text: [Themes: Science Fiction, religion, gender-neutral protagonist]
  
  > Go downward
  Hands and feet on slippery, fragile brick, descending into a deep, rank darkness--
  
  The Inquisitor calls after you: "Search carefully down there. I'll continue the investigation up on this level."
  
  --and then you fall.
  
  So... it was only three feet. Still, you could easily have twisted an ankle.
  
  This was probably a culvert once. Muddy, dim. Just breathing the air here is like kissing a grave. The bowed ceiling (cinderblocks? ancient masonry?), which curves down to become the walls, is riddled with fissures, from which protrude dead black roots.
  
  The old culvert runs east and west, and a ragged chimney leads up into the relatively clean air of the crypt.
  
  > examine the roots
  Just the scraggly, twisted roots of long dead plants.
  
  > Go east
  The ground crunches and shifts wetly underfoot.
  
  Unhealthy stems grow lush here. They have woven themselves into a pliable mesh between floor and ceiling. The roots are sunk into a putrid matrix of muck and shattered bones.
  
  Your LED's light gleams in pale splinters off the stems. The growth is crushed down in paths heading east, west, and south.
  
  > examine the bones
  They were shattered an age ago. In another age they'll be dust.
  
  > examine the stems
  Some kind of colorless subterranean weed.
  
  > go to the east
  White stems frame a tilted lintel stone. Beyond it is a flicker of feverish light. You duck through.
  
  A cramped stone cubicle. The walls are shaggy with cancer-like scales of soot. An iron basket of smoldering dirt clods hangs from the ceiling. The air, mostly smoke, stinks like the filth of millennia. The exit is west.
  
  A hermit covered in white felted frizz hunches against the back wall.
  
  On the floor before the hermit is an open-topped cardboard box. Scrawled on its front panel is the phrase: "Everything's a dollar in this box."
  
  > Examine box
  In the cardboard box are a plexiglass key, a paperback book, a clarinet, and a bowling ball.
  
  > talk to the hermit
  The hermit makes a strange gesture with his right hand: index and middle fingers extended, pointing up at a shallow angle.
  
  > look at the basket
  Burning dirt in a hanging iron basket might be the least sophisticated method of generating light and/or heat you have ever encountered. For his own safety, the hermit should really just get some modern appliances down here.
  
  > ask the hermit about dollar
  [Use TALK TO to interact with characters.]
  
  > go west
  Unhealthy stems grow lush here. They have woven themselves into a pliable mesh between floor and ceiling. The roots are sunk into a putrid matrix of muck and shattered bones.
  
  Your LED's light gleams in pale splinters off the stems. The growth is crushed down in paths heading east, west, and south.
  
  > Go south
  The ground rises--unstable heaps of rubble--while the ceiling doesn't.
  
  You go to hands and knees until, suddenly, the ceiling is gone.
  
  At your best guess, this was the bottom of a garbage chute. There is a faint blur of illumination high overhead, but whatever gleaming expanse of civilization is up there, is out of reach. Trash, dumped down the chute since forever ago, has heaped up under the mouth of the chute in the shape of a shallow cone. The ground drops away to the north.
  
  Sticking up out of the trash heap is the corner of a paper envelope.
  
  > examine the envelope
  A dirty paper envelope in the old style. It's sealed shut.
  
  > get it
  Taken.
  
  > open the envelope
  You open the paper envelope, revealing a dollar bill.
  
  > examine dollar
  A small wrinkled white bill. Curving text on the bill reads: "Monopoly", and below that, "1".
  
  > go east
  A cramped stone cubicle. The walls are shaggy with cancer-like scales of soot. An iron basket of smoldering dirt clods hangs from the ceiling. The air, mostly smoke, stinks like the filth of millennia. The exit is west.
  
  A hermit covered in white felted frizz hunches against the back wall.
  
  On the floor before the hermit is an open-topped cardboard box. Scrawled on its front panel is the phrase: "Everything's a dollar in this box."
  
  > Examine book
  The pages are yellow and full of their own little labyrinth of worm holes. On the cover, a ridiculously improbable painting of a robot. It is almost as if whoever designed the cover for this "I, Robot" by one "Isaac Asimov" had never seen an actual robot.
  
  Your breath takes a hitch. This book, which seems to contain uneducated nonsense about the inner workings of robots, is almost certainly heretical.
  
  You can almost visualize the heresies swimming around, seeping from page to page until the whole thing is saturated; swarms of blurry, corrupted type.
  
