Egress

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<div id="text-box">Finally, you are absolutely perfect in every possible way. You feel empty, but that's fine. The air blows through you and it feels good.</div><div id="image-box"><ul><li>[[Look around you|Garden Deck]]</li></ul></div> <<set $Completed += 1>>

<div id="text-box">You are on the lovely deck of the lovely house that sits atop a hill overlooking a lovely garden. The garden slopes downward, following the natural contours of the land. Beyond it you can see a beach. The ocean is a soft blue line.</div><div id="image-box"><ul><li>[[Enter the Garden|Garden Entrance]]</li><li>[[Enter the House|Living Room]]</li></ul></div>

<div id="text-box">Trees, grass, and a pathway snaking downward along the hill. This is a simple garden, but it is no less lovely for it.</div><div id="image-box"><ul><li>[[Walk up to the Deck|Garden Deck]]</li><li>[[Walk to the Beach|Beach]]</li></ul></div>

<div id="text-box">This is a nice living room. It's very nice indeed. There's a lot of space and a lot of light during the day. And when the sun sets, you are sure that you will feel safe here, swaddled by the soft and luminous air.</div><div id="image-box"><ul><li>[[Go out onto the deck|Garden Deck]]</li><li>[[Go to the Kitchen|Kitchen]]</li><li>[[Go to the Dining Room|Dining Room]]</li><li>[[Go to the Bedroom|Bedroom]]</li><li>[[Go to the Basement|Basement]]</li></ul></div>

<div id="text-box">Everything is so new here, so very new and shiny, from the knives to the [[refrigerator.|Fridge]]</div><div id="image-box"><ul><li>[[Go out onto the deck|Garden Deck]]</li><li>[[Go to the Living Room|Living Room]]</li><li>[[Go to the Dining Room|Dining Room]]</li><li>[[Go to the Bedroom|Bedroom]]</li><li>[[Go to the Basement|Basement]]</li></ul></div>

<div id="text-box"><<if $Completed is 2>>There is a lovely, framed woodblock print on the wall depicting a robed figure with long, disheveled hair striding barefoot across a barren field. <<endif>><<if $Completed is 3>>There is a pair of lovely, framed woodblock prints hanging on the wall. One depicts a robed figure with long, disheveled hair striding barefoot across a barren field. The other depicts three unbridled oxen standing in front of a rickety farmhouse. <<endif>><<if $Completed >= 4>>There are three framed woodblock prints hanging on the wall. One depicts a robed figure with long, disheveled hair striding barefoot across a barren field. The one next to it depicts three unbridled oxen standing in front of a rickety farmhouse. The third depicts what appearts to be a string quartet of anthropomorphic animals performing in front of two enthroned lions. <<endif>>Such a lovely dining room, well appointed, so as to keep everyone comfortable, but not too ostentatious, so as not to draw attention away from from the sparkling conversation and the smiles of your guests. The chairs and the table are currently empty, a bit like your whistling, perfect belly, but that's not forever.</div><div id="image-box"><ul><li>[[Go out onto the deck|Garden Deck]]</li><li>[[Go to the Living Room|Living Room]]</li><li>[[Go to the Kitchen|Kitchen]]</li><li>[[Go to the Bedroom|Bedroom]]</li><li>[[Go to the Basement|Basement]]</li></ul></div>

<div id="text-box">A true sanctuary. It serves you in whatever way you need it to. If you but take a single step past the threshold, you arrive in the home of homes, the sanctum of sanctums. Ah. <<if $Completed >= 2>>[[The painting|Painting]] on the western wall depicts a city dwarfed by the moon and a spiral of stylized constellations.<<endif>></div><div id="image-box"><ul><li>[[Go out onto the deck|Garden Deck]]</li><li>[[Go to the Living Room|Living Room]]</li><li>[[Go to the Kitchen|Kitchen]]</li><li>[[Go to Dining Room|Dining Room]]</li><li>[[Go to the Basement|Basement]]</li></ul></div>

