Adventure Gamers - Forums

>donate
Oh, you’re not seriously going to — oh, god, you are. You know, this is never going to work. There are sound scientific reasons why — oh FINE.

We hand over some of your money — I guess I should console myself that it is yours — to the girl.

“Thanks!” she says brightly. Tucking the bill into her pocket, she gives a little skip and heads off across the oval to accost some other innocent.

You just enriched some random television network, you understand. That money won’t do a lick of good to anyone else.

>s

Samuel Johnson Hall
This is the main building for Language Studies. This is not to be confused with Language Engineering, which is the department that handles devices for the manipulation of language-objects; it is also not to be confused with Linguistics, English Literature, or Comparative Literature, all of which have their own buildings and faculties. Language Studies applies itself to questions of linguistic efficacy chiefly at a social and anthropological level.

That’s to say that we study how the ability to change things based on their names affects daily life and society.

The department office, with several professorial offices leading off of it, is to the southeast. To the southwest is the seminar room, where many of the upper-level courses occur, and which also contains the department library; downstairs is the basement, where the graduate students and junior instructors are kept.

On the wall hangs a framed photograph of Professor Waterstone, with the words SHAPLY CHAIR in big letters underneath.

>x photograph
The Shaply Chair is not named after the famous suffragette Phyllida Shaply, but after her considerably less famous or interesting descendant Lawrence Shaply, who was well-placed within Dental Consonants Ltd. when it started up and subsequently had buckets of money with which to endow university chairs.

Nonetheless, this position is a point of considerable pride for Professor Waterstone, and gets him many invitations to speak both here and abroad, which he takes terribly seriously. (More to the point, the government permits him to attend.)

This may explain the particularly expansive grin on Waterstone’s face in this image. Usually his pleasure is expressed more moderately.

The monocle pings happily as we sight the framed photograph of Professor Waterstone with the crosshairs.

>se

Language Studies Department Office
This big, slightly drab area holds such useful objects as the mailboxes and the secretary’s computer. On ordinary days the secretary would be in as well, presiding over affairs. The offices of individual professors lie north and west.

The department printer also sits on the u-shaped desk.

This corner office was won in a battle of wills with several other departments during the most recent rebuilding drive. Professor Waterstone is fond of reminding the others that he was the one to obtain this favorable position whenever there is a disagreement about procedure.

>x desk
Formidable in size, but even that is not enough to support all of the things that the secretarial staff need to keep track of.

On the u-shaped desk is a printer.

The monocle pings happily as we sight the u-shaped desk with the crosshairs.

>x printer
The networked printer handles output for all the computers in the department. The indicator lights glow red to indicate that the paper-drawer is empty.

The printer is currently switched on.

The paper drawer is closed.

There is nothing on the output tray.

>x mailboxes
There are slots for all the professors and graduate students. Undergraduates, of course, are too insignificant to be assigned mailboxes, and are not allowed to have mail delivered to the department.

The monocle pings happily as we sight the mailboxes with the crosshairs.

>x computer
One of many beige boxes hooked into the university’s main system.

The secretary’s computer is currently switched off.

The monocle pings happily as we sight the secretary’s computer with the crosshairs.

>start computer
The secretary’s computer chimes cheerfully.

A box on the screen invites us to type a password to proceed.

>n

Waterstone’s Office
A very finicky, neatly arranged room, in which one never feels quite at home.

Professor Waterstone is sitting here. Waterstone is my dissertation advisor. (He insists on the “o” spelling.) He’s an expert in the history of linguistic and orthographical power, but he’s politically kind of reactionary. “Don’t meddle” is pretty much his motto.

We can see an invitation on a desk. It’s from Dental Consonants Limited. Their design of stationery is unmistakable.

In front of Professor Waterstone is a small laptop.

He looks up at us gravely. “I don’t believe we’ve met,” he says. “Can I help you?”

I’m inclined to make up some excuse, ask whether he met the activists, or ask why he is working on Serial Comma Day.

>x laptop
It goes everywhere with Waterstone and is grimy with long use, but still functional.

The small laptop is currently switched on.

