investigating, you watch a swirling vortex of light energy expand as Hugor's star cruiser, drifting near the field of distortion, accelerates gently away from it and then begins to turn toward it in a long arc.
Incredible. He should not have been able to generate such a large field for a long time. You cannot allow him to escape through it, or you may lose him forever.
Target hugor
Your targeting system can't lock on to Hugor's vessel due to interference from the vortex, but you fire off a shot at the general area anyways, just as Hugor brings his ship around to enter the swirling light. The beam misses and is absorbed into the energy field. The vortex swells and wavers, and Hugor's ship tumbles away from it, turning end-over-end.
The vortex shrinks and stabilizes, and then opens wide again as Hugor regains control of his cruiser, once again turning to enter the field of light.
Target vortex
Your computer refuses to target the vortex directly due to the energy field's emissions, but you unleash a laser volley, the laser turret firing thousands of times in the half-second. On your viewport, the vortex absorbs the beam and warps chaotically, bursting into a nebula of sparks.
Turning aside from the blast, Hugor's ship halts. As your star
cruiser continues on an intercept course at its top non-photon speed, a swirling nimbus begins to gather in front of Hugor's cruiser. The nimbus expands into another vortex, and Hugor promptly accelerates into it just as you approach from behind, disappearing into the light. You are just seconds away from the light field, but you know that it's going to snap closed in the heartbeat.
You enter the vortex
You must do so. But you can't simply fly into the energy field at sublight velocity. Now that the origin of the dimensional field has gone on to the other side, the gateway is unstable and will collapse immanently, destroying your craft if you aren't moving faster than the photon warp.
You examine the photon controls
You haven't encountered any "photon controls". (If you're sure you need to refer to that, try putting it another way.)
You turn on the photon
There is only one thing you can do. Responding to your thought faster than you can twitch a limb, your computer sets a course through the center of the vortex and engages the four photon engines for a microsecond burst.
You are elsewhere. Your sensors show no sign that the vortex ever existed. The viewport shows a solar system encircling an angry red sun. Hugor's craft is barely within scanning range, in orbit of the nearest planet. Even with the computer's precision, you far overshot the exit point of the portal, traveling above light speed. You bear down on the planet at top sublight speed.

A cloud of debris encircles a dark terrestrial planet.
The interior of the control pod of your ship is a spherical room with four molded chairs facing the viewscreen that covers the enitre diameter of the wall. The viewscreen shows Hugor's cruiser arc down and around the dark planet on a landing vector.
Down
You descend into the atmosphere, following Hugor's vessel as it makes directly for the strange bulge, which resolves in your viewscreen into a misshapen artificial dome of some kind. As the star cruiser approaches, a panel opens on the surface of the dome, and Hugor decelerates directly into the maw.

As the panel closes behind Hugor's cruiser, your ship lurches, the defensive system taking evasive maneuverings. Two turrets have risen from beneath ground level on either side of the dome to spit fiery fury at you, while assorted artillery outside the dome and smaller guns along its surface shoot at you with a variety of energy weapons. The defense system works tirelessly to evade, but a few stray beams manage to take out your photon engines. You return fire with your lasers, destroying one of the turrets and decimating the ground machines. Suddenly, the viewscreen flickers out along with the control strip
and every source of light ,leaving you in total darkness. You feel yourself falling. Two tense heartbeats pass, and then the pod lights up again dimly. You initiate the eject sequence, and the ship encases your body in a close-fitting, rigid suit of alloy plates. The pod opens, and you fall, spreading your hands to create a force field just before impact.

metal and organic offal, strewn around in haphazard heaps. The murky atmosphere obscures the sky in an acrid haze. Smoldering nuggets of debris rain down slowly but constantly.
With the exception of the craters, the land is blandly level and featureless in all directions -- except in the direction facing the planet's south pole, where an asymmetrical black dome blots out the horizon.
Go south
You sprint toward the malignant edifice, your shock suit enhancing your strength as you bound lightly over the barren terrain. As you draw near, the remaining ground turret follows your movement, and you proceed warily, activating your suit's force-shield. But the turret is content to track you as you walk through the mangled remains of the machines that you obliterated during your hurried arrival. Unhindered, you walk straight up to the side of the dome, and a portion of the wall dematerializes, leaving an uneven opening.
You enter without hesitation, and the wall rematerializes on your heels. You see a dark silhoutte standing before you.

