text: [Themes: Science Fiction, verbose, apocalyptic, science fiction, Old-style, male protagonist]
  
  > Look around
  Another lab, where light is just a thick, yellow smoke at nose-height. All seems in place: the cabinets, the tables, the displays. Even a terminal, which sits on the northeast corner of the room, seems real enough to push the thought it could actually be functional. But: there's something more.
  
  Something like a talon has cut this room in two. Its three meter long, shiny carapace is dripping with horror and malevolence. In from the west wall, it has crushed everything and splintered stone and metal together with no effort. You cannot fathom what -- or who -- it must belong to.
  
  The nail seems nerveless.
  
  > Exits
  [From here you can go east].
  
  > take the nail
  That's fixed in place.
  
  A distant dripping sound echoes somewhere.
  
  > Go east
  The walls of what once was a sort of laboratory are but piles of debris and distorted laminas. The only passage large enough for your shoulders is west, through broken rocks. To the south, darkness marks the way to the corridors.
  
  The only surviving piece of equipment, amidst the crumbled universe that is now this old planet, is a glass cabinet which batteries still power. A fluorescent light shines on its pale interior.
  
  > Go south
  Darkness falls. The faint, sterile light coming from the opening to the south is devoured by the walls of this twisted tunnel, a cut in the earth running diagonal and scattered in every direction. The only exit you found is north, to the laboratory.
  
  > Go west
  Pale walls run east-west in this blank passage. No doors or windows open in the underground, but light fills the corridor, blown in through the roof. A crack breaks the southern wall like a black scar.
  
  A distant dripping sound echoes somewhere.
  
  > pull switch
  That's already off.
  
  > Go west
  Pale walls run east from here in this blank passage. No doors or windows open in the underground, but light fills the corridor, blown in through the roof.
  
  A gap opens where the west wall once stood.
  
  The light from the ceiling vibrates randomly, then it calms down.
  
  > go to the west
  You go into the gap.
  
  Light vibrates and sends shimmering glances all over the place. The floor seems to be made from plain, levigated rock. The walls are of the same plastic material of the near corridor. To the west, a metal door bears the sign "storeroom" while, to the north, stands a more relieving vibertron portal.
  
  > Go north
  You walk past the vibertron door, which silently opens around you.
  
  Chunks of rock have emerged from the broken floor, piercing through the roof. From there, massive blocks of concrete and steel hang, remnants of the city above.
  
  A tunnel cuts its way into the earth to the north, beyond reach.
  
  An ice spike the size of a bus has been thrusted into the room from below. It shines, the light coming from a source underneath it, and it is illuminating the area. The color and shape of the chunk betray the ice as very, very old, the likes of which you studied from the Monarch's glacial era.
  
  Above the spike, near the roof, sparkles fall down from a broken piece of machinery.
  
  > Climb spike
  You climb up the spike, finding enough grip to reach the roof.
  
  Cold Pyramid (on the ice spike)
  Chunks of rock have emerged from the broken floor, piercing through the roof. From there, massive blocks of concrete and steel hang, remnants of the city above.
  
  A tunnel cuts its way into the earth to the north, beyond reach.
  
  Near the roof, sparkles fall down from a broken piece of machinery.
  
  > look at the cylinder
  It seems the quake has exploded in here, sending all upwards, toward the surface. The machinery (the likes of which you've never seen before) has been pushed into the ceiling by a shattering force.
  
  Now that you are near, you can carefully analyze it. It is 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 exposed 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.
  
  > examine Alpha
  It has two plain surfaces. One is smooth and polished. The other is marked by an astonishing number of protruding lines, like a maze of sorts.
  
  > put Alpha on the cylinder
  You try the disc labeled "Alpha", but it doesn't fit the machinery base. The lines and cuts don't match.
  
  > put the Beta on the cylinder
  You try the disk "Beta" on the machinery. 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.
  
  It is so much fun.
  
  Then, it all comes crumbling down. The very earth trembles and drops to pieces. A wave comes rushing inside from the south, devastating the walls and the whole surroundings like a tsunami of stone. The ceiling holds, but the ice spike on which you stand is swallowed by the ground, that closes on it like curtains of doom.
  
  When the event comes to an end, the machinery has disappeared, lost somewhere, and you get up, bruised but uncannily unharmed.
  
  What has just happened? you ask yourself, while removing dust
  from your clothes.
  
  Chunks of rock have emerged from the broken floor, piercing through the roof. From there, massive blocks of concrete and steel hang, remnants of the city above.
  
  A tunnel cuts its way into the earth to the north.
  
  > Inventory
  You're carrying a disc labeled "Alpha", a wax soap, a black box, a steel bar, a new railway ticket, some Report files and an E-Pad.
  
  > go north
  Crystal walls surround you, in every direction. To the south, they open to a more comfortable rock cave while, on the opposite direction, they separate in two different paths, to the northwest and east respectively.
  
  > Go northwest
  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.
  
  Another spark ignites your brain as you recall having read something, once, about a zone called the "Quarantine", where convicts of the underground settlements -- and something far more valuable -- were held... uhm, hostages.
  
  A seclusion area, you think. A place where things were
  hidden.
  
  > Research quarantine
  The reclusion area of the Underground Settlements. Different zones were used for storing artifacts found during excavations, storing unvaluable waste and garbage, and jailing those that were held responsible for acts of mischief during their duty.
  
  A non-conventional belief, by the way, is that the Quarantine was
  used to recess "guests" not too fond of keeping secrets and -- as the very name indicates -- to avoid unknown viruses from exiting the underground environment.
  
  Ouch, you express loudly. Viruses? And to think that I
  forgot my medkit at home.
  
  > Research wastes
  A part of the Quarantine area, in the Settlements, was used as a
  waste facility. In there ended up all the garbage and the disposable utilities.
  
  A faint crumbling sound breaks the silence of the place, somewhere.
  
  > Go east
  A room as large as your condo opens before you. A set of metal stairs descends into what seems to be the largest waste basket you've ever seen. Walls are shiny in slime and other unpleasant sewages, reflecting the stale light that comes from bioluminescent lamps clinging to the ceiling. The overall sensation is that of a green pudding, bubbling inside a green basin, bathing in a green atmosphere.
  
  > look at the pudding
  Everything that was rejected in the Settlements has been piled here. This is a sort of trash compactor, now luckily inert. Bathing in this sink is every kind of thing, much of it almost completely putrefied.