text: [Themes: Science Fiction, Old-style, male protagonist]
  
  > Go down
  You climb down the ladder, every step uncomfortably sinking into ancient garbage and the thick smell of human decay.
  
  You are neck deep into a mass of old-decayed garbage. The only exit is up, via a metal ladder. The rest is a green horizon of smelly headaches.
  
  > search the garbage
  You rake the garbage, holding your breath -- and not
  figuratively. In the end, you come up with something unexpected.
  
  You are neck deep into a mass of old-decayed garbage. The only exit is up, via a metal ladder. The rest is a green horizon of smelly headaches.
  
  A glass case swims over the garbage. Something is floating inside it.
  
  > look at the case
  In the glass case is a perfect machine.
  
  > examine the machine
  A sort of metal cylinder, levigated beyond perfection by unknown forces. On it, four dots identical to the ones on the door of the Hyerotrope blink faintly. The bottom edge of the cylinder is a tangle of tiny cuts, each twisted into the other in an unique pattern. A smooth, plain surface is visible just a few centimeters near the dots.
  
  > Open case
  There are no obvious openings. It looks like a cage. Whatever that thing inside is is meant to stay there.
  
  > hit the case with the bar
  The glass case resists the blow. It has obviously been designed to keep the cylinder trapped inside at any cost. You need to find something even more adamant to break it.
  
  > go west
  The dark interiors of this hall, washed in a pale greenish dye, remind you of a hospital. A few corridors exit the chamber to the east, north and south, all marked by a red sign respectively to "the Wastes", "the Cells" and "the Pentagon". A tunnel exits to the southeast.
  
  > go north
  The polished look of this area shouldn't betray its soul. A wing of containment rooms, each used for a specific purpose, as stated by the signs appended to each of the doors in the corridor. Many are storerooms for quarantined specimens, chambers armored against radiation, explosions and other unpredictable events. But the rest, lined in rows of hundreds, are just detention cells for human convicts. Among the many, two are open, west of here and further north.
  
  You think about the madness that once must have inhabited this hall. A place where seclusion was the worst enemy, above danger, a scarce economy and not many escape routes. A full population of no-hopers, whom life on the surface was forbidden or set apart and that, eventually, was driven insane by its own lifestyle.
  
  The ASA, in the end, proved above all the rest that "the end justifies the means" is just another hollow statement, built up by politicians to lay their plans with no opposition.
  
  > Go west
  A wall, covered in monitors. A table, unfurnished except for some lined square buttons in the middle and a lonely terminal, sitting on a corner. This is a sightseeing tour over the detention center.
  
  > examine terminal
  A tap display and a vibertron surface. It is on, maybe self-powered.
  
  > tap the display
  (the functioning terminal)
  There are three blank spaces and a virtual numeric keyboard on the terminal. Maybe you have to enter a code on it.
  
  > examine the buttons
  Strangely, two of the buttons are lit. One bears the word "screens", the other: "shock".
  
  The light from the ceiling vibrates randomly, then it calms down.
  
  > Examine monitor
  One of the monitors is lit. It shows the blank interiors of a stale cell.
  
  > Go east
  The polished look of this area shouldn't betray its soul. A wing of containment rooms, each used for a specific purpose, as stated by the signs appended to each of the doors in the corridor. Many are storerooms for quarantined specimens, chambers armored against radiation, explosions and other unpredictable events. But the rest, lined in rows of hundreds, are just detention cells for human convicts. Among the many, two are open, west of here and further north.
  
  > go north
  You walk in the only open cell to the north and gasp.
  
  This is what hell must be.
  
  The walls of the tiny cell -- a mere two-by-two meters cubicle -- have all been painted and writings cover most of the surface. Someone, the inmate, has scratched every square centimeter of the concrete, leaving parts of himself among the apocalyptic messages and drawings.
  
  It is indeed a work that took time, and a relentless resolution. Or a madness without boundaries.
  
  And was the madness that took him to the confinement, you
  wonder, looking at the scars that mark the soul of this very room,
  or was it the other way around?
  
  The humming that fills this nightmare, as a moaning of a living being, stands as an answer, when all that is sane has left the building.
  
  A cylinder rests on the ground of the cell, on the opposite side of a hole dug into the wall where it must have been trapped before the explosion.
  
  A round hole marks the wall where the cylinder once stood trapped.
  
  > look at the wall
  The writings have been scratched in blood. Nails and finger parts are still clinging to the raped wall.
  
  I found the way    There is a way
  Itch itch itch
  Help me
  Apocalypse comes from down under
  They all speak in riddles    They all speak to me     I can hear
  them
  
  Then, the single writing that catches your attention:
  
  The FIRST initiative. Their testament. I have seen it. This is all going to end. Use the bounds use their number.
  
  The first initiative. The one secreted so many years ago.
  
  And that sentence: "Apocalypse comes from down under". Could it be talking about the Alpha Radiation?
  
  > Research first initiative
  This unit was not allowed to download resources on the matter.
  Sorry.
  
  > look at the cylinder
  (the perfect cylinder)
  A sort of metal cylinder, levigated beyond perfection by unknown forces. On it, four dots identical to the ones on the door of the Hyerotrope blink faintly. The bottom edge of the cylinder is a tangle of tiny cuts, each twisted into the other in an unique pattern. A smooth, plain surface is visible just a few centimeters near the dots.
  
  > look in the hole
  All you see is part of the next cell. Blank as a politician's speech.
  
  > Inventory
  You're carrying a glass case, a disc labeled "Alpha", a wax soap, a black box, a steel bar, a new railway ticket, some Report files and an E-Pad.
  
  > put Alpha on the cylinder
  (the perfect cylinder)
  You try the disk "Alpha" on the perfect cylinder. It fits perfectly, the lines protruding from it matching the cuts on the base. The four dots blink twice, then start strobing and dancing to the rhythm of some unheard music. The perfect machine flees from your hands and start levitating in front of you. Then, shrieking like a wraith, it flies away, jumping into the very ground and digging itself an escape.