We can't take that with you!We can't take that with you!We can't take that with you!We can only take objects.We can't take things from that!We can't open that.We can't open that.We can't open anything with that.We can only close objects.We can't close that.We can't close anything with that.We can't lock that.We can't lock that.We can't lock anything with that.We can't lock that.We can't lock that.We can't lock anything with that.We can't eat that!We can't drink that!We can only throw objects.We can only throw objects.We can't throw anything at that.We can't be serious.We can't throw anything to that.Don't be silly.We can't throw anything in that.We can't break that.We can't push that.We can't push that.We can use only objects to push things with.We can't hug that.We can't touch that.We can't touch that.We can use only objects to touch with.We can't examine that!We can't examine that!We can't look inside that.We can't search that!We can't read that.We can't put that anywhere.We can't put that anywhere.We can't put anything in that.We can't put that anywhere.We can't put anything near that.We can't put that anywhere.We can't put anything behind that.We can't put that anywhere.We can't put anything on that.We can't put that anywhere.We can't put anything under that.We can only give away objects.We can't give things to that!We can't say that.We can't say that.We can't talk to that.We can't ask about that.We can't talk to that.We can't ask about that.We can't talk to that.We can't ask about that.We can't talk to that.We can't talk to that.We can't attack that.We can't attack that.We can't attack anything with that!We can't shoot at that.We can't shoot at that.We can't shoot that.We can't shoot at that.We can't shoot that.We can't shoot at that.We can't kiss that!We can't turn that.We can't turn that on.We can't turn that on.We can't switch that on.We can't switch that on.We can't turn that off.We can't turn that off.We can't switch that off.We can't switch that off.We can't listen to that!We can't smell that!We can't knock on that!We can't jump on that!We're having trouble doing this.We're having trouble climbing this.We're finding it difficult to sit in this.We're finding it difficult to sit on this.We can't wear that.We can't wear that.We can't wear that.We can't remove that.We can't remove that.We can't remove that.Taken.We can't take that!We've already got that - you're wearing that.We've already got that.That is too heavy to lift.Dropped.We aren't carrying that.We can't take things from yourself!We takethe $1$$.The $2won't let you takethe $1$$.We already havethe $1$$.is now open.The $o is now open.We can't open that!It's already open.We can't openthe $1withthe $2$$.We don't havethe $2$$.is now closed.The $o is now closed.We can't close that.It is already closed.We can't closewiththe $1 withthe $2$$.We don't havethe $2$$.is now locked.The $o is now locked.We can't lock that!It's already locked.is now locked.The $o is now locked.We can't lock that!It's already locked.We don't havethe $2$$.is now unlocked.The $o is now unlocked.We can't unlock that!It's already unlocked.is now unlocked.The $o is now unlocked.We can't unlock that!It's already unlocked.We don't havethe $2$$.We eatthe $o$$.We can't eat that!We drinkthe $o$$.That is not drinkable.We can't throw very far, completely unskilled in the acts of hurling;ends up on the ground.the $1 ends up on the ground.We haven't got that!arcs in the air like a misguided angel! The $1 arcs in the air like a misguised angel!lands nowhere near $2.The $1 lands nowhere near the intended target.We haven't got that!We are carryingthe $2$$!Done.We haven't got that!Now, that would be a good trick!We breakthe $1$$.It would be improper for us to break that. We don't know how we'd repair it again.We pushthe $1$$.We can't push that.Usingyou pushthe $2 you pushthe $1$$.We can't push that.We touchthe $1$$.We can't touch that.We hugthe $1$$.Custom dictates that you do not embrace this person.We touchwiththe $1 withthe $2$$.We can't touch that.It doesn't make sense to touch something with itself.There is nothing special aboutthe $o$$.We can't examinethe $o$$.We can't look insidethe $o$$.We find nothing of interest.We can't searchthe $o$$!We readthe $1$$.There is nothing written onthe $1$$.Dropped.We haven't got that.Done.We haven't gotthe $1$$!We can't put something into itself!Naaah. I'd rather just putthemitdown here.We haven't gotthe $1$$!We already havethe $o$$!We givetothe $1 tothe $2$$.We don't havethe $1$$.No one's listening.We shout at air.We shout and shout until nothing's left.Our vocal cords quiver; no one's running through the landscape to bring us cool water.Echoes echo into us. Words (not words you SAID) resound back into us. Our voice falls back into the air like birds unwittingly falling from the sky.No comment.