Hokay, having warmed up with Zork Zero, it's time for a more thoughtful, less puzzle based IF game. I thought it would be difficult to play on a modern computer but didn't realize that Lost Treasures 2 came on a cdrom, so all I needed was an interpretive program and bam, we're in business! From the manual: In this game we play PRISM (aka Perry Simm), who was programmed by Abraham Perelman. We're newly aware of ourselves as an AI instead of a normal 20 year old, starting out life as an adult. The game itself comes with some short vignettes of Perelman discussing the creation of PRISM and Perry's early life, and a map of the town of Rockvil, South Dakota with a small selection of ads from local businesses. The closest rendition to the map I could find is: Play will involved exploring this town in different simulated time periods and recording items of interest until Perelman has enough data for us to move forward. There's a lot of flexibility in what we do and see, especially after the first decade, so there is a lot of reader input possible in how we proceed. Also note that I haven't played this game in almost two decades, so I don't remember anything. This is going to be very close to playing blind, wee!
Part I We've got some time before the simulation starts, but not enough to look at everything. What should we check out? We can also go into library mode and read people's personal files, if we're into that kind of thing.
Will we be able to check these things out later? If we can't (Or at least won't be able to for a while), it's probably a good idea to prioritize a bit. I imagine getting an idea of who we're working with using people's personal files might be a good way to start. The WNNF might also prove useful for establishing the current state of things, even if the manual's introduction already gave us a pretty good idea.
Yes, I believe we can check things out later. I'll pop into the news feed and then peruse the sekrit files in the library. We wait. Hmm. Let's look at the files in Library Mode. Oh man. So, read Perelman's personal files, which totally isn't a violation of his privacy, bone up on current events, read about the plan we're testing or read about ourselves?
Well, I said we should get an idea of the people we're working with, so let's check out Perelman's personal files. AIs have no need for this so-called human privacy! After that, if we have time, we could read about the plan. It'll be good to have an idea of what we're doing, I imagine.
Our whole life was a lie, Perelman can share some of his life with us. That last one looks extra juicy, doesn't it? Aww, it's about us! Also, I spent five minutes looking up Honnurth before catching on the the 2007 copyright was in the future when this game was written. Derp! I.. think we can view the cafeteria. Unfortunately this list was for two days ago. I sense that all is not right between Vera Gold and Perelman. This was partially written weeks ago. I wonder if awakening us early caused him to re-think his resignation? We have a bit more time, apparently, so let's look up a little bit about the Plan. I exit out of library mode. And, this is the copy protection! There's a table where I have to look up color + number and give a number response. Luckily, I totally already found the manual, so off we go. Okay, here we are! I can turn the recorder on and off and any time, and have my task list. Are there any preferences for (a) order of things we experience? (b) where to eat a meal (c) what public transportation to take (d) anything to do off list? I'll wait a few hours and then start talking to people and looking at things.
Derp. I blame Soli-chan and her revival of the Magical Diary LP: I played AMFV and then got distracted trying to get an ending with MD instead of posting. So, here's us exploring the current time zone: So we live down on Southway, somewhere. It's south of the park, so I travel around Southway until I find a likely building. Right. I need to record being in my house. We know from the fiction that came with the game that Jill is our lady friend. She is apparently also quite talented and a nice person - we know this because she made us birthday cake one time. She is probably referencing that we are allegedly a writer, and apparently in the future writers don't write on vintage typewriters, they write on old word processors. I'm picturing this on our desk: We are such hipsters. Nice view! This is probably enough of a record, so I turn it off and continue to seek adventure. Jill doesn't say anything about my lack of conversation and random wanderings. Then again, she's not real. :( If you try to enter a building you're not supposed to, you get: However, I soon find a church! Sounds like things are going well with the plan, then, overall. This also seems to show that things are going well. I'm getting that weird horror movie itch, though. When is the monster going to come out and start stabbing people causing social unrest?
