text: [Themes: Superhero, superhero, science fiction]
  
  > look around
  [Please press a key to continue]
  
  Episode 2:
  ANOTHER EARTH, ANOTHER SKY
  
  "The Owner of this House
  A Stranger He must be --
  Eternity's Acquaintances
  Are mostly so -- to me."
  
  Emily follows you.
  
  Some people might describe the interior of this cabin as "cozy", but you're more inclined to face facts and call it what it is: cramped. Furnishings are minimal: a table, a few chairs, a hotplate, and a television that probably hasn't worked since the mid-1980s. The back door is south and the front door north, and two doors on the eastern wall lead northeast and southeast, to the bedroom and bathroom respectively.
  
  Emily stands here, looking around.
  
  On the table are some loose papers.
  
  Emily takes a quick glance at the papers on the table, and exhales.
  
  "Listen, Austin," she says, "I find all these diagrams and observatories and whatnot a bit exhausting, so I'd like for you to take the lead for a while, if that's OK. Let me know if there's anything specific you'd like me to do -- otherwise I'm just going to follow you around and offer my help if I think of anything that seems significant."
  
  Please select a reply:
  
  1) "No problem."
  2) "Don't sell yourself short. Just because you're not a scientist doesn't mean you can't comprehend this stuff."
  3) "Oh sure. When it comes to flying around and fighting monsters, you're all over it, but things like diagrams just tucker you out."
  
  > 3
  Select an option or 0 to say nothing >> 3
  
  She laughs. "Well, I could probably do diagram-reading and then monster-fighting, but for some strange reason I find the other way round just a wee bit more taxing."
  
  > enter the cabin
  [first opening the cabin door]
  You step into the relative dimness of the small cabin.
  
  Episode 2:
  ANOTHER EARTH, ANOTHER SKY
  
  "The Owner of this House
  A Stranger He must be --
  Eternity's Acquaintances
  Are mostly so -- to me."
  
  Emily follows you.
  
  Some people might describe the interior of this cabin as "cozy", but you're more inclined to face facts and call it what it is: cramped. Furnishings are minimal: a table, a few chairs, a hotplate, and a television that probably hasn't worked since the mid-1980s. The back door is south and the front door north, and two doors on the eastern wall lead northeast and southeast, to the bedroom and bathroom respectively.
  
  Emily is here, watching you.
  
  On the table are some loose papers.
  
  Emily takes a quick glance at the papers on the table, and exhales.
  
  "Listen, Austin," she says, "I find all these diagrams and observatories and whatnot a bit exhausting, so I'd like for you to take the lead for a while, if that's OK. Let me know if there's anything specific you'd like me to do -- otherwise I'm just going to follow you around and offer my help if I think of anything that seems significant."
  
  Please select a reply:
  
  1) "No problem."
  2) "Don't sell yourself short. Just because you're not a scientist doesn't mean you can't comprehend this stuff."
  3) "Oh sure. When it comes to flying around and fighting monsters, you're all over it, but things like diagrams just tucker you out."
  
  > 2
  Select an option or 0 to say nothing >> 2
  
  "I never said I couldn't comprehend it, just that it annoys and tires me to mess with it. I need a break, okay? I had a pretty rough day yesterday -- it's your turn to be the leader of this outfit."
  
  > read papers
  These papers are torn from a legal pad, and you recognize your father's handwriting and his extremely minimalist notation style on them. Most of them contain diagrams and equations that look quite similar to those you found with the suits, but there is one paper that seems to have notes on an unrelated topic:
  
  WWK: [This you recognize as Dad's abbreviation for "What We Know" -- he's in the habit of making "What We Know" lists when trying to figure out a problem.]
  
  1) Al. thru port.
  2)T gone
  3)T cont. by Al. (4 help?)
  4)Al. prob. OK, but ???
  5)N's mic. maybe invol.?
  
  Must purs. -- Claire agr.
  
  Claire is your mom's name, but that's all you can say for sure about this note.
  
  > show the papers to Emily
  (first taking the loose papers)
  "I'm horrible at figuring out Dad's notes, but I bet this last word is 'agree.' I wonder what Mom agreed to?"
  
  > ask Emily about the papers
  "That's pretty definitive proof that at least Dad was here."
  
  > Examine tv
  This dilapidated old wreck of a TV appears to have been cannibalized for spare parts some time ago.
  
  > look at the table
  This battered table looks like it's seen many a meal.
  
  > look at the hotplate
  Here you thought it was only college students whose only culinary equipment consisted of a hotplate and a saucepan. Turns out at least one college professor shares the predilection.
  
  > look under the table
  Dust. Ancient scraps of food. The occasional ant. In short, nothing interesting or useful.
  
  > Go northeast
  Emily follows you.
  