The small laptop’s screen is displaying a generic system error.

>x waterstone
Waterstone is in many respects a brilliant man, but he also has a spectacular capacity for ticking people off. He has a dry, off-beat sense of humor whose output is often indistinguishable from insult; he is also convinced that he knows best about most topics of policy, which brings him into frequent disagreement with his colleagues, the dean, and (we hear) his wife.

The monocle pings happily as we sight Professor Waterstone with the crosshairs.

>x invitation
It is a white card, like a wedding invitation, with swirly script lettering. “You are invited,” it says, “to a demonstration of a new T-inserter not available to the general public — Serial Comma Day — Bureau of Orthography.”

Smaller, meaner sans-serif lettering across the bottom adds: “Bring this card for admission.”

The monocle pings happily as we sight the invitation with the crosshairs.

>ask about activists
“Did you run into those activists outside?”

“Sadly, it is our misfortune constantly to encounter people with no concept of what language manipulation can and cannot do,” Waterstone says. He really seems to be in a bad mood today, even for him: maybe a fight with the wife, or a nasty letter from the dean.

We want to ask why he is working on Serial Comma Day.

>x system error
(I only understood the first part of that — trying anyway. Retrying that as “x system”.)

I can’t see what you’re talking about.

>ask about comma day
“Why are you in today?” we ask. “Isn’t it a holiday?”

“The pursuit of knowledge does not occur according to the calendar,” he says. Then he adds, “And my wife is having the carpets shampooed and kicked me out of the house.”

There’s a brief pause. “Look, I really must work on this,” says Waterstone, chasing us to the door. “Perhaps someone else in the department can answer a few of your questions. I believe I saw Professor Higgate earlier, and Professor Brown is usually in his lab downstairs. I’m sure he’s not working on anything too urgent. Goodbye!”

The office door closes with measured firmness behind us.

Through the window in Waterstone’s door, we can see him turning the lock. When he catches us watching he gives a tight, unfriendly smile and goes back to his desk.

A moment later the printer whirs thoughtfully.

Language Studies Department Office
This big, slightly drab area holds such useful objects as the mailboxes and the secretary’s computer. On ordinary days the secretary would be in as well, presiding over affairs. The offices of individual professors lie north and west, though the north door is closed.

The department printer also sits on the u-shaped desk.

>w

Higgate’s office
Higgate got about 30% finished with a stylish decorating scheme and then got distracted, leaving everything in a unsettled state. A few of her books are arranged on a very nice rosewood bookshelf, which looks Asian and is ornamented with small figurines; all the rest of her library is stacked higgledy-piggledy in plastic cartons.

Professor Higgate is sitting at an oval table, on which are spread an ugly yellow book, a sugar bowl, a teapot, and a romance novel in some heavily accented language. Higgate is the second reader on my dissertation committee, and a conlang expert — that is, Constructed Languages. It was a seminar with her that really got me thinking about utopian linguistics, and she’s been very supportive, though cautious. She and Professor Waterstone don’t always get along that well.

She looks up when we come in. “.i xu do se bangu la lojban.” Higgate asks. She’s asking whether we speak Lojban. For the present, I think it will raise fewer questions if we say no.

>no
“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” we say, smiling faintly.

Her face falls. “Ah! I was hoping you’d be here for Conversational Lojban Tea.” The room is conspicuously lacking other Lojban conversationalists.

We could ask how Professor Higgate is doing.

>x higgate
Professor Higgate is about forty-five, very tall and slim, with a short, no-nonsense hairstyle. Indeed everything about her self-presentation suggests that she has studied how to make herself acceptably professional in the shortest possible time each day, and now adheres to this plan with absolute rigor.

What she might look like in some other setting, such as on a date or at a formal dinner, is beyond my ability to imagine.

The monocle pings happily as we sight Professor Higgate with the crosshairs.

>ask about higgate
“How are you?” we ask.

Forgive me these irrelevant questions, but I haven’t seen Professor Higgate for a few days, and she’s one of my favorite people in the department. I worry about her a little.

She looks taken aback, as though trying to figure out whether she knows us. Then she shrugs this off and decides to proceed as though she does.