<div id="text-box"><<once>>This house does not have a basement.<<becomes>>It's okay. You must have forgotten. Happens to the best of us. This house doesn't have a basement.<<becomes>>I am not lying to you. This house really doesn't have a basement.<<becomes>>You are perfect in every way, finally. Why would someone as perfect as yourself need a basement?<<becomes>>What for? Storage? You have exactly as much as you need and want. There is nothing to put away, nothing to consign to darkness or dust, nothing to hide.<<endonce>><<if visited() >= 6>><<once>>Fine...<<endonce>><<if $Completed is 1>>There's the door... Here are the crooked stairs, stained gray concrete and festering wood. There's the dim, bare lightbulb, and there are the rows and rows of crap, musty shelves of musty crap that seem to stretch forever in every direction, well past that feeble, wavering pool of electric light. There it is, the Elemental Plane of Imperfection, the Derelict Dungeon of Meaningless Mysteries, the ravenous stomach, never full and never empty. You solved the puzzle. You found it. Welcome to the goddamn basement.<<else>>You stand atop a stained and crooked concrete staircase. It leads down to your impressively spacious basement.<<endif>> <<endif>> </div><div id="image-box"><ul><li>[[Go out onto the deck|Garden Deck]]</li><li>[[Go to the Living Room|Living Room]]</li><li>[[Go to the Kitchen|Kitchen]]</li><li>[[Go to the Bedroom|Bedroom]]</li><li>[[Go to the Dining Room|Dining Room]]</li><li>[[Go to the Basement|Basement]]</li><<if visited() >= 6>><li>[[Explore the Basement|Inner Basement]]</li><<endif>></ul></div>

<div id="text-box">The breeze moves through you and past you, rhythmic as the waves. There's a faint echo of pain, like drawing air over a sensitive tooth, but you are finally perfect in every way, and are therefore untroubled. The beach stretches to either side of you, and the ocean stretches in front of you, forever. </div><div id="image-box"><ul><li>[[Go to the Garden|Garden Entrance]]</li><li>[[Enter the Ocean|Ocean]]</li></ul></div>

<div id="text-box">You drift forward, into the surf, and the cold of the water strikes. It overwhelms you. It is so sudden and so utterly brazen. The audacity. The seafoam climbs you, encircles you like a serpent, and you are, at least for the moment, consumed by it, by the cold and the salt.</div><div id="image-box"><ul><li>[[Step Back|Beach]]</li><li>[[Keep Wading In|Ocean2]]</li></ul></div>

<div id="text-box">After a bit of a struggle, your body adjusts to the cold and that which was painful becomes invigorating! Nothing like a dip in the ocean to get the old blood flowing again!</div><div id="image-box"><ul><li>[[Return to shore|Beach]]</li></ul></div>

<div id="text-box">There is nothing inside right now. Only light. This is, of course, not forever. </div><div id="image-box"><ul><li>[[Go out onto the deck|Garden Deck]]</li><li>[[Go to the Living Room|Living Room]]</li><li>[[Go to the Dining Room|Dining Room]]</li><li>[[Go to the Bedroom|Bedroom]]</li><li>[[Go to the Basement|Basement]]</li></ul></div>

<<if $Completed is 1>><div id="text-box">Deeper in, you find a black, slick, dripping fungus climbing up the walls and over the shelves. Delicate phallic stalks sprout and strain toward the ceiling. There are boxes back here, piles and piles of them, but they are all mostly grown over with the stuff. Hard to tell what's inside them anymore. The fungal growth has eaten away at the cardboard. The labels are either gone or illegible now. Boy, this basement sure is big. It's a lot bigger than you thought it'd be.</div><div id="image-box"><ul><li>[[Go back upstairs|Basement Lost]]</li><li>[[Continue Exploring|Basement Explore]]</li></ul></div> <<else>><div id="text-box">The black fungus is everywhere and the place now smells like death...</div><div id="image-box"><ul><<if $FoundUD is false>><li>[[Go back upstairs|Basement Lost]]</li><<else>><li>[[Go back upstairs|Lost Again]]</li><<endif>><<if $PitchEnding is false>><li>[[Continue Exploring|Basement Explore]]</li><<else>><li>[[Find the nook|Nook]]</li><<endif>></ul></div><<endif>>

<div id="text-box">Wowser, what a basement you have! Amazing that we'd almost forgotten about it, forgotten that it exists in the first place. We must have been tired. It's big, for sure. In fact, it's huge. So huge! You keep finding new shelves, new walls, new towers of cardboard boxes rotting and teeming with weird growths. You pass under many bare lightbulbs, some bright, some dim, some flickering, and some dead, and over many cracks that cover the poured concrete foundation like twisted, illegible hieroglyphs. You seem to have misplaced the stairs, however.</div><div id="image-box"><ul><li>[[Keep Searching|Basement Lost 2]]</li><<if $PitchEnding is false>><li>[[Continue Exploring|Basement Explore]]</li><<else>><li>[[Find the nook|Nook]]</li><<endif>></ul></div>