$o? We're not sure that saying such a word aloud makes the air any different.doesn't seem interested.The $2 doesn't seem interested.We can't talk to that.says "I don't know anything aboutThe $1 says "I don't know anything aboutthem!"that!"We can't talk to that."I don't think I need to know aboutthe $2," saysthe $1$$.We can't talk to that.looks at us, seemingly wondering if we have anything specific to talk about.The $1 looks at us, seemingly wondering if we have anything specific to talk about.We can't talk to that.Violence is not the answer.Violence is not the answer.We don't have that object to attack with.No point attacking anything with that!We need to specify what to shoot at.We need to specify what you want to shootwith.the $o with.We need to specify what you want to shootwith.the $o with.Violence is not the answer.We don't have that.We can't shoot anything with that.Violence is not the answer.We don't have that.We can't shoot anything with that.Well, if you must!We kissthe $1$$.avoids our advances.The $o avoids our advances.We turn on$$.the $o.We can't turn that on.It's already on.We turn offthe $o$$.We can't turn that off.It's already off.We listen tothe $1$$.We hear nothing unusual.We smell nothing unusual.We knock onthe $1$$.We need to specify what you want to knock on.We jump onthe $1$$.We rest for a few seconds and get back up.We jump up and down.We enter the place.What are we doing?We climb.We're having trouble climbing this.We sit down.We can't sit down here.We sit down.We can't sit down here.(We pickup.)$nthe $o up.)$nWe put onthe $o$$.We can't wearthe $o$$.We are already wearingthe $o$$.We can't pickup.the $o up.We take offthe $o$$.We are not wearingthe $o$$.We remove all the items you were wearing.We're not wearing anything you can remove.Interactive fiction can be tricky to get the hang of at first. But essentially, at the computer prompt (the 'greater than' sign), you type in commands that indicate how your character moves through, and interacts with, the landscape provided. Once you get the hang of the syntax, it makes much more sense. For example, MOVE BACK THROUGH GATE is incomprehensible to the parser, while a simple 'north' (abbreviated as N) makes perfect sense. All of the eight major compass directions, as well as up or down, may be utilized.$pSome other 'meta' commands include SAVE, RESTORE (to bring back a saved game), SCORE (to see how you've progressed), and QUIT.$pYou can see what you're holding by typing INVENTORY (or simply I).$pAbove all, be sure to experiment, try new things with the objects and setting. There is no final solution to this game, no condition of 'winning' or 'losing.' You can't die. So go ahead and try silly, intuitive, or ridiculous things! Just like real life (whatever that is), most things have many properties, both physical and metaphysical. Good luck!We are hintless in the hinterlands.This is my first endeavour into interactive fiction; I caught the bug relatively recently, and it wasn't too long until I wanted to try it out on my own. After writing poetry, short fiction, and (as yet unpublished!) novels for awhile now, writing IF is/was one of the most challenging, mind-bending processes I've ever come across, simply because of the nonlinearity of the authorship.$pIn case it's unclear on this point, the story of the Isolato Incident is nearly puzzleless; I wanted to put a structure for landscape and voice (yes, the first person plural) in this game. I hope I've pulled it off for a realtively neophyte effort.$pIf you are interested in any of my other writing, feel free to visit my website at: http://www.taverners-koans.com/ratbastards/alan.html. And drop me a line at: alandeniro@aol.com. Certainly, I'm going to keep going with writing these, and they will hopefully grow more nuanced and vivider in scope and cognition. Consider this a first salvo.