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[[ BEGIN | uno]]
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</div>Hours after midnight in the darkest parts of the night in your living room a terrific flash of light temporarily blinds you. From the wall, a brilliant white doorway appears embedded in the plaster. You shield your eyes and then peer carefully through your illuminated hands. A low rumbling mechanical noise grinds through the room.
[[RUN FROM THE ROOM | 2a ]]
[[INSPECT THE GATEWAY | 3]]
<audio src="1.wav" autoplay>You push off from the couch and run from the room, hiding in the bedroom down the hall. After several minutes deciding perhaps you had fallen asleep and had a dream or had some other temporary late night hypnagogic hallucination, you carefully return to the living room. The room is dark and quiet. You rub your eyes and head to your bedroom to sleep.
[[CONTINUE | 2b]]
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</div>You start to look closer at the strange intruder to your room. As you get closer though it blinks out of existence. You decide its best to go to sleep. The next day arrives with you putting away the strangeness of last nights event. By the time you have completed your weekend chores you have almost completely forgotten it. As you look through your refrigerator for something to eat a strange electric sensation erupts from your arm and hand. Thinking you have gotten a shock you retract your arm from the refridgerator and rub your hand reflexively. But instead of the sensation diminishing, it grows, a slight buzzing sound fills your ears as your arm begins to tingle and burn. You rub your arm and hand aggressively and rips begin to appear in your skin. A strange checkerboard pattern illuminates through the tears of your skin.
[[SCRATCH AND TEAR AT THE RIPS | 3a]]
[[WASH AND WRAP YOUR ARM | 4]]
<audio src="2.wav" autoplay>The next day is spent lounging around your house, dressed in your casual weekend blue sweat pants you try to forget yesterdays strangeness. As night falls the doorbell rings. As you rarely talk to your neighbors and friends are a distance away fear temporarily envelopes you as you wonder who it could be.
[[ANSWER THE DOOR | 2c]]
[[IGNORE THE DOOR | 2d]]
You scratch and tear at your arm feeling a combination of satiation and terror as the rips become larger, soon the itchy electric feeling spreads from your arm to your chest as you savagely rake your nails across your skin. Pieces of your epidermis fall in clumps on the floor while the feeling spreads throughout your body, eventually you scratch away everything your body is. A huge pile of skin is left on the ground that begins to blow away like your final thoughts.
<audio src="3.wav" autoplay>You run to the bathroom and wash your arm trying to push your tattered skin over the glowing scene underneath. You find bandages and medical tape and wrap your arm, as the lines of light coming from your arm get covered the electrical itchiness begins to dissipate. You look for your keys and a jacket to make a trip to the hospital. Just as you are about to open the door to leave, you look down at your arm. Cautiously, you pull on the bandages, your heart sinking as you pull more bandages off you realize the rips are gone, the skin showing just slight red marks where you itched or bandaged, but otherwise, the arm is normal. The sickening realization sets in, you must have been hallucinating, perhaps you unintentionally took acid, or perhaps are suffering from some unknown brain trauma. Sitting in the darkness on the couch, your hands covering your head, you weep silently through the night.
[[CONTINUE | 5]]
You open the door cautiously, curiosity winning out over the fear of this late-night encounter. In front of you stands a suit with no man in it. No head or hands are visible. Its clothed arm reaches into its jacket and pulls out a long and incredibly thin needle blade. As you try to slam the door the arm darts forward and the blade enters through your chest cavity piercing your heart. You slide to the ground in front of your house. As you die, the manless suit walks away into the night.
<audio src="10.wav" autoplay>You walk into the kitchen ignoring the doorbell that has rung several times. After the ringing has ceased you carefully look out the window in the living room. There doesn't appear to be anyone around. After looking through the window for several minutes the sound of glass shattering echoes through your house. You turn startled, the sound must have come from a bedroom in the house.
[[RUN OUT OF THE HOUSE | 2e]]
[[TAKE A KNIFE FROM THE KITCHEN AND ENTER THE BEDROOM WHERE THE SOUND OCCURRED | 2f ]]You quickly run out of the house, your bare feet padding over the uncut grass. As you almost reach the street you are stopped by an invisible barrier, as you try to feel the barrier, invisible hands reach out and grab your arms. You are dragged down to your knees, your arms blackening from the strength of the invisible hands. Behind you, the sounds the steps of something heavy walking can be heard. As you strain to look around a pain emanates from your chest, you look down to see a thin blade poking through your sweatshirt, your death comes soon after.
