What happened in 1984 Basic walkthrough It's finished! Hayashi corporation has finally finished the first time machine, and you have been chosen to use it for the first time! You begin to wonder what you should use it for. You could prevent world war I, go forward into the future, or anything else. Then, like a bullet from a high calibur rifle, it hits you! You're going to prevent Activision from buying Infocom! You fire up the time machine, set your destination, and step on it! The experience of driving a time machine reminds you of that old movie they call "Back to the Future." Then, the time machine grinds to a hault. The time machine disappears, and a hollow voice says, When you're ready to return to the present, say plugh." What happened in 1984 A Time Travelers Tale - Introcomp version by Harris Conger Release 1 / Serial number 130613 / Inform 7 build 6G60 (I6/v6.32 lib 6/12N) Infocom shrine This is the infamous Infocom shrine, a basement of sorts in MIT. Not much to see here, except for the famous Infocom Mural (Why it's painted in this time period, you don't know). >x mural The mural consists of the Infocom logo and a passage of text below it. The passage reads: "Oh ye who go about saying unto each other: "Hello sailor": Dost thou know the magnitude of thy sin before the gods? Yea, verily, thou shalt be ground between two stones. Shall the angry gods cast thy body into the whirlpool? Surely, thy eye shall be put out with a sharp stick! Even unto the ends of the earth shalt thou wander and unto the land of the dead shalt thou be sent at last. Surely thou shalt repent of thy cunning." Marc whistles a toon. >ask marc about imps "Hmmm, they were supposed to be here for a meeting! We were going to talk about devoting resources to a business project." Marc whistles a toon. >ask marc about cornerstone "Yep. We were supposed to work on a database program called Cornerstone. The business for databases is booming, you know." Marc looks at you with a surprised look on his face. >ask marc about Douglas Adams "He's not a perminant imp, but he's working with Steve on a Hitch hiker's guide to the galaxy game." Marc twittles his thumbs and hums a toon. >tell marc about future You explain to Marc your situation, and the future of Infocom. "Wow! jI'll have to tell the other Imps." Then, Marc pulls a pad and a pen from his pocket and makes a sketch of you (Yeah - they didn't have good quality cameras in the 80's). Marc twittles his thumbs and hums a toon. >u stairwell This is one of many stairwells in MIT. This one leads up to a room with a bunch of workstations. >u workstation room This is the room where the Unix workstations usually go. Oddly enough, not a single workstation remains. A scruffy-looking Hacker is here, looking rather befuzzled. >ask hacker about unix Unix? It's an ok OS. It's just not... Free. I mean free speech, not free beer. I plan to make a replacement for it, and I'll call it... GNU. GNU's not UNIX. >plugh The time machine reappears, and you drive away from the past and towards the present. When the time machine disappears again, you find yourself in... lab This is the Labratory for the Hayashi corporation, where they moniter the TRS. Shishi Hayashi, the head of all lab affairs, is here. >ask shishi about outcome "Look kid, I hate to tell yuh, but by preventing Cornerstone, you have destroyed the computer all together! It started in 1985. Infocom released Milliways. At this time, Microsoft was supposed to release Windows 1.0, but they didn't! Eventually, people got sick of MS DOS, Apple DOS, Linux and UNIX. And that scruffy hacker? That was richard Stallman! He ended up creating everything he needed, and Linus Torvalds supplied the Linux colonel. However, People were too sick of computers to care! Now, this is critical. You have to return to the past, convince Infocom to create cornerstone, and convince Richard Stallman to go forward with GNU, or else we'll be living in a low-tech world! To return to the past, say Plover." >Plover The time machine appears, you jump in, and speed off towards 1984! Two minutes later, the time machine stops, but you discover you have been sent to 1985! Worse yet, The time machine has short circuited! ***TO BE CONTINUED*** Would you like to RESTART, RESTORE a saved game, QUIT, or UNDO the last command? > quit