<div id="text-box">It seems to mostly be more boxes, more shelves, more useless junk. Some of this stuff makes no real sense...just bits and pieces that look to have been removed from some kind of mammoth contraption, too specific and too technical to understand, like the letters of an alien language. Here and there you see something familiar, a deflated ball, a naked, headless doll, the empty chassis of a game console, a dust jacket, an expired condom, but none of it is especially interesting or useful. It's all kind of a blur. </div><div id="image-box"><ul><<if $FoundUD is false>><li>[[Go back upstairs|Basement Lost]]</li><<else>><li>[[Go back upstairs|Lost Again]]</li><<endif>><li>[[Continue Exploring|Basement Explore 2]]</li></ul></div>

<div id="text-box">It's exhausting, looking for the stairs, the door, the way back up to the well lit and well appointed house. Did you get a chance to check out that bedroom? It was really quite nice. Haven't you been here before, in this very spot? You know, if you find the outer-most wall of the chamber and follow it all the way around, you're bound to eventually hit the staircase that takes you up there. Gosh, this place is so big!</div><div id="image-box"><ul><li>[[Look for the wall|Basement Lost 3]]</li><<if $PitchEnding is false>><li>[[Explore the basement|Basement Explore]]</li><<else>><li>[[Find the nook|Nook]]</li><<endif>></ul></div>

<div id="text-box">How long has it been? Hours? Days? Years? What a marvel of architechture! And to think we had almost ignored it, almost forgot that it was down here! Have no fear, persistence pays off! Here's the staircase! Here it is! We're out and in the clear!</div><div id="image-box"><ul><li>[[Go upstairs|UD Livingroom]]</li><<if $PitchEnding is false>><li>[[Stay and Explore|Basement Explore]]</li><<else>><li>[[Find the nook|Nook]]</li><<endif>></ul></div>

<div id="text-box"><<once>>Oh dear...we've been stumbling around down there for quite a while longer than we thought!<<endonce>> It looks to be nighttime now and the lights don't work. There are no bulbs in any of the fixtures. The moon, at least, is full. Although it feels dimmer than it should be, doesn't it? It feels really rather dim, for a moon... The walls are pocked with dark, soft, amorphous stains of varying sizes, some as small as a pin's head and others as large as yours. They are bumpy, squirmy, kinda hairy, and give off a moldy smell. It looks like someone had taken most of the furniture in your living room, along with most of the flooring...There's an [[old, cathode ray tube television set|TV]], and a musty lawn chair overgrown with gray moss. Someone has been using the floor, now an expanse of bare, bumpy concrete, as an ashtray.</div><div id="image-box"><ul><li>[[Go out onto the deck|UD Garden Deck]]</li><li>[[Go to the Kitchen|UD Kitchen]]</li><li>[[Go to the Dining Room|UD Dining Room]]</li><li>[[Go to the Bedroom|UD Bedroom]]</li><li>[[Go to the Basement|UD Basement]]</li></ul></div> <<set $FoundUD to true>>

<div id="text-box">The deck is, predictably, rotten, rickety, not long for this world. But at least the garden is still, for the most part, a garden. It's a bit overgrown, perhaps, but that's to be expected. There isn't anything to light the way besides the moon, but the slope is gentle, and the ocean is stoic as always.</div><div id="image-box"><ul><li>[[Enter the Garden|UD Garden Entrance]]</li><li>[[Enter the House|UD Livingroom]]</li></ul></div>

<div id="text-box">Even the refrigerator is gone. Almost a relief, really...The sink still sort of works, but the water looks and smells wrong. All the appliences and implements have been taken, and the cabinet doors have been removed from their hinges and piled in one of the corners, their edges eaten by the fuzzy, gray mold.</div><div id="image-box"><ul><li>[[Go out onto the deck|UD Garden Deck]]</li><li>[[Go to the Living Room|UD Livingroom]]</li><li>[[Go to the Dining Room|UD Dining Room]]</li><li>[[Go to the Bedroom|UD Bedroom]]</li><li>[[Go to the Basement|UD Basement]]</li></ul></div>

