OPENING THE CRYSTAL BOX FOURTH LEVEL The entire Fourth Level appears to have been converted into a motorcycle repair and maintenance shop. There's a metal work table covered with motorcycle parts and tools, and a sign informing you that the mechanic is currently on a leave of absence. Your eye is particularly drawn to a painting on the east wall. To the north you see an open panel revealing an elevator. To the west you see a triangular hole in the floor with a rope ladder. On the metal ceiling above you see an etching of a warrior king. He rides in a wheeled chariot among the clouds, blowing the demons out of the sky by the power of the four winds that he blows from his mouth. Nothing is for sale here. >blow whistle You blow the dog whistle. The whistle makes no sound, but suddenly the painting moves sideways, revealing an open wall safe! Inside the wall safe you see a crystal box and an audio cassette with a yellow label. >take all from safe crystal box: You take the crystal box out of the wall safe. yellow audio cassette: You take the yellow audio cassette out of the wall safe. >x cassette It's an audio cassette with a yellow label. The label on the yellow audio cassette says "TO DAD". On the flip side the label says "TO MARTIN". >play cassette in headphones You put the yellow audio cassette into the headphones. The cassette begins to play. The voice that you hear belongs to Martin. I wanted to talk to you one more time, Dad, even though I know it's too late for that. I can't stop thinking about that night when I was ten years old, the night that Mom's theatre group held their Mikado cast party in our courtyard. You and I took a walk out back, and I remember being disappointed that the sky was too cloudy for you to quiz me on naming the stars and constellations. We were standing on the mesa by the waterfall. You were trying to tell me something, you said it was important. But the winds got stronger, and a storm was beginning to start. I couldn't hear you. Maybe it was the sound of the wind and the waterfall or maybe it was that I wouldn't listen. You started looking obsessed and a little crazy, like you always did when you tried to talk about sending messages to aliens in outer space. Then I remember a sharp clap of thunder and the rain suddenly slammed down on us. I started running back towards the house and you grabbed my arm to stop me. You told me not to worry, that everything would be all right. I don't think you were talking about the storm. You said that someday I would understand you. ------------- Press space bar to continue ----------------- Well Dad, I think I understand you now. I've been working in research and development for most of my adult life, and I know what it's like to get deep into a project that other people think is crazy. I know what it's like to catch the tail of something almost impossible, and I know what its like to hang on to that thrashing tail until you've invented something that never existed before. And I know what it's like to try to share your discoveries with other people only to have it tossed into the trash by those who don't even take the time to try to understand it. But if you could see what I've done you'd be amazed, Dad. Just take a look at the building blocks of our world. Don't get bogged down with atoms and the molecules, that's just hardware. But if you look at the perceptions of our senses, you'll see the stuff that reality is truly made of. It's the same stuff that you find in fiction - - drama, suspense, passion, irony. Especially irony. And so, with almost fictional irony, I find myself to be a crackpot inventor in his mid-thirties whose work on sensory enhancement devices is even crazier than your sending brain-wave messages to alien pen pals. I suppose I feel cheated that I can't share my work with you. But more importantly, this makes me realize what a disservice I did to both of us when I wouldn't allow you to share YOUR work with ME. Well, maybe it's too late now. Maybe it's too late for me to keep wishing that things had turned out differently, and maybe it's too late for me to be angry with you for spending so many hours talking into a stupid tape recorder when I wanted you to be spending time with me instead, and maybe it's too late for me to keep beating myself up for what I can't help seeing as the ultimate betrayal of your memory --- the unspeakable crime of being a ten- year-old boy who was ashamed of what his father believed in. ------------- Press space bar to continue ----------------- I tried to find the cassettes you'd made containing your laboratory notes, and I found out that Mr. Takamine had taken them. He wouldn't let me listen to them, he wouldn't even let me SEE them. He seems to think that I want to continue your work. That's not it at all, but I couldn't get the words out to tell him that all I really wanted was to hear your voice one more time ...because I was starting to forget.. the sound... Martin's voice is starting to break, and there is a long pause. Then he continues, his voice sounding low and hoarse. Julie understands, of course. I'm thinking of asking her to sneak me into the place where her father keeps your tapes. But I've never known Julie to ever disobey her father. Not yet anyway. ------------- Press space bar to continue ----------------- It's strange how just about