GETTING A MEMORY FROM THE FAN The only entrance to the attic is the skylight in the floor, which is currently open. You could jump down to get to the dance studio from here. It occurs to you that it's rather odd to find a skylight leading to an attic instead of leading to the open sky, but then again it occurs to you that many things about this house are rather odd. The attic is filled with stacks of old objects. Your eye is particularly drawn to an old black trunk and a statue of an elephant. You see a walk-in wardrobe to the east, which appears to be filled with stage costumes. The trunk is open. In the trunk you see a top hat, a fan, and a copper key. You see a bottle of hair conditioner, a green candle (lit), and a plucked rose here. >take all from black trunk top hat: You take the top hat out of the trunk. fan: You take the fan out of the trunk. copper key: You take the copper key out of the trunk. >open fan The fan is now open. >x fan It's a Japanese folding fan. The paper is yellowed, and smells like an aged memory. On this side of the fan you see a water color painting that shows the reflection of the rising sun upon ripples of dark water. With simple brush strokes, the artist has captured the interaction between the sun and the water without explicitly painting either one. >turn fan You turn the fan. The other side of the fan is now facing you, showing the moon and stars. >x fan It's a Japanese folding fan. The paper is yellowed, and smells like an aged memory. On this side of the fan you see a water color painting that shows the reflection of the moon and stars upon ripples of dark water. With simple brush strokes, the artist has captured the interaction of the moon and the water without explicitly painting either one. >turn fan You turn the fan. The other side of the fan is now facing you, showing the rising sun. >wave fan You wave the fan. As the fan flutters in front of your face, you feel yourself being somewhat hypnotized by the rippled reflection of the rising sun on the dark water. Holding the fan near to your face you inhale deeply. Your nose tingles, and you feel as if your sense of smell is being enhanced by the fan. Unfortunately, the smells that surround you in this place are not of the type that leave your nose itching to investigate them. >close fan The fan is now closed. >d DANCE STUDIO You see a coat rack here. >e LIVING ROOM (back half) On the music stand you see some sheet music. You see three empty boxes, two ordinary cans of spam, and a magic carpet (rolled) here. >s LIVING ROOM (front half) You see three empty boxes, three ordinary cans of spam, and a magic carpet (rolled) here. You see Agador-Spartacus in the dining room by the west end of the table. He's wagging his tail. >w HALLWAY >w BATHROOM You feel as if you are in a lush rain forest, surrounded by green leaves and warm steamy mist. The bathtub is filled with brightly colored machine tools. The fan snaps open. >wave fan You wave the fan. As the fan flutters in front of your face, you feel yourself being somewhat hypnotized by the rippled reflection of the rising sun on the dark water. Holding the fan near to your face you inhale deeply. Your nose tingles, and you feel as if your sense of smell is being enhanced by the fan. Filtered through the fan, the smell of the soapy bathtub plunges you into a memory. But the memory is not your own! The memory revealed by the rising sun belongs to Martin's father Viktor. ------------- Press space bar to continue ----------------- Viktor Kessler, who appears to be in his mid-thirties, is sitting at his desk in the living room and talking into a cassette tape recorder. He's spent several hours this evening recording the progress of his scientific work, an attempt to contact intelligent life forms that might exist elsewhere in the galaxy. At first he'd been transmitting mostly mathematics, for everyone agreed that this was the universal language. Then he added some Shakespeare and Beethoven. But lately he'd been toying with the idea of creating transmissions directly from human brain waves. Imagine being able to send out a sampling of human sensory perceptions: sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch! But he needed help with some aspects of the project, especially the part relating to the electrochemical processes of the brain. It had occured to him to take on a colleague, but so far the only kindred spirit he had found in the area was a man who spoke only Japanese! Jorucho Takamine relied on his wife to translate for him, but Mrs. Takamine had no scientific leanings and was often busy minding their store. Was it possible for the two men to collaborate if they had to rely mostly on formulas and diagrams? While it would be interesting to see if mathematics really WAS the universal language, Viktor suspected that if he and Jorucho decided to work together it wouldn't be long before they began to learn enough of each other's languages to get by. ------------- Press space bar to continue ----------------- Suddenly something squishy hits Viktor on the side of his head. He hears a squeak as it bounces off