text: [Themes: Science Fiction, apocalyptic, science fiction, male protagonist, Old-style, verbose, disaster]
  
  Morning comes, in Monarch. An eerie light permeates the room.
  
  It's been a hard night...
  
  A bed, a table, a bathroom. This is all that's left of your colleague, Professor Re's. Some dust, an eerie atmosphere and just a memory.
  
  [Author's Note: The most important discovery in history. And then, the whole world goes crumbling down. Armed with but a computer and an expired railway ticket, how can one expect to save the day when the doomsday clock has begun ticking...?]
  
  > examine the dust
  Light fills in from the blinded windows. Dust flies in the sunrays like snow in a torment.
  
  > look at memory
  You can't see any such thing.
  
  Certainly, though, you can smell it and listen to it.
  
  > Smell memory
  Along with Andy, has gone his scent. All that remains is the noisy pout-pourri of the exotic food he'd like to eat, along with the odor of root beer and soda.
  
  > listen to the memory
  Silence is all that's left of Andy, and it's much more than anything else. He was so mouthy, sometimes. Hell, he was mouthy every damn minute, never closing that babbling gape, always inquiring about something, always trying to inspire faith in the others. Faith in science, that is. And faith in humanity as a worthy bunch.
  
  You hardly squeeze a smile. You will miss that gape. You will miss his faith.
  
  > About yourself
  Getting fat. Getting old. Getting bald.
  
  > check your inventory
  You're carrying an expired railway ticket, a magnetic card and an E-Pad.
  
  > examine the ticket
  A regular monthly railway ticket. The expiration date printed on it bears the yesterday's date.
  
  > look at the card
  A plastic card, with a black stripe on its back. On the front it bears a picture of you and your generalities.
  
  > look at the picture
  It is you, some time ago.
  
  > examine Ethe -Pad
  A black slab, ten-by-twenty centimeters. A surface, the one you would refer to as "the bottom", is made out of vibertron alloy. The "top" side is a psychoglass vibertron that you can use to gather information. The E-Pad is indeed the ultimate resource for any kind of question: you can consult it about almost anything (that you have previously uploaded into it, of course). Think to it as some kind of Guide to the galaxy.
  
  > examine the bed
  That's where you've had your final sleep. The blankets are a mess, even if you lied over them. A troublesome sleep, indeed.
  
  > examine the top
  It is a psychoglass you would use to gather information simply by touching it.
  
  > touch the top
  It took seven minutes to upload all your records on the Pad. It would take several millennia just to browse through half of it. It's better if you try and consult it about something.
  
  > take the blankets
  You sincerely hope the night just passed is the last you'll have to mess with this particular bed.
  
  > examine table
  This is where Andy passed his sleepless nights, always studying something new, always focusing on pushing humanity forward.
  
  You can't but mourn at the loss this old world has suffered from his departure.
  
  On the table, you glance a folder with some files inside.
  
  > consult Ethe -Pad about Andy
  You wave your hand on the vibertron, mentally igniting its interior device. A blink of an eye later, the screen vibrates with a faint purple light.
  
  User 5,834 of this device, bearing no significant difference
  between all the other 5,833 before and the one after.
  
  > consult e-pad about yourself
  You are user 5,835 of this device, bearing no significant
  difference between all the other 5,834.
  
  > examine the folder
  As you drop your eyes on the cerulean cover of the folder, your own writing jumps out almost new, as if someone else has inscribed on it the words: "Reports to the Council".
  
  > read the folder
  You know these files by heart: A report on the state of the crust substrates, and about the discoveries you've made there.
  
  Strolling through the pages, you fall deep into a sense of vertigo. The whole world starts spinning.
  Can you do it? Will you be able to go on with the plan, now that Andy has gone? Now that he's been--
  A single tear runs through your left cheek, substantial, heavy. When it dives from your skin you almost feel its burden leaving. A second later -- or maybe a millennia -- it hits the ground with a sounding boom.
  
  You can barely form his visage into your head, and he's been dead for just ten hours. The impression printed in your forehead is that of a pale face, no more anguish, no more tears. And that terrible wound, a hole ripped in his chest like a mole's burrow. That's how it looks when a bullet bangs out of you, taking skin, flesh and bones in a bloody firework. They shot him. In the back, and he wasn't even fleeing. The coroner said he may just have been walking unaware.
  
  Another tear jumps into the void. Another boom.
  
  They were looking for these, the Reports.
  
  One reason more to go and show the committee. One reason more to cry the truth out loud.
  
  > take the folder
  Taken.
  
  > Exits
  [From here you can go west].
  
  > examine bathroom
  A sink and a toilet, stocked in the far corner of the room.
  
  > Go west
  You leave the tiny room.
  
  On the door's sill, you pause and send one last glance to Andy's apartment. A new rush of tears threatens an escape and you barely suffocate it.
  
  Andy, you promise. I will do it. I will do it for both of
  us. Whatever it is they are trying to hide -- whoever they are -- I will find out. And the whole of Monarch will know. This I vow.
  
  And, although you can't quite imagine it just now, no words will ever be truer than those.
  
  A foggy light comes from the grates on the top half of the stairwell. You are standing just mere feet from Andy's house entrance, above the first step going down.
  
  > Research monarch
  Sixth planet in the trinary system, the biggest in size. Base of
  the human activity in the Andromeda galaxy, is Capital World and headquarters of the ASA Council of the Thirteen. Age: 1.2bill. Size: magnitude 7.2 in Resson's scale.
  
  > Research council
  The government-above-the-government of the ASA Republican Worlds.
  Made up of thirteen members, it is the source of the ASA codex and of the 237 Bounds.
  
  You really think it's time to run to the Campus. You sight the exit, down from here.
  
  > look at grates
  Yes, you rather had a regular window, but this is what comes with peripheral, low-cost buildings.