everyone reacts with such strong emotions to the subject of your cassettes. Mr. Takamine and Julie seem quite touchy on that subject, and Mom refuses to discuss it at all. The only one who seems immune to this is Rachel. I remember her trying to talk to me about it a couple of times, something about one of your cassettes that she said she'd found. But for some reason I always seemed to get a nasty migraine whenever she tried to talk to me about it, so I'd keep telling her that we'd have to wait until later. She might still be waiting for a good time -- I never did find out what she wanted to say, and even now it hurts my head to think about it. Actually it's fairly unusual for Rachel to give up on anything so easily, and I'm surprised that she stopped trying to talk to me about it. She always seems to get so obsessed about little mysteries, refusing to let go until she figures the answers out. But that's Rachel. She's always been kind of weird. You hear a click on the tape where Martin apparently stopped recording. ------------- Press space bar to continue ----------------- You hear another click, and the recording continues. The background noise is completely different now, and you can hear the sound of rushing water. It occurs to you that several days may have passed since the first part of the recording was made. Martin's voice certainly sounds different, almost artificially cheerful. Well, Dad, I've been able to listen to your cassettes after all, and it's been an education. I've made some plans. Tomorrow I'm going on a little trip to visit some friends of yours, something that needs to be timed very carefully. I'll be sure to give your regards. You hear a click on the tape as the recording stops. The rest of this side of the cassette is blank. ------------- Press space bar to continue ----------------- You play the other side of the cassette, but the voice is different. It's a man's voice, but it's not Martin. Martin, my dear little boy. Not so little now, your voice has changed into a fine bass-baritone. No doubt your great-grandfather would have wanted you to be an opera singer. I confess that when I first discovered this cassette several months ago I thought it must be a hoax. It was too much for me to handle, especially since it mysteriously appeared on the very day when Jorucho and I received an incoming transmission from aliens! But I was forced to change my mind last night when the rain poured down on us by the waterfall, exactly as you had described. Time travel? It seems impossible, but there is no other explanation for how this cassette could have come into my possession several months before the events described in it actually occurred. ------------- Press space bar to continue ----------------- The past few months have been so confusing. Last July we sent out a message that would have taken 25.7 years to reach its destination, but we received an alien reply to that message immediately afterwards! The implications of that are mind- boggling. Since then we've been attempting to modify our transmitter according to the alien instructions and equations that were contained in their reply. Trying to achieve faster-than-light communications, imagine that! But frankly neither one of us has any real understanding of what we're working with. At first, Jorucho wanted to try to adapt the alien mathematics to build a warp speed space travel drive. But I had to insist that our top priority must be communications. What could possibly be more important than communication between two independently evolved intelligent life forms? I'm not sure if I convinced him. But you should have seen heard his reaction when I called him this morning to say that the tape that I had found on the lab bench that day must have traveled through time! We both got so excited that he forgot most of his English and I forgot most of my Japanese. He ended up bringing Julie on the phone to translate. ------------- Press space bar to continue ----------------- Anyway, Jorucho can moonlight on side issues if he has a mind to, but in my opinion we're having enough trouble just trying to modify the transmitter. When we received the alien transmission three months ago it came upon us in a shock wave. Jorucho had just been reaching over to adjust my helmet and as usual Paganini was doing his best to get in the way. But at the moment Jorucho touched my helmet the shock wave hit and the message poured into our minds. We were sort of stunned and it took a while to come back to the real world. At first I was worried about Rachel, who had been running in and out of the lab all afternoon. But when I looked up she was standing out in the courtyard, so I guess she must have gotten out in time to avoid the shock wave. Later we discovered that the information in the message was split evenly between Jorucho and me. But certain fundamentals of the alien mathematics seem to have evaded both of us. Sometimes Paganini meows at me and sits on top of my equipment, and then I have an odd feeling that he is trying to tell me something. Perhaps some of the alien math ended up inside that pussycat head of his? But such speculation does me no good regarding calculations about broccoli. Yesterday Paganini ate most of the broccoli when I wasn't looking and then complained about it for ten minutes. I'll have to go out to buy some