text: [Themes: Surreal, unicorn, humor, ethics, educational, fantasy]
  
  > Look around
  Fourth Chamber (in the Experience Machine)
  The organ playing is deafening here. It's echoing around the curved ivory walls, its descending scales and dark figures amplified and multiplying, a dense wall of foreboding music. The doorway and stairs behind you seem terribly inviting -- if you had any excuse to leave her, any unfinished business, you would scamper downstairs now. Otherwise -- another door lies on the other side of the chamber.
  
  You're in the Experience Machine. It's an uncomfortable booth, containing only a strange metal helmet, with a sorry looking pile of bones beside it.
  
  > go to the east
  You'll have to get out of the Experience Machine first.
  
  > open the door
  You push suspiciously against the ivory door. Sure enough, it eases open -- it wasn't locked! You take a regretful look at the pile of bones on the floor and make your way up the spiral stairs as the organ music fills your ears.
  
  As you step into the next chamber, a huge wall of ivory crashes down behind you, blocking the doorway. You, however, are too transfixed by the sight before you to even turn round.
  
  A vast organ fills much of this chamber, its huge bank of ornate pipes reaching higher than you can see. But even this, the biggest organ you have ever seen, is made to seem like a child's electronic keyboard by the figure that sits at it, back to you, playing the keys with vast, gnarled hands. It is a hulking brute of a figure, wearing a thick black cloak that ripples and flows as the figure plays and plays.
  
  Hearing the crash of the ivory wall, the figure pauses in its playing. Notes ring around the chamber as it pulls itself to its feet, casting the cloak to the ground and turning round.
  
  It is a hideous fiend. Two twisted horns sprout from its forehead; its skin is a burning red; its huge body taut with bulging muscle and its black-bearded face a picture of evil. It speaks, in a voice dark and deep:
  "Welcome."
  
  [1] Er . . . Hello.
  [2] Wait a minute: top of a tower, climactic organ music, evil villain . . . This is a d?noument, isn't it?
  [3] Horns, check. Red skin, check. Point beard, check. Bulging muscles ready to crush pun humans, check. You're an evil demon, aren't you? [4] (whimper)
  
  > 3
  The demon roars with laughter. "Correct, my fine young adventurer!" he bellows. "I am the Evil Demon, and this is my realm. How do you find it?"
  
  [1] It's . . . very nice.
  [2] Awful. I've been nearly gored by a unicorn, trodden in philosopher vomit, watched my mother almost get incinerated, and been emoted to by vampire bats. And that's your fault, I find now, is it?
  [3] I didn't find it, it found me. What's all this about?
  
  > 3
  "Slow down, my hasty young friend," chides the demon mockingly. "First, I must know: I have carefully crafted this world to be confounding to your every sense, bedazzling to your mind and befuddling to your wits. Now tell me: was it not good?"
  
  [1] Yes, good, very good. Can I go now?
  [2] If by "good" you mean "mind-numbingly sadistic", then yes, it was good.
  [3] No, it was utterly horrible! Are you telling me you created this whole place?
  
  > 2
  "Indeed I do," replies the demon. "My thanks for your compliment. Now: to the fun!
  
  [1] Fun? Fun? What fun?
  [2] Wait, wait! Why me?
  [3] Sure, fun: but first I have to know: Where is this place? What am I doing here?
  
  > 3
  The demon smiles. "This is not a where," he says enigmatically. "Where you are, I do not know. This world -- this world is but an illusion of your mind. My powers of creation are but these: to control your every sensation, to sustain the representation of life in your consciousness. I am your world.
  
  And now I will be your death. We must duel!
  
  [1] This is a duel for my life, right?
  [2] (fight him)
  
  > 1
  "No," says the demon. "This is a duel to your death. Fight!"
  
  [1] (fight him)
  
  > 1
  The demon snaps his fingers -- his cloak and the organ behind him vanish with a sulphurous crack. He stands, all-powerful, staring you down.
  
  Not knowing what else to do, you lower your head and charge at him, screaming. Your eyes closed, you fail to see where you're going and, as he dodges easily out of the way, you smack straight into the ivory wall. As you reel back in a daze, staggering, the demon soars above you, fire flaring from his fingertips and smoke pouring from his nostrils. The chamber fills with his laughter.
  
  The demon extends his hand, and an enormous fireball careers towards you. You roll to the side just in time as the fireball crashes into the ivory floor, scorching the tiles.
  
  > throw thing at Demon
  You throw it at the demon, but he just catches it in his fist and crumbles it into dust.
  
  The demon crashes to the ground, the shockwaves throwing you against the wall. You pick yourself up to your feet as the demon soars back into the air.
  
  > Kiss Demon
  It wouldn't be any use!
  
  The demon crashes to the ground, the shockwaves throwing you against the wall. You pick yourself up to your feet as the demon soars back into the air.
  
  > eat Demon
  (first taking the Evil Demon)
  Philosophers are not yet supermen.
  
  The demon swoops down at you and smacks you with a huge clawed fist. You crash against the wall once more with the force of the blow.
  
  > wake
  If only it were that simple.
  
  The demon conjures up an ethereal wind which launches you into the air, before dispelling it again and dropping you onto the ground with a sickening thud.
  
  > West
  You channel your will to power to summon a path in that direction. Sadly, nothing happens: you can't go that way.
  
  The demon lands in front of you and stares you in the eyes. There is a dreadful pause as you fall into the glowing hollows of his pupils, and then he punches you square in the stomach. As you collapse you think you hear the sound of ribs breaking.
  
  > Down
  You are unable to descend by the fourthdoor.
  
  > kill Demon with the axe
  You charge at the demon, swinging your axe wildly into the air. He grabs your wrist, snaps it, takes the axe, and brings it crashing down on your skull.
  
  > think about Demon
  The Evil Demon rules over Western philosophy. He is one of the first thought experiments in its Modern period, devised by Descartes, the Father of Modern Philosophy.
  
  Descartes set out to determine what he could know using only the powers of his own rationality. He reasoned thus: there could be an Evil Demon controlling every aspect of my experience. Everything I think I know could be a false impression created by an Evil Demon to fool me. So what can I know by the use of reason alone? Descartes's first thought was that he knew with utter certainty that we was thinking -- for even if he only thought he was thinking, even if the Evil Demon was fooling him into thinking, that was still a thought. He could not doubt he was thinking, because doubt was a thought. So he was thinking. Cogito, ergo sum -- popularly translated as "I think, therefore I am".
  
  Descartes continued to think a lot more than that, but perhaps you'd better just think about this for a moment. First thought: this devision of what we reason and what we experience has ruled over much of Western philosophy. But why is reason more certain than experience? Couldn't the Evil Demon fool us into thinking that we were certain of our rationality as well? Couldn't we just as well think that direct experience, sitting safe in memory, is more reliable than waffly rationality? Second thought: how does Descartes get from the neat proof that he is thinking to the idea that he definitely exists? What about thought proves existence? Isn't just the humbler "Cogito" by itself better? Third thought: What do we mean by thoughts?
  
  There are huge questions even at the very root of the founding ideas of our philosophy.
  
  > throw the axe at Demon
  (first taking the axe)
  (putting the thing into the sack to make room)
  You throw it at the demon, but he just catches it in his fist and crumbles it into dust.
  
  > Sing
  The hills are alive. Which in any other context would be positively terrifying, but it's only the sound of music.
  
  > Shit
  Quite.