text: [Themes: edutainment, historical]
  
  It is approximately 30,000 years ago. You are a young Neanderthal living on the Gibraltar peninsula at the southern tip of Europe. You are one of the few remnants of a species which once thrived across Europe and Asia, but now your daily decisions and survival will determine the fate of your kind. You have been living with your family in a coastal cave located on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea for the past few months, but have been doing so in solitude ever since your mother, father, and older siblings left to follow a herd of bison. It has been weeks since you have seen them, or any other people for that matter. You are growing restless and hungry: it is time to move and find food for yourself.
  
  [Author's Note: Extinction of the Neanderthals]
  
  > exit the cave
  You leave the comfort of the cave, armed with your preferred flint-tipped spear. You have two options of hunting grounds. If you hunt in the grasslands, you can survey the water holes in hopes of finding a straggler from the herds of grazing animals. If you hunt along the shores, you can scavenge mussels and sea turtles, and possibly run across a young seal or beached dolphin. Either choice has its fruitful benefits, but also a looming danger of injury in this unforgiving environment. Which do you prefer?
  
  > hunt in the grasslands
  You travel along the steppes and frozen plains in search of herds of grazing animals, hoping to find a weak or sickly individual which has fallen behind. You expect to find immense herds of bison, horses, elk, and mammoths surrounding the water holes but, peculiarly, you come across nothing but the grazed and downtrodden grass left behind by such animals. You question this strange situation, but conclude that it must have something to do with the lasting summer: your world seems to be experiencing an uncomfortable increase in warmth. Crossing over a foothill, however, you finally spot a potential prey item: a lone, elderly woolly rhinoceros bull. The animal is unaware of your presence, and although you would usually spare such a powerful animal without the reinforcement of other hunters, this individual is crippled and ill. Do you attack the woolly rhino or move on for fear of injury?
  
  > get yourself some tasty rhino ribs
  You are about to kill the animal when a strange scent fills the air. The rhino charges away from you, panicked by an unforeseen danger. Before you get the chance to flee yourself, you get your first look at the approaching threat. It is a group of people like you but taller, less muscular, and with smaller faces: a different species from you entirely. Even stranger, these unusual people are accompanied by wolves which seem to follow their command. Menacing, indeed, but they could potentially lead you to food and shelter. Do you approach the men, or avoid any contact?
  
  > approach the men
  Upon seeing you, the men give a peace offering of meat and then signal for you to follow them. Although slightly shorter than them, you are physically massive in comparison to these men, and they seem to express a cautious respect for you as a result. Still, you fear that their greater numbers, wolves, and advanced weaponry could overtake you at any moment. Thankfully, no such attack occurs during your journey with the small men, and you arrive at the entrance to a spacious cave. You suddenly fear that the men could have reinforcements ready to attack you within the cave. This is your last chance to escape, but you smell roasting meat from within the cave and hunger urges you forward. Do you run away or enter the cave?
  
  > run away
  This was a wrong move: the men turn on you and attack, revealing their true intentions. Although your greater muscle mass gives you the strength to crush one of these men's bones with a mere handshake, they outnumber you and overtake you with their dogs. You die as part of a genocide being waged by these strange invading people upon your kind. Their descendants tens of thousands of years from now will regret the colonialist conquests which they waged upon tribes of their own kind. However, no one will remember the slaughter of your kind, the Neanderthals, at least not until Homo sapiens anthropologists piece together clues of the event.
  
  You and your kind are now EXTINCT
  
  Want another chance?
  
  > enter cave
  Entering the cave, you exhale in relief, as its inhabitants are peaceful women and children. To your surprise, along with the smaller people's kin, there are women or your kind inside as well. They are cradling peculiar infants which exhibit a mosaic of features, with some similar to those of your kind and others distinctly similar to those of the other people. This observation sparks an astonishing realization within your mind: the women of your kin have interbred and borne offspring with these new people. Your initial response is disgust, but then you see how well the women and children have been cared for. This could be a stable future for your kind despite the desolate environment which you have just witnessed outside. The men make it clear that you are welcome to have permanent residence within the cave, but the thought of your children being raised by these strange people gives you second thoughts. Do you continue living in the cave or leave?
  
  > continue living here
  You live the rest of your days in the cave, and end up raising your own kin. After your death, you and your kind will be considered extinct by the descendants of these people, at least until the hundreds of thousands of years later when they acknowledge that your bloodline remains within them. You and the other pure Neanderthals may die, but part of your lineage will remain within the smaller people, Homo sapiens, a species which will someday spread across and conquer the entire planet.
  
  The End