"Remember me, World Builder?"

An opaque black expanse covers everything, proclaiming itself to be a whole world, an entire universe. A multitude of machines and cyborgs lurk about, silhouetted against the haphazard red light that unevenly illuminates broken terrain.
A hulking robotic behemoth stands before you.
You talk to the behemoth
"Your pointless war has nothing to do with my son, Minfor. Release
him now, and I may yet leave you alone."
The expressionless head swivels, and the lone yellow eye flashes brighter and then dimmer. "You have no authority here, World Builder," the machine hisses mechanically. "Hugor came to me freely. He is mine."
Inventory
You are carrying the imager.
You talk to the behemoth
"Do not feign innocence, Deceiver. I know that something touched my son when I had imparted my consciousness to him -- lied to him, no doubt, confused him. Told him how to use his ability. Lead him to this prison. No, Minfor, it is not Hugor who initiated this rebellion. I will have my vengeance."
A popping cackle. "You did not suppose that you were the only one knowing the secrets of sub-dimensional transmission and projected consciousness, did you, World Builder? But I can't claim credit for Hugor's actions, as you well know. You said that Hugor bears your consciousness. If I had the power to control conscious beings, would I not have taken you?"
You look at the behemoth
The rigid, hulking figure before you defies sense and logic in the way the many plates, cylinders, and connecting tubes are assymetrically positioned. The main part of the "body" is a large, roughly box-shaped segment, upon one side of which sits a cylindrical "head" with a single oval optic, glowing yellow.

Minfor's incongrouous limbs and components raise themselves higher,
and he looms over you. "Unless that is exactly what I did. It seems Hugor was not the only one whom I lead to this prison. Like son, like father. All along, you thought you were acting of your own free choice. But what if I had always been communicating with your thoughts? What if I gave you the idea to create a being capable of opening doors to other dimensions, just so I could eventually conquer all worlds, altering reality according to my will? And now I have both the portal-maker and the mind that conceived him."
You talk to the behemoth
"What you say is false, and I can prove it," you state calmly.
The cylindrical head extends out from the boxy body and bends down
into your face. "How?"
Continue
"Because I can freely choose to allow you to enslave me and still see my vengeance in the end!" you declare.
The yellow light on the head blinks, and the cylinder swivels.
"You can do whatever you want to me, on the condition of Hugor's freedom." You square your shoulders and clasp your gauntleted hands together, steepling your thumbs.
Minfor retracts to its previous height and regards you curiously. A long moment passes. "Agreed." As soon as the word is grated, you see movement out of the corner of your eye, and Hugor is tossed at your feet, beaten and smoldering. A grotesque metallic creature detaches from the right side of his disfigured face and scuttles across the floor to crawl up Minfor, where it disappears somewhere inside the robot's asymmetric mass of components.
You talk to Hugor
"Be strong, son," you tell him. He looks up at you weakly, his expression numb.
You look at Hugor
The right side of his face and parts of his body, including his entire right hand, are scorched to the alloy skeleton, marring his human countenance. The imager has gone dark above his brow.

"Time now!" Minfor hisses as the opening in the wall of the dome reappears. It bends over to wrap a tentacle around Hugor, roughly throwing him out the opening. From outside, Hugor meets your eyes for a brief moment, and then hangs his head low before the portion of the wall rematerializes.
You go outside
Leaving would spoil your plan.

Something strikes you down from behind. The next thing you know, you are being beaten by a group of cyborgs. They enthusiastically deliver blow after blow. They smash your kneecaps and rake your body with metallic claws, lapping your blood like dogs. As you are tossed around, you occassionally catch a glimpse of Minfor looming behind the cyborgs, watching impassively.
Attack minfor
With your nano augmentation and the field-generating capabilities of your emergency shock suit, you are far from defenseless. But here, you are on enemy territory, and your adversary has access to firepower and backup. Best to find another way out of this.