$pThe Isolato Incident wouldn't be possible without the help of several people who have encouraged me, beta tested the Isolato Incident, or listened to me while away the hours talking about interactive fiction: Kristin Livdahl, Jim Munroe, Chris Barzak, Barth Anderson, Steven Griffiths, Thomas Nilsson for creating ALAN, and those in the ALAN--and the greater IF--community that I haven't mentioned. If you're interested in ALAN, a superb introductory IF-authoring system, check out http://www.welcome.to/alan-if.We think that verbosity is a fine wine indeed: a vintage of us.Okay, brief mode is now on. Location descriptions will only be shown the first time you visit.Please write the full 'quit' command to exit from the game. $p(We can't undo a quit instruction. So to avoid accidentally exiting the game by typing 'q' when you meant to do something else, you must write the 'quit' command in full.)Unfortunately, you are not able to undo commands in ALAN. Speaking on behalf of Alan (in all of its/his incarnations), we apologize.Done.Done.$nWe are jade.We are an opal cup.Stories swim around us. Although we are on the verge of capsizing, we aren't sure whether this should be frightening or weirdly cathartic.We are not ahistorical. This is progress. Trust us, we do not bear these burdens lightly.We are seeming to score tiny victories for the protection of the kingdom.No comment.We're pretty sure time passes.We wait like a mule.Stillness and quiet is easy for us, in our state.Our neck flushes with ponder.Our soul hunkers down and pauses, and our body follows. Still, for a moment, and then it is not still.No comment.The 'again' command is not available, sorry. We can probably use the up and down arrow keys to scroll through our previous commands (unless you're using the MSDOS interpreter in which case you can press the F3 key to repeat our last command.)We can't carry anything more. We have to drop something first.We can't carry anything more. We have to drop something first.inventoryWe are carryingWe are empty-handed.We can't wear anything more. We have to remove something first.We can't wear anything more. We have to remove something first.wornWe are wearingoutdoor_thingsOur burden is too heavy.We are carrying:We are empty-handed.skyWe try to touch the air in order to scrutinize it. It proves nearly impossible. It is a colorless vapor that surrounds us. Isn't there something... conspiratorial about this? The fact that it is everywhere? Well, maybe we are imagining things.The faintest serrated edges of musk.sunThere is no sun. Light is evenly distributed in an invisible quilt of chroma, brightness, and hue.outdoor_things_storageA door along the south wall leads to the realm's expanses.doorThe rapping makes us want to think of a riddle, but we are no good at riddles.The door is made of a hardened fiber that has the color of brown and jade. The treasury, out in the field, is also made of this material. We enjoy knocking on it.We open the creaking door.The door is now closed, and the fetund earth scents slip away from us. doorThe rapping makes us want to concoct a riddle, but we are no good at riddles.The door is made of a hardened fiber that has the color of brown and jade. The treasury, out in the field, is also made of this material. There are wide but shallow scratches, as if by a weak claw, or even a rake, along the surface.Fresh air and tendrils of light waft in.$pWe close the door. With the light from the outside world gone, the hallway is now dark and mysterious.A hole in the ceiling leads up to the roof, a place that we like to call the 'War Room.' We imagine an arduous trek to reach the top.holeWe haul ourselves up, and complete the tiresome quest! The annals will praise us.We haul ourselves up. Our capers have brought us to the War Room! We should be congratulated.Our throne is here.simple throneIt is not devoid of charm, yet sometimes we mistake it for an ordinary chair. Still we do not complain. We don't want to seem unseemly after all.We ease gingerly into the chair. The chair strains to contain our physical properties, and after a minute of contemplation in its hard teak, we have to get up again, and do some limbering exercises.We ease gingerly into the chair. The chair strains to contain our physical properties, and after a minute of contemplation in its hard teak, we have to get up again, and do some stretching exercises.It's much too large for our waifish arms.We can also go down the hole, although denouements are always less fun than quests.holeWe shimmy down, sighing.We shimmy down, sighing.There is still a little bit of history stuck along the wall. At least the ghost (for surely it was a ghost) didn't take ALL of the history.historyHistory is a dark yellow resin, translucent and very gooey. It is inappropriate to ingest history, but may be worn, attaining its impact through the skin.We smell clover, hyssop, cave mushrooms from time eternal, distilled by bee-mouths. We appreciate the apiary giving the history such scent.We smear the history all over our physical properties. The resin begins to tingle and dissolve. A voice from this batch of the history enters us. It is the voice of a ghost:$p'Don't you find it strange that none of your subjects attend on you? Where are they?