text: [Themes: Steampunk, Lovecraftian, steampunk, science fiction, asylum, mysticism, suicide, moral choice, kaballah, glitch, amnesia, horror]
  
  > Go downwards
  Cunningly extending and contracting its wheels, Triage easily follows down the stairs...
  
  The stairs end here at a solid metal door labeled "Basement - Private" leading northward.
  
  Triage silently rolls to a stop.
  
  > Go upward
  Cunningly extending and contracting its wheels, Triage easily follows up the stairs...
  
  This narrow, dusty corridor runs parallel to the shop beside it and contains nothing more than a rickety staircase leading up and down and a small door leading west.
  
  Triage obediently appears.
  
  > Go upward
  Cunningly extending and contracting its wheels, Triage easily follows up the stairs...
  
  The stairs end here at a rickety door labeled "1428 - Attic Loft" leading eastward.
  
  Triage trundles patiently along beside.
  
  > look at the door
  While closed, it seems barely able to stand up - it looks as if it
  were knocked in and then placed back at some point in the recent past.
  
  > Go east
  (first opening the attic door)
  It seems to be locked.
  
  > unlock the door with the small key
  That's unlocked at the moment.
  
  > Go east
  A tiny flat with barely enough room for a small sink and tub to one side, a living area in the center, and a bed to one side.
  
  Triage silently rolls to a stop.
  
  > look at the bed
  An old, sour-smelling thing with twisted sheets. Beneath it, the
  planks seem misplaced.
  
  > look under the bed
  Beneath the bed a misplaced plank can be seen, revealing a space beneath.
  
  > move the plank
  Beneath the planks is a puzzle box, about the size of a book.
  
  > get the box
  The box slides easily out of the hole.
  
  > look at it
  It is approximately the size of a large bound book. It is a puzzle box of some kind for while it seems to have a seam along its side, there
  is no way to open or unlock it. Its top is inscribed with a beautiful engraving of a tree.
  
  > Point at box
  Triage's beam flickers over the puzzle box, briefly, then displays:
  
  CAT:NONLIVING.TO
  OL.UTIL:STORAGE.
  PART:COMPLEX.MEC
  ANISM.DETECTED.E
  NGRAVING+WRITING
  =KABBALAH?TREEOF
  LIFE/YGGDRASIL?B
  UTTONS=SEPHIROTH
  
  The mechanism clatters for a moment, making connections, then...
  
  SEPHIROTH+KABBAL
  AH+MACHINE=CYPHE
  RIST.!.POSSIBLE.
  CONNECTION.CYPHE
  R="MALKUTH.IS.IN
  KETHER"-SOLUTION
  =MALKUTH,KETHER,
  KETHER,MALKUTH?!
  
  > examine the tree
  The tree is huge, covering the whole of the box. Its roots trail downwards, into a dull red glow while its upper branches are bathed in a white light.
  
  A series of raised buttons overlays the tree, each with a word inscribed on it. Generally, from top to bottom they read:
  
  Kether, Binah, Chokmah, Gevurah, Chesed, Hod, Tipareth, Netzach,
  Yesod, Malkuth
  
  > Press malkuth
  The button depresses with a slight "click." Nothing more happens.
  
  > Press malkuth
  The button depresses with a slight "click." Nothing more happens for a moment, then the seam of the box opens slightly. The box appears to be unlocked and openable now.
  
  > open the box
  The puzzle box opens, revealing a letter, a diary and a primitive copy of a key.
  
  > read the letter
  Folded but unsealed, it was apparently never sent. It reads:
  
  Brothers:
  
  Yes, I call you Brothers, though due to my age and alleged lack of knowledge you have denied me entrance into your Order. But as Seneca said, Nullum saeculum magnis ingeniis clausum est. I am proud
  to offer you indisputable proof that my generation is no exception.
  