<div id="text-box">What used to be the dining room is downright putrid now, although you can't quite pinpoint the origin of the stench. The walls look to have been spray painted a dark red, so dark that it's almost black. Here too, the flooring seems to have been removed. The room is littered with discarded wrappers, bottles, and bags.</div><div id="image-box"><ul><li>[[Go out onto the deck|UD Garden Deck]]</li><li>[[Go to the Living Room|UD Livingroom]]</li><li>[[Go to the Kitchen|UD Kitchen]]</li><li>[[Go to the Bedroom|UD Bedroom]]</li><li>[[Go to the Basement|UD Basement]]</li></ul></div>

<div id="text-box">The far wall seems to have been removed, along with literally all of the furniture. Even the bathroom seems to have been stripped clean. It's basically just an empty, doorless chamber now. This is the emptiest room in an already empty house...The wind is cold. It blows in from the sea, smelling of brine.</div><div id="image-box"><ul><li>[[Go out onto the deck|UD Garden Deck]]</li><li>[[Go to the Living Room|UD Livingroom]]</li><li>[[Go to the Kitchen|UD Kitchen]]</li><li>[[Go to Dining Room|UD Dining Room]]</li><li>[[Go to the Basement|UD Basement]]</li></ul></div>

<div id="text-box"><<once>>The door was right here...I swear. It was right here.<<becomes>>Where was it again? I just...I am not kidding this time...this isn't a puzzle or a trick...it's...<<becomes>>It's gone...I'm sorry...It's just gone. This house doesn't seem to have a basement. Maybe it never had one. Maybe we just...got carried away?<<becomes>>You are perfect in every way. You are perfect in every way. You are perfect in every way. You are perfect in every way. You are perfect in every way. You are perfect in every way. You are perfect in every way. You are perfect in every way. You are perfect in every way... <<becomes>>This is making me very tired...I am sorry...I really am...<<endonce>><<if visited() >= 6>><<once>>Let's just go...Please? Let's just try to make the best of what we have...<<endonce>>This house doesn't have a basement. <<endif>> </div><div id="image-box"><ul><li>[[Go out onto the deck|UD Garden Deck]]</li><li>[[Go to the Living Room|UD Livingroom]]</li><li>[[Go to the Kitchen|UD Kitchen]]</li><li>[[Go to the Bedroom|UD Bedroom]]</li><li>[[Go to the Dining Room|UD Dining Room]]</li><li>[[Go to the Basement|UD Basement]]</li></ul></div>

<div id="text-box">Boy, have we let this place go or what? The grass, at some points, comes up to your navel. Best tread carefully here, lest we step on something that we really shouldn't want to step on.</div><div id="image-box"><ul><li>[[Walk up to the Deck|UD Garden Deck]]</li><li>[[Walk to the Beach|UD Beach]]</li></ul></div>

<div id="text-box">The beach stretches to either side of you, and the ocean stretched in front of you, forever. It's gotten colder since we had been away...much, much colder. The wind is unkind. It cuts down to the bone. It makes your skin and your meat go numb.</div><div id="image-box"><ul><li>[[Go to the Garden|UD Garden Entrance]]</li><li>[[Enter the Ocean|UD Ocean]]</li></ul></div>

<div id="text-box">You drift forward, into the surf, and the cold of the water strikes. It overwhelms you. It is so sudden and so utterly brazen. The audacity. The seafoam climbs you, encircles you like a serpent, and you are, at least for the moment, consumed by it, by the cold and the salt. And dear god it's cold! You've never felt so cold in your life!</div><div id="image-box"><ul><li>[[Step Back|UD Beach]]</li><li>[[Keep Wading In|UD Ocean2]]</li></ul></div>

<div id="text-box">Well, there's something...a nook of sorts, a small room, doorless, about the size of an average bathroom or closet. There is a shaded lamp with a ceramic base in the corner. It gives off a bright, orange light. Jeez, how long has that thing been running up the electricity bill? The black growth is thick and heavy here. The mushrooms seem to quiver a little, for a moment appearing more animal than vegetable. Well, mushrooms aren't a vegetable...but you understand what I mean. They are neither animal nor mineral. See? I'm sorry...I am suddenly feeling very, very tired...it's getting a bit difficult to keep track of things. How long have we been down here? </div><div id="image-box"><ul><<if $FoundUD is false>><li>[[Go back upstairs|Basement Lost]]</li><<else>><li>[[Go back upstairs|Lost Again]]</li><<endif>><li>[[Examine the nook carefully|Basement Explore 3]]</li></ul></div>