  Dusty, golden light seeps in through the closed curtains, further highlighting the various earth tones that adorn this sparse room. The wallpaper is brownish-orange, the nightstand is dark oak, the bedspread burnt sienna, and so on. The cabin's main room is west.
  
  "Wow," says Emily. "Somebody hasn't redecorated since the 1970s."
  
  Emily is alongside you, resplendent in blue and white.
  
  The nightstand has a drawer, which is closed.
  
  > open drawer
  The drawer is locked.
  
  > Break drawer
  CRRASH! You hammer your fist on the oak tabletop, and the nightstand splinters into pieces. A notepad and a legal pad appear to be lying amid the debris.
  
  "If I ever open an antique store," says Emily, "you aren't allowed in."
  
  > examine the notepad
  From the unfamiliar handwriting and the nature of the notes, you surmise that this notepad must belong to Dr. Andrews. Amid pages of detail about the orbital periods of various planets, telescope azimuths and elevations, spectroscope readings, and suchlike, you find a crude drawing of an apparently artificial sphere, with a cross-section showing an inner circle connected to its outer shell by two long columns.
  
  Beneath these pictures is a swarm of equations, some of which appear to be calculations of density, gravitational pull, and surface temperature. The temperature equations in particular are interesting, as it appears that Dr. Andrews was either unable to come up with a solution, or unable to settle on one of many.
  
  > take the notepad and the legal pad
  notepad: Taken.
  legal pad: Taken.
  
  > examine the debris
  These are the remains of a once-proud nightstand. Well, maybe not proud. A once-intact nightstand.
  
  > examine legal
  This is one of those legal pads that your Dad is known for filling with his cryptic notations, and indeed, this one bears his signature style. The notes are for a process that looks utterly unfamiliar to you. The most you can piece together is that it takes the dumbbell-shaped wave function of an electron at a particular energy state and splits it into two bubbles (though how a wave function can even be treated as a physical entity, let alone split, is left unexplained), allowing "half-electrons" to jump instantaneously from one bubble to the next along some extra-dimensional quantum pathway. Dad's laconic note-taking style doesn't make clear whether this is just a thought experiment, but knowing him, he's probably found some physical use for it.
  
  > show the notepad to Emily
  She scratches her head. "Yikes," she says. "That thing looks like a hamster wheel."
  
  > examine the bed
  The bed is unmade, and you suspect that's its natural state.
  
  > look under the bed
  Peering under the bed, you discover... that Thaddeus Andrews apparently was not big on the concept of "dusting."
  
  > ask Emily about Andrews
  "I never met him. Small wonder, really, considering how much time he spent up here."
  
  > Dust
  What do you want to dust?
  
  > open the curtains
  You open the curtains, letting light through the window.
  
  > look through the window
  You see the driveway and evergreens outside.
  
  > examine the bedspread
  This bedspread is rumpled and messy, and obviously many years old.
  
  > Go outside
  Emily follows you.
  
  Some people might describe the interior of this cabin as "cozy", but you're more inclined to face facts and call it what it is: cramped. Furnishings are minimal: a table, a few chairs, a hotplate, and a television that probably hasn't worked since the mid-1980s. The back door is south and the front door north, and two doors on the eastern wall lead northeast and southeast, to the bedroom and bathroom respectively.
  
  Emily stands here, looking around.
  
  > go outside
  There are several ways out. Please specify a direction.
  
  > Go south
  [first opening the back door]
  It seems to be locked.
  
  > unlock the back door
  You unlock the back door from the inside.
  
  > open it
  You open the back door.
  
  > Go south
  Emily follows you.
  
  The view from behind the cabin is spectacular. The research station isn't situated in the highest part of the mountain range -- it isn't even above timberline -- but it's high enough to afford an expansive panorama of the valley below. The observatory is a little further up the incline to the south, and the cabin stands to the north, its back door open.
  
  Emily is nearby, waiting for you to do something interesting.
  
  > fly
  Emily rockets upward, swooping out over the valley. "Whooooooo!" she cries. "It's just beautiful up here!" After a few more aerial fillips, she returns to earth. "I didn't see anything alarming, but it is a heckuva view."
  
  > ask Emily about the roof
  "It keeps the rain out, I guess."
  
  > Go south
  Emily follows you.
  
  A rocky path ends here, just north of the door to the concrete, rectangular portion of the observatory. Unlike the small observatory on the main campus, this one makes no particular concessions to aesthetics, and its door wouldn't be out of place on a bank vault. The path leads back down and north to the cabin.
  
  Emily is nearby, waiting for you to do something interesting.
  
  > look at the door
  The observatory door is an imposing affair, with a large U-shaped handle and a very serious-looking lock. It's hard to be sure, but you're guessing the door's made of solid steel, no doubt with a massive deadbolt. It's currently shut tight.
  