  As you must well know by now,  I discovered the existence and nature
  of your enclave during my time at University. Excited by tenets so similar to my own: the celebration of intellect, the recognition of information as an entity rather than an idea, the embrasure and development of new technologies to unlock the mysteries of the
  Universe itself, I left my feeble schooling, gathered my few worldly possessions and came to study at your collected feet.
  
  But trapped in your antiquated and outmoded ways, clinging more to superstition and myth than logic and reason - you refused me. Oh, you commended my "ability to solve puzzles" and patted me on the head like a dog that returned a thrown ball. You allowed me to work for one of your lesser number, mindlessly churning out one insignificant
  apparatus after another - a mere journeyman in your archaic system.
  
  Undeterred, I remained near by, studying where I could, observing in secret and working towards one goal: proving my worth and value to
  you. Tonight I have the rare and singular privilege to tell you that not only have I proved, beyond doubt or measure, my value. I have exceeded you. I have succeeded where you have failed, and I have gone further than you ever dared dream.
  
  I have leapt the Sephinroth in one bound, from Malkuth to Kether.
  Kai theos en ho logos. I have heard that Word, Brothers -
  echoing across eternity. I have touched the mind of God - of Information pure and unsullied by the mere mind of Man.
  
  My contact was brief, but glorious. The brevity of it was, I'm sure, due to the crude and simple nature of your mechanisms. The resulting damage was, of course, regrettable, but once I relate to you the breadth and wonder of my experience, I think you will agree:
  exitus acta probat.
  
  I eagerly await your response, Brothers: of when we shall meet to discuss my entry to the Order, and our ascendance upon the wings of this discovery towards a transcendent future.
  
  Cleve G. Anderson
  
  Scientist, Cypherist
  
  > examine the copy key
  Heavy and unwieldy, its rough surface gives evidence that this key is, in fact, a copy.
  
  > examine diary
  Once leather bound and elegantly stitched, the journal looks as though it has seen better days. Some pages have been scribbled over to the point of illegibility, while others have manic messages scrawled over the neat, deliberate hand originally recorded there. Many pages have been removed entirely...
  
  > look at the diary
  The diary is undated, though distinct entries can be made out:
  
  > I have made a copy...
  How full of themselves they are...
  I have seen the face of God...
  That is all I can call it...
  The response was...
  I have healed well enough...
  I have not left the flat...
  I awoke, screaming...
  Everything has fallen apart...
  Quam terribilis est haec hora...
  I have made a copy Du Monde's basement key. It is primitive, but it will serve. I have continued to listen in on their little meetings,
  but having actual access to the equipment below will make the vast difference between theory and practice.
  
  She has mentioned the shop will be closed shortly for her little excursion to the countryside. That will be the time to move.
  
  They have their fingers in every pie imaginable, it would seem. I
  heard them speak last night of some that had come close to discovering their secrets and what must "be done about them". So many secrets, so little actual learning...
  
  The diary is undated, though distinct entries can be made out:
  
  > I have made a copy...
  How full of themselves they are...
  I have seen the face of God...
  That is all I can call it...
  The response was...
  I have healed well enough...
  I have not left the flat...
  I awoke, screaming...
  Everything has fallen apart...
  Quam terribilis est haec hora...
  
  > go to the north
  The diary is undated, though distinct entries can be made out:
  
  I have made a copy...
  > How full of themselves they are...
  I have seen the face of God...
  That is all I can call it...
  The response was...
  I have healed well enough...
  I have not left the flat...
  I awoke, screaming...
  Everything has fallen apart...
  Quam terribilis est haec hora...
  How full of themselves they are, their workspace so neatly arrayed in rows. I see now how much of their talk was simply that. They have made a most holy calling into a social club - a place of dilettantes and bored businessmen with a philosophical and mechanical bent. They have performed their ceremonies for so long that they no longer understand their true meanings. They have forgotten how to reach their sworn goals.
  
  I shall change that.
  
  My calculations are almost complete. Pages upon pages of equations and diagrams fill every corner of my room. I have taken to connecting the engines in the shop together after hours, running my own scenarios and simulations. It will work. It must.
  
