text: [Themes: Satire, Screen]
  
  > Look around
  Inside Zarf's Brain (as Peter)
  The noise is really loud here, and there is more to see. A visual juxtaposition mars your sense of place. The walls are angular but smooth, are a warm red, living rock, are cold dead clay and calcite. Cave tunnels lead in all directions, but without a compass or a way to mark your trail, you sense that you could easily get lost.
  
  You can see a control panel, Valerie and Zarf here.
  
  There is a sound like a vacuum implosion, and a flash of light. Melvin tumbles into view, holding some sort of ray gun.
  
  "He's got a gun!" shouts Valerie.
  
  Zarf says, "Follow me, please."
  
  Zarf leaves to the northwest.
  
  > Go northwest
  Melvin fires the ray gun, which emits a sizzling noise and a bright stripe of electric blue laser light. "EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!" he screams. The two of you narrowly dodge the beam and follow Zarf down the tunnel.
  
  Tunnels (as Peter and Valerie)
  A huge cavern rises above you. The far reaches are lost in shadow mist, and the vaults above fade into a darkness pierced with long columns of stone. Chill water drips and pools in broken declivities. You can hear little else. A river of smoke-grey travertine flows down one wall of the chamber. Pale fungi gleam in phosphorescence somewhere above. Gloomy side chambers stretch off in many directions.
  
  You can see Zarf here.
  
  Zarf says, "We're going to need a few things. Try to keep up."
  
  Zarf walks down through the floor. Vivid gold light flares around him.
  
  > go northwest
  If you don't follow Zarf, you will surely be killed.
  
  Melvin enters from the southeast. "Aha! There you are, my pretties!" he cackles.
  
  > dig the shovel
  Peter attacks the soft ground with the shovel. It seems to magically bite large chunks at a time, like a ravenous rodent burrowing into angel food cake. The scooped material seems to vanish like evaporating bubbles, leaving only a deep pit behind.
  
  Unfortunately, Peter himself ends up at the bottom of it.
  
  > Leave
  There are no exits.
  
  You hear the distant crash of a giant hammer, followed by a small shriek from Melvin. It sounded more disappointed than fatal.
  
  > put the blanket on the hole
  Putting things on the deep pit would achieve nothing.
  
  You hear the distant crash of a giant hammer, followed by a small shriek from Melvin. It sounded more disappointed than fatal.
  
  > cover the pit with the blanket
  Valerie throws the blanket across the opening of the pit, covering it completely.
  
  > Caskly blanket
  The casting feels wrong, and you are momentarily blinded.
  
  There is a terrific crash and then a fast series of metallic whupping noises. Melvin comes limping in through the southeast wall, looking the worse for wear. Several spears are skewered in his sides, and one leg drags limply behind him.
  
  "My ray gun got smashed by the hammer," he mopes."Hey, where's your boyfriend? You two get separated? Don't worry, you guys will have a touching reunion in Hell."
  
  With a steely 'snikt', long metal blades protrude out of his knuckles.
  
  > check your inventory
  You are carrying:
  a stained scroll
  
  Melvin takes a limping step forward and, like the idiot he always was, falls for the trap and topples into the pit, just barely missing Peter.
  
  In the Pit (as Peter)
  You are down in the bottom of the pit. Crudely carved, spongy walls lead up to a narrow opening.
  
  You can see a blanket here.
  
  Melvin looks like he's gotten the wind knocked out of him, if that's possible. Probably getting past the crashing machinery trap took more out of him than you guessed. He stands up woozily.
  
  > look at stained
  The scroll reads "caskly spell: cause perfection."
  
  There is a terrific crash and then a fast series of metallic whupping noises. Melvin comes limping in through the southeast wall, looking the worse for wear. Several spears are skewered in his sides, and one leg drags limply behind him.
  
  "My ray gun got smashed by the hammer," he mopes."Hey, where's your boyfriend? You two get separated? Don't worry, you guys will have a touching reunion in Hell."
  
  With a steely 'snikt', long metal blades protrude out of his knuckles.
  
  > look at the scroll
  The scroll reads "caskly spell: cause perfection."
  
  Melvin takes a limping step forward and, like the idiot he always was, falls for the trap and topples into the pit, just barely missing Peter.
  
  In the Pit (as Peter)
  You are down in the bottom of the pit. Crudely carved, spongy walls lead up to a narrow opening.
  
  You can see a blanket here.
  
  Melvin looks like he's gotten the wind knocked out of him, if that's possible. Probably getting past the crashing machinery trap took more out of him than you guessed. He stands up woozily.
  
  > shoot Melvin with the crossbow
  You shoot the crossbow at Melvin, who is too disoriented to deflect the bolt. It plunges straight into his gizzard. "EEEAGH!!" he cries his last, before exploding into a million shiny pieces. Melvin is no more.
  