While we're here, we're next to a restaurant.. Wow, he's kind of snooty, isn't he? Okay, I'm a big veggie fan in general, but soybean salads really CAN be tasty. Tasty but probably not $65 tasty. Maybe that's just inflation? … I forgot to record that. DAMMIT. But there's another place to eat in town and it's not like this money is real, right? I walk to the city hall (it's on the map!) and find an official. See! Everything is going.. just.. fine. That's obviously where this game is going. It turns out the Cinema is east of the newspaper dispenser. Hmm, if the ticket is only $15 that salad must have been made of gold. The movie is.. decent, and apparently we're too good for movies because we only sit through 15 minutes of it. At this point we get the warning that our buffer is half full. When it's completely full we have to wait until Perelman reviews our information before we can return to this age and get more data. Tightly run explorations can get it all in one run but I don't know if I'll make it. I still need to: ride public transportation visit a power-generating facility attend a court in session I've seen a few Tube stations around, but otherwise I will need to doublecheck my map and poke around to find the other things.
Oh, we're in the Tube! Probably less complicated, though. This has nothing to do with our quest list, but 1) It’s a good description of the downtown area and I’m interested to see how it changes over time, and; 2) I really want to go to the 19th floor of the Infotech building and see if I can pick up a t-square. I enter each building at random to discover: se- sw - . Right, we read about overcrowded jail cells. Still, looks clean and orderly. nw - Oh, right! Time passes here and it is currently 6:06pm. I probably shouldn’t have eaten and done the movie first. I’ll travel and see if I can get to the power facility yet. And I finally find a ‘bad’ side of town! what else to do, so I .. guess I should try sleeping until morning? I head back to my apartment. Awww. Why is the rubber duckie in the crib? Silly baby, this is a bath toy. mask... of... baby.. fat wat I try to sleep and I’m told I never go to bed this early, so I wait in the living room with Jill. Unfortunately I can't seem to engage Jill in any real conversation. After waiting another hour or two.. You know this is a simulation because the baby didn't wake me up. Ever. I hope my fake baby is okay with his baby fat mask. :( Okay, let’s go get some breakfast! Simon’s was too snooty, let’s try another place. I find a restaurant on Main & Wicker. Seiriously? Gah. At least I remember to start my recorder. I sit down, order another soybean salad and then.. I’m empty handed.. reading up, I left everything on the bureau. Dammit. Can’t pay for the meal. And then the buffer is full.
Uh oh, we didn't attend the court session. If the buffer is full, what do we do now? Also, things definitely do seem a little too calm. I'm looking forward to seeing just how badly things go wrong eventually.
Well, I didn’t get everything, but I’m still a fresh-faced AI. I’m sure I’ll get better! So.. I also do tax auditing now? Sounds.. boring. Unfortunately, I think Perelman has already left for the night. Guess it means I can finish going through the files now! Will pass through the news first: He sounds.. friendly. It was a biased question, obviously, but it’s obvious we’re not supposed to be thinking of this church/cult thing as a good thing. I enter Library Mode, but before I can read anything I get a message: He was apparently not gone! Maybe at dinner? Next time I’ll check the cafeteria before wandering off. I’m going to peek into CURRENT.EVENTS this time: Eep. Okay, that explains that newscast. Also, this seems like a weird ruling. New religious sect squats in a place and the government rules they're allowed to keep it? I hope they appeal and win. We wait around a little bit until Perelman calls us into the office. Look, dude, if you gave me more RAM this would be much easier. Jeez. We're the future, I need upgrades! The court in session is really boring - we can't interact at all. But I turn the recorder on and off so Perelman won't be so disappointed in us. Having failed to record a fancy meal TWICE now, we hunt around for a fast food place and find: So the meal was cheaper AND it had meat. Nice! I've had decent soy burgers before but I'm having difficulty picturing as providing good texture for a burger. After we eat we end the recording and hop back into real time. Another short wait and then he calls us into his office again. And thus the game ends.