$p'I took your bees, as a rude way to bring truth to your kingdom. Your existence has its own truth (I cannot talk to you directly, I can only leave these trite clues; they would find me out surely if I confronted you face to face) but you need to find it.'$pBlasphemy! The word 'I' is a ghost word for sure. No such thing exists. The history dissolves. Good riddance.History cannot be ingested or read without serious consequences. We can only wear history, much like armor.$pA prismed apple is here. It is unclear whether this is a gift or threat. There is a gold ribbon coiled around the stem.anappleThe surface shifts and mutates in its color scheme, in every imaginable inverse of a rainbow: fuschian yellow, cobalt red.We prod and squeeze. The apple is watery and pulpy. Colors swirl around the imprint of our fingertips.As we pick the apple up, we hear a viscuous sound inside. Something is roiling around in there.We smell a warm hand, the sweet skin of the fruit. Smelling is permitted in the kingdom. We need to develop and exercise this underrated sense further.Our fingers can't gain passage on the smooth surface. We need the planetsword to open the apple! Alas, the planetsword has been lost in the shrouds of myth for quite a few months now.We uncurl the message. On a flowery, purple script, it is written: 'Why are you never hungry?'$pWho would ask such a brazen question to us?Slowly, we bite into the core, head swirling. It is sweet, resists the (our? my?) teeth. After we've swallowed, there is a sharp churning inside of us. There was a message, maybe the last, maybe the closure message, embedded in that apple, if any of this exists, if anything except... me exists:$p$pWHERESPACE TRANSMISSION$nGreenwich Standard: 01/03/2349, 23:30:59$nHeading: Isolato Incident$nClearance: fat pulse$nRelease: general bin, with cobalt to aquamarine FLAGs to: news.xavier.politics, polisci. statecraft.assassinations, news.displaced-populations.xavier, royal.families.viceroys.isolato$nContent Filter: 15% (low sociopolitical impact, low to moderate insurrection impact)$pIsolato family, viceroys of North Xavier estates (planet: Xavier; territorial hold on planet: 60%, wherespace transposition: 23omnicron,33tau,5tau, 550 light yrs; macropolitical entity: Anabasis Parameter, confederacy of 12 planets and five asteroid belts), slain (though see below) in a coup by their seneschals, the Crowkeeper family, midnight geostandard local time.$pIn a herespace transmission soon after the transference of power, the Crowkeeper family spokesperson accused the Isolatos of 'gross negligence of their territory and moral degeneracy'.$pThe family later assured their subjects that, in accordance with Anabasis Parameter 'age of assassination' statutes, the youngest member of the Isolato household, Ebb (age 14), was put in iconic suspension, where he cannot be killed until the age of 18.$p'We of the Crowkeepers are humane, unlike our predecessors, and would never think of transgressing interspatial and interstitial law. Ebb will be placed in a third party, neutral storage facility and will not be harmed for the next four years.'$pAmong those Isolatos slain include: Annamarie (age 115), Whey (79), Vasko (70), Tesso (43), Ashe I (38) and Ashe II (clone, age 20), and Milandra (19).$pEND WHERESPACE TRANSMISSION.We place the apple close to our lips and then we shudder and recoil. There is no desire to eat this, no ravenous appetite.$pA note is tucked into one of the cobblestones.noteThe paper is quiet vellum, which we previously would have thought an oxymoron. The note is riddled with tiny holes, made by the mouths of bees. The ghost who stole our bees must have written this epistle!The paper is soft vellum. The note is riddled with pinpricks, as if nibbled on by insects. Bees. We'd recognize the work of bee mouths anywhere. But the bees are safe in the special place. How?The note, in a graceful cursive, says:$p'Do you know how long I have been trying to save you? You don't realize it...you don't realize your own secret.