<audio src="10.wav" autoplay>You grab a large kitchen knife from the silverware drawer and run to the bedroom where the glass broke. Anger fills you as you push open the bedroom door. Carefully avoiding the shattered glass you walk around the room. You turn the switch for the bedroom light but it does not turn on. Looking up you see a full dress men's suit pressed up against the ceiling, the two arms of the suit pull open the jacket and the shirt unbuttons. The suit falls down upon you swallowing you within the suit. Confusion follows as you try to pull the suit from you, but eventually, the clothing suffocates and absorbs you, your body is never found.
<audio src="14.wav" autoplay>After regretting calling in sick for tomorrow at work, the last day of the weekend appears normal. A slight weight of fear nestles into the pit of your stomach as you wonder if what you figure must be hallucinations will continue. You find your smart phone to see if you can make an appointment for tomorrow at the doctor just as you begin to dial your phone rings, a strange ring that you've never heard before, you look at your phone to see the number but strange icons begin to shift and change on your phone, the ringing then becomes louder and louder as a now sickeningly familiar checkerboard pattern fills the smart phone screen.
[[ANSWER THE PHONE | 6 ]]
[[THROW THE PHONE AWAY | 5a]]
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</div>You click the answer icon on your phone and are immediately penetrated by glowing elements of checkerboard patterns that fill your being. You flail helplessly as odd shapes of checkerboard things swirl and enter you. Dropping your phone you become disoriented and hazy. Flashes of light appear before your eyes. You stumble down the hall hoping to find your bedroom to lay down, as you stumble through the hall an opening appears at the far end. A checkerboard world appears and flashes of electricity and light spring forth from it.
[[ENTER THE GATEWAY | 7]]
[[RUN FROM THE GATEWAY | 6a]]
<audio src="6.wav" autoplay>You throw your phone at the wall angrily, but the ringing doesn't stop, forcing your heel downwards you step on the phone pivoting as you do so grinding the circuits into the carpet, but the ringing continues getting louder, the ringing seems to be coming from everywhere, from the microwave, the oven, your computer, the ceiling fan, then from every cell in your body. You must end the ringing, you run to the garage and search desperately for a way to stop from hearing the ringing which appears to be emanating from every corner of the universe. You take the electric drill and the longest drill bit and key it into the drill. The sound of the spinning drill is lost amongst the cacophony of the ringing, but soon you hear no more as the drill bit first enters your ear canal, then into your brain.
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</div>You slide through the gateway, a rush of energy and light fills your senses. A dizzying array of black and white squares flash before you as you are propelled through an insane world. Large rectangular towers and what appear to be buildings spread out into every direction all patterned with the same black and white squares. After falling for several minutes you land inside one of the towers, its opening welcoming your entry. You collapse on the ground. The pain of impact eventually dissipates and you stand up shakily. You look down and notice your body has changed wearing strange black clothing and your face has become imprinted with a checkerboard.
[[CONTINUE | 8]]
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You run from the swirling gateway and attempt to flee to the safety of another room. As you reach the doorknob you find yourself suddenly looking at the carpet. You have been violently flung to the floor. Twisting around, you see your leg has been held by a glowing white pseudopod coming from the checker gateway. You try to kick it off with your other leg, but it quickly wraps around both. You turn around and grab hold of the open door holding on tight as it tugs you toward the gateway. The pull becomes too great and your body is pulled off the ground, still held to this world by your now bleeding and crushed fingers. You fall to the ground once more, thinking the glowing tentacles have given up you look around hopefully. Your legs can be seen being pulled into the gateway, but it is your last vision as death overwhelms you as you lie in a pool of your own entrails.</style><img src="9.jpg"/300px height="200" width="300">
</div>You walk around examing your surroundings, the walls and floor are smooth and checker patterned. You walk into a large room, in the center of the room on a platform is a human-sized cross and at one end is a large black square the size of a doorway. You put your hand on the black square and your hand goes through the blackness. When you turn around the way you came from is now blocked with a wall that was not there before. You soon feel that you may not be alone in this bizarre place. Vibrations arise from your feet, they soon become bigger and begin to ripple through your body.
[[RUN THROUGH THE BLACK DOOR | 9]]
[[STAY AND HIDE IN THE ROOM | 8a]]You walk through the black doorway and appear to be outside in an open area. The building you were just in is not behind you but there is a a tall building about 30 feet away, and a larger, wider one about 100 feet away.
[[ENTER CLOSER BUILDING | 9a]]
[[ENTER FURTHER BUILDING | 10]]
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</div>You start to run to a corner of the room but you find your legs unable to move. The rumbling sound gets louder and is accompanied by the sound of rushing water. You are lifted off the ground and slam into the cross in the middle of the room. Your arms and legs get stuck to the cross in a crucified stance as if held by powerful magnets that hold flesh rather then metal. From the black squares in the floor red liquid pours forth quickly filling the room. You struggle to get free but the swirling liquid gets deeper and deeper. It reaches your waist, then chest then flows over your head. You try to hold your breath at first as the liquid completely fills the room, but eventually, your lungs can resist no more. You painfully breathe in the strange red liquid that eventually suffocates you.