Just Kidding! We are still looking for the fan and any objects that may be approaching it. This part is actually not very interesting: I get some ascii shapes and assign them Broken Forum words. Grimwold is vaguely pleased with each answer so I imagine they don’t count for anything. And now I've caught up to my notes. I know from the game description they're going to let me play in later years, but apparently the government is going to implement the Plan in the meantime? I'm.. sure.. this is going to go well.
When the buffer is full we have to let Perelman go through it and then make disappointed faces at us if we didn't get everything 'the experts' asked for, but I don't think there's any other penalty - I will probably find out!
Hmm, keeping busy. Well, there aren’t any interesting files to read and the news is boring, so, let’s see if there’s anything else to see in the simulation mode. Aha! There was something about data correlations. Let’s look at the new stuff! So, there’s no official list but we can go down through the same list again and see what has changed. I’ll wander a bit to get the flavor of the time. In the courthouse: Well.. that’s worse. I’ll record that. We take a ride in a tubecar: Yeah, I’ll record this too. It's not out of control but not pristine like 10 years ago. I try to get into an unauthorized building: Well, he’s slightly less polite but not too bad. We go back to the same church elder: Okay, so things are not going as well as the last age but not completely gross yet. What else should we explore before we show Perelman the new evidence? Want me to just to try to down the list again? Explore any other areas on the map?
I think it's probably best to try down the list again to see how things are slowly going downhill. Still, some exploration wouldn't hurt. We should see how the downtown area has changed and I'm curious if the "bad" side of town has started to increase in size. It might also be nice to see if there are any parts of the city we haven't visited yet. It sounds like the Church of God's Word will be at the center of things going downhill. I still have no clue how they managed to get a ruling in their favor when they had no legal right to the building they took over. Maybe they bribed the judge.
What I've been up to: Lots and lots of cosmos at the holiday party. They went down an ice luge! Not ordering them was like denying alcohol a fun trip to the water park! Anyway, now back to distopian futures! Our list was: We have chatted with a church official, attended a court in session, and ridden some form of public transportation. Let us continue exploring! Walking back to the newspaper dispenser, we notice: Church of God’s Word! Let’s go say hi. This image makes me feel pretty spiritual, sure: Ooh, literature! This fictional religion feels like it is taking from both Mormonism and Scientology, with this Word of God from space that only the top people in the church and interpret. It's safe to say their interpretations don't have a lot to do with the poor, what with this shiny church and what we see later. After recording the church and pamphlet for Perelman, we head northwest to Bodanski square and buy a newspaper. We all know newspapers are dying, but back in the 80s they didn’t really know that the internet was going to replace them. I wonder where/if people get their news now. Okay, so I’m a little concerned: If the business folks are telling me that farms need subsidies I would normally just brush it off but if they’re using things like ‘falling aquifers’ and ‘acid rain’ as the reasons I’m SUPER concerned - normally they would shy from such things, right, as it would mean more environmental legislation that’s bad for business. Things to know about euthanasia in the 80s: World Federal Right to Die association forms in 1980, Pope John Paul II said it was bad around the same time; and in 1984 the AMA said in some cases removing life support would be the right thing to do. Acid rain - in 1980 the US government formed a group to do an 18 year assessment of the impact of acid rain, and there was a lot of environmental rhetoric about this for a while. When was the last time this was discussed in the news as a terrifying thing? Google Trends tells us that acid rain has been a steadily declining thing for a while now. I start walking south to the gross part of town and this goes by so quickly I can’t record it: What? I know I can exit and restart to get the recording, but we’ll see what else we can find first. Getting to the bad part of town: That soup kitchen is definitely new.
