text: are carrying:
  a fake diary
  an autokey
  two keys:
  an antique key
  a simple key
  a code book
  a real diary
  a prosthetic eye
  your StreamDive console
  five chips:
  a library chip
  an interface chip
  a DataStore chip
  a cryptography chip
  a blank chip
  
  > DROP FAKE DIARY, CODE BOOK, REAL DIARY, EYE
  fake diary: Dropped.
  code book: Dropped.
  real diary: Dropped.
  prosthetic eye: Dropped.
  
  > Simple key
  antique key: Dropped.
  simple key: Dropped.
  
  > go west
  Hallway, east end
  You are at the east end of the main hallway on this floor. The hallway ends at a door on the east wall, and another door is north. A doorway to the south has no door, though it looks as if it were designed for one.
  
  A framed photograph of a young man is affixed to the wall.
  
  The stairs from the ground floor land in the middle of a long hallway which extends east and west from your current position. There is a door in the north wall, slightly narrower than usual. From here, you can see three doors at each of the two ends of the hallway.
  
  > examine the coatrack
  A fairly simple coatrack stands in the corner, partially eclipsing the air vent along the wall.
  
  > look in the cabinet
  In the video cabinet are a video screen and six video discs (one "Episode Two", one "Jigsaw", one "Spider and Web", one "Symetry", one "War of the Worlds" and one "Best Chefs").
  
  > Go north
  A poorly-lit length of hallway begins here and continues west. The southern wall is open to the living room. A door leads east.
  
  > take it
  That's hardly portable.
  
  > Examine books
  Nothing of note; a few books on computer operation and general chemistry references.
  
  > Go east
  You are in the main entryway of the house. Aside from its functional purpose as the central hub of the building, it also serves as a showcase of the owner's prowess as a decorator. This room is tasteful and ornate. A coatrack stands abandoned in a corner, beside a highly polished small wooden table. The front door is due south, and the hallway opens west onto the kitchen, and east to the living room. A large staircase to the north leads up to the second floor, and down.
  
  On the wooden table is a letter to Julia.
  
  The very name "living room" is a subject of some consideration: what does it mean to be a "room for living". Obviously, one "lives" in every room of a house. Practically speaking, during this time period, the "living room" was the room in which one entertained guests, watched video transmissions, and interacted with family. Nevertheless, the living room was primarily the adults' domain. This living room is not an exception. The atmosphere is one of maturity; the lack of wear on the furniture and prominence of fragile art objects suggests that it is a room not accustomed to children's play. A couch and several armchairs are arranged in a rough semicircle, a superficial attempt at creating the illusion that its occupants are generally interested in conversation rather than watching the screen, which one assumes is in the cabinet situated along the southern wall. The louvered doors of a closet are set in the east wall, and the wall opposite opens into the foyer. Along the north wall, a section opens into another hallway.
  
  This was originally a walk-in closet, but with the quantity of items which have accumulated here, it has become more of a stand-in closet. You are sure that if the building weren't doomed, it would eventually have turned into a lean-in closet. Between the well-stocked coat rod and a number of boxes, there is just enough room for you to turn around if you feel like returning west to the living room.
  
  On the coat rod are a winter coat (in which is a sales brochure), a light jacket (empty), a windbreaker (empty), a gray suitcoat (empty), a black suitcoat (empty) and a smoking jacket (empty).
  
  > look at the boxes
  Boxes are piled high. The bottommost ones appear to be neatly stacked, but the more accessible ones are positioned more haphazardly.
  
  > look at the smoking jacket
  A wool jacket with suede patches at the elbows in a houndstooth pattern.
  
  > take all the coats
  winter coat: Taken.
  light jacket: Taken.
  windbreaker: Taken.
  gray suitcoat: Taken.
  black suitcoat: Taken.
  
  > wear the winter coat
  You put on the winter coat.
  
  > wear the light jacket
  You put on the light jacket.
  
  > wear the windbreaker
  You put on the windbreaker.
  
  > wear the gray suitcoat
  You put on the gray suitcoat.
  
  > wear the black suitcoat
  You put on the black suitcoat.
  
  > wear the smoking jacket
  You put on the smoking jacket.
  
  > look at windbreaker
  A lightweight jacket made of a synthetic polymer.
  
