text: [Themes: Psychedelic, drugs]
  
  > Go downward
  Your house, in the basement
  Your ex-girlfriend used to stay down here, but now the area is mostly storage...and your grid hardware. In the center of the dark concrete floor is a flimsy table with numerous aging computers both under it and on top. A tangle of ethernet and power cables criss-cross the room like spiderwebs.
  
  Your cat Strawberry is here.
  
  Strawberry looks at you with mild curiosity.
  
  > take the cat
  Strawberry lets you hold her for about fifteen seconds before squirming free of your grasp, climbing your shoulder with help from sharp tiny claws, and hops to the floor behind you.
  
  > Pet cat
  Strawberry begins to purr as you stroke her, but after a few seconds, she decides that she is a fighter, not a lover. She bats at your hand with a paw, and looks up at you expecantly, hoping you will attack her.
  
  > look at the computers
  The physical hardware of your grid is cheap and worn. A mixture of no-name hardware and old dell minitowers, the processor speed, RAM, and storage space is all well below the current standard. The software is a different story - your Advanced Namespace Tools weave the physical boxes together into a coordinated whole. Sometimes you feel like the data within, how it is organized and flows, is like a living thing.
  
  Strawberry perches atop the router and studies you.
  
  > look at Strawberry
  Your cat is small, orange with white chest and paws, female, and feisty.
  
  > unplug the cables
  That action is outside the scope of this simulation.
  
  > Sing
  You start with a bit of Mozart's Marriage of Figaro, move on to a few of your favorite Wu-Tang verses, and conclude with a heartfelt imitation of how IU would sound singing Ripple by the Grateful Dead.
  
  Strawberry deftly steps through the maze of cords and vanishes behind some boxes.
  
  > Xyzzy
  There is a trans-dimensional short-circuit of interactive fiction tradition, and you catch a brief glimpse of a brick building near a stream and a metal grate before you blink and find yourself...
  
  Your section of Milwaukee Street is directly across from a small farm which remains as an agricultural island within the city. An open field and a barn are across the street. Toward the southwest is Atwood Street leading toward downtown. Monona Drive is to the south. The edge of town lies toward the northeast.
  
  > examine barn
  The farm across the street is one of the main reasons you chose to move into this house ten years ago. The way property development goes in Madison, it seems like a miracle that the farmer has held onto this land in the midst of the city. The barn is run-down and decrepit and the field is not yet planted for the season.
  
  > examine the house
  Your house is on the corner of the block. It is painted a light yellow and has a fenced in side yard. You have lived here for the past decade.
  
  > go south
  Traffic is heavy at the intersection of these roads. Nearby to the east is Coffee Lion Cafe. Monona Drive continues to the south, Atwood Avenue is northwest, and your home is to the north.
  
  > Go east
  Your local cafe has been your comfort for the past several years. Days and sometimes whole weeks used to go by where the only people you saw were the employees here. You always felt accepted, despite your disheveled appearance and stumbling arthritic gait. It has been several months since you have visited, because you feel embarassed of a mild foolish crush on one of the young baristas.
  
  She is working today, of course. You feel an unfamiliar fearless energy within yourself. As you order your coffee, you hear yourself say 'It's nice to see you, I haven't been in lately because I feel self-conscious about thinking you're cute.'
  
  Miraculously, she smiles warmly at you. 'That's ok, thank you. It's fine to be honest about what you feel.' A giddy, tingling sensation races through you, but your voice answers fluently. 'Thanks, that means a lot to hear someone say. I've been pretty isolated with a computer programming project lately, and it's felt hard to communicate with people. Sometimes I feel like a machine.' She replies, 'Well, there are a lot more people on your level than you realize. My name is Xochi, by the way. Also, I might be a robot myself!'
  
  You both laugh, you introduce yourself, and you walk out of the cafe higher than a kite aloft in the skies of Jupiter. Not only had your impulsive flirtation (quite outside your usual character) gone well, but she was smart and funny too. You return home feeling reality has been magically transformed for the better and you have been freed of your insecurities and fears. No more inhibition of your wild and eccentric impulses. You will use the story of your patent dispute with the JCN corporation to inspire others to join together in a glorious struggle to free the human spirit from everything that limits our creativity.
  
  (3 April 2013 - Outside my house)
  It is late at night and you are hungry for food and friends for the fights to follow. You hope to find both at the 24-hour restaurant northeast of your home.
  
  > go northeast
  This is the northeast edge of town, by the shopping mall and the interstate. It is mostly lacking in the distinctive charms of the rest of the city. The usual reason for being out here is to visit the 24-hour restaurant to the north, whose sign faces the highway, glowing like a green beacon. The road continues out of the city to the northeast.
  
  > go north
  As you enter the late night restaurant, you notice an old friend here. You join him at his table, and he offers to give you a Tarot reading. You accept, and the cards arrange themselves in a dramatic tableaux featuring The Tower and The Devil. Your friend looks at you seriously and says 'Fear obsession. Fear obsession very strongly.' You realize that in pursuit of your Plan 9 programming goals, you have neglected other things you care about, like people - and music. You head back towards your home and resolve to clean off your piano and play it as soon as you go inside.
  
  (The introduction is 50% complete. You will have freedom to explore soon.)
  (4 April 2013 - Outside my house)
  
  > enter
  You spend a few minutes moving and rearranging books and papers, and soon enough, your piano is cleared of obstructions. You are eager with anticipation to play it and feel your fingers moving across the keys.
  
  You can see some bookshelves, a terminal and a piano here.
  
  > play the piano
  You sit at the keyboard, and your fingers find a leitmotiv-like descending sequence of a Db-major chord and a series of descending overlapping thids that trace out an Ab-major ninth. Played as a repeating pattern spanning the whole keyboard, this becomes a central refrain of your improvisations for the next several months, the core melodic seed of the Harmonic Time-Bind Ritual Symphony.
  
  (As the game progresses, you will compose many songs about your experiences. Return home to >play piano frequently.)
  
  > play the piano
  You fool around with a rough idea for a song about a cute barista at your local coffeeshop. Your favorite lyric is 'My latte is strong but my heartbeat is stronger.'
  
  > examine terminal
  Your terminal glows with a Mondrian-like arrangement of pastel windows, each rio bound into a different namespace. Multiple rc shells are running, acme is open, and several irc channels are available within hubfs. You can check for messages with >use terminal.
  
  > use the terminal
  You perform your usual cycle of checking email and irc...
  
  You spend some time talking with your irc friends, who offer valuable perspective on keeping yourself in contact with shared social reality.