$p'Tell me. Why is your kingdom so small? Why have you no desire to expand its boundaries? Where are your subjects? Why are the icons around you so still and cold?$p--A friend'$pWhat is the meaning of friendship? It must be the same as gall and impropriety. Some heretic is lurking about, vexing us, persisting in the use of blasphemy.There is a dark, viscuous liquid here.futureAs we reach to scoop the liquid, the apple in our possession quivers and almost mewls. It becomes a continuous hummer. In our hands, the bile feels like antihistory, made by bees exposed to air, rather than kept deep underground. It could be a representation of our future. Or the future itself.We can't get a good grip on it. It is like an uncertain serpent. Is there something missing from our repository of knowledge or objects?The future is a black chrism, a molasses, thicker than history, with more uncertain bubbles and lumps. We are uncertain whether it might be worn. The apple, however, has its own ideas. It's practically leaping out of our hands.It's hard to get a good look at it, unless we smear and holdfast it (as the ghost said) in our hands.The apple's prismed flesh starts to eat away, eat to the core. Like overripe fruit, the apple's husk molts. Our hands start to burn. As this is taking place, a voice, the same one we heard when we wore the history, says (somewhere around us, and yet inside us, a whisper):$p'A grevious wrong needs to be righted. There is no royal we! You are a singular you, a boy tucked away in a landscape and soon to be killed, for no crime of your own. I, who once served you, want to help you escape, help you live. Eat the apple's core now. Know.'The future sizzles on the $o's surface. But nothing more happens. Strange. We're able to gather together most of the future again after the inertness continues for about a minute.We're not holding the future in our hands.The bitterness is indigestible in all sorts of fashions, even if we were famished.Rancid and yet somehow crisp. Intoxicating. Like the opposite of the apple--the opposite half that needs to be joined with it. sheenOur hands hesitate over the surface of the End. It makes us queasy. It makes us want to recoil. Even when its stationary, its filling up our presence with its absence.$pA white door is set into the End.doorThere are tremors on the other side, but nothing answers.The door is barely a wisp of a surface.We open the creaking door. With a hard kiss of air behind us, and our heads reeling from the 'Wherespace' transmission, we're--that is the correct word, correct?--sucked into the door.The knob shies away from our touch.The door is now closed, and the fetund earth scents slip away from us.The ghosts are growing here.ghostsThis crop isn't quite ready for processing into history.The ghosts are small today. Ghosts are the chief natural resource of the kingdom. It is a bad crop this week; stunted stinkweed crowds out the grace. By grace we mean full grown ghosts that we kill, mash into a pulp, and then use to fertilize the Special Place. From the Special Place, the bees are generated, which in turn produce history.$pIt is a finely tuned economy.There is stinkweed here.$pThere seems to be something obscured in the stinkweed.stinkweedWe find nothing more in the vile weeds.We find nothing more in the stinking weeds.wood crowWe poke the crow with the adder. The crow topples into our hands.We have nothing to bludgeon the golem crow with.The crow statue is made of an alabaster wood. Its beak makes the bird seem like it was on the edge between caw and speech before it was frozen. There is a story written on the expanse of its wings.We hop and holler, but the crow will not come down off the branches. We can't quite reach it from our vantage.'The client's mangled psychological state after the coup, however, required a radical iconic strategy: historical, familiar, yet seemingly boundless. Only then would the client intervene for himself. The landscape would become one of his own devising. He will have to learn to reach the end by himself.' --Journal of Bioaesthetics, 2344'We need to be holding the crow to read it.The crow's surface is like a cross between clay and wood. It is a wholly alien, yet almost soothingly familiar substance. royal treasuryWe try to hoist ourselves on the lowest branch, upon which the crow resides. No luck! We hop, cajole like a bunch of mooncalves, but we can't quite reach the branch. The treasury's trunk affords no passage, either. It is not