Adventure Gamers - Forums

Here are the two alternatives.

>out
(heading northeast, since that is the only direction available)

So you want us both to get caught? Well, I’m not up for that arrangement. What we are doing here is important. I say we send Brock and get out of here.

I vote we gel Brock and send him out to my father. No, hear me out. Brock’s cover is probably not in great shape anyway. You might be able to rescue him later. And it would be a coup for my father to have a real big arrest to put on the record.

>ne
So you want us both to get caught? Well, I’m not up for that arrangement. What we are doing here is important. I say we send Brock and get out of here.

I can’t go anywhere, can’t discuss it, so the second option is out.
Third option:

>rub gel on object
Hang on — are you sure you want to send one of these poor bastards out there? It would be cruel to get their hopes up just to have them re-arrested, not to mention that it would make my father look like a fool if he arrested a dissident who turned out to have been in storage all along. >>yes

We gel the nearest of the objects, and it comes to life: a woman in her thirties or forties, at first so motionless that she looks like a statue, until she remembers that she can move.

“Thank goodness,” says the woman. “I felt like I was going to lose myself if I had to spend another minute in there. I don’t know who you are, but thank you, thank you! Is there a Bureau reprieve? Please tell me they’ve decided to let us all out!”

“No general reprieve,” you say. “Just you.”

This isn’t what I want. It’s not just unfair; it’s actually monstrous. “What were you put in for?” I ask.

“Italian,” she whispers.

“What?”

“I was learning Italian,” she says. “I wanted to read Manzoni. There was no sympathy from the officers; they thought it was an inexplicable desire. Is it daylight or night-time out there? Not that it matters. I haven’t seen either in so long.”

You gesture at the door. She looks at us once more, doubtfully, and goes.

From the corridor comes the sound of a shot being fired from a restoration gel rifle; the woman exclaiming in pain; officers gathering around her for the arrest. And she’ll be back here, I suppose, before the night is out. I suppose that allows you to tell yourself that it wasn’t a bad thing, what we just did.

A faint spell comes over you and you feel dizzy.

I guess we betray Brock…

Karlok - 29 March 2021 06:09 AM

I can’t go anywhere, can’t discuss it, so the second option is out.
Third option:

Gelling ourselves doesn’t work?


Djees, if Brock or that girl are the only options, then this is a cruel twist in the game… 

TimovieMan - 29 March 2021 06:14 AM

Karlok - 29 March 2021 06:09 AM

I can’t go anywhere, can’t discuss it, so the second option is out.
Third option:

Gelling ourselves doesn’t work?

You’re right, it does! I didn’t try it because earlier the game always refused to put gel on ourselves.

>rub gel on self
If you have some idea of gelling me and sending me out there while you escape with Brock, let me tell you, I know enough to ruin you. I know Lena, I know Slango, I know who to talk to at the Counterfeit Monkey. I know half a dozen other exploits you pulled before. And I would tell them, because that’s the only way I’d get to avoid a full trial for treason. I like you, honestly, but if it’s you or me, I’m still picking me. Unless you’re volunteering to go yourself? >>yes
You’re a brave person. Foolish. But brave.

We do the split, a cold hasty slathering of gel, and—

You’re on your own now. You give Alex one last look. Wonder how he’s going to get away, shivering and naked as he is, but that’s not your problem now. He can keep all of your stuff, and doubtless there’s some kind of outfit to be found in there. You go.

After that comes interrogation, incarceration, a trial that’s remarkably swift. You aren’t asked about whether you’d like to plea bargain. Alex’s father doesn’t mean to let you say the half of what you know; not if it would endanger him and his son. You spend most of the time leading up to your trial in a fog so dense that it must be drugs. You can barely speak.

The sentence is inanimation. You are put on the chair and the last thing you notice is the executioner setting the dial of his letter-remover to C.
That is, that’s what would have happened if we had done something so foolish. Shall we suppose we didn’t? >>

Sorry, you probably missed my edit earlier. Should’ve just made a new post instead:

TimovieMan - 29 March 2021 05:54 AM

Edit: how about the altruistic option? Gelling ourselves and walking out ourself?
Or even gelling ourselves and making Alex walk out?