<div id="text-box">There is a hatch against the far wall, caked in black grime, but nevertheless functional...there's a ladder here. leading down into pitch black. </div><div id="image-box"><ul><<if $FoundUD is false>><li>[[Go back upstairs|Basement Lost]]</li><<else>><li>[[Go back upstairs|Lost Again]]</li><<endif>><li>[[Go down the ladder|The pitch]]</li></ul></div>

<div id="text-box">It takes you somewhere deep, deep, very deep. You are, I'm quite sure, well below sea level now. You can't see a thing. No lights down here. The space around you feels stifling, small, but you can't be certain. </div><div id="image-box"><ul><li>[[Time to go back home|Pitch Lost]]</li><li>[[Press onward|The pitch 2]]</li></ul></div>

<div id="text-box">It's too dark...you can't find the ladder...you can't find corners or walls. You can't find anything at all. It's just dark. So, so dark. </div><div id="image-box"><ul><li>[[Press onward|The pitch 2]]</li></ul></div>

<div id="text-box">Normally, your eyes would have adjusted by now, but there's nothing to adjust to, no morsel of light for your retinas to feed on. It's just a vast, stuffy blackness, and it smells like mold, and the only sound is that of your footsteps squishing through a thick layer of slime. </div><div id="image-box"><ul><li>[[You have to keep moving|The pitch 3]]</li></ul></div>

<div id="text-box">The slime is making you sick and it's making me tired...I think we're sinking in it...I think it's caught your foot and is trying to pull you under...And it's bad for the skin...Prolonged contact causes irritation...and then it goes deep, and there is pain. It goes deep into the blood, into the meat, into the folds of your brain. It hurts. We need to get out of here. </div><div id="image-box"><ul><li>[[We need to keep moving|The pitch 4]]</li></ul></div>

<div id="text-box">It's all around us now, the slime...It's eating away at us, our skin now, and then our muscles, and then our bones, and we are dissolving in it. Soon we will become it, and it will become us. And in becoming, we will be unraveled, undone, cleansed. Soon we will be perfect again...absolutely perfect in every possible way. </div><div id="image-box"><ul><li>[[Yes|Start]]</li></ul></div> <<set $PitchEnding to true>>

<div id="text-box">It works, apparently? They power hasn't been shut off yet! Small blessings...the TV fills the room with cold, blue light. In the tube, there is a monochrome face, an angry face, a face resolute in its committment to looking as angry and as serious as possible. Its mouth moves and, after a barely perceptible delay, the sound comes out through the ancient speakers. It seems to be spouting gibberish with an almost beatific air of authority: words, letters, numbers. Some kind of code, maybe. </div><div id="image-box"><ul><li>[[Go out onto the deck|UD Garden Deck]]</li><li>[[Go to the Kitchen|UD Kitchen]]</li><li>[[Go to the Dining Room|UD Dining Room]]</li><li>[[Go to the Bedroom|UD Bedroom]]</li><li>[[Go to the Basement|UD Basement]]</li></ul></div>

<div id="text-box">It's all around us now, the sea, the cold...So FUCKING cold! Searing cold! And then the feeling goes...the feeling goes away. It's eating away at us, our skin now, and then our muscles, and then our bones, and we are dissolving in it. Soon we will become it, and it will become us. Burning, burning, burning. And in becoming, we will be unraveled, undone, cleansed. Soon we will be perfect again...absolutely perfect in every possible way. </div><div id="image-box"><ul><li>[[Oh, Yes|Start]]</li></ul></div> <<set $OceanEnding to false>>

<div id="text-box">A real work of art, this. The golden plaque underneath the painting reads "As Above, So Below."</div><div id="image-box"><ul><li>[[Touch the plaque|Safe]]</li><li>[[Turn away|Bedroom]]</li></ul></div>

<<if $GotKey is false>><div id="text-box">With a mechanical click, the painting slides over to reveal a small, antique wall safe with three brass dials. Enter Three Digit Combination: <<textbox "$Combo" "">></div><div id="image-box"><ul><li>[[Try combination|Validate]]</li><li>[[Turn away|Bedroom]]</li></ul></div><<else>><div id="text-box">The safe is empty.</div><div id="image-box"><ul><li>[[Turn away|Bedroom]]</li></ul></div><<endif>>