  > drop it
  You take off the windbreaker.
  Dropped.
  
  > drop it
  You take off the gray suitcoat.
  Dropped.
  
  > drop it
  You take off the black suitcoat.
  Dropped.
  
  > drop it
  You take off the smoking jacket.
  Dropped.
  
  > check your inventory
  You are carrying:
  a light jacket (being worn)
  a winter coat (being worn)
  a sales brochure
  an autokey
  your StreamDive console
  five chips:
  a library chip
  an interface chip
  a DataStore chip
  a cryptography chip
  a blank chip
  
  > drop it
  You take off the winter coat.
  Dropped.
  You take off the light jacket.
  Dropped.
  
  > Go west
  The very name "living room" is a subject of some consideration: what does it mean to be a "room for living". Obviously, one "lives" in every room of a house. Practically speaking, during this time period, the "living room" was the room in which one entertained guests, watched video transmissions, and interacted with family. Nevertheless, the living room was primarily the adults' domain. This living room is not an exception. The atmosphere is one of maturity; the lack of wear on the furniture and prominence of fragile art objects suggests that it is a room not accustomed to children's play. A couch and several armchairs are arranged in a rough semicircle, a superficial attempt at creating the illusion that its occupants are generally interested in conversation rather than watching the screen, which one assumes is in the cabinet situated along the southern wall. The louvered doors of a closet are set in the east wall, and the wall opposite opens into the foyer. Along the north wall, a section opens into another hallway.
  
  You are in the main entryway of the house. Aside from its functional purpose as the central hub of the building, it also serves as a showcase of the owner's prowess as a decorator. This room is tasteful and ornate. A coatrack stands abandoned in a corner, beside a highly polished small wooden table. The front door is due south, and the hallway opens west onto the kitchen, and east to the living room. A large staircase to the north leads up to the second floor, and down.
  
  On the wooden table is a letter to Julia.
  
  In the days before all food could be prepared by an automated processing unit, the kitchen was often considered the center of family life. This kitchen is decorated in a country style that was archaic even when it was built. Woodgrain paneling and prominently displayed kitchenwares give the room a rustic look. The stove, refrigerator and other appliances have a more modern look, but clashing with the predominant style is kept to a minimum. Heavier items and food supplies are kept in the pantry to the west, while archways lead north and east.
  
  On the refrigerator door are a report card and a receipt.
  
  This is a small room, designed to hold food staples and cooking equipment not housed in the kitchen. You doubt you'll find anything worthwhile in here, but you've been a StreamDiver long enough to know better than to trust appearances. You can return east to the kitchen.
  
  Shelves line the walls, sparsely stocked.
  
  On the shelves are some pots and pans, a lazy susan (empty), a flour pot (closed) and a can of spiced ham (closed).
  
  > look at the ham
  This is a can of compressed, meat-like substance, which, though only barely meeting the definition of "food", could have provided an easy meal in an emergency.
  
  > Footnote 8
  [Footnote 8]
  Just.
  
  > examine cans
  Which do you mean, the floor cleaner or the furniture polish?
  
  > Cleaner
  If the label is to be believed, this particular compound will restore even the most heavily soiled floors to a factory shine.
  
  > examine the polish
  A fragrant compound designed to collect dust and restore a polished shine to wooden furniture.
  
  > examine the bottles
  Which do you mean, the detergent bottle, the bleach bottle or the stain remover?
  
  > examine the detergent
  A simple cleaning agent for laundry.
  
  > look at the bleach
  A chlorine-based cleaner.
  
  > examine the stain
  A powerful cleaner, designed to treat especially soiled areas of garments.
  
  > take the cleaner
  Taken.
  The console beeps. "Information: Two hours of dive time remaining."
  
  > Go upwards
  When this house was first built, conventions of style dictated a degree of spartan functionality from the dining area. The construction of this room has a sort of tacit apology built into its architecture, as if the dedication of an entire room to dining facilities was seen as an undesirable extravagance. The twenty years that followed saw a reversal of the cultural mores which had all but done away with a fixed dining area. The net result is that this particular dining room has an uncomfortable blend of styles. A small, nondescript table shows signs of heavier wear than it was meant for. An ornate china cabinet stands in one corner, looking very out-of-place. The buffet counter, again nondescript and too small to be really serviceable, stretches across a portion of the north wall. Open archways lead south and east, and a small door is west.
  