<audio src="8.wav" autoplay>The closer building has a well-defined entrance to it and you walk in easily. It appears to be similar to the first building you were in. As you walk you step on one of the black squares, however, instead of it being the floor it appears to be a hole. You fall in desperately trying to grab on to the sides but are unable. You continue falling, the black and white checkers flashing endlessly before your eyes. Thousands of years pass as you continue to fall with no end. Eventually, your mind is unable to handle this predicament and your consciousness falls into a waking hypnotic unthinking trance, you continue falling for 13 trillion years until this universe finally ends.
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</div>On your way to the larger building, you see a shape on the floor close by. It appears to be a mass of clothes on the ground, but as you look more carefully, you see that it may be a man in a trench coat. He looks similar to you, with a checkered face, but wears a hat and has some sort of mask on, and one of his hands appears to be a woman's boot. A hammer lays by his side. You walk a little closer to him, but he does not appear to notice you.
[[SAY HELLO | 10a]]
[[SAY WHO ARE YOU? | 10b]]
The strange man looks up at you startled then stands waveringly.
He says, "Help him out why don't you, don't just stand there. He's not going to save himself is he. You'll save yourself if you save him, maybe." He then picks up the hammer and starts hitting himself in the head.
"I'm going to be just fine once I get it all fixed and in place", he says as he continues hammering his skull, his hat rips in places and spatters with blood before it finally falls off. He then stops as if hearing a sound and then runs off into the distance.
[[CONTINUE | 11]]After the strange man's departure, from nearby you hear a call for help.
[[GO TO THE CRY FOR HELP | 12]]
[[GO IN A DIFFERENT DIRECTION | 11a]]The strange man moves to his knees and looks up at you.
"My name? Yes, yes I had a name. What was it? What is your name? Maybe that's mine as well. Do we all have the same name here? Everything else is the same. Maybe that's how they find us, when we say our name. You should be careful, names are dangerous around here, words too. I saw...I saw one of them..." He begins to cry uncontrollably, then he falls to the ground wrapping his arms around his legs. His sobs get louder, then slowly he begins to disappear. His faint sobs still linger as his body fades to nothing.
[[CONTINUE | 11]]
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</div>You walk to the sound of the cries and enter a nearby building where it is loudest. Going through some corridors you find the source of the painful expressions. A fabric rabbit hangs upside down held by invisible strings and spins slowly around, the rabbit turns its head and looks at you.
It speaks in a whisper, "Oh hello, I thought you might be Sarv. I see you are someone else or have you changed Sarv? No, I can see that you are not him in any form. The time worms keep coming and changing things so it's been hard to know if we are moving forward or backward now. In a few months, I'll be back here or is it a few months ago I'll be here. Anyways, I'm here now. Can you get me down?, the linears need the hands of someone who is parallel to the shadow, so I am unable."
[[LEAVE THE RABBIT AND MOVE ON | 12a]]
[[TRY TO GET THE RABBIT DOWN | 13]]
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</div>You head away from the cries to a different large rectangular building. It looks promising and you enter it. In the middle of the building is a floating cube about the size of a basketball with the same checkerboard pattern on it as everything else.
[[TOUCH CUBE | 11-a1]]
[[IGNORE CUBE AND CONTINUE THROUGH BUILDING | 11b-1]]
You reach for the cube and turn it. As you turn it pain erupts from your torso. Your midsection has been rotated around. You desperately try to pull the cube back to its original position but it does not budge, out of frustration and pain you turn the cube from the bottom to the top, you feel your body contorting and twisting. Your arm hangs from the cube as your hand holds on to it, but your body has become a twisted contortion of what it once was. The weight of your body and the desperate grasping of the cube makes it turn once more. You become a contorted twisted object on the floor, after months of extreme agony you hear the sound of someone walking and a large foot accidentally steps on you crushing your body instantly and you are no more.
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</div>You go from one building to the next. All the locations seem the same, you walk from one corridor to another. In the last building, you walk through you notice what appears to be the same corridor you came from. You turn around and see that corridor again. You walk a little forward and it appears that you are in the same hallway once more. With a nauseating thought, you realize you are stuck in some sort of endless loop that you can't escape from. You spend the rest of eternity waiting and walking with no escape possible.</style><img src="13.jpg"/300px height="200" width="300">
</div>You apologize to the rabbit and move on. You walk deeper into the complex trying to ignore the quiet distant sobs of the strange rabbit entity. In one of the more darkened rooms, a movement catches your eye from above. You glance upwards to find a large creature silently stirring several feet above your head. It looks to be made of some sort of metal with hundreds of interlaced ribbons all throughout its body. The ribbons move almost silently, there slight metallic rubbings can just barely be heard. It doesn't appear to notice you.
