text: > Go downwards
  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.
  
  > go south
  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.
  
  > Go east
  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.
  
  > Sing
  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."
  
  > look at the pauper
  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.
  
  > Go north
  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.
  
  > About you
  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
  
  > go to the north-west
  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.
  
  > open the cabinet
  (first unlocking the plexiglass cabinet)
  You lack a key that fits the plexiglass cabinet.
  
  > look at the fuse
  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.
  
  > examine the Saint
  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.
  
  > Go northwest
  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.
  
  > examine the hole
  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?"
  
  > look at the woman
  Not very many people wear rust-red jumpsuits--pretty much only Inquisitors.
  
  > 2
  She says: "It's most likely printed material."
  
  > 2
  She says: "Somewhere down that hole, mostly likely."
  
  > 2
  She says: "You must think I just tell everyone who wanders by about my work, don't you? Well, I don't."
  
  do?"
  
  > 2
  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."
  
  > 2
  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."
  
  > 2
  She says: "We are very particular about who we accept."
  
  > 1
  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."
  
  > 2
  She shudders, and says: "You've healed, I presume?"
  
  believed."
  
  > 1
  She says: "That's lucky, for you. But please don't talk to me about miracles."
  
  > 1
  She says: "Have you ever heard of the Cult of the New Version?"
  
  > 1
  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."
  
  > 1
  She shrugs, and says: "My job isn't to not be sad. It's to crush heresy wherever I find it."
  
  > 1
  She says: "That's exactly what everyone says, including heretics."
  
  > 1
  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."
  
  > say something
  (to the Inquisitor)
  [Use TALK TO to interact with characters.]
  
  > Go 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 (closed) (in which is a mangled saint (in which is a holy fuse)) here.
  
  > Go southeast
  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.
  
  > Up
  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.
  
  > Go west
  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.
  
  > go to the south
  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.
  
  > go to the west
  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.
  
  > 2
  He says: "I'll give it to you if you play me a song."
  
  > 1
  He told you he would give it to you if you played a song for him.
  
  > 2
  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..."
  
  > 2
  He says: "I'm afraid not. I just got here."
  
  > 1
  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."
  
  > 1
  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.""
  
  > 2
  He says: "Everyone did."
  
  > 1
  He says: "I played a character named 'Earl Porterhouse,' who was a vile little sneak, cheat, brat, bully, snob, and anti-robot bigot."
  
  > 1
  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."
  
  > 1
  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."
  
  > 1
  He shrugs and says: "Kind of you, but it doesn't really matter any more."
  
  > 2
  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."
  
  > 1
  He told you he would give it to you if you played a song for him.
  
  > go southwest
  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.
  
  > examine the head
  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.
  
  > examine the eye
  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.
  
  > take the head
  That's fixed in place.
  
  > talk to the head
  Generally, it's best to talk to living things.
  
  > cut the wire
  (with the emergency tool kit)
  The emergency tool kit is not sharp enough.
  
  > take the wirecutter
  Taken.
  
  > cut the wire with it
  You snip through the wire, detaching it from the head of Saint 43 and from the LED eye.
  
  > take the eye
  [Your score has just gone up by one point.]
  
  > look at the eye
  The eye of Saint 43. It provides light, like a tiny, incorruptible star.