Reviewing my old notes, it looks like this used to be a factory. We head southeast to: Wait wait. Coal-burning is totally new. Things seem to not be doing totally well over here. We check our driver’s license and apparently we’re still living in the same one bedroom apartment... which I guess makes sense because we;re a writer so even with a 10 year old son we can’t afford a bigger place. We’re probably still living in a safer area of town. We say hi to our wife and kids and then: :( :( :( I think there's a news brief on the origin of the BSF, I should read that when I'm done here. Don't cry, fictional wife! Interesting! The first painting was of our honeymoon cottage, and was a watercolor, btw. I head out to continue exploring and maybe take a meal. Downtown looks the same, so not everything has changed. Next: tourism in my hometown!
Downtown looks the same, so not everything has changed. Heading toward the burger place, I pass the Halley Museum and decide to check it out: Well, this is still nice. Good! I dip back to the Musem in 2041 and the only difference is that it was crowded. Have we ever been to Huang Hall? Also still nice. Ten years ago it was hosting a publishing convention. Walking around we also find: 2041 tank: 2051 tank: Not an improvement. And a zoo! This is the same in both times, so that's good. We finally get to the Burger Meister and.. it’s closed for the night. It’s 8:37pm, guys! That’s a totally normal late dinner time! Hmm. We begin the trek home, when: It’s 9:00pm. Curfew. That’s.. that’s not good. I’m going to mark this in the Not Good Category. I try to get home, but.. We turn on the recorder and look around. Gross! Okay, this is starting to set off red flags.
It’s late in the evening and Perelman is out of the office, so we’re going to do a little bit of light reading: The USSR did not dissolve until 1991, so the whole Cold War thing was still a Pretty Big Deal. Also, I found this awesome image: Preventing something this size from entering the US seems like an impossible task. I guess that's why our apartment was searched for radiation - that's the only way to hope to detect these things, and if they're properly shielded they'd never find them. There’s also a TAX.STUDY article, which tells me that the ‘underground’ economy of nonreported and therefore untaxed income is rising and is connected with higher tax rates. 2030 data says that about 36% of income in nonreported and that the Top Tax Rate is 80%. They estimate that the Top Tax Rate will be 96% by 2038. Wat. Are we in Flatheadia? However, it doesn’t break it down by income tax brackets, so I don’t know who is being hit by the highest tax rates and what the tax burden is for the average citizen. Infocom, how could you not know this would be important data? Especially with all of the tax cut / fiscal cliff stuff going on right now. I also explore the PRISM.INTERFACES directory, which tells me a bit about different parts of PRISM..er.. myself. Most of these are ‘beyond interface control’, but.. HVAC.CONTROLLER gives me some commands. Nice! Will save these for if the pesky humans are being naughty. I'm starting to feel like a proper AI and not just a virtual tourist. JANITORIAL.CONTROLLER also gives me commands, so I can change the cleaning times between 8:00pm and 11:30pm. This excites me a little bit less, but good to know. TRAFFIC.COMPUTER also lets me morning and evening rush hour times. Oh man. If these pesky people tick me off I can RUIN their lives. I will start taking notes on behavior. And apparently Perelman doesn’t get to work until a little after 10:00am. I don't know Perelman, that seems a little late. Do I need to adjust the morning traffic rush hour times for you? I do like that he just trusts that I’m not trying to show him porn, here. Actually, I wonder if I COULD... hmm. We do have a virtual wife. And it's text, so as long as I don't give a corresponding image... no. Bad clethra. An hour later.. He says ‘no storage’ because the official game statements from him are all stored in library mode under PRISM.MESSAGES for us to review. I’m going to stop here, except for entering the simulation at 2061: Spoilers: the future doesn’t look awesome. Tomorrow I will attempt to go through the list again, prioritizing the stuff we didn't get to do last time and then checking for differences in the places we've been checking in on. Let me know if there's anything in particular we should check out, though!
Sounds like prioritizing the stuff we didn't get to do and checking for differences is a good plan. I'm actually curious if the Church of God's Word building was there in 2041 or if it was built sometime between then and 2051. I'm also going to bet that in 2061, the Church probably has an even greater influence as well, so I'd keep an eye out for that. I hope St. Michael's is still around... Well, at least this downward spiral is confined to the simulation...isn't it?