The beating ceases as robots break the cyborgs up. Two androids grab you and unceremoniously constrain you to some bent and narrow surface, leaving you hanging in an unnatural position. The light from Minfor's eye blinks in your face. Then the torture begins.
You talk to Minfor
Nothing remains to be said.

Laser drills bite into your skull and the back of your mouth.
You wait for a while
Time passes...

Minfor places a spiny robotic creature onto your forehead. "The question as to whether or not you act under my compulsion is moot now, for this will allow me to control you quite crudely and efficiently." The spines shoot into your skull, piercing your brain. You can feel the thing rifle through your conscious thoughts and memories.

Before your eyes appears a vision of Minfor, dark and terrible, shrouded in raging flame. Your consciousness is consumed by terror, and you feel an impulse to beg for mercy. But some rational remnant of your mind cannot accept, and your mouth remains closed.
Wait
Time passes...

Your consciousness is plunged into pure pain, and agony because the only reality.

The pain diminishes slightly, and your ears discern hollow, lifeless words. "The good thing about your projected consciousness is that I don't have to worry about killing you prematurely, since I can simply gather your nanotides and continue my experiments. Let us see if death has any interesting effects."
You are enveloped in more pain -- a clearly physical pain. All over your body, you feel tiny creatures burrow into your flesh, consuming your organs.

*** YOU HAVE DIED ***
Look around
But Minfor did not understand the relationship between consciousness and dimension. As your mangled body dies and your brain fails, your consciousness breaks free of the dimension barrier and drifts unhindered through the fabric of reality.

An opaque black expanse covers everything, proclaiming itself to be a whole world, an entire universe. A multitude of machines and cyborgs lurk about, silhouetted against the haphazard red light that unevenly illuminates broken terrain.
Minfor is here.
You examine minfor
The rigid, hulking figure before you defies sense and logic in the way the many plates, cylinders, and connecting tubes are assymetrically positioned. The main part of the "body" is a large, roughly box-shaped segment, upon one side of which sits a cylindrical "head" with a single oval optic, glowing yellow.
About yourself
You are human, and you are the World Builder.
Go outside
Leaving would spoil your plan.
You talk to Minfor
Nothing remains to be said.
You look at your surroundings
An opaque black expanse covers everything, proclaiming itself to be a whole world, an entire universe. A multitude of machines and cyborgs lurk about, silhouetted against the haphazard red light that unevenly illuminates broken terrain.
Minfor is here.
Attack minfor
You sense every quantum of energy within the encompassing expanse of the dome. You see the entire framework of this reality, and you touch it. The atoms in the wall of the dome quiver as you project your wrath, and the dome violently implodes, burrying Minfor and its minions in a mound of devastation.

Free at last, you drift incorpeally, stretching out to detect your son's aberrant signal elsewhere on the dead planet. He has opened a vortex portal and is about to step through, shoulders slumped. You follow the dimensional lines to the dark, gloomy place on the other side of the portal and promptly sever them. As effortlessly as breathing, you coalesce in front of Hugor, your nanotides forming quarks and atoms that form flesh and blood and bone, until you stand before him just as physically as when you first activated him with your thought.

Hugor is here.
You talk to Hugor
Words can wait a moment more. Right now, Hugor needs you to restore him.
You turn on Hugor
The imager does not respond to you, but you no longer need it to.
Hugor flinches as you lay a hand on his shoulder but otherwise allows your grip. You project yourself into him, pulsing through his damaged body, causing his atoms to dissassociate but his essence to remain in a cloud of light. The light coalesces, forming a body as living as yours, but with all the perfection of his original android form. He raises his head to look into your eyes, and you feel his own consciousness project into your mind.
The imager is gone, but Hugor's brow shines with a pure silver gleam.
You talk to Hugor
"Do not be ashamed, Hugor. All is well. Infinite worlds await!"
Hugor inhales deeply and looks up at you, smiling softly. He turns
and raises his right arm, calling forth a bright field of light.
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HUGO ZORK: The Great Underground Empire
A Port of Infocom's Zork I to Hugo
Beta 
Hugo Zork written by John Menichelli
"Zork I" is copyright by Activision and is used without permission Written using Hugo v2.5 by Kent Tessman (c) 1995-1999
(New players should type "help")

You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door.
A small mailbox is here.