  > unlock door
  (with the cabin key)
  That doesn't seem to fit the lock.
  
  > fly
  She nods, and floats upwards. When she alights on the ground again, she says, "The telescope dome is closed, and there are a bunch of solar panels on the roof, but that's about all I noticed."
  
  > break the door
  BANG! You slam your fist into the door, denting it a little.
  
  > Zap door
  "Yeah! I'll give it my fastball," says Emily. She goes into an exaggerated windup, and as her hand comes forward for the pitch, brilliant blue electricity crackles between her fingertips and the steel door. An explosive KER-POW splits the air, and the steel door is left standing, scorched but unmoved.
  
  "Well, that was anticlimactic," she says.
  
  > Lift observatory
  That's hardly portable.
  
  > pull the door
  SKREEEEEEEK! Planting your feet firmly, you pull at the handle. The door strains, then buckles, and the handle comes partway detached. But by then you can grip the door itself, and a mighty heave pulls it the rest of the way free, tearing it right off its hinges.
  
  > give door to Emily
  (first taking the mangled steel door)
  You've already rendered the door useless. Let it go.
  
  > Enter
  Emily follows you.
  
  The observatory is astonishing. It's not the desk, or the computer, or the other laboratory accoutrements that make it so, but rather the staggeringly complex mass of ornate machinery that smothers every wall. Tubes, readouts, and gleaming metal plates swarm together in a lunatic collage, every lever and dial shouting your parents' design influence as surely as if they had autographed their work. You've known these sights all your life, but their presence here is a shock -- clearly, Mom and Dad were collaborating far more closely with Dr. Andrews than they ever revealed. The newly opened entranceway leads back north, and a doorway leads east to the telescope dome.
  
  Emily leans against the wall here.
  
  In front of the dome doorway, seemingly generated by the room's prodigious gadgetry, is a curious projection: a curtain of light, within which coruscate ever-shifting patterns and colors. The curtain covers the doorway completely -- there doesn't seem to be any way to cross the threshold into the dome without first crossing the flickering barrier.
  
  > look at the curtain
  The patterns of light that define the curtain refuse to stay still. Symmetrical fluorescent squiggles travel from the edges to the center, only to dissolve into sparkling dots that dance in Brownian ecstasy, adhering into gentle pastel waves, which in turn become spinning geometric designs, and so on.
  
  > Inventory
  You are carrying:
  a legal pad
  a notepad
  some loose papers
  an earthsuit (being worn)
  a cabin key
  
  > go east
  Gingerly, you reach out to touch the sparkling curtain, and feel a force pull sharply on your fingers, drawing you further into the light. Startled, you yank your hand out and back away from the curtain, with a clammy suspicion that it was only the power of the earthsuit that allowed you to break free of that inexorable pull.
  
  > ask Emily about the the curtain
  "Freaky, isn't it? I feel like the Jefferson Airplane should be playing in front of it."
  
  > throw Emily at the curtain
  (first taking Emily)
  "Hey. Hey!" protests Emily. "Hands off!"
  
  > throw the key at the curtain
  The cabin key sails toward the curtain of light, and disappears. The barrier is only semi-transparent, but you don't see the cabin key land on the other side.
  
  > examine the desk
  "I think I'd prefer to stick together."
  
  >Unlike the corporate, modular furniture popular in university offices, this is an honest-to-goodness desk: huge, made of wood, big file drawer... the works. There is a computer on the desk.
  
  > examine computer
  A cursory examination of the computer reveals that it is password-locked, and you haven't got a clue what Andrews' password might be. Looks like this is one lock that you won't be able to tear open.
  
  > examine file drawer
  The drawer is closed, but doesn't appear to have a lock. Apparently Dr. Andrews thought that the immense steel door was security enough. So much for that theory!
  
  > open it
  You open the drawer, revealing a headset.
  
  > look at the headset
  It's clear that this device is meant to be worn on the head, but that's the only obvious thing about it. It's got one piece that seems intended to fit over the ear, and another that arcs over the head and balances out the other side. The earpiece bristles with electronics.
  
  > take it
  Taken.
  
  > wear it
  You put on the headset.
  
  > turn the headset on
  You don't see an on/off switch on the headset. Unless you miss your guess, Mom and Dad probably outfitted it with a permanent, long-lasting power supply, so it's always on.
  
  > examine the machinery
  Sometimes, growing up, you suspected that Mom and Dad's designs were deliberately ornate, exposing their complexity in order to impress or intimidate. As you've gotten older, though, and learned more from them, you've realized that the reason the complexity isn't covered is because neither one of them wants to waste time on making things pretty.
  
  > search the notepad
  What do you want to type that on?
  
  > find nothing of interest.
  
  > type Andrews on the computer
  Nice try.