  The diary is undated, though distinct entries can be made out:
  
  I have made a copy...
  > How full of themselves they are...
  I have seen the face of God...
  That is all I can call it...
  The response was...
  I have healed well enough...
  I have not left the flat...
  I awoke, screaming...
  Everything has fallen apart...
  Quam terribilis est haec hora...
  
  > go north
  The diary is undated, though distinct entries can be made out:
  
  I have made a copy...
  How full of themselves they are...
  > I have seen the face of God...
  That is all I can call it...
  The response was...
  I have healed well enough...
  I have not left the flat...
  I awoke, screaming...
  Everything has fallen apart...
  Quam terribilis est haec hora...
  I have seen the face of God.
  
  How powerful, then, their little engines - to be able to rend the veil of the Temple to reveal the Holy of Holies beyond.
  
  It was with an unnatural calm that I set the gears and knobs, aligning the energy just as my calculations demanded. It was as though my whole being knew all my toil and effort had not been in vain. I have not the words to express the joy that surged through me as I flicked the final switch.
  
  The hole appeared slowly - so slow that at first I did not understand it to be a hole. The air above the pedestal warped subtly, the air bending the light as if it were a lens. Then, the warp became a bend,
  a break...
  
  I cannot explain it, but it was in that moment that I knew I was looking onto a place fundamentally different than the universe I knew. Under my breath, I whispered the Order's motto ... for that is what
  had come to be. My words hung in the air a moment, drifting across the opening...
  
  ...to be echoed against the far wall of Creation. Language fails me. The words...the words! They echoed yes, they returned ... but they were not unchanged. Time stretched and pulled like the space above the pedestal and I knew in that moment my words had touched...The Word -- the...Logos.
  
  The diary is undated, though distinct entries can be made out:
  
  I have made a copy...
  How full of themselves they are...
  > I have seen the face of God...
  That is all I can call it...
  The response was...
  I have healed well enough...
  I have not left the flat...
  I awoke, screaming...
  Everything has fallen apart...
  Quam terribilis est haec hora...
  
  > go north
  The diary is undated, though distinct entries can be made out:
  
  I have made a copy...
  How full of themselves they are...
  I have seen the face of God...
  > That is all I can call it...
  The response was...
  I have healed well enough...
  I have not left the flat...
  I awoke, screaming...
  Everything has fallen apart...
  Quam terribilis est haec hora...
  That is all I can call it - what else can one call language given sentience, an idea that breathes, a thought that thinks itself? The whole of the ... space? universe? ... beyond the rift was both its
  home and itself, part and whole.
  
  And then, in a joyous, horrible moment -- God, the Universe, the Logos...awoke.
  
  Linear time fell apart. A second, an hour, a year, an eternity. I cannot say how long it took, for the past and present and future were as one within it. The Logos had always been and would always be and my reaching out to it in this one moment was as a grain of sand on an infinite beach.
  
  And yet, it responded. In that moment, it *heard* me.
  
  The diary is undated, though distinct entries can be made out:
  
  I have made a copy...
  How full of themselves they are...
  I have seen the face of God...
  > That is all I can call it...
  The response was...
  I have healed well enough...
  I have not left the flat...
  I awoke, screaming...
  Everything has fallen apart...
  Quam terribilis est haec hora...
  
  > go north
  The diary is undated, though distinct entries can be made out:
  
  I have made a copy...
  How full of themselves they are...
  I have seen the face of God...
  That is all I can call it...
  > The response was...
  I have healed well enough...
  I have not left the flat...
  I awoke, screaming...
  Everything has fallen apart...
  Quam terribilis est haec hora...
  The response was immediate and incomprehensible. I ... was Spoken. I did not listen, I did not hear...I, myself, was spoken. I remember it now as vibrations - echoing across the air, across time - and across myself. I carried them as waves, as if I were made from water, or aether. They penetrated me, passed through me. In that eternal moment, I and Logos touched and were one...
  