Just curious to see what would happen.

Edit: nevermind.

Karlok - 29 March 2021 06:19 AM

The sentence is inanimation. You are put on the chair and the last thing you notice is the executioner setting the dial of his letter-remover to C.

I’m not following. How does that inanimate us?

Pegbiter - 29 March 2021 06:23 AM

Have we caught up with your own playthrough Karlok, or did you already go through this before?

I’ve managed to stay ahead of you, but barely.

If both options work, I kind of want to see both endings. I do however agree that sending Brock out is the least bad version, at least from our current perspective.

You can, because I chose the innocent woman in my playthrough. We’ll see if that makes a difference.

Edit: Unless putting paste on the earl works. Did we try that?

No, I could try that, but I saved right after sending him out, so I would have to go back to a previous save. And I bet it won’t work, from the description of the woman and the earl it is clear they shoot the gel first and ask questions later.

Nope, doesn’t work. The game doesn’t let me put paste on the earl before ordering him OUT, so I put it on the pearl.

>rub paste on pearl
We smear some of the Origin Paste onto the pearl. Nothing obvious happens, of course, but that is the whole point.

>wave p-remover at pearl
The pearl gives way to the now-familiar earl.

The earl looks at us in confusion. “OUT,” you say, pointing at the door.

I keep thinking: my father is going to look like a fool when it’s found he’s arrested a fake person; he’ll be disgraced.

I want to stop you, but you’ve got the upper hand now.

The earl backs out the door.

There’s a noise like the firing of a restoration gel rifle and the sound of the earl collapsing into a pearl. “Nice try,” shouts a voice from outside. “Next?”

TimovieMan - 29 March 2021 06:23 AM

Karlok - 29 March 2021 06:19 AM

The sentence is inanimation. You are put on the chair and the last thing you notice is the executioner setting the dial of his letter-remover to C.

I’m not following. How does that inanimate us?

I don’t get it either. Anybody else?

Okay, let’s get the hell out of here.

>out
(heading northeast, since that is the only direction available)

Bureau Basement Secret Section
The heightened security on this side of the door is obvious everywhere I look. The floor is tiled in paisley tiles. The light fixtures give off pale pink light. The walls are covered in frog leather. The doors are locked with padlocks the size of handbags, locks decorated à la Louis Quinze, combination locks made of solid gold. There is not a bare noun in sight.

The cute security door at the south end is solidly shut; there’s no sign of anyone still waiting on this side of it.

Going south through the security door isn’t an option; our only way out is north. Just west is the equipment testing room, and southwest is Cold Storage.

>n

Wonderland
The ridiculous décor continues, now so extreme that I cannot even put a name to the things around us. They might as well be extrusions from a nightmare by Dali, or by Dr. Seuss. Offices are accessed by hatchways that seem to have come from submarines, or through passages resembling the sphincter of a great whale, or up ladders decorated with human teeth.

An open archway leads to storage space east of here.

Hanging in the air at the north end of the hallway is an odor.

>x odor
I can’t quite place it. There’s definitely a smell, but what is it like? Strawberries? Burning rubber? Freshly chopped chives? Every time I think I’ve pinned it, it goes again, sliding sideways to smell like something else.

>x offices
The name plaques identify such functions as “North-End Meeting Room” and “DCL Special Liaison,” but who knows whether the descriptions are remotely true. There is something very menacing about it all, as though one were going mad.

The monocle pings happily as I sight the ridiculous décor with the crosshairs.

Luhr28 - 29 March 2021 06:44 AM

I thought about the chair/hair thing too, but I doubt it.

A quick search led me to Emily Short’s blog, where someone asked her the same thing. Her reply:

Emily Short says:
January 31, 2013 at 1:54 am
gur P-erzbire vf abg orvat hfrq ba Naqen, ohg ba gur punve va juvpu fur’f frngrq — n pbzzba zrgubq bs vanavzngvat crbcyr jubfr anzrf nera’g bgurejvfr ihyarenoyr

Why didn’t you translate that for us??

the C-remover is not being used on Andra, but on the chair in which she’s seated — a common method of inanimating people whose names aren’t otherwise vulnerable