  On the buffet are two oil lamps.
  
  You can see a photograph here.
  
  In the days before all food could be prepared by an automated processing unit, the kitchen was often considered the center of family life. This kitchen is decorated in a country style that was archaic even when it was built. Woodgrain paneling and prominently displayed kitchenwares give the room a rustic look. The stove, refrigerator and other appliances have a more modern look, but clashing with the predominant style is kept to a minimum. Heavier items and food supplies are kept in the pantry to the west, while archways lead north and east.
  
  On the refrigerator door are a report card and a receipt.
  
  You are in the main entryway of the house. Aside from its functional purpose as the central hub of the building, it also serves as a showcase of the owner's prowess as a decorator. This room is tasteful and ornate. A coatrack stands abandoned in a corner, beside a highly polished small wooden table. The front door is due south, and the hallway opens west onto the kitchen, and east to the living room. A large staircase to the north leads up to the second floor, and down.
  
  On the wooden table is a letter to Julia.
  
  The stairs from the ground floor land in the middle of a long hallway which extends east and west from your current position. There is a door in the north wall, slightly narrower than usual. From here, you can see three doors at each of the two ends of the hallway.
  
  > go to the east
  Hallway, east end
  You are at the east end of the main hallway on this floor. The hallway ends at a door on the east wall, and another door is north. A doorway to the south has no door, though it looks as if it were designed for one.
  
  A framed photograph of a young man is affixed to the wall.
  
  Of all the rooms you've seen so far, this bedroom shows the least signs of having been tidied before the house was abandoned. Naturally, of course, this heightens your curiosity; untidy rooms generally tell you more than clean ones. From the space-shuttle wallpaper, you suspect that this room belonged to a young child, though it might simply imply that the room is long-overdue for renovation. There is a bookcase along one wall, containing model space ships, toy robots, and a very few books. A desk beside the door is loaded down with computer equipment. The most interesting feature of the room is the floor; while most of the other rooms have had wall-to-wall carpeting, this room has what appears to be industrial grade linoleum tile. The hallway lies west.
  
  > Go north
  Hallway, east end
  You are at the east end of the main hallway on this floor. The hallway ends at a door on the east wall, and another door is north. A doorway to the south has no door, though it looks as if it were designed for one.
  
  A framed photograph of a young man is affixed to the wall.
  
  Coming, as you do, from an enlightened time period where man has, by and large, learned to overcome prejudicial assumptions about people on the basis of gender or background [Footnote 5], you know better than to jump to conclusions about the occupant based on the cultural stereotypes of their living space.
  Nevertheless, you can always tell a girl's room. It isn't some particular thing [Footnote 6]; rather, an air of femininity issues more from the juxtaposition of objects than the contents themselves. The dollhouse; the partially completed watercolor on an easel in the corner; the ornate, hand-carved chest at the foot of the bed; the paper ribbons affixed to the vent cover on the floor, all suggest, but do not insist that the occupant of this room is female. And yet, there is a certain something about this space that rarely arises in a man's quarters.
  The walls are a soft, uniform pastel. The desk stands opposite the bed, well stocked, but uncluttered. There is a closet door on the east wall. The exit to the hall is south.
  
  On the nightstand is a charger.
  
  You can see two keys (a simple key and an antique key), a prosthetic eye, a real diary, a code book and a fake diary here.
  
  > Clean the dresser with the polish
  (the dresser with the furniture polish)
  You apply some of the furniturepolish to the dresser, and wipe it away. The polish soaks into the bare wood where the finish has been scratched, and the single word "SERENDIPITY" becomes visible on the surface.
  
  > turn on the Computer
  The computer hums to life. After a second of self-configuration and diagnostics, a message flashes on the display:
  
  login:
  
  > Type serendipity
  password:
  
  > Type serendipity
  login:
  
  > Type serendipity
  Too many incorrect logins. Shutting down.
  
  The display goes dark.
  
  > Documents
  Press the number of your selection, 1-24, 0 to redisplay or Q to quit.
  