  And then the sparks, the smoke. The machines, long overloaded, broke down one by one in a shrieking of spinning gears and twisting metal. Axles broke, machinery shifted and then, instantly collapsing upon itself, the door I had opened slammed shut.
  
  The force of it lifted me upward, flinging me across the room to the cellar's far wall, and for a long time I knew nothing more.
  
  I awoke to find my hands and arms mysteriously burnt, the back of my head throbbing. I reached to touch it and my hand came back damp with blood. The engines were nothing more than so much melting slag. Of the hole, there was no sign.
  
  Before I dragged myself up the stairs, I once more whispered the words that had brought Malkuth and Kether into the same space and thought I heard the faintest ghost of an echo ... a wash of a ripple across the air.
  
  But the rest was silence, and smoke, and burning metal.
  
  The diary is undated, though distinct entries can be made out:
  
  I have made a copy...
  How full of themselves they are...
  I have seen the face of God...
  That is all I can call it...
  > The response was...
  I have healed well enough...
  I have not left the flat...
  I awoke, screaming...
  Everything has fallen apart...
  Quam terribilis est haec hora...
  
  > Go north
  The diary is undated, though distinct entries can be made out:
  
  I have made a copy...
  How full of themselves they are...
  I have seen the face of God...
  That is all I can call it...
  The response was...
  > I have healed well enough...
  I have not left the flat...
  I awoke, screaming...
  Everything has fallen apart...
  Quam terribilis est haec hora...
  I have healed well enough, in body - but my mind is a broken thing. It races, thinking on what has happened, running through each tiny detail over and over in the hopes of understanding some small part of what
  has happened.
  
  I have written the Order a letter. I shall leave it for Du Monde to find -- I am sure she shall have words for me when she sees the state of her cellar. But once I explain ... show what I have done -- they will come to understand that in one moment, the world has forever changed, and all of our places in it as well...
  
  The diary is undated, though distinct entries can be made out:
  
  I have made a copy...
  How full of themselves they are...
  I have seen the face of God...
  That is all I can call it...
  The response was...
  > I have healed well enough...
  I have not left the flat...
  I awoke, screaming...
  Everything has fallen apart...
  Quam terribilis est haec hora...
  
  > go north
  The diary is undated, though distinct entries can be made out:
  
  I have made a copy...
  How full of themselves they are...
  I have seen the face of God...
  That is all I can call it...
  The response was...
  I have healed well enough...
  > I have not left the flat...
  I awoke, screaming...
  Everything has fallen apart...
  Quam terribilis est haec hora...
  I have not left the flat since I awoke. I stumble about, pace endlessly. My mind feels more fragmented with every moment. Often I awake not having remembered sleeping or passing out - perhaps I am sleepwalking?
  
  My body, too, works against me - I feel sudden chills, numbness in my legs, my hands.
  
  What is wrong with me?
  
  The diary is undated, though distinct entries can be made out:
  
  I have made a copy...
  How full of themselves they are...
  I have seen the face of God...
  That is all I can call it...
  The response was...
  I have healed well enough...
  > I have not left the flat...
  I awoke, screaming...
  Everything has fallen apart...
  Quam terribilis est haec hora...
  
  > Go north
  The diary is undated, though distinct entries can be made out:
  
  I have made a copy...
  How full of themselves they are...
  I have seen the face of God...
  That is all I can call it...
  The response was...
  I have healed well enough...
  I have not left the flat...
  > I awoke, screaming...
  Everything has fallen apart...
  Quam terribilis est haec hora...
  I awoke, screaming -- uncertain of why. I do not remember my dreams. How long was I raving? The flat is in a shambles - things tossed
  every which way. What has ...
  
  It... what is this? What is th
  
  Language...words...but words I have never heard and cannot understand. My throat is stripped dry. Is this the Logos? Still with me? Does it speak the language of the angels through my lips?
  
  But if this is as angels speak, why am I so afraid?
  