“Oh, you know,” she says. “It’s that time of year when the energy’s run out and the students have to be prodded with an electric rod to get them to do any work. And then I’ve got this book I’ve got to write, and Professor Waterstone keeps talking about how next year he would like to take a break from being Director of Graduate Studies…”

I’m inclined to ask what would be so bad about directing graduate studies.

>ask about graduate studies
“What would be so bad about being director of graduate studies?” I ask, a little surprised. I always thought she liked graduate students.

“Nothing, nothing! It’s just that I have this book I should be writing, and Professor Waterstone has done the job for so many years that he’s—”

She pulls up short, apparently remembering that she doesn’t, actually, know us at all. “He’s very experienced, and I am not sure he would enjoy watching someone else do it differently,” she concludes tactfully. “Our personal styles are not very similar.”

There’s a brief pause. “I’d offer you some cucumber sandwiches,” Professor Higgate says. “But I’m afraid I ate them all.”

We could ask whether she might let us into the language studies seminar room, ask how we might return a book, or ask which conlangs she knows.

We don’t have any reams, they were Lena’s disguised contraband.

>ask higgate about book
“I need to return this book to the department library,” we say, holding out The Problem of Adjectives.

“Oh! Yes, all right,” she says. “Did you like it? It’s a good overview of the subject, didn’t you think? I’m afraid the author once annoyed Professor Waterstone at a conference, or we might have had her around to speak at one of our colloquia…”

Higgate stands, patting herself down as though worried she has forgotten something.

“After you,” says Higgate. “I assume it’s safe to leave for a minute; if anyone is coming for Lojban Tea we’ll see them in the hall.” She walks past us through the office door.

We walk a little behind Higgate, who has a very long businesslike stride despite her heels.

She fiddles with her keys for a moment before finding the right one. “Here you go,” she says, pushing the door open.

Language Studies Seminar Room
They recently redid this room, and whoever picked the decorations had postmodern tastes.

Professor Higgate waits a little absent-mindedly nearby, looking over the bookshelf. On the bookshelf are History of the Standards Revolution and Lives of the Lexicographers.

A massive plexiglas case takes up one corner of the room. The plexiglas case contains a compact but high-powered late model synthesizer.

The big table at the center of the room is an irregular polygon, with one chair pushed up to the shortest side. I think the shape is intended to undermine traditional conceptions of academic hierarchy, but in practice it just means that whoever gets to seminar late has to sit with a table angle jabbing him in the stomach.

We could ask which conlangs she knows.

[Your score has gone up by three points and is now forty-eight.]

>x case
Higgate may be a little unworldly, but there is no way she’d let us mess with the synthesizer without interference. We’ll have to hope she is willing to leave us in here.

>x synthesizer
Higgate may be a little unworldly, but there is no way she’d let us mess with the synthesizer without interference. We’ll have to hope she is willing to leave us in here.

>return book
We take a moment to find the proper place for the book.

The sound of discussion comes from down the hall: two voices speaking in Lojban, and then a male voice interrupting. “Do you have a license for this conversation?” it asks.

“Excuse me,” Higgate says. “I’d better go see to that.”

She waves and heads back northeast.

[Your score has gone up by two points and is now fifty.]

>x case
The case is made of very thick protective plastic on a metal frame. It is thoroughly locked shut; I don’t think we’ll have any luck with normal forms of approach. However, plexiglas is a cuttable substance with the right tools, and then there are the screws at the back.

In the plexiglas case is a synthesizer.

The monocle pings happily as we sight the plexiglas case with the crosshairs.

>x synthesizer
It is designed to accept two items and then be turned on. It is shiny and white, and looks a little like a bathtub for very short people.

In the synthesizer is a crossword.

It was a full-sized, human version of this that made us what we are now, so the object makes both of us feel a little skittish and self-conscious.

>x crossword
It looks like it’s been snipped out of Chard-Farmer’s Weekly, but it hasn’t been filled in at all.

There is a dismissive blatt from the monocle, and transposed over the crossword is a faint, greenish image of a cross and a word.