  3     Suicide Note
  4     Current Events Homework
  5     Letter (1)
  6     Letter (2)
  7     Code Book (old)
  8     Code Book (new)
  9     Real Diary (Decoded)
  10     LZ-50 Memory Buffer
  11     Photograph of a Young Man
  12     Code fragment
  13     Email Database (Boy's Bedroom)
  14     Graduation Photograph
  15     Account Sheet
  16     Email Database (office)
  17     Letter to Julia
  18     Kaldeki Article
  19     Family Photo
  20     Report Card
  21     Grocery Receipt
  22     Home Shelter Sales Literature
  23     Data Disc Message
  24     Fake Diary
  
  > 13
  Email Database (Boy's Bedroom)
  
  ---Email Database (Boy's Bedroom)---
  Page: 1 Mailbox for swallace
  
  P = previous page    N = next page
  Q = resume story    G = Go to page
  
  From: Subject:
  Dr. Helmut Sha Re: distributed neural simulation...2
  YOR_FRIEND906  HOTTEST OFFER EVER..................3
  hotoffer@spam. Lower your debt!....................4
  Dr. Helmut Sha PIT AI lab..........................5
  Michael Pendra 31337...............................6
  Amy            (no subject)........................7
  Michelle313    I'm boooooooored!...................8
  Steve Elocon   Re: PIT AI lab......................9
  Amy            Re: Tonight.........................10
  Michael Pendra Julia...............................11
  Amy            Hi..................................12
  Michael Pendra 31337...............................13
  Amy            Hi, again...........................14
  Michael Pendra Re: Julia...........................15
  Amy            Re: Hi, again.......................16
  Steve Elocon   Re: PIT AI lab......................17
  hotxxx@bulkmai YOUNG HARDCORE SLUTS................18
  Mary Pantalon  PIT early admission.................19
  Amy            Um... Stuff.........................20
  Amy            My last mail........................21
  Dante          Situation...........................22
  Michael Pendra Re: Situation.......................23
  Michael Pendra Re: PIT.............................24
  Amy            Sorry...............................25
  
  > Research freenet
  An early system for the anonymous distribution of documents via the internet. Its creators supported its use to circumvent intellectual property laws which they considered outdated. As it grew, difficulties with the system quickly became apparent, and it eventually fell into disuse in favor of a related system, "LibertyNet".
  
  Source: The Digital Corsairs: Hacking, Phreaking, and the Fall of Intellectual Property 1960-2010
  
  SEE ALSO: Internet, LibertyNet
  
  > Research dataweb
  Dataweb (Global Dataweb; Web)
  Global data networks are reported as early as the last quarter of the twentieth century. By the end of the 21st century, the internet had evolved into the more familiar form of the Global Dataweb. The name "Dataweb" refers to the Dataweb Protocol, its major services (such as electronic mail, video communication, and document archive), and individual documents attached to it. When the Dataweb Protocol was introduced, nearly all electronic devices made use of it, from simple audio-visual communication and text messaging, to remote control and navigation systems. Though the system itself has changed little since its inception, the name has fallen into disuse.
  
  Source: Information Overload: The rise of the global data networks (2nd ed.)
  
  SEE ALSO: Internet
  
  > browse
  Press the number of your selection, 1-11, 0 to redisplay or Q to quit.
  
  3     Cylinians
  4     Dataweb
  5     Freenet
  6     Historical Period: The Seventy Days
  7     Historical Period: ca 865600-866300 UDC
  8     Internet
  9     LibertyNet
  10     Space Station Kennedy
  11     Stephen James Wallace
  
  > Go north
  The stairs from the ground floor land in the middle of a long hallway which extends east and west from your current position. There is a door in the north wall, slightly narrower than usual. From here, you can see three doors at each of the two ends of the hallway.
  That door is locked.
  
  You manage to unlock the door with the autokey.
  
  Although the primary function of this room seems to be as a linen closet, its size suggests that it was intended for even heavier storage. Three of the walls bear shelves, neatly stocked with towels and bed linens.
  
  > search the linens
  You poke around at the sheets, and find, hidden in the folds of a large bedsheet toward the back, a pack of cigarettes, either squirreled away for an emergency, or hidden from a disapproving family member.
  The console beeps. "Information: One hour of dive time remaining."
  
  > drop the cigarettes
  Dropped.
  
  > Go north
  Hallway, west end
  The upstairs hallway begins here, or ends here, depending on your point of view. You can see where the stairway meets the hall to the east, and doors are located along the north, south, and west walls.
  
