text: [Themes: Lovecraftian, Horror, strong NPCs, violence, incest, city, Lovecraft, child death, research, female protagonist, self-mutilation]
  
  > Look around
  Several workbenches and racks of arcane electronic equipment have been dragged together to form a sort of open laboratory on this wide balcony overlooking the mill. A wide table dominates the area, strewn with precision tools, bits of wire, and scribbled calculations. To the south, a narrow catwalk hangs above the mill floor, and a metal ladder leads down into the machinery below.
  
  On the workbenches are some notes and some arcane electronic equipment.
  
  One of the racks contains a number of circular mirrors, stacked side by side like dishes in a dishwasher.
  
  Tacked up on the wall is a large technical blueprint.
  
  > look at the equipment
  Circuitboards, electronic components of various shapes and sizes. It's all entirely beyond you.
  
  > search it
  The mirror is perfectly round and exquisitely polished. It is very slightly concave on its reflecting surface, distorting the edges of your face as you stare into it. On the back is a small label with the number 3 written on it.
  
  > examine rack
  The rack has four slots labeled one through four.
  
  In the rack are four mirrors (the mirror labeled #1, the mirror labeled #2, the mirror labeled #3 and the mirror labeled #4).
  
  > take the rack
  That's fixed in place.
  
  > Go south
  You are at the southern end of a long, narrow crawlway leading northward into the mill. All around you, through the metallic walls, you can hear the oppressive thumping and grinding of heavy machinery. The air in here is hot and smells of burnt engine oil.
  
  A large metal valve wheel juts out from the middle of one of the many fat, sweating pipes lining the walls. Just to its left is a gauge of some sort.
  
  > look at the pipes
  Dozens of thick, metal pipes line the walls and ceiling of the crawlway, some of them leaking tiny plumes of steam from loose joints.
  
  > examine the machinery
  The machines squat like gigantic mechanical trolls all around you, ceaselessly clanking, groaning, vibrating and spitting steam.
  
  > Go north
  Several workbenches and racks of arcane electronic equipment have been dragged together to form a sort of open laboratory on this wide balcony overlooking the mill. A wide table dominates the area, strewn with precision tools, bits of wire, and scribbled calculations. To the south, a narrow catwalk hangs above the mill floor, and a metal ladder leads down into the machinery below.
  
  On the workbenches are a printed memo, some notes and some arcane electronic equipment.
  
  One of the racks contains a number of circular mirrors, stacked side by side like dishes in a dishwasher.
  
  Tacked up on the wall is a large technical blueprint.
  
  > take blueprint
  (slipping the mirror labeled #3 into the pocket of your trenchcoat to get a hand free)
  The blueprint curls up into a loose tube as you pull it from the wall.
  
  > Go south
  The catwalk stretches north, a narrow ribbon of metal grillwork dangling fifty feet over the factory floor and shuddering dangerously in time with the machines beneath it. There are no railings of any kind. At the far end you can see what looks like a wide balcony with several large banks of equipment.
  
  A large block of heavy equipment hangs in the air just a foot or two beyond the edge of the catwalk.
  
  > go south
  The foundations of an older structure lie crumbling in a sunken square of ground, hidden away behind the imposing shadow of the mill wall. Weeds push up through cracked and buckling slabs of concrete; twisted rebar and rusting pipes poke up like the legs of dead insects. The ruins are surrounded on all sides by dense thickets, although narrow, overgrown trails lead northeast and southeast through the underbrush.
  
  Set into the base of the mill wall, nearly covered by the thickets, is a metal hatch.
  
  A flurry of dead leaves goes skittering along the ground, swirling past you in the wind.
  
  > Go northeast
  You stand in a circular clearing among the stones, surrounded on nearly every side by the sea. Before you looms the ancient, massive lighthouse, a vertiginous pillar of pale brick jabbing defiantly up at the sky. The road from the southwest ends here, although it looks as though you could pick your way down the rocks to the southeast, around the structure's base.
  
  The great bronze door of the lighthouse is closed.
  
  A flurry of dead leaves goes skittering along the ground, swirling past you in the wind.
  
  > unlock the door with the bronze key
  (first taking the tarnished bronze key)
  (slipping the blueprint into the pocket of your trenchcoat to get a hand free)
  You unlock the massive bronze door.
  
  The cold wind blows harder, tugging at the hem of your trenchcoat.
  
  > go inside
  (opening the massive bronze door first)
  With great effort, you manage to pull the ancient, creaking door open a few inches, enough to slip through.
  
  The sound of the ocean is muffled behind the thick cinderblock walls, and the air is damp and heavy. You can almost feel the weight of two hundred feet of hoary old whitewashed brick pressing down on you from above. To the west, a narrow strip of dim light marks the exit. Cracked concrete steps lead up.
  
  > go upward
  You climb the winding stairs in a gradual spiral around the inner circumference of the tower, and finally emerge, breathless, at the top.
  
  The stairs give onto a wide, circular chamber surrounded by windows. The glass is old and streaked with grime, but you still have to catch your breath at the magnificence of the view. In one direction, the dying heath and the stunted cluster of buildings that is Anchorhead; in the other, the ocean like a vast, undulating blanket.
  
  Sitting in the middle of the room is what looks like a swivel mount of some kind, although nothing is mounted on it now. Looking up, you see that it rests directly below a large, hexagonal skylight.
  
  > examine mount
  The mounting is ring-shaped, about three feet in diameter, and is designed to allow whatever is to be mounted on it to turn freely in all directions. It was probably originally intended to hold the beacon when the lighthouse was still in operation.
  
  > examine the blueprint
  You spread out the rolled-up blueprint to look it over.
  
  The blueprint is a technical schematic for some extremely complicated device, the exact purpose of which is anything but clear. It looks a bit like a telescope, a bit like a microwave oven turned inside out, and a bit like the "industrial laser" from Goldfinger. The
  inner workings of the device involve a complicated arrangement of lenses and mirrors and a hopeless tangle of circuitry that vaguely resembles several dozen street maps of Manhattan laid across each other. Some of the notations on the circuitry don't even look like technical symbols; they look more like cabbalistic runes.
  
  Next to what must represent the main focusing mirror of the device, someone has written the number "0.0113"; someone else, in another handwriting, has scratched that number out and written below it, "0.0128".
  
  > look at the disc
  It's a dark, glassy circle, about the width of your hand in diameter and half an inch thick in the middle, tapering off to thinness toward the edge like a convex lens. Its color is the deep, oily black of obsidian, though you fancy you can see faint swirls of color inside it like the rainbow sheen of oil on water. Its curved surface is cool and perfectly smooth. Although incredibly hard, the material does not feel like stone; there is an odd, yielding quality to it, almost like something organic... almost, you realize with disquiet, like skin.