<div id="text-box"><<if $Combo is "136">>With a click and a tick and another click, the safe's locking mechanism is released. It swings outward. Inside is a large, cylindrical object. You know it to be a key, though you can't quite remember what it opens. You take it with you, of course. <<set $GotKey to true>> <<else>>Not quite... <<endif>> </div><div id="image-box"><ul><<if $Combo != "136">><li>[[Try Again|Safe]]</li><<endif>><li>[[Turn away|Bedroom]]</li></ul></div>

<div id="text-box"><img src="egress_title.png" alt="Egress"/> by Aleks Samoylov</div><div id="image-box"><ul><li>[[Start|Start]]</li><li>[[About]]</li></ul></div> <<set $Completed to 0>> <<set $PitchEnding to false>> <<set $OceanEnding to false>> <<set $FoundUD to false>> <<set $GotKey to false>>

<div id="text-box"><<once>>No matter what you do, no matter what markers you leave behind, whether breadcrumbs, or paper cranes, or lines of irridescent string, you can't seem to avoid getting lost. The sensible method that you'd previously employed seems to have lost its efficacy. The walls twist, turn, fold in on themselves, become corridors, and rooms, warehouses, and labyrinths. After a certain point, all that's left to do is wander and hope for the best. You learn to hunt the local fauna, tracking their footprints in the dust, and, following one unfortunate experiment, to avoid injesting the local flora, no matter how hungry you get. You are rather tired by the time you finally find the stairs.<<endonce>><<if visited() >= 2>>How many eternities have you spent down here? If you weren't perfect in every possible way, I'd counsel against trying this in the future...You always find the staircase...eventually.<<endif>></div><div id="image-box"><ul><li>[[Go upstairs|Blasted Living Room]]</li></ul></div>

<div id="text-box">The nook, at the very least, you can find reliably enough. It...calls to you, sings to you...The sludge... Something seems to have gotten dislodged since last we were here...Where there was once a hatch and a ladder is now a concrete shaft filled to the brim with bubbling, pitch black liquid. Someone has scrawled your name on the far wall, presumably using that same liquid in lieu of ink or paint. The sludge continues to call to you. The sludge continues to call to us. To whisper, whisper, whisper.</div><div id="image-box"><ul><li>[[Submerge yourself|Submerge]]</li></ul></div>

<div id="text-box">The sludge is thick and viscous at the very top, but appears to grow thinner and thinner as you sink deeper and deeper. It consumes you bit by bit, first your feet and then your knees, your hips, your stomach and elbows, your chest and your shoulders, your neck. As it finally swallows your head, something pops, something like a membrane or a film, and you begin to plummet, through absolute blackness, breathlessly. Mercifully, you lose consciousness before you have a chance to panic, before your lungs begin to burn and your body begins to scream.</div><div id="image-box"><ul><li>[[Breathe|Start]]</li></ul></div>

<div id="text-box">The sun is blood red. It squats on the horizon. There is nothing left but a broken hatch door and some crumbling concrete. The hatch itself, now little more than a ragged shaft, is bubbling over with thick, black sludge. You're standing on a low hill encircled by a desert that stretches as far as the eye can see. There's a ruined tower to the west, almost black against the darkening horizon.</div><div id="image-box"><ul><li>[[Drown in the sludge|Submerge]]</li><li>[[Investigate the tower|Tower]]</li><li>[[Wander the desert|Desert 1]]</li></ul></div>

<div id="text-box"><<once>>This must have always been a formidable, if painfully utilitarian, structure.<<endonce>> What remains of the tower is reduced, certainly, but impressive...that particular species of impressive that the word "awful" was invented to convey. The hollow concrete pillar, even as it leans, even with its jagged rim and deformed entryway, manages to make you feel smaller than does the desert itself. The interior is a broken circle full of shadows, and at the center of the circle is another hatch. <<once>>It appears to be well and truly locked.<<endonce>></div><div id="image-box"><ul><li>[[Return to the hill|Blasted Living Room]]</li><li>[[Examine the hatch|Hatch]]</li><li>[[Wander the desert|Desert 1]]</li></ul></div>