I went back and checked - in 2041 the CoGW building is an old train station. Well, it WAS a national landmark, now it's a creepy space church. 2061 - okay, here is the list again. Eating a meal in a restaurant Talking to a government official Visiting a power-generating facility Reading a newspaper Riding some form of public transportation Attending a court in session Talking to a church official Going to a movie Visiting your own home or living quarters We should go look at the movies, eat food, and talk to a government official first. Add in some random wandering, visiting tourist spots and saying hi to our virtual family and I think that will be enough data for Perelman and co. While walking toward the movie theater I notice that there’s a health care facility, so we go take a look: Switching back to 2041, it used to be: So, definitely not as nice. I also don't know if we've ever been in the Heiman Village: vs. 2041: So basically, it's a domed area that is able to be mostly self-sufficient services-wise. I'd miss the sun but I can see the appeal. Too bad it didn't age well. Trying to enter a building I don’t belong in: The Church of God’s Word looks the same, but the pamphlet is.. different. ….So, they’ve gotten more powerful and.. angry. Sounds like they’re using an impending comet visit or meteor fall to scare people into following them. No more mention of science at all. Where are the scientists saying 'no, it's just normal space stuff, not God?' I guess when we told them they didn't get to keep their science station and stopped funding space factory work they gave up on us. In my head, all of the smart science folk are living on the moon and laughing.
We get to Bodanski Square and there isn't even a newspaper dispenser there. But Simon's is nearby, so we go to get sniffed at by the Maitre d’. Our choice this time is an overpriced kelp fillet, which is the cheapest item on the menu. We have a LOT less money than before. And in keeping with tradition, I totally spaced actually recording the meal at Simon's. Hopefully we'll get enough data that I won't have to come back and do it again. East of Bodanski square: I didn’t even have time to RECORD that, but wow. Okay. Police brutality distracted by.. Inside of the cinema we can see: No, just no. This is my face right now: We’re not going to see any of those. But we record the marquee for Perelman. Circling around toward the city hall, we peek back into: There are a bunch more people here and they seem depressed. At court: Wat. Is this a morality code about uniforms or is this some kind of universal moral code. What did he/she do to earn a life sentence? Sometimes I do wish we could dig a little bit deeper. There’s no official in the City Hall, so we can’t chat with them. Let’s going to go check out our tourist zones and then say hi to Jill. Okay, the Halley Museum is closed. That’s too bad, but probably foreshadowed by the dwindling crowds. Huang Hall : I guess there isn't much else for the youth to do. Aquarium: still murky. Ooh, the bank! We spot the bank. That’s no good. In 2041 it was just 'the largest bank' in Rockvil. We pass by the fast food burger place again: So, no more meat. Also sad. I.. I wonder what the hot dogs were made of, actually. We miss recording this, too, but as soon as I start recording inside the zoo we see: Look dudes. The animals are hungry and you are presenting yourselves as opponents. We stick around for a few rounds but the animals do not take their revenge right away.