[[WALK QUICKLY AWAY | 12b]]
[[EXAMINE IT FURTHER | 12c]]
You gently grab the rabbits soft legs and pull, at first it appears to be stuck, by after some gently pulling electrical sparks appear and the rabbit is free. You lay him down on the ground and he quickly moves from under the place he was stuck. He brushes himself off and looks up at you. His black soulful eyes regard you sadly.
'Thank you so much, I am in your debt.', he says softly.
'Its best if we leave here quickly, I wish I could lead you, but I have some things I must do now that I'm free. I will give you one special word rhyme before I go though:
When going through this cubicular
Danger may find you quick
Try to turn perpendicular
And that may do the trick."
The rabbit then turns and pads far away.
[[CONTINUE | 14]]
As you try to walk away you feel something hard on your shoulder. You look around to see a mass of metal ribbons coming toward you, you make a mad dash to escape the horrible ribbons but you are too slow, you see parts of you fall to the ground as the ribbons effortlessly slice through you, the strange entity carefully scoops up your remains and discards them quickly.
<audio src="wierd2.wav" autoplay>You look more carefully at the metallic being, it appears to get closer and worry begins to dwell inside you. Soon the metal ribbons surround you and you are trapped. You gently try to move one of the ribbons so that you may escape but see your fingers falling to the floor. Grabbing your arm the danger of your situation becomes clear. A slight burning sensation hits your stomach and you look down to see a ribbon cutting through you, more metal ribbons follow slashing you into nothing.
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</div>After exploring the building you leave it. You walk around the strange realm going from building to building, many do not have entrances. After a few hours of walking a shape rushes from the corner of your eye. As you turn it is gone, but soon appears to your peripheral vision of your other eye. A strange cold feeling flashes over you, an echoey growling sound emanates in the area. You stagger around trying to look for the source of the sound. On the ground, you see a shadow, the shadow leaps from the ground and stands threateningly in front of you. Its body appears to be human but its head is of a wolf or similar creature and carrying some sort of bladed weapon resembling a machete. It raises the blade ready to deal you a fatal blow.
[[RUN AWAY | 14a]]
[[TRY TO BLOCK | 14a]]
[[TURN SIDEWAYS TO IT | 15]]
[[PUNCH IT IN THE STOMACH | 14a]]
[[YELL ANGRILY AT IT | 14a]]
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A feeling of incredible coldness cuts through both your mind and body as the shadow blade rips you in two. A sickening bestial howl is your last sense as the two halves of your body collapse to the ground.
<audio src="11.wav" autoplay>Remembering the rabbits' message, you turn perpendicularly sideways to the shadow thing. The lightless creature looks around wildly in a confused state. It lowers its blade and cowers then finally falls into the ground as a regular shadow. From above a white shining sphere appears in the sky, the light causes the shadow to contort in pain, as the light brightens the shadow tries to run but fades away as the light consumes it. The orb appears to move from one tower to another coming closer to you with each movement pausing above each as it moves.
[[GO TO A TOWER THE SPHERE WILL BE ABOVE | 16]]
[[AVOID THE ORB AND GO IN A DIFFERENT DIRECTION | 15a]]</style><img src="end.jpg"/300px height="200" width="300">
</div>You enter one of the towers the sphere will soon be over. In the tower, there is a large black square on the ground. You stand on the square and you float upwards. Looking up you see the shining orb above you. With your arms outstretched you come into contact with the glowing white orb. As you enter the warming glow of the orb you feel your body begin to dissolve. Painlessly with a feeling of utter bliss, you dissolve into the orb. All of a sudden you can feel and see the entire checkerboard world from every spot and every location, once you designed games, now you have become a game, this placed called to you and now you have become it and it has become you. Joining with the universe fulfills you in ways your normal life could never have and you realize this is what you've always wanted. You merge together for all time. Once, a checkerboard man, now you are the checkerboard world. The End.
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</div>You run from the strange orb and try to find a hiding spot. You walk into a small building and see a mirror on the wall. For the first time, you are able to see yourself, the checkerboard man. The mirror changes from your reflection to visions of all the many times in your life where you have hurt people, friends who you have used, the family that you have lied to, strangers that you have abused. The visions continue ceaselessly showing all the results of your selfish actions.
A voice from the mirror asks, "Do you wish to continue these reflections?" You say no, the mirror then moves from the wall and like a giant piece of foil envelopes you, surrounding your body and enclosing all around you. The mirror devours you and your memories and your life is extinguished.
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After a long week at work designing and testing board games at Martin-Burson you sit down on the couch for a few hours of mindless television. From the glare of the screen several hours of visual entertainment spill forth.
[[ CONTINUE | Light]]