  A framed photograph of a young woman graces one wall.
  
  In most respects, this is a thoroughly ordinary bathroom. It is far less clean than the public areas of the house, but not unsettlingly so. It is simple in decor, featuring a tub, toilet, sink, and no windows. The mirror over the sink protrudes slightly, suggesting that it conceals a medicine cabinet. The exit is south.
  If your history is right, it should be about now that the Chinese missile diverts its course away from the US capital to avoid an anti-missile missile. It redirects toward a minor target, a military base near this town.
  
  > open the cabinet
  You open the medicine cabinet, revealing a pill bottle.
  
  > check your inventory
  You are carrying:
  a furniture polish
  a floor cleaner
  an autokey
  your StreamDive console
  five chips:
  a library chip
  an interface chip
  a DataStore chip
  a cryptography chip
  a blank chip
  
  > Cleaner
  furniture polish: Dropped.
  floor cleaner: Dropped.
  
  > go north
  The stairs from the ground floor land in the middle of a long hallway which extends east and west from your current position. There is a door in the north wall, slightly narrower than usual. From here, you can see three doors at each of the two ends of the hallway.
  
  Hallway, east end
  You are at the east end of the main hallway on this floor. The hallway ends at a door on the east wall, and another door is north. A doorway to the south has no door, though it looks as if it were designed for one.
  
  A framed photograph of a young man is affixed to the wall.
  
  Coming, as you do, from an enlightened time period where man has, by and large, learned to overcome prejudicial assumptions about people on the basis of gender or background [Footnote 5], you know better than to jump to conclusions about the occupant based on the cultural stereotypes of their living space.
  Nevertheless, you can always tell a girl's room. It isn't some particular thing [Footnote 6]; rather, an air of femininity issues more from the juxtaposition of objects than the contents themselves. The dollhouse; the partially completed watercolor on an easel in the corner; the ornate, hand-carved chest at the foot of the bed; the paper ribbons affixed to the vent cover on the floor, all suggest, but do not insist that the occupant of this room is female. And yet, there is a certain something about this space that rarely arises in a man's quarters.
  The walls are a soft, uniform pastel. The desk stands opposite the bed, well stocked, but uncluttered. There is a closet door on the east wall. The exit to the hall is south.
  
  On the nightstand is a charger.
  
  You can see two keys (a simple key and an antique key), a prosthetic eye, a real diary, a code book and a fake diary here.
  
  > Inventory
  You are carrying:
  a can of spiced ham (which is closed)
  a charger
  a pill bottle (which is closed)
  an autokey
  your StreamDive console
  five chips:
  a library chip
  an interface chip
  a DataStore chip
  a cryptography chip
  a blank chip
  
  > Research ham
  No relevant entry found.
  The console beeps. "Information: Thirty minutes of dive time remaining."
  
  > Wait
  Time passes.
  
  Time passes.
  
  > wait for a while
  Time passes.
  Time passes.
  Time passes.
  
  > Wait
  Time passes.
  Time passes.
  Time passes.
  About now, the propulsion system on the missile begins to fail. It holds its course, but is now certain to fall several killometers short.
  
  > Wait
  Time passes.
  Time passes.
  The console beeps. "Warning: Fifteen minutes of dive time remaining." Time passes.
  Time passes.
  Time passes.
  
  > Wait
  Time passes.
  Time passes.
  The console beeps. "Warning: Dive will end shortly. Please complete investigations now."
  Time passes.
  Time passes.
  Time passes.
  
  > wait awhile
  Time passes.
  The StreamDive console emits an audible warning: "Alert: Dive time expired. Discharging temporal capacitors."
  
  All at once, the universe goes away. Time itself cries out in distress, and every cell in your body echoes its cry. The laws of physics cannot be broken, but they can be bent, if only for a time. As the energy stored in your temporal capacitors discharges, time reasserts itself. If you were the sort to anthopomorphize physical law, you'd say that it was extracting some revenge against you for daring to transcend the barriers of time. Of course, all that you're really experiencing is a form of severe disorientation resulting from the unusual perceptual stimuli occurring outside normal time-space. It all goes away in a nothingth of a second, and you stumble backward to the floor of the StreamDive Core. White-clad technicians swarm into the chamber a second later, helping you into the postDive examination, which confirms that you have weathered the Dive intact, and cleanses ancient toxins from your system. Your possessions are taken for examination, and you are led to the debriefing room.
  