As we walk toward our apartment: Our apartments are no longer quite so nice: Also: Elevators out as usual.. I had a momentary flashback to Big Bang Theory but their lobby isn't vandalized and missing a picturephone. (1) Our child is still living in the living room. I feel like a failure of a virtual parent that we never got to move somewhere where he had his own space. Of course, how does this work? We're PRISM, really, so do we 'autpilot' through the ten year speedup like that one Adam Sandler movie with the remot control? (2) Some of his stuff is missing. Did we get robbed? I was actually trying to look out the window and failed, but this is also good to know. This is probably nicer than the view we actually have. Our virtual wife is still talented but obviously her inspirations are less likely to be happy things. We enter the kitchen to find a drink and waste time until someone comes home: Oh, this is probably bad. A religion that doesn't let you talk to non-believers? Orientation camps? Another raid, and the leader is less friendly this time. I think we’ve seen enough from here. Exiting the simulation, it’s only 12:30am, so we return to the simulation to catch and record the two harassment acts we witnessed but didn’t record the first time. In case it's not obvious, the simulation always resets to a 'beginning time' whenever we enter, so we can redo acts or put ourselves in position to record/witness things we didn't have a chance to the first time around. Also, I notice we can now also enter 40 years to the future, 2071. But our buffer is also over halfway full, so we’ll wait for Perelman to return and flush it for us so we have plenty of space for the next adventure. We wait until a little after 10 when Perelman gets in and after reviewing the recordings: Well, yes, that was the plan. If you’d given us a way to save our own recordings to disk instead of continuing to enforce this review policy we could have waited until all data is gathered, but I suspect 2071 is not going to be the "bundle of sunshine" 2061 was. Anything you want me to go back and poke at in 2061? Anything I should be sure to hit in 2071? Here's the opening room: Abandoned car lots and no more Tubes. Hmm. Sounds like 2071 will be fun!
The Church of God's Word is still in good shape, and there's a new pamphlet: There's a lot of things that make me upset. I don't want to post an image that's disrespectful of the callbacks to concentration camps and other things, so let me express my opinions about my church with this: What! We didn’t even look at what we were carrying. Well, I guess no meals for us today. "The Triumph of Man" was originally a World's Fair display in the 1960s, going through the 'ages of man'. I think this films is supposed to be a descendant of Birth of a Nation. On they way to our place: Serfs.. serfs? Really? We're in the super-future and we have.. serfs? Do they look like this? That must be one of the things stolen off of us. Alas. :( No one answers when we push our buzzer, and as we've been mugged we cannot get in without our key. Let's try restarting the simulation and see we can avoid the mugging.
We re-enter and are immediately mugged again so I say screw this and go on another tourism run. This isn't the church we've visited, but another one. Another building that isn't destroyed, but it shows religious plays, so we're not surprised. From the only bank to the only bank+Church controlled. While dorking around on the street, waiting for the aquarium to open: It was a one turn event so it didn't get recorded, but still very creepy. It looks like the Burgerworld has been converted: We visit the Zoo: I need more Grumpy Cat "No" pictures. It's gone from just dirty to dirty and filled with dead fish. Walking around town: So many not work safe pictures, but I will give you this instead: We try to get into an insurance building: We visit the Indoor City: And then we visit the "bad" part of town, just to see how much worse it is: The soup kitchen has closed! And there are now.. execution matches? We wander back to the core of town to visit more buildings and check out as much as possible without visiting our poor virtual wife. Wat. Government services only open 1 hour a day, rations for food. This is definitely not an improvement. We also witness: Good, because we don't have papers. Oh look, our old friend the Courthouse! The only kind of tattooing I can imagine is the number system, but all of the images that come up are Holocaust tattoos and it feels disrespectful to use them as an example for this game. At the same time, I wonder if we can figure out how to cheat on our Food Allowance. It would make a very good recording, I think. And then our buffer is full. It's the middle of the night, so we'll take a quick break to read Senator Ryder's speeches. But first, here's a list of things I did not want to search for images of, but did: EXTINCT signs Prostitutes in red (found a happy solution for that, though) Rivers on fire prison tattoos
Let’s read files: Have you ever read The Dead Zone? It's a Stephen King novel about a man who has some psychic capabilities and realizes that a particular politician, although seemingly wholesome and all-American, will cause TERRIBLE THINGS to happen should he be allowed to live. Here's the trailer with Christopher Walken: We derp around in the system until Perelman shows up and get him to watch our tapes. . Unfortunately, we don’t have enough data from 2071 yet to make 2081 happen. We have to go record more data!
