text: [Themes: surreal, mathematics]
  
  > look around
  This is the living room of the white house, and it looks to be the only room still intact. A sofa sits against one wall, and a bookcase stands against another. The sole unblocked exit is through the front door to the west.
  
  There are currently thirteen books on the bookcase:
  Fractals (glowing)
  Finite-Dimensional Vector Spaces
  Principia Mathematica
  The Art of Computer Programming
  Disquisitiones Arithmeticae
  La Géométrie
  Foundations for a General Theory of Functions of a Complex
  Variable
  Liber Abaci
  Introduction to the Analysis of the Infinite
  Diophantus's Arithmetica
  Ars Magna
  The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and
  Balancing
  Elements
  
  > look at Fractals
  This is a copy of Fractals, by Benoît Mandelbrot. The book
  is emitting a soft glow.
  
  > read it
  You open Fractals, and light bursts forth from it. The light
  circles you several times. Then, with a loud "whoosh," it returns to the book, which slams shut.
  
  > Inventory
  You are carrying:
  Fractals (glowing)
  the trig homework
  a spare key
  some presentation slides
  a brass rod
  some limit shoes (being worn)
  a set (no longer empty)
  a square root
  a printout
  your math book
  
  > put the Fractals in shelf
  You put Fractals on the bookcase. As it slides into place
  you hear a faint click. Then you hear the same voice as
  before - the one that sounds like Professor Glasser.
  
  The voice says, "Fractals have yet to be defined precisely - even by Benoît Mandelbrot, the author of Fractals and the originator
  of the concept. They tend to be characterized, though, by attributes like self-similarity: Changing the scale on a fractal object often results in the same or a similar pattern being repeated over and over. Fractal images are frequently created by iterating a function over the complex plane and assigning colors based on how rapidly the function diverges."
  
  > About yourself
  You're asleep. But this is the most vivid dream you've ever had.
  
  > go upward
  You make your way up.
  
  Real Axis: 1
  The dark blue expanse of space now contains a plane that stretches as far as you can see in all directions. It includes both the real axis you are standing on and the imaginary axis you can see off in the distance, and it is filled with starry, twinkling lights.
  
  > go west
  The dark blue expanse of space now contains a plane that stretches as far as you can see in all directions. It includes both the real axis you are standing on and the imaginary axis you can see off in the distance, and it is filled with starry, twinkling lights.
  
  > go north
  Imaginary Axis: i
  The dark blue expanse of space now contains a plane that stretches as far as you can see in all directions. It includes the imaginary axis you are standing on and the real axis you can see off in the distance, and it is filled with starry, twinkling lights.
  
  > Extract root
  The root vibrates quietly, as it extracts the square root of the essence of the space around it. You feel yourself rotate
  clockwise, swinging in an arc that takes you halfway back to the positive part of the real axis.
  
  Complex: Modulus 1 and Acute Angle
  This is more of an abstract space than a physical place. It strikes you, somehow, as a mixture of both the real and the imaginary spaces you have visited. It also feels large beyond your understanding, but not any more so than the irrational space you've already seen. A hole leads up.
  
  > open Fractals
  You open Fractals, and light bursts forth from it. The light
  circles you several times. Then, with a loud "whoosh," it returns to the book, which slams shut.
  
  > Go upwards
  You make your way up.
  
  As soon as you climb through the hole, it closes behind you. A curve appears once more, lighting a path for you in the shape of an arc of a perfect circle - through the stars and back to the number 1 on the real axis. You follow the arc. As you step onto the real axis, the arc disappears.
  
  Real Axis: 1
  The dark blue expanse of space now contains a plane that stretches as far as you can see in all directions. It includes both the real axis you are standing on and the imaginary axis you can see off in the distance, and it is filled with starry, twinkling lights.
  
  > read it
  You open Fractals, and light bursts forth from it. The light
  circles you once, twice, three times, and then it splinters, spinning away in all directions.
  
  Each splinter of light seeks out one of the twinkling stars in the complex plane. The starry lights absorb the splintered ones and begin to pulse: blue, white, blue, white, blue, white...
  
  The pulsing ceases with each point in the complex plane settling on a color from midnight blue to the purest white. Together they form a fractal pattern of infinite complexity, containing spirals throwing out tendrils that themselves contain spirals with tendrils... on and on.
  
  The fractal is blindingly, indescribably, painfully beautiful.
  From somewhere you hear - but only in your mind - words once spoken by another:
  
  "Così la mente mia, tutta sospesa
  mirava fissa, immobile e attenta,
  e sempre di mirar faceasi accesa...
  
  "Oh quanto è corto il dire e come fioco
  al mio concetto! e questo, a quel ch'i' vidi,
  è tanto, che non basta a dicer 'poco'...
  
  "Qual è 'l geomètra che tutto s'affige
  per misurar lo cerchio, e non ritrova,
  pensando, quel principio ond' elli indige,
  
  "tal era io a quella vista nova...
  "A l'alta fantasia qui mancò possa."
  
  "Thus all my mind, absorbed,
  was gazing, fixed, unmoving and intent,
  becoming more enraptured in its gazing...
  
  "O how scant is speech, too weak to frame my thoughts.
  Compared to what I still recall my words are faint -
  to call them little is to praise them much...
  
  "Like the geometer who fully applies himself
  to square the circle and, for all his thought,
  cannot discover the principle he lacks,
  
  "such was I at that strange new sight...
  Here my exalted vision lost its power."
  And you wake up. You lie in bed for a while, thinking about what you've learned.
  In the morning you get up and make your way to the exam.
  
  You walk into the classroom feeling supremely confident about your understanding of the material. As the exam proceeds, the look on Professor Glasser's face goes from resignation to surprise to shock and finally to bemusement. By the end you have answered every single question correctly. Professor Glasser shakes your hand. "I have never had a student earn a perfect score on one of my final exams," she says, "much less one who skipped most of the class sessions!" She pauses for a moment, thinking. "You know," she says, "I could use a research assistant this summer. I don't normally have undergraduates work with me, but since you did so well in my class... Just think about it."
  
  A couple of weeks later you check your grades...
  
  You owe your roommate an apology about those study pills.
  
  > MATH
  Balance scales
  Pascal's triangle
  Achilles and Zeno's paradoxes
  Euclid, his fifth postulate, and non-Euclidean geometry
  Top Two game
  Farmer's problem, calculus, the roller coaster, and Pennings
  Laser bike game
  Transformation matrix and determinants
  Harmonic series and alternating harmonic series
  Grand hotel guest problem