  You are in a comfortably small room, used to debrief StreamDivers following their missions. The room is intentionally designed to avoid the impression that this is some kind of interrogation chamber, even if that is indeed its function. The room contains very little in the way of decoration or, well, anything at all, aside from the table and chairs.
  
  > examine the chairs
  wooden chair: You see nothing special about the wooden chair.
  
  > wait
  Time passes.
  Joxley Douzen walks heavily into the room. Though there are a few agents you'd prefer to serve as your evaluator, you could have done far, far worse. She scans over her notes, not seeming to see you until after she has taken her seat. "Welcome back," she says. You are naturally inclined to take the lack of feeling in her voice as a bad sign, but you resist the urge. It's all she's capable of; her voice box is artificial, and she's never managed to program it properly.
  
  "We've reviewed your findings. As you know, the purpose of this phase of your evaluation is to give you the opportunity to present anything you think may have escaped our attention, and to address any concerns which the evaluation team has about your Dive. If you'll take your seat, we can begin." [Footnote 9]
  
  > sit on the chair
  You get onto the wooden chair.
  
  > Footnote 9
  [Footnote 9]
  For the duration of this interview, you may respond to Douzen by typing a single word at the command prompt, signifying the subject you wish to discuss. For example:
  >KITCHEN
  Would be interpreted as a desire to talk about the kitchen. For questions requiring a numerical answer, simply type the number at the prompt [Footnote 10].
  
  > Footnote 10
  [Footnote 10]
  The special command "DONE" indicates that you have nothing to say on the subject, and the command "REPEAT" will repeat the current question. The standard commands will remain available if you wish to perform other actions while you consider your answer.
  
  > examine Joxley
  Joxley Douzen is a typical example of what your father would have called a "hard-looking broad". Muscular, stocky, with chiseled features that would have been distinguished on a man. She probably knows exactly how threatening people find her. You know that she's a touch bitter about her position as a Dive evaluation agent -- after she was injured in a shuttle accident, she received enough bio-mechanical implants to make her a walking, talking anachronism, and therefore unfit for StreamDiving. Nevertheless, your experience of her has always been as a fair evaluator.
  
  > Wait
  Time passes.
  "First things first. Based on your scans and our records, you surveyed about ninety-six percent of the area within your mission boundaries. Quite impressive. Now, are there any rooms in particular that you feel merit special attention?"
  
  > Boy 's bedroom
  "Yes. Your console recorded some unusual readings from that area. We'll give it another look."
  
  > Shelter
  "Ah yes, the survival shelter. That's a very impressive find. We looked over the notes, and we don't have any other incidents of a Diver exploring a survival shelter of that era. Good work."
  
  You go on to explain that you found the bodies of two recently deceased young women in the basement.
  
  Joxley looks through her notes. "Yes, I have that here. That contradicts what we had in our historical records -- you know, of course, that heads are going to roll in the approval committee for that little oversight. It's a good thing your Dive didn't take you back any earlier. If either of them had been alive, we'd have had a major violation of the first directive on our hands.
  
  "It's just a shame that you weren't able to use the Stream Visualizer inside the shelter. If the approval committee had known what you would find, they would have made sure to send you back with the right equipment."
  
  > wait
  Time passes.
  "Okay. Now, let's consider the contents of your DataStore. It seems that you recorded twenty-five documents. It's a shame you didn't elect to take the Stream Visualizer. Of course, you were under tight restrictions. As for other documents, you appear to have done quite well.
  
  "Your DataStore contained an article from a scientific magazine. What about this article attracted your interest?"
  
  > Time travel
  The article, you explain, contains the earliest reference to Emmanuel Kaldeki's work on which would eventually lead to StreamDive technology.
  
  "A good find," Joxley says. "As you know, we have very little information about Kaldeki's research before the war. This find could lead to a revision of what we know about the history of time travel.
  
  "You also downloaded something too big to fit in the DataStore. We found it stored on a spare chip. What is it?"
  
  > Done
  "I suppose we'll have to work it out for ourselves then.
  
  "Unfortunately, the memory recording you downloaded from the optical prosthesis was very short. What, based on your research, happened to the owner after the end of the recording?"
  