We finish up our tourist run and then go visit Jill. I never turn off the record and either we're lucky with not getting mugged or that's the magic pill to keep the muggers away. We discover more racist grossness while wandering around: Check out what Huang Hall hosts now: I imagine the trophy to be a golden axe, sort of like: We see more of the class divide: And check out the new wealthy estate area: We even find a school! Oh good, a Church school. Okay, I've built up some bravery, let's go visit Jill. We don't get mugged all the way to the apartment and make it inside: Oh, poor Jill. It's been 10 years since our virtual son walked out on us to join the Church and the world is so terrible I can imagine it would be hard for her to find inspiration for art. We take a moment to recover, and then.. Pardon me I'm going to be over here having feelings for a moment. We exit the simulation and make Perelman look at the recordings. He tells us the same thing, again, that we need data from 2081. I can only imagine how fun this will be.
I almost don't want to see 2081. 2071 is already disturbing enough. Also, why does Perelman think things will turn around? At this point, the Church of God's Word has pretty clearly gained complete control and things have been going steadily downhill. I'm guessing St. Michael's is completely gone at this point as well. You can't have altruism in a world full of crazies, after all. Also, yeah, I'm definitely seeing how The Dead Zone applies here. EDIT: Also, wow. That scene with Jill...Let's hope that this future can still be averted.
JohnStargazer - if I were PRISM and able to initiate God Mode on the simulations, I would go back to 2041 and start kicking heads until later simulations stopped sucking. In fact, as an AI who is obviously unbiased and just after knowledge I would like them to start building my mobile Head Kicking unit, attached to a drone I control that goes and kicks heads in the real world for me. So, one of the questions I have in my head: are the terrible things happening because of the Plan or because of the Church of God's Word? Or are they happening because the person who implements the Plan was connected to the Church? Ryder seems like an obviously troublesome politician, and although I don't think current religious politicians are anywhere near the uncomplicated True Evil of our antagonists here or in Dead Zone I still wonder what is it that causes us to splinter toward fundamentalist religion in times of trouble, and why it was so obvious in the 80's that this was a direction humanity would lean. Anyway, 2081 ahead!
Ah, we should have given more heed to the sign, I guess. We didn't die! Score! Death two! They look cute but I don't want to get eaten. We try entering one of the wrecked buildings from the starting point: Okay, that's enough death or near death, I think. We turn in the tapes. Luckily it's not quite quitting time for Perelman yet, so we get our recordings processed right away. That is not a good quote - are folks not going to believe our simulations now that we're predicting bad stuff?
The World News Network Feed is still down, so we tool around Library Mode looking for things to read. Nothing new has popped up, but we get: Ooh! We’re getting power over the news! I want my newscaster image to be like this: Also, Perelman checks in: Uh oh. Folks didn’t believe us. Why reject these recordings when you accepted the first? We derp around, watch people eating food in the cafeteria, until: That's interesting. We'll talk more about this at the end. Right now National Guard feels ominous, right? OMG it worked. Awesome! I think.. I think Perelman just noticed my little record light was on. Go team us! Perelman respect +1. Always liked a man who couldn’t help but be snarky in the face of insanity. Seriously, though. A lot of creeps who can’t take care of themselves get a little hurt? Head kicker, get developed faster! This is the games way of hinting that we should be recording this. If I hadn’t already been fantasizing about my real world reach I may have had to restore and redo, but luckily I am already to the 'cackling' stage of AI-hood. And then something happens, and if you don’t know it’s happening Bad Things happen.
Yup, 2081 was just as bad as I thought. I'm guessing there really isn't much else to see there since you get killed pretty quickly. Looks like we discovered how to set humanity back hundreds of years in just fifty. Also, I'm betting that the answer regarding why things are getting so bad is because of the Plan, which I imagine is truly intended to help the Church come to power. The Church already has powerful friends in the government like Ryder as well as whatever judge it was that let them keep that science station, so I wouldn't be surprised if that was their plan (No pun intended). EDIT: I guess I posted too soon. That last post pretty much confirms this. My respect for Perelman really went up after that as well. The guy isn't about to back down now.
