Infocommunicado

by Luke Jackson

You are standing on a gentle green slope overlooking a plain white house. There is a mailbox standing near the gravel walkway leading up to the house. The mailbox is open.

Your third eye is growing.

> what?

I’m sorry, I don’t understand you.

> i

You are carrying a backpack and an elvish sword. You cannot tell if the sword is glowing in sunlight.

Your third eye is growing.

> look in backpack

You see a shaker of salt.

Bleary and encrusted, your third eye opens to see darkness where there is light. The fluttering butterflies grow the clawed, leathery wings of bats. The soft soil underneath becomes hard with broken human skulls.

> I’m sorry, I don’t understand you.

Ditto.

You are now able to perceive hirsute tentacles, miles long and twitching sensually, dangling from the malevolent black sun hanging overhead. The blindly groping tentacles fondle your exposed skin, leaving a slimy residue.

> OK, that’s just gross.

I don’t think you have a proper appreciation of how this parser interface thing is supposed to work. If I need to step in and tell you how to do things, it’s really going to hurt with the suspension of disbelief.

I’ve left some juicy morsels for you to go after: the white house, the mailbox, now a slimy tentacle. Pick one and go with it.

> climb tentacle

Okay, you asked for it.

It seems like you have been climbing the moist, gently twitching pseudopod for hours. The black orb has grown in size, and you seem to have shrunken: smaller, paler, and weaker than you were before. Dangling in space, you can hear the beating of the great wings of massive carrion eaters, but cannot make out any shapes or forms. You also hear the wet sucking sounds of feeding.

The white house is a tiny blur below subsumed in blackness. You really should have gone for the white house. I made some things especially interesting for you in there. Just more wasted effort on my part.

> pour salt into third eye

That’s a surprising choice. Are you taking my game seriously?

> maybe

Very well....

Your third eye begins foaming and bubbling, an open red wound on your forehead. The pain is literally blinding; you lose your grip on the slick pseudopod and begin sliding, then hurtling through the darkness to the peaceful white house below. As your spine cracks along the peak of its rooftop, you regret that you never had the chance to explore the many interesting things that must lie inside the house.

* * *

You have died.

Your score is 0 out of 7,328, which earns you the rank of Pathetic.

I really don’t think you took that very seriously at all. Let’s play again:

You are standing on a gentle green slope overlooking a plain white house. There is a mailbox standing near the gravel walkway leading up to the house. The mailbox is open.

Your third eye is growing.

> quit

I’m sorry, I don’t understand you.