of him, leaving his cheek smelling of soap and bubble bath and Johnson's baby shampoo. As Viktor turns around, his momentary annoyance at having his work interruped dissolves at the sight of his wife holding a naked and wiggling toddler in her arms. Little Martin is giggling uncontrollably and trying to get down to retreive his yellow rubber duckie, which is now on the living room floor after having served the function of drawing his father's attention away from more serious scientific pursuits. Raina is giggling too, although she seems to be trying to pretend to be truly annoyed with her husband. "Viktor!" she scolds, "You put the sheet music in the piano bench again! How am I supposed to fill the bathtub?" Viktor thinks to himself that this is probably the only household in all of New Mexico where a statement like that would make any sense. How very Kessler! "Did you try singing to the cat?" he asks, realizing that his reply is equally Kessler-esque. "Hearing people sing always makes Paganini want to sharpen his claws." Raina understands that whenever the cat sharpens his claws on the piano bench this causes the bench to pop open, but she objects to this suggestion. "It's a matter of principle! That cat of yours is becoming more finicky every day!" Raina pouts. "He's always turned his nose up at songs from Broadway shows or the classic movie musicals. But now he's disdaining to repond even to Gilbert and Sullivan! Light operetta isn't good enough for him any more, he wants something in German, French, or Italian. I refuse to pander to the musical preferences of a feline opera snob!" ------------- Press space bar to continue ----------------- Raina puts Martin down, and the boy waddles over to retrieve the yellow rubber duckie. Viktor takes the opportunity to stand up and put his arms around his wife, suggesting to her that she ask her brother's construction company to change the bathroom faucets to something more ordinary. "If I had wanted an ordinary life why would I have married you?" Raina teases, kissing him on the nose. "Besides, my brother and his crew are busy putting in the third bedroom. And I wouldn't want him to feel that we don't appreciate his creativity. He put the piano activation in the bathroom plumbing especially for you. He knows that you love to play the piano almost as much as you love to play with unusual gadgets." Viktor smiles at Raina and begins to sing "O Sole Mio". Paganini the cat appears from nowhere and begins howling along in the fine tradition of his pussy-cat ancestors, who for many generations had been born in an opera house in Budapest where Viktor's grandmother sang mezzo soprano and Viktor's grandfather, the renowned Jakob Kessler, performed as a violinist. ------------- Press space bar to continue ----------------- Looking at Paganini, Viktor's mind begins to wander. He thinks about a story told to him by his father Jozsef, about how Jozsef had smuggled a cat through Immigration when he first came to this country. The clerk at Ellis Island obligingly ignored the meowing coming from his coat in exchange for the diamond that Jozsef's mother had sewn into the wasteband of his pants. At the time our nervous cat smuggler felt guilty, thinking that his parents would not appreciate his squandering his only family heirloom in a moment of sentimentality over a cat. It seemed that his violinist papa had always disapproved of his son's choices, including the decision to emigrate to America in order to study with Von Neumann at Princeton. Being forced to leave everything behind, even his beloved mathematics and physics textbooks, what could have possibly possessed Jozsef to leave Hungary with a cat? ------------- Press space bar to continue ----------------- It wasn't until several years later, after he had married and was struggling to support their baby Viktor while teaching at the University of Chicago, that the situation in Europe deteriorated so badly as to force an inversion of perspective concerning the wisdom of his choices. Jozcef always refused to talk about what happened to his parents after 1938 except to say that his love of music was the true family heirloom that he brought with him to America. But he came to feel that his use of his mother's diamond to save an opera-loving cat had been bizarrely appropriate. With a sigh as Viktor thinks of the grandparents that he never met, he consoles himself by thinking that his grandparents' legacy lives on in his own modest attempts at piano composition. It's not surprising that he's never had the heart to tell Paganini that for the past four feline generations his ancestors have been born within an hour's drive from Los Alamos rather than in a Budapest opera house. After Viktor finishes singing "O Sole Mio", Paganini scratches at the piano bench leg and the seat pops open. Viktor takes the sheet music out of the piano bench, puts it on the music stand, and sit down to play. The sounds of Handel's "Water Music" fill the house along with the sound of water pouring into the bathtub. As the memory ends, the fan turns in your hand. The other side is facing you now.