We know something bad is happening and while I don't like the National Guard I don't think it's them. We have one way we can wait for an attack, and that's to scope out the roof. Ha! I know from reading that (a) my maintenance area is in the delta sector and (b) I have a WAY of dealing with pesky humans. Okay, let's see if we can now catch these bastards in the act. Suck on this, Asimov's first law! Aww.. I guess I didn't kill anyone. Still harmed them, so I maintain my 'suck it' status. I return to interface mode until my "3-4 hours" are up, and then WNN Feeder shows up on my list of active ports. Oh, sweet, sweet justice. HEAD KICK MACHINE.. Awww... I am too dangerous for my head kick machine, so instead I will get to live in a Utopian future. I'll finish up with what we see in the last simulation and then I have some ranting to do.
2081 is basically 100% dying, 100% of the time, unless you're previously associated with the gangs/tribe that are already in place. And with the weird way the simulation works, you auto-pilot through time and apparently don't really DO anything, so you either don't have the connections you need to survive or you just land in the wrong area for your auto-piloted life. I have some ... issues... with how they decided to create the AI, which I'll get into in a minute, but I feel comfortable putting Perelman in the 'science geek who got excited about a solution and didn't consider all of the ramifications'.. which I guess makes us Frankenstein?
We know what to do with newspapers! We're going to space. Cool! Okay, so in 1985 there was about 4.5 billion people on Earth. If we're only offworlding 7 million people a year, we'd have to have a LOT more than 2 billion folks unless something devastated world population between now and then. Hmm. We wander what is an admittedly a TOTALLY SWEET penthouse apartment until: So, not a wealthy estate then. Good! I am not sure how to take this. The river is NOT on fire. Solar collectors seem much better than reactor/coal power stations! So, I will admit I was worried that Mitchell had not been born in this reality. Wasn't sure where Infocom was going to take this.
And that is AMFV. There are other areas of town we never got to explore (which in 2071 can end in you being stoned by children, which is awesome). But there are some really interesting questions in here that kind of bug me now, especially considering the age of the game. Part I: the AI Creating an AI that is human and then telling him that his whole life is a lie seems like.. a terrible idea. After all, you have just told him all of his emotional connections, the things that cause him to be invested in life and care about consequences.. aren't real. How do you prevent the AI from killing everyone? That's probably why they made us take psych tests, but still this seems incredibly cruel. Why is our 'reward' pushing us back into the fake world with the fake people? Do they remove our memories of being an AI? Will they 'kill' us when we reach a normal end of life? Will they tamper with the simulation so that we never die? What about computer hardware upgrades? The current hardware only allowed the simulation to go at 'one minute per minute', but eventually the CPU/ram upgrade will allow the simulation to run much faster. Will they let that happen or will they keep the machine old to prevent the speed? What happens when they want to test the next big plan? Do they call PRISM back in or create another Frankenstein? Part II: the Plan As someone who has only really been paying attention to politics for the last ten years, it was surprising to me to perceive what seemed to be a hyperbolic and simplified version of some recent politics put up as the vilified plan. I can believe that deregulation was around in the 80s but I was surprised at the religious fundamentalism that was pared with it - was this something that was readily apparent or did Infocom just.. guess really well? I was frustrated, especially at the end, at the simplification of everything. I don't really believe that any one plan will create a utopian future of any kind, and the unwillingness of the game to give a less than 100% blissful future took away some of their credibility. I also wished I had seen more of an active 'anti-Church' movement. V for Vendetta was coming out in comic form when this was out and there are other cultural sources as well that model the behavior of people pushing against distopian futures; we seem to see tired resignation in everyone we talked to and the only rioting we heard about was from church serfs destroying a non-CoGW temple But all in all I really enjoyed the game that made me think so much. If you come across it, it's worth it just to explore each age more deeply.