  "That was funky," Valerie says from above.
  
  > Gnusto scroll
  You don't have a spell book.
  
  "Come on up," Valerie calls down to you.
  
  > go up
  Peter climbs out of the pit and rejoins Valerie.
  
  Dead End (as Peter and Valerie)
  It is the classic dead end. More than that, it is the archetypal dead end. Nowhere forward, nowhere back. The ceiling shocks with its height, the walls oppress with their closeness. There are no exits.
  
  A deep pit has been dug here by Peter.
  
  Zarf appears in a cloud of orange smoke, wearing a long blue cloak with electroluminescent highlights. He surveys the scene calmly. "Okay," he says, retrieving the blanket and the crossbow.
  
  What would you like to say?
  [1]How do we get out of here?
  
  > 1
  "Like this," he says, and withdraws a small white cube and a spell book from his cloak.
  
  -- glaring light...
  
  [Hit any key.]
  File Room (as Peter and Valerie)
  The room is a disaster area. Ruined cabinets lie everywhere, the remains of a once mighty (but very silly) army. The exploded pulsating copier machine innards are leaking trails of acrid ochre smoke into the air. Scorched company documents, flung willy nilly in the battle, carpet the floor, hiding only the smallest of the many scuffs and scratches.
  
  The secret door lies exposed in the wall.
  
  You can also see Zarf here.
  
  "Now," says Zarf. "Your turn again."
  
  > Caskly
  Zarf says, "Try the other one first."
  
  > Gnusto
  What do you want to gnusto?
  
  > Inventory
  You are carrying:
  a brittle scroll
  a stained scroll
  
  > examine brittle
  The scroll reads "kulcad spell: dispel a magic spell". The spell seems very long and extremely complicated.
  
  > look at stained
  The scroll reads "caskly spell: cause perfection."
  
  > Kulcad door
  Peter intones the Kulcad scroll. It is long and complicated, and he stumbles over the unfamiliar language. However, the magic is too powerful to be constrained. The more he reads, the clearer his pronunciation becomes, as the magic works through him. As he finishes the incantation, there is a noise like the rushing of open wind through a great tunnel. The secret door ripples and shimmers, trapped in a state between reality and mirage. Then, so suddenly that it is missed in a blink, the door is gone, leaving only a blank wall. There is no trace that it had ever been here.
  
  Zarf nods. "Now the other," he says.
  
  > Caskly
  Valerie intones the caskly spell. The room begins to melt; plaster, plastic, metal, and glass drip down like wax; loose papers lift and twirl in swelling eddies, spinning upwards from all directions.
  
  Then, familiar forms start reasserting themselves. Torn pages mend themselves out of the whirlwind, flowing back into place. Cabinet after cabinet slots itself into position, drawers agape, eating documents that file themselves. All is changed. The copier machine refuses its alien origins and becomes happily mudane, humming to life and churning out copies of a wonderfully boring document.
  
  "What just happened?" Valerie asks.
  
  "Take a look," says Zarf.
  
  > look at machine
  The copier has a lid which covers a big pane of glass, and a panel with buttons. The big green button makes copies. That's all you've ever needed to push on it. In fact, your annoying supervisor, Melvin Prufrock, impressed upon you, at stammering length, how temperamental the machine is, and how expensive copier repair guys are. Bah.
  
  > look
  File Room (as Peter)
  The file room looks considerably cleaner, perhaps better than before. The reassuring familiarity of its short, slumping ceiling seems now to brighten your morale. Short file cabinets, marked in reverse alphabetical order, stand in a clean line along the walls like a perfect set of teeth. A window affords a beautiful view and a kind square of sunlight.
  
  "Congratulations, that's the end of the story," says Zarf, pacing back and forth. "But, that's not *really* the way it happened, is it?"
  
  What would you like to say?
  [1]Yes.[2]No.
  
  > 1
  "Don't be absurd. You have an active imagination; that much is true. The rest of it -- a patchwork, a pastiche! Let me refresh your memory for you." You see a glint of something shiny in his hand.
  
  -- glaring light...
  
  [Hit any key.]
  At last, your troubled fortunes seemed to come to an end. It all happened very quickly: the callback from Red Hat, the bizarre interview with Human Resources, the handshake, the filling out of W-2 forms, and then your first day of work.
  
  And then the next day of work, and the next, and the next. Life goes on, routinely and normally, happily ever after.
  
  > Notes
  Please give one of the answers above.
  
  > Endnotes
  Please give one of the answers above.
  
  Please give one of the answers above.
  
  > Go north
  Please give one of the answers above.
  Please give one of the answers above.