more before I can resume testing, and finding fresh organically grown broccoli in late October isn't all that easy. But I can feel it in my bones that tomorrow's transmitter test is going to be the turning point in this project. I will not tolerate any more delays, no matter where they come from. ------------- Press space bar to continue ----------------- But speaking about tomorrow... what's this about a trip you say you're planning? Martin, what are you getting yourself mixed up in? I'd warn you to be careful if I didn't know any better. I've seen the stubbornness of your character many times, starting from before you were even old enough to speak. Warnings and advice from the outside would change nothing, I'm sure. But while you're following your dreams, you won't forget to think logically, will you? Of course you won't. You're my son. Martin, I want you to stop being so hard on yourself over what you think is some sort of betrayal of me. Such foolishness! Don't you know how much I love you? Didn't I ever tell you? Well I'm telling you now. I love you. I love you with an intensity that transcends however many dimensions you are carrying around in that imagination of yours. Take your anger and regret and shame and toss them away, they don't matter. The connection between us is stronger than any of those things, it always has been. ------------- Press space bar to continue ----------------- You talk about the stuff that reality is made of. I haven't got it all figured out but your mom has taught me a thing or two along the way. People are always drawing boundaries around themselves and thinking that there's an important difference between inside where they see themselves and outside where everything else seems to be. But if we could only wrap our language around the truth we'd understand that the connections between people are more real and more lasting than the individual people themselves. I suppose we're both on our way to appointments with destiny tomorrow. Tell your mother and your sister that I love them always. Don't forget to come home. You hear a click as the recording stops. The rest of the casssette is blank. You feel somewhat embarassed to have listened to a message that was intended for Martin. You wish that there was some way you could play it for him so that after all these years Martin could hear what his father wanted to say to him. You take the yellow audio cassette out of the headphones. >x box The crystal box has a dark, smoky tint. The box is closed, but through the tint of the crystal you can get a somewhat distorted look at a pair of gloves inside the box. Inlaid into the top of the box are twelve panels cut from the same smoky crystal as the box itself. Each panel is imprinted with a letter of the alphabet. The letter panels are arranged in two rows, positioned so that there are two blank spots in which there is no panel. The blank spots make it possible to rearrange the letters. Each letter panel can be pushed up, pushed down, pushed left, or pushed right. Pushing one panel left or right would also move the panels ahead of it. The panels read: F P U _ R W E L O _ P E R L (The above display is intended to show white letters and black letters on brown panels. If your display is difficult to read or if the letters appear all in the same color, try typing HTML to toggle the display settings into a different format.) >push w left You push the White W left. The panels read: F P U R W _ E L O _ P E R L >push l left You push the Black L left. The panels read: F P U R W _ E L O P E R L _ >push l up You push the Black L up. The panels read: F P U R W L E L O P E R _ _ >push l right You push the White L right. The panels read: F P U R W L E _ L O P E R _ >push l right You push the White L right. The panels read: F P U R W L E _ _ L O P E R >push f down You push the White F down. The panels read: _ P U R W L E F _ L O P E R >push white r left You push the White R left. The panels read: P U R _ W L E F _ L O P E R >push white p left You push the White P left. The panels read: P U R _ W L E F L O P _ E R >push p up You push the White P up. The panels read: P U R P W L E F L O _ _ E R >push w down You push the White W down. The panels read: P U R P _ L E F L O _ W E R >push r left You push the Black R left. The panels read: P U R P _ L E F L O W E R _ >push e left You push the White E left. The panels read: P U R P L E _ F L O W E R _ You hear a click. >open box As you open the crystal box, the box dramatically plays the first five notes of "Thus Spake Zarathusra". Looking at the inside of the box is oddly disorienting. The letters on the top of the box appear backwards and upside down when you look at them from this perspective. Now that the box is open, you can take a closer look at the gloves inside. Even without the distortion of the crystal box, the gloves still look bizarre and spooky. You get the feeling that something about the gloves is backwards and upside down too, but not in any obvious way that you can put your finger on. The gloves appear to be made from an extraordinarily light, sheer white fabric. You see two layers of this white material, one on the outside and one on the inside of the gloves. The two layers appear to be connected by a substance that is purple yet translucent. The inside of the gloves is glowing with a pale eerie light.