text: > look at your surroundings
  1) "I have a question about the Brain Guzzlers."
  2) "I'm ready to go. Launch the BUBU!"
  3) "I guess I won't bother you any more right now!"
  
  > 3
  ["I guess I won't bother you any more right now!"]
  
  "I appreciate that, young lady."
  
  A dome covers the roof of the laboratory, converting this top floor into a vast circular workspace with a view of the surrounding mountains  beneath a sky full of brilliant stars. In the center of the room is some sort of half-completed machine. Near it is a cluttered desk, with a blackboard looming over it.
  
  Mary Jane Minsky is working on the BUBU.
  
  Professor Barrabas Rudolph Minsky is up to his elbows in the machine, tinkering away.
  
  > talk to Mary Jane
  [Picture number 12 here.]
  
  "Hi again, Bonnie!"
  
  1) "Jenny is making snickerdoodles. Want some?"
  2) "I should go!"
  
  > 1
  ["Jenny is making snickerdoodles. Want some?"]
  
  "Ooh, I would love some!" Mary Jane says, licking her lips.
  She takes a handful of cookies and stuffs one in her mouth. "Fammff yoo."
  
  1) "I should go!"
  
  > 1
  ["I should go!"]
  
  Mary Jane nods. "Go get "em!"
  
  A dome covers the roof of the laboratory, converting this top floor into a vast circular workspace with a view of the surrounding mountains  beneath a sky full of brilliant stars. In the center of the room is some sort of half-completed machine. Near it is a cluttered desk, with a blackboard looming over it.
  
  Mary Jane Minsky is working on the BUBU.
  
  Professor Barrabas Rudolph Minsky is up to his elbows in the machine, tinkering away.
  
  "Really, though," the BUBU says, "I've gained 1.451 tons since this morning. I really ought to do a jumping jack or two."
  
  > talk to Renee
  [Picture number 11 here.]
  
  "Hey there."
  
  1) "What's that you're reading? Does the professor have an eye for good science fiction?"
  2) "Want some of these snickerdoodles?"
  3) "Okay, I should go!"
  
  > 2
  ["Want some of these snickerdoodles?"]
  
  "Oh, gosh, yes," Renee says, taking a handful. "Nearly dying makes you pretty hungry, huh?"
  
  1) "What's that you're reading? Does the professor have an eye for good science fiction?"
  2) "Okay, I should go!"
  
  > 2
  ["Okay, I should go!"]
  
  "See ya!"
  
  This circular room is ultramodern, like something from twenty years in the future. The sleek, smart-looking furniture is a symphony in avocado, orange, and mustard-yellow. There are exits set into the wooden paneling to the southwest and northwest, and another exit past a small entry foyer to the east. A spiral staircase leads up, and a gaping exhaust vent leads down.
  
  Renee Finch is plopped in a comfortable-looking easy chair, leafing through a leather-bound book.
  
  > talk to Professor
  [Picture number 10 here.]
  
  "Ah, greetings again, my young chum."
  
  1) "I have a question about the Brain Guzzlers."
  2) "I'm ready to go. Launch the BUBU!"
  3) "I guess I won't bother you any more right now!"
  
  > 2
  ["I'm ready to go. Launch the BUBU!"]
  
  Nodding grimly, the professor helps you into the pilot's seat of the "spaceship." "May God have mercy on our souls," he says.
  
  Mary Jane gives you a kiss on the cheek. "Good luck, Bonnie!" Then she taps a few buttons and the dome slowly opens overhead. Machinery grinds as the BUBU rises into the air.
  
  A glittering sea of stars surrounds you. Below, you see the last flickering lights of Canyonville glinting off huge dark shapes. The town seems to undulate like an ocean of living ink. The few buildings you can see, in the scattered light from  fires and sparkling electric lines, aren't much more than shells. There's the ruins of the diner. Over there, the one remaining wall of the haunted house sways in the breeze. The last of the police station crumbles as you watch.
  
  From the south, a wave of Brain Guzzlers rolls over the line of tanks. You can hear faint shouts and bursts of futile gunfire. One enormous Guzzler is slowly oozing over the Beat Barn. Another probes the base of the cliff with its tendrils.
  
  "They look mean, Dave," the BUBU remarks, "but I was made to
  fight tough stains!
  
  1) Fire the BUBU.
  
  > 1
  [Fire the BUBU.]
  
  With a terrifying crack, light lances from the tip of the BUBU, fingers of electricity raking the sky like crude scratches carved into filmstock .The Brain Guzzlers begin to quiver, then to shrivel, sputting into loose piles like deflating party balloons. In minutes, it is over. The string is pulled, and Canyonville's remaining brains will remain unguzzled.
  
  "You did it!" a voice chirps from beneath you. You look down to see Mary Jane looking up at you, Jenny by her side, their hands clasped together and their hair whipped by the mountain wind.
  
  The professor stands behind them, staring thoughtfully off into some unknown future. "The way I see it," he muses, "we may never know why they came here, where they came from, or where they went. We may never know, and we may never be ready to know! All I know is that every year of my life I become more convinced that not only do we not know what we don't know, we also don't know what we do know. These are the things that come when man tampers in heavens--we, with our Sputniks and our weather balloons, we've opened the door and laid out the welcome mat. Dare we really shirk our responsibility when our guests arrive. Dare we?"
  
  Indeed, those words are full of wisdom. But though the future is uncertain, you've brought about a brighter today, and a brighter today is the first step to a brighter tomorrow.
  
  ...
  
  Jimmy Johnson was rescued, alive, well, and of normal size, some eight thousand miles away in a lifeboat, with no memory of where he had been or how his brain came to be returned to him.