a road.The bark is smooth, like driftglass. None of the branches are low-lying or subservient to our needs. We suppose that this makes the treasury impenetrable to a land-based robbery, but still--it's not the most convenient location in the kingdom.Embracing inanimate objects, particularly treasuries, will not satiate us in this hour of crisis.The trunk is permafrost cold. Adders rattle like icicles. We try to remember what, exactly, an icicle looks like. The word is stuck in the craw, but the image is not. Strange. bonegrassThe grass looks like a rite of passage. We ask ourselves, whose bones were processed into grass? Or is this another one of those dangerous 'metaphors'?Arms low, our hands whisk over the tips of the whistlers. The sound becomes more high pitched, and then subsides as we resume our normal royal (that is, non-childlike) gait.$pOh no, there is a dead adder here, strewn from the treasury.dead adderAn adder is a stick with numbers. The numbers are on the INSIDE of the wood, however. Adders can only work when they are alive, attached to the treasury, and in wind. When the adders rustle, computations take place. This particular adder is stunted, warped and broken, its gray color fading.$pBut how did it land in the middle of the bonegrass, so far from the tree?$pIt must have been the crow, the censusless thing that flew from the ghostpatch to the treasury. That jackanape needs to be dealt with.$pSomething is amiss. Something is propeling objects to leave their fixed orbits and places.beesNowhereCozy Throne RoomThis is where we rest, tarry, and make our fears vanish. There is enough room for all of us here. We admit, it is humble.We decide that a quest is in order. We hoist ourselves up by the ceiling hole and climb to the top.$pThe quest is completed!The door is closed.The scratching stops, and there's a scurrying away. We can't exactly pin the sound down. It was either a series of fingers (impossible) or a wingbrush (equally impossible).War Room On The RoofThe roof is curved, like the surface of an eye, but daubed and thatched, like any old locale. It is a place where we like to strategize and dream, where the air is cleaner.$pIt is also a perfect place to assay the kingdom. Far, far to the south is a horizon of silver-blue, although the End blocks most of the horizon. To the east is the whistling, white field, anchored at the far east by the Treasury. To the north is the patch of ghosts.$pOf course, when we tire of assessment, we can jump off and reach the special place from here.It's not that tall of a jump for us. We've done it before and aren't afraid to do it again, even if our knees break!A crisp breeze enters our ears.Special Place Or The ApiaryAs we're about to hit the ground, there is a flash and we land here, a cave with only one opening, north, that leads back to the roof. (We jump off the roof, we come back by walking through a tunnel. We don't understand it either.) The ceiling is black. We feel special here because we're alone. Not even the sky can spy us. Along the walls, however, the bees cluster, where they create history out of their little bodies.$pOnly, all of the bees are gone!The tiny passage gets smaller and smaller, and without a warning we're back on the roof. We do not understand the magic of our kingdom. We only preside over it.No buzzings of the bees. Only our heavy breathing. A slight ague dripping from above.Ghost PatchFairly empty. A trim garden against the side of the hut. Light from the sky pirouettes down. We can traverse southwest back to the front of the house.We need proper paths.There is more no rustle-rustle in the weeds.It sounds like a tensing muscle. The wind is still.Our Tiny Kingdom Disguised As A LandscapeThe rich blue sky is a lullaby of light. There are vague knolls in the distance, full of viridian grass. Daffodils hum. No horses are grazing; they must be sleeping. A stone path leads south to a crossroads, and a dirt path curls around the hut to the northeast.The door is closed.We enjoy the secret liberties of a predefined path. Like ballet, it is the gravity that makes the dance of statesmanship possible.Restless, we think a constitutional to the crossroads will do us good. $pWe are still restless...Long is the running of gone songs. Everywhere there are secretions of subtle noise.The Crux Of Our LandscapeStill, there is much to be admired here. The green slopes are flatter; thus, the cleft of the wind is much stronger. There are also choices etched in the