  > Suicide
  You say that you believe she died almost immediately after removing the prosthesis.
  
  Joxley writes this down. "Very tragic," she says.
  
  "Now, you found a diary in the downstairs bathroom. It appears to have been encoded using a very secure cipher. Given the nature of the writer and its content, the only explanation we can think of is that the writer was mentally unstable. How would you explain the fact that such effort was taken to encode the diary?"
  
  > Mother
  You explain that the author, Julia Wallace, had reason to believe that her parents were reading her diary without permission, and had encoded it to prevent the highly personal content from becoming public knowledge.
  Joxley raises an eyebrow. "It seems like a great deal of effort, but yes, that does explain what we've seen, and seems consistent with the details we've managed to piece together about the girl.
  
  "We've had some difficulty making sense of the code fragment you downloaded. Any idea what it is?"
  
  > Brain
  You say that you believe the author to be Stephen James Wallace, who was conducting experiments in artificial sentience.
  
  "Really? We knew Wallace had done important work in neural circuitry, but there's nothing on this scale in his later career. Unbelievable.
  
  "We're curious about the diary you found in the girl's closet. All our evidence suggests that the daughter was approximately eighteen years of age, but the textual analysis suggests that this diary shows a writing level more consistent with a much younger person. We suspect that this diary is either much older than the other documents you've collected, or that the writer was... to be indelicate, stupid. Perhaps you could offer an explanation?"
  
  > Fake
  You explain your theory that the diary is a fake; a red herring designed to throw off a snooping parent.
  
  "Fascinating," Joxley says. "That does explain a great deal.
  
  "I think that covers all the documents we need more information about. Let me check my notes, and we'll move on."
  
  > Donna
  You explain that a young woman named Donna, a friend of the older child, had been living with the family near the time that the house was abandoned.
  
  Joxley makes a note of this. "Good work. This is exactly the sort of thing that isn't covered by our records of the period.
  
  "Now," Joxley says, "It appears that you violated your mission parameters by bringing something back from your Dive. Since everything in the area appears to have been destroyed immediately after you left, the committee has decided to recommend against disciplinary action, but there will be an entry made in your file, unless you can give us some exceptional circumstance which warranted your action. Is there any object which you felt had some extraordinary reason for being retrieved for examination?
  
  > Charger
  You tell Joxley that you suspect that the charger has somehow been altered so as to be anachronistic in its native time.
  
  Joxley pushes back from the desk. "That's a very serious claim. But from the logs in your console, it certainly merits more examination. If there has been tampering with the timeline, it's essential we locate the source.
  
  "What was the name of the female child?"
  
  > Julia
  "Marital relations between the Wallaces... Were they good or bad?"
  
  > Bad
  You explain that your impression was that they were not good.
  
  Joxley asks, "What justification do you have for that assessment?"
  
  You quickly realize that you have no proof to support your theory, at least, none that would satisfy the assessment team.
  
  "What was the name of the male head of household?"
  
  > James
  "What was the name of the male child?"
  
  > Jim
  "What was the name of the female head of household?"
  
  > Katia
  "You say that the girl had an optical prosthesis. Which eye was artificial?"
  
  > Right
  "Okay," Joxley says.
  
  "You've claimed that there's evidence the timeline has been altered. Did you encounter anything else that might serve as evidence?"
  
  > Ham
  "Unfortunately," she says, "It doesn't look like there's enough evidence in your logs to verify that.
  
  "We have no postwar records of the daughter, and your findings suggest that she was not with the family when they evacuated. What became of her?"
  
  > Suicide
  You say that she committed suicide by ingesting a euphenasisa pill.
  
  "Thank you for your cooperation, agent," she says. After taking a few more notes, Joxley Douzen rises to her feet. "If you'll wait here, the review team will have your final evaluation shortly."
  
  Without paying you another glance, she strides out of the room.
  
  > wait awhile
  Time passes.
  Joxley Douzen walks confidently into the room, followed by the rest of the evaluation team. They stand at the head of the room, staring heavily at you. Finally, Joxley speaks.
  
  "StreamDiver Alpha Tango-678, it is the finding of this evaluation team that you have completed the objectives for this mission with an approval rating of 90 percent. Absolutely exceptional. We're going to recommend you for a promotion."