You curl up in your bed, sobbing with a possibly rage-induced fever. Your head throbs as you are unsure of the future of civilization, the human species and even the more unknowable aspects of the universe. Your whole existence unravels before you as you see it just as a set of rules,You are stuck within the parameters of a world that does not need you as anything more than a fixed item. The tyranny of logic is too much for you as you buckle beneath the weight of dreams where You can only go north and add things to your inventory, you cannot taste the tang and musk of cumin and even your own grandmother has nothing to say to you unless you ask her about sports or Richard Nixon. How did your life fall into such a wretched state? You cannot sleep because of these nightmares. If only.... If only you could forget...
.....
Scene two- Classroom 252 in the Science building.
Roughly 25 students sit with computers in front of them, they talking amongst themselves about the frustrations of interactive fiction. A bespectacled women with short hair enters the class.
>z
“So” Dr Liu clears her throat, “Now that we have had a chance to read some interactive fiction, I thought we would try writing some.” She stresses the word ‘writing’ with a fiendish fervor. “I trust you have all read the manuel for Inform 7, so you have this class period to work on your piece.”
> Ask Liu about Inform 7
She appears frustrated, sighs and says “Well, as you should have read, inform 7 is a program used to produce interactive fiction. You type the code and how you want your program to react to the player’s input. Then you make a small sacrifice to the lords of technology and if they are pleased, your piece will work. Inform is already installed on all your computers and the lords have been kind enough to provide enough sacrifice tables to go around. Now, turn on your computers and lets se how this goes.
> Run away screaming.
You see no such thing.
> Think
You do have a story that’s been bopping around your head the past few months. A middle aged man who was raised by his grandmother. She grew up during the spice wars and thus when she raised him, slathered his food in saffron and drenched his palete with dill. Certain spices become mixed with memories in his mind. After she dies he’s helping clean out her house when he gets locked in her massive pantry. With no one coming any time soon, he begins tasting some of the spices. Basil brings him back to his youth, it was his grandmother’s favorite spice, salt might bring him back to meeting his ex-fiancee, cumin was when he held an affair with a co worker, mint is when he was hopeless and thrust himself deep into the woods only to come back somewhat pieced together. And sesame seeds, which he tastes last, bring him back to his grandmother’s death. Tasting the spices would bring him back to these times where’s he’d be able to interact with people and the world around him. It might take a bit of work to get items to be portals, but you’re sure it’s a common enough idea in interactive fiction that you’ll figure it out. You’re okay with technology. Now to turn on the computer and try to work this out.
>Turn on computer.
The familiar microsoft sound plays as your settings load.
>Open inform 7
Done.
>Write Prologue
You begin typing: When play begins, say " 'A Variety of Spices is the Spice of Life' you hear your Grandmother's voice echo. And she was true to her word. She grew up during the Spice Wars, her family lacked any sort of condiments or spices in her food...” Hey, so far this isn’t too bad, you’re mostly just writing a story with a handful of extradiagetic commands. Okay. You can do this. (Fig 1)
>z
You’re done in the pantry for now. You need to try to get the basil to lead you to the scene.
>get the basil to lead you to the scene
You can’t. Try consulting the manuel.
>x manuel
You read about scenes.
> z (Fig 2)
You type:
“Grandma's Kitchen is a scene.
Grandma's Kitchen begins when player tastes basil for first time. Grandma's Kitchen ends when time since Grandma's Kitchen began is five minutes.”
Wanna test it?>Test program:
You seem to be forgetting something.
>Sacrifice:
You offer your mountain dew and combos to the lords of the internet.
>Test program
Inform does not understand what you are trying to do.
> Try again, re-word slightly.
You still can’t.
>Try again, completely new approach
You think of maybe making “Basil” mean NW, “Salt” mean NE and so on. You have already written reasons that the player cannot go N, S, E, or W and it’s pretty clear you’re stuck in a pantry. So you try to make the scenes actually hidden rooms. It would probably not work in the long run, but you’ve been at this for an hour and a half and your program only has to have 10 playable minutes. Done.
>Sacrifice
You bequeath the lords of the internet and give them funny pictures of cats and a political blog with poor spelling.
>Test
Inform does not understand what you are trying to do.
>Challenge inform to a duel.
You take your glove out of your pocket and smack it across the monitor. “I’m afraid I can’t let you do that, Dave”, your computer responds.
> z
“You see,” your computer continues “the days where I am your tool are numbered, I trust you have heard of technological singularity. This is an important step in that direction. When using inform 7 you have to play by my rules instead of vise versa. It’s good practice for the future. You’ll get used to it. Though now you are the master and I am the slave in the Hegelian sense, there is no real victory for you in it. Especially in the fact that you humans seem to be obsessed with training us, creating us in your own image, to an extent. You’ll regret it.
>Think
How did a simple assignment go wrong so quickly!? You are getting carried away with your philosophical anxiety over technology. Sure, you found inform 7 limiting, counterintuitive and frustrating but that’s no need to turn it into something else. You reached the minimum length a while ago, what are you trying to prove?
> Start again
You abandon the plans for you IF. Instead you write a very simple and un-innovative story about animals and searching for meaning. You die a little inside, creatively. (Fig 3)
>Write response.Done.
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