road. South leads to the nearly endless royal road, and to the east of us is the bonegrass field and (further east) the treasury. We can also pitter-patter back to our hut to the north.Weird silence enveloping us. There should at least be insects. Strange. Strange.Long Grand RoadMany are the endless travails of this road. It was built long before our reign; thus, it is replete with statecraft. We can sashay south to the End, or north back to the crossroads.We walk for what seems like days...This is a trek beyond frolicking and traipsing. We consider all of the strange portents, the rattlings of unseen cages. We are frankly afraid of The End. Ahead of us is the edge of our understanding.We walk for what seems like days...There is nothing to hear here except distance.The EndThe End is a place we don't like to pay pilgrimage to very often. We like beginnings. It is a white sheet of light that binds the kingdom. The road ends here.There is a hazy aura crouching around this area. It makes us prickle.$pWhat has happened to us? Questions rise up like a plague of locusts. No 'royal we'? Who are we?$pOne thing we know and feel-- we are the key to something. Particularly that door. We don't need a puzzle solver to enter it. Puzzles and intrigue have plucked us from our life and placed us here in the first place.$pFor the first time, we look at our hands, really look at them.$p There are two of them.There's no turning back now, whether we want to call it destiny, fate, or something in between.Quietude, except for the sky.Past The TerminusRoyal TreasuryWhen we arrived here from the distant past, we needed to rename our world. It gave more sense to our places. A tree was as good of a place for our coffers as any... The trunk of the treasury is white ash. The adders hang and conspire figures from the middling to high parts of the trunk. We can hear them counting in the wind. We can go back to the bone grass to the southwest.$The adders hum in the crow's absence. But we have a feeling their world will never be the same. By 'their' we mean 'our,' of course.$pWhat is left to discover here?Field Of The Bonegrass WhistlersThe bonegrass is about calf-high. As our calves slide through the field, the stalks provide a low-pitched whistling. It's as if we're wind turbines, making the grass churn. Northeast, the treasury is obscured in a sudden shadow. West leads back to the crossroads.We can't make out the tune of wind.HeroWe look weary and seeping. Our skin is pallid with the galavanting.Our hands are limned with dirt and speckle, our head has blows. We can taste the need for succor, for relief and redemption in our bones. Because of the history we have worn, we are a little more knowledgable about what can be discarded, what can be saved.Needless to say, the stars do not collectively tremble at our presence. We are a demolition derby of razorthin hips, our eyes are like the hazel weeds that spring up, in spite of themselves, along the main road of the kingdom.No comment.$pWe hear a clawing on the outside of the door.$p$pWe sink to our knees. Ebb. Ebb. Memories start to flash inside: playing hide and seek in translucent secret passages, finding squirming crawdragons in Aunt Whey's mystery garden, having the Ashes tell me fairy tales about castles, princesses...kings.$pThe colors in the landscape start to bleed away, and we are sad and scared. We are scared that we've lived too closely in the shadow of the family name.$pThe landscape itself starts to fall away, like a gown off the shoulders of a body. There isn't much time. This is our chance to change. The door.$pMulling, we realize that although we have never SEEN a friend before, we have told stories about them (heretical as they must be). These stories usually involve magic apples, secret passages through walls, and giant ships in which to travel great distances. Somewhere these stories live in locked boxes inside of us, distant in memory, yet nearby after a triggering.$pAs much as we hate to admit it, the appearance of these letters, by friend or ghost or both, is such a triggering.$pThe crow in our arms starts to tremble. The wings blur and work, the wood shakes off, leaving a trembling, almost-newborn bird perched at our feet. It was a trick.$pWe just don't know whether it was a trick in our favor or at our peril.$pThen, the crow starts coughing. With spurts, bees--our bees!--come streaming out of the crow's mouth, mixed with bile. After it's done hacking, and we're left standing there watching, the crow flies through the door, as if it's only vapor.