<div id="text-box">It doesn't take you long to get lost, to lose sight of the hill and the tower. It takes you significantly longer to forget that they ever existed in the first place, assuming they actually did. There is no difference, I think, between a desert and anything else, fundamentally speaking at least. You let your body work, let it move, in the way that feels most natural under the circumstances. You let it make calculations and adjustments on the fly. You let it exhaust itself. You close your eyes involuntarily, just for a moment, and suddenly you're on your deck again, caressed by the fresh ocean breeze. You open them again, and you're trudging through the desert. You close them again ...</div><div id="image-box"><ul><li>[[Close your eyes|Desert 2]]</li></ul></div>

<div id="text-box">The hatch is a heavy and austere copper disk with an unusual circular lock set into its center. There is something scratched into its surface, likely with a large, sharp implement: a crude depiction of the moon and the stars hovering over what look to be houses, and beneath them three rough rectangles.</div><div id="image-box"><ul><li>[[Return to the hill|Blasted Living Room]]</li><li>[[Turn away|Tower]]</li><li>[[Wander the desert|Desert 1]]</li><<if $GotKey is true>><li>[[Unlock Hatch|Hatch Unlocked]]</li><<endif>></ul></div>

<div id="text-box">The key that you'd retreived from...Well, wherever you got it from, the key fits. You hear a series of mechanical clicks and ticks, and then the heavy disk sinks a foot into the earth, groans loudly, and slides off to the side, revealing yet another deep shaft. Far below you, where the shaft finally appears to end, you can see a tiny, circular sliver of what looks like a lush night sky, a sky brimming with stars. Except, of course, it isn't a sky at all.</div><div id="image-box"><ul><li>[[Jump|Star Fissure]]</li><li>[[Stay for now|Tower]]</li></ul></div>

<div id="text-box">Exhaustion sweeps over you and kicks your legs out from under you. The earth doesn't catch you. Instead, you float, as if on a gentle wave. As you sink deeper in slumber, something clicks again, and yet again you're on your deck, watching the ocean roll in and out below you, watching the garden stirring in the wind. Something compels you to stay awake, some dogged desire or instinct, and suddenly you are wracked with pain, barely moving through a wasteland that stretches on, and on, and on, your limbs burning and your throat dry. No, no, no. This simply will not do.</div><div id="image-box"><ul><li>[[Close your eyes|Start]]</li></ul></div>

<div id="text-box">Well, this makes at least as much sense as anything else, I guess. You take a deep breath and your innards flap wildly in anticipation. And then you leap. And then you fall, and fall, and fall, your stomach lurching, and your brain, and your blood. You tumble down and through the shaft, and then the universe seems to explode around you, stars, galaxies, nebulae, light, darkness, and space as far as your eyes can see. There is no shaft, no way upwards, no way back. There never was. You close your eyes, and you see yourself standing, sitting, lying down, on countless different shores, in countless different gardens, bedrooms, hospital wards, basements, dungeons, museums, forests, cemetaries...</div><div id="image-box"><ul><li>[[Everywhere|Star Fissure 2]]</li></ul></div>

<div id="text-box">You begin to burn, or to dissolve, or to disintergrate. Whatever the case, it doesn't hurt. It is merely the lifting away of matter and, with matter, of burden. As your corporeal form unravels, your inner self blurs and expands, an unfurling of a thousand blossoming flowers, one bursting eternity of infinitely complex superposition. You remember everything and forget everything. You are everyone and noone. As the last shred of your body folds in on itself, curls like a flake of ash over a bonfire, you feel the vastness of space contracting around you. Or are you simpling expanding that rapidly? The stars smash into you and bloom amongs your stems and whorls, and the planets, and the asteroids, and the dust, and the atoms.</div><div id="image-box"><ul><li>[[Everything|Star Fissure 3]]</li></ul></div>

<div id="text-box">Finally, you suspend yourself, always on the deck, always in the garden, always waiting for the sun to rise, or set, for your friends to come or go. Finally, you are perfect.</div>

<div id="text-box"><img src="egress_title.png" alt="Egress"/> Egress is a short piece of interactive fiction by Aleks Samoylov. It asks you to explore an imaginary space, test its boundaries, and, if you feel up to it, solve a puzzle or two. If you find this experience edifying, interesting, or enjoyable and would like to support the artist long term, consider becoming a patron at <a href="https://patreon.com/feedthealeks" target="_blank">patreon.com/feedthealeks</a>. Patrons receive access to all commercial releases from the artist (more games like this, plus some tabletop stuff, and who knows what else) as part of their subscription.</div><div id="image-box"><ul><li>[[Start|Start]]</li><li>[[About]]</li></ul></div>