  The diary is undated, though distinct entries can be made out:
  
  I have made a copy...
  How full of themselves they are...
  I have seen the face of God...
  That is all I can call it...
  The response was...
  I have healed well enough...
  I have not left the flat...
  > I awoke, screaming...
  Everything has fallen apart...
  Quam terribilis est haec hora...
  
  > Go north
  The diary is undated, though distinct entries can be made out:
  
  I have made a copy...
  How full of themselves they are...
  I have seen the face of God...
  That is all I can call it...
  The response was...
  I have healed well enough...
  I have not left the flat...
  I awoke, screaming...
  > Everything has fallen apart...
  Quam terribilis est haec hora...
  Everything has fallen apart. My mind, my body, time, the world...
  
  I am beginning to understand. I have destroyed my notes.
  
  Man was never meant to...this experiment must never be repeated if humanity is to survive. I have burned all my research, although it pained me to do so.
  
  The noise in my head grows louder.
  
  The words...the words...
  
  they never stop coming.
  
  The diary is undated, though distinct entries can be made out:
  
  I have made a copy...
  How full of themselves they are...
  I have seen the face of God...
  That is all I can call it...
  The response was...
  I have healed well enough...
  I have not left the flat...
  I awoke, screaming...
  > Everything has fallen apart...
  Quam terribilis est haec hora...
  
  > go north
  The diary is undated, though distinct entries can be made out:
  
  I have made a copy...
  How full of themselves they are...
  I have seen the face of God...
  That is all I can call it...
  The response was...
  I have healed well enough...
  I have not left the flat...
  I awoke, screaming...
  Everything has fallen apart...
  > Quam terribilis est haec hora...
  Quam terribilis est haec hora.
  
  How fearful is this hour indeed.
  
  I understand all. I (if I can still lay claim to I) have moved through time, backwards and forwards...I have tried every way imaginable to make it not so.
  
  Once...once I tried to make it finally so.
  
  I said...the words. How ironic, that the Order's hubris should be so. Our motto is now like the rays of the sun, melting the wings of poor Icarus as he plunges into the sea.
  
  Curse those words forever. May no man speak them again.
  
  May no man ever speak again.
  
  I know what I must do.
  
  They have come for me - as they have come before, as they will come again. I will let them take me to Bedlam. I will let them lock me away from the world so that what is within me shall never escape.
  
  Poor Xavier -- my sweet, kind keeper. How sad your eyes look. But you will never understand, will you? You will scribble your notes and think on your theories, but it will all come to the same end. You
  shall keep me in a tiny cell for the rest of my days, and I shall hope that that shall be penance enough.
  
  They are battering at the door now. I shall hide this and wait for them.
  
  May whatever god there is have mercy upon my soul.
  
  The diary is undated, though distinct entries can be made out:
  
  I have made a copy...
  How full of themselves they are...
  I have seen the face of God...
  That is all I can call it...
  The response was...
  I have healed well enough...
  I have not left the flat...
  I awoke, screaming...
  Everything has fallen apart...
  > Quam terribilis est haec hora...
  
  > look at the tub
  from there into the wall. The ceramic is cracked and worn to a dull gray color.
  
  > get in the tub
  Everything is old and broken - the tubes, the tub, the basin. Best to leave it alone.
  
  > say veritas lux mea
  (to yourself)
  You talk to yourself a while.
  
  > check your inventory
  Carried:
  a puzzle box (open)
  a letter
  a diary
  a primitive copy of a key
  a small module labeled 'Aetheric Amplifier'
  a large iron key
  File F6A142: Cleve Anderson
  a flanged brass rod
  a paper tape labeled F6A142
  a small key labled 2D
  
  > look at the copy
  Heavy and unwieldy, its rough surface gives evidence that this key is, in fact, a copy.
  
  > Go outside
  One must be in something to exit.
  
  > go to the west
  The stairs end here at a rickety door labeled "1428 - Attic Loft" leading eastward.
  
  Triage trundles patiently along beside.