$pThe bees stagger off and disperse, but a dark viscuous liquid remains. The bile. Or maybe not. Maybe the bees made this.$pThe black hole in the sky is getting wider, cacophanous. We can see from a great distance the treasury being scooped up, upwards into it, all the adders shrieking. If that was the only thing that happened today, then it would be considered an act of war, and we would have to retire to the War Room and scheme. But something much deeper and dire is happening to us.$pWe're falling apart, but maybe we can reconstruct into something else altogether. We still wish we had the planetsword.There is a head lifted. It is...mine. Air is breathed. Passive voice is about all I can handle now.$pThe Crowkeeper, one of those few loyal to the Isolatos, helped orchestrate an escape. When there is waking, when the kingdom dissolves, I'm speeding away on a hovercraft from a research facility. Nothing else feels facile. The Crowkeeper gives me a birthday song and a rock candy cake in the escape.$pHe says that there are relatives on old Earth. Quite poor now, but blood, at least...$pAll of this happens so fast that I can't say I know myself yet, or even who this 'I' is. It takes a long time to heal from a kingdom like the one I was kept in, cocooned in a royal we. There's a chance a person might not heal at all from such a time, and may never be whole, ever again.$pBut who knows?$p Around me in the open water are waves, the edges of my understanding, never standing still.$p$p$p THE END.Just then...a crow leaps out of the underbrush! We leap back in surprise. The crow whirls, squawking, and churns its white wings to the southeast, towards the field and the treasury.$pWe've never seen a crow in these parts before. We need to approach it, for answers about the recent strange happenings in the kingdom, as well as for more general census-taking purposes.$pWhat is left to discover here?$pApparently, a crow on a large adder. It considers us, outstretches its white wings, and turns into the same substance of the tree, looking like a fine sculpture of a crow. All of the adders start to tremor and turn histrionic. The crow's feet teeter on one of the larger adders.Above the tree, with a loud clap of thunder, a black hole opens in the sky.$pBlack hole in the sky? There should not be a black hole in the sky! Our lullaby of light is out of tune. We put our hands on our cheeks. We are trembling. There is a further trembling near the direction of the End.$pThe kingdom is falling apart.$pAll around us, the chroma tints from blue to mauve. The lights are deepening, as if someone is turning a switch. A story's beginning is beginning to end. Stories have pasts and futures. We only have a knack for living in the present, do we not? Do we not?Huh?We don't understand.We're obscured by your use of the word 'all'.We don't know what's meant by 'it'.We don't know what you mean by 'them.'You can't refer to multiple objects with '$v'.We can't fathom what we want to $v.A noun must be supplied and lagniapped.We must have an object after 'but'.You can only use 'but' after 'all'.That doesn't leave much to $v!I don't know which $1 you mean.We can't scry any $1 here.We can't traverse that way.We can't do that.We can't $v the $1.There is nothing here that you can $v.There is$$, and here.is here.Thecontains, and $$.Theis empty.You have scoredpoints out ofWe're not aware of that word.(A redux of our trek)Enter file name to save inThat file already exists, overwrite (RETURN confirms) ? Sorry, save failed.Sorry, could not open that save file.Sorry, the save file was created by a different version.Sorry, the save file did not contain a save for this adventure.Enter file name to restore fromAre you sure (RETURN confirms) ? Do you want to RESTART, RESTORE or QUIT ? aOnce upon a time...$pWait, we must stop. Already the story is all wrong. To be honest, we don't want the story to begin, not at all. We like to watch it stay the same. We like to meander to the roof of our cottage, pretending it's a quest. We disdain consumption of food. We like to coif our hair into shape, exactly like each other. We watch our bees, smear their history on our arms and legs. This is our kingdom. $pWe don't want the story to begin but it begins when there is a scratching outside the door...$p$pTHE ISOLATO INCIDENT v. 1.0$pWritten by Alan DeNiro for the '01 IF Comp.$pType 'INFO' for more details; 'HELP' if new to Interactive Fiction