text: [Themes: gender-neutral protagonist, educational, adventure]
  
  > look at your surroundings
  This is a grassy area between buildings at some university. Dusk is falling, and no one else is around. There is a log table at the edge of the grassy area. It looks like there is a small laundry facility in the building to east, and a gate lies south of you.
  
  Someone has left their trigonometry homework on the log table.
  
  > check what you're carrying
  You are carrying:
  an icosahedron
  a square root
  a set (no longer empty)
  a slide rule
  a cube
  some exhaustion sandals
  a tetrahedron
  an octahedron
  an old coin
  your math book
  
  > examine the slide
  The slide rule consists of three pieces of wood: the two on the outside are attached to each other, while the third - in the middle - can slide between the other two. Numbers are marked on all three pieces of wood. You have no idea how to use a slide rule.
  
  > Go south
  As you move south, you feel an electrical impulse course through you. The space around you seems to fold in on itself.
  
  Off to the side sits a gray storage bin. In the storage bin you see a square piece of metal and a scribbled scroll.
  
  A gray, translucent ghost flits around the storage bin.
  
  > show the homework to the ghost
  The gray lady looks carefully at the trig homework. Then she says, "I think you may still find some use for that. You never know, though," she adds. "I might be wrong."
  
  > check your inventory
  You are carrying:
  the trig homework
  an icosahedron
  a square root
  a set (no longer empty)
  a slide rule
  a cube
  some exhaustion sandals
  a tetrahedron
  an octahedron
  an old coin
  your math book
  
  > look up Plato
  (in your math book)
  Plato held that mathematical reasoning serves as a model for how to think philosophically. There is a legend that the phrase "Let no one ignorant of geometry enter" was written over the door to his Academy. The five Platonic solids - the tetrahedron, the cube, the octahedron, the dodecahedron, and the icosahedron - are named for him.
  
  > Slide rule
  What do you want to slide the slide rule under?
  
  > go up
  You must name something more substantial.
  
  > show the rule to Achilles
  (first taking the slide rule)
  Achilles frowns. "I don't see how that will help me beat the tortoise."
  
  > look up Achilles in the MATH
  The story of Achilles and the tortoise is a paradox related to the nature of infinity. It was devised by Zeno of Elea.
  
  In the paradox, Achilles is racing a tortoise who is given a head start. Zeno claims that Achilles can never catch up to the tortoise because "In a race, the quickest runner can never overtake the slowest, since the pursuer must first reach the point whence the pursued started, so that the slower must always hold a lead."
  
  The paradox of Achilles and the tortoise, as well as Zeno's paradoxes in general, are important in mathematics because they helped force mathematicians to consider carefully what they mean by continuous quantities that are infinitely divisible, as well as infinity itself.
  
  Some mathematicians believe that the limit concept, which not only provides a rigorous method for handling infinite quantities but also put calculus on a firm theoretical foundation, resolves the paradox of Achilles and the tortoise. However, limits were not developed until over 2000 years after the death of Zeno.
  
  > Go west
  From here, the only exit is east.
  
  > show rule to Countess
  You show the slide rule to the Countess. "This is an interesting device," she says. "Do you know how to work it?" You shake your head, and she returns the slide rule to you.
  
  > look up the slide rule
  (in your math book)
  The only mention of slide rules in the index refers to a unit on logarithms, so you turn to that section.
  
  A logarithm is a function whose output is an exponent or power. For example, the base 10 logarithm of 1000 is 3, since 10^3 is 1000.
  
  The earliest practical use of logarithms was to convert a multiplication calculation to an addition calculation via the logarithm property log(xy) = log x + log y.
  The slide rule operates on this and other properties of logarithms.
  
  (There follows a detailed description of how to work a slide rule to do multiplication using logarithms.)
  
  Using the example, you practice with the slide rule until you understand how to use it to do multiplication.
  
  [Your understanding of Logarithms has increased. You estimate
  that your score on tomorrow's final has just gone up by two
  points.]
  
  > show the rule to Countess
  You show the slide rule to the Countess, and you carefully explain to her how to use it to do multiplication. She immediately grasps the concept. "With this, I don't need to fix my mechanical calculator!
  Do you mind if I have it?" You give your assent, and the Countess smiles widely.
  
  "If this does multiplication, it could also do division." She begins playing with the slide rule. "And it should be able to calculate powers of a number." She performs a few more calculations on the slide rule. "Yes!" she says. "Here, let me show you what I've done."
  
  As the Countess explains how to use the slide rule to do division and exponentiation, you realize that she is essentially showing you two more logarithm properties: log(x/y) = log x - log
  y, converting division to subtraction, and log x^n =
  n log x, converting exponentiation to
  multiplication.
  
  "Thank you so much for the slide rule. What an ingenious device and valuable gift!" she says. "I must reciprocate!" She produces a small bell from somewhere and rings it. A servant rushes in, and the Countess whispers something to him. The servant disappears, but he soon returns, hands a book to the Countess, and disappears once more.
  
  The Countess gives the book to you. "This is a wide-margin copy of Diophantus's Arithmetica. We used to have a copy with narrow
  margins, too, but we gave that one to Fermat."
  
  [Your understanding of Logarithms has increased. You estimate
  that your score on tomorrow's final has just gone up by two
  points.]
  
  > look at the arithmetica
  This is a copy of Diophantus's Arithmetica. As the Countess indicated, it does have wide margins.
  
  > look up Fermat
  (in your math book)
  Pierre de Fermat was a contemporary and sometime rival of Descartes. He was the greatest number theorist of his era, invented analytic geometry about the same time as Descartes (but did not publish his results), and his method of tangents was a forerunner to the derivative concept used in calculus. Fermat was actually a lawyer and did mathematics for fun in his spare time.
  
  Fermat is most well-known for his conjecture that become known as "Fermat's Last Theorem": There do not exist solutions in nonzero integers a, b, c, and n > 2, such
  that a^n  + b^n = c^n. In his copy of
  Diophantus's Arithmetica Fermat claimed to have found a
  "truly remarkable proof of this theorem which this margin is too narrow to contain." No one has ever found Fermat's proof, and, despite an enormous amount of effort, nobody succeeded in proving it themselves until 1995, more than 350 years later.
  
  > Count count
  You get exactly the number you expected.
  
  > go east
  The Count calls after you, "If you find something else for me to count I would be grateful!"
  
  As you move east, you feel an electrical impulse course through you. The space around you seems to fold in on itself.