  > examine the clarinet
  A poorly-maintained electro-clarinet. Along the side of the instrument are a square fuse slot (containing a dead fuse) and round hole for a music chip (containing nothing).
  
  > examine the ball
  A purple-swirled bowling ball around 22cm in diameter and weighing around 7kg.
  
  > get the book
  You take the the paperback book from the box, handing a dollar bill over to the hermit in exchange.
  
  > check your inventory
  You are carrying:
  a paperback book
  a paper envelope (open but empty)
  two relics:
  a holy wire
  an LED eye (providing light)
  a pair of wirecutters
  an emergency tool kit (open but empty)
  
  > go west
  Unhealthy stems grow lush here. They have woven themselves into a pliable mesh between floor and ceiling. The roots are sunk into a putrid matrix of muck and shattered bones.
  
  Your LED's light gleams in pale splinters off the stems. The growth is crushed down in paths heading east, west, and south.
  
  > go west
  This was probably a culvert once. Muddy, dim. Just breathing the air here is like kissing a grave. The bowed ceiling, which curves down to become the walls, is riddled with fissures, from which protrude dead black roots.
  
  The old culvert runs east and west, and a ragged chimney leads up into the relatively clean air of the crypt.
  
  > Up
  The rotten brick floor has partially collapsed, allowing access to a level below the crypt. You can climb down, or you can skirt the hole and go north. The hallway also runs southeast.
  
  A woman in a rust-red jumpsuit is leaning against the shabby, filthy wall, just across the hole. Her shoulders are right in a mass of cobwebs--she must not care.
  
  > give the book to Inquisitor
  The Inquisitor snatches the paperback book out of your hands.
  
  She says: "Aha! Heretical material!"
  
  She glares at you for a second, almost as if she blames you for the existence of this heresy. Then she cracks her knuckles and walks swiftly away into the crypt.
  
  You feel a wash of relief as she takes the evil text around the corner and out of sight.
  
  > Go west
  The ground drops away in a gentle slope. Each footstep sinks into the mire.
  
  Not much light at all, just a few knife-edges of shuttered candle gleam coming from the hodge-podge of alleys and houses. Though--my God--houses isn't the right word for them. Shanties? Hovels? You are appalled that people could possibly be allowed to live down here.
  
  Maybe they aren't people. Though you don't see any residents at the moment, the buildings are not perfectly quiet. Little noises of creaking wood. Whispers, too, perhaps.
  
  Decayed alleys run in many directions, but seeing as how you don't want to die in a trackless labyrinth of abject poverty, you should probably stick to traveling east, back towards the culvert, or north, where a sturdier structure of stone stands amongst the ramshackle dwellings.
  
  > listen
  You hear a faint creak of wood.
  
  > go to the north
  Your footsteps echo on still-solid stone.
  
  Four thick square columns near the corners. Your LED makes elongated shadows dance out behind each one as you move. The central space is empty. Maybe once there were seats or pews, but if so they've rotted entirely away. It may be ancient, but this tiny building has nice proportions. The architect was human, no doubt, but probably had robotic assistance. The exit is south.
  
  Near the north wall is a huge oblong block of stone with a smooth top.
  
  On the block of stone are a tarnished silver plate (in which is a dollar bill), a tube of glue, and a broken idol.
  
  > examine the stone
  A block of stone as large as a table.
  
  On the block of stone are a tarnished silver plate (in which is a dollar bill), a tube of glue, and a broken idol.
  
  > look at the plate
  An old collection plate.
  
  In the tarnished silver plate is a dollar bill.
  
  > examine tube
  A half-used tube of glue. Small text along it reads: "Suitable for most materials. Do not sniff."
  
  > Sniff
  It smells like cold stone.
  
  > Sniff tube
  Smells like chemicals.
  
  > examine the idol
  A peculiar ancient idol. It is about six inches high, and depicts a woman in a blue shawl holding a baby. It has been cracked across the middle, and is in two pieces.
  
  > get all
  tarnished silver plate: Taken.
  dollar bill: Taken.
  tube of glue: Taken.
  broken idol: Taken.
  
  > glue the idol
  (with the tube of glue)
  You squeeze out a bit of glue and repair the broken idol.
  
  > examine the idol
  A peculiar ancient idol. It is about six inches high, and depicts a woman in a blue shawl holding a baby.
  
  > Pray
  You mutter a quick prayer of protection against disease.
  
  > put the idol on the altar
  You put the ancient idol on the block of stone.