by Ryan North
So!
That’s something to look forward to!
THE END
* * *
» Restart? «
* * *
You turn to the appropriate page, and read about how you’re sad from your dad’s death so you dress in black and act all sullen, but you’re still looking for something to reveal itself so that you might spring into action and begin your investigation. In the meantime you’re acting weird and making a general nuisance of yourself. There’s a cool picture too! It looks like this:
Holy cow! This book is like a mirror image of what’s actually been happening lately! It’s got both your and Hamlet’s characters down perfectly, just with different names, and also with dragon-mastery powers that don’t actually ever seem to come up.
In fact, there are so many similarities between the book and real life, you bet that if you went back a bit, squinted your eyes, and did all the correct name substitutions as you read, you could continue reading the book as if it actually WAS a choose-your-own-adventure book written about Hamlet!
So that’s what you decide to do! You begin to mentally make all substitutions necessary while reading this book to make the book match up with what’s been going in real life, and you...
» Play as Hamlet «
* * *
* * *
You continue reading:
You’ve killed your brother and married his widow and now you’re king! Congratulations: you have scored 400 out of a possible 1000 points. Now you get to play as the dead king’s son, and try to reveal your own murder!!
You look up from the book. “Sweet, this book is a lot of fun!” you say, “And I sure am completely innocent...as to what might happen next!”
Behind you, Hamlet whispers to himself. “MAN, WAIT MAYBE HE DIDN’T DO THE MURDERS,” you hear.
You return to the book:
You are Gonzago II, or as you prefer to be called DRAGONMASTER 3001: son of the king and nephew of the DRAGONMASTER 3000! You have all the powers of your uncle, the 3000th member of the DRAGONMASTER clan. Also you look a lot like your uncle too, but that’s neither here nor there. Anyway, you’re a prince!
Things have been rough lately. You’ve been trying to focus on your studies at Teen High where you and your bros The Whiz, Standard Softtop, and Heatshrink Buttsplice all hang out, but you’ve been called home because your father died. Then your dead dad’s brother, DRAGONMASTER 3000, married your mother two weeks later. Classy.
You think your father’s recent death was MURDER, and you suspect it was his brother who did it. Should you investigate his murder? Or should you go kill skeletons, as he would’ve wanted — to do himself, that is, if he were still alive?
You look up from the book and say:
» “I choose to investigate the murder!” «
» “I choose to kill the skeletons!” «
* * *
* * *
You turn to the appropriate page.
You pour the poison into his mouth. Like all sleeping people, your brother doesn’t wake up when cold liquids are poured down his throat without his consent, so this whole thing goes really well! Congratulations, you have just murdered your brother. Perhaps you’d like to assume his throne now as well?
Behind you, Hamlet whispers to himself, “MAN, THAT’S CLOSE ENOUGH, ONLY A MURDERER IN REAL LIFE WOULD APPROXIMATE A MURDER IN A FICTIONAL ENVIRONMENT AS WELL.”
Nice one, Claudius. Hamlet now believes you murdered his father!
It seems you have two choices: you can throw the book down, yell that you hate it, and run out of the room. Or, since an innocent person would actually not react that way, you can just continue playing as if nothing’s wrong, thereby NOT instantly confirming your guilt, and allow your choices to be read as simple random chance!
» Run out of the room «
» Continue playing as if nothing’s wrong «
* * *
* * *
You hold on, but your palms start to sweat, and before you know it you’re slipping. Then you’re falling. This isn’t looking good, Hamlet!
You hit the ground so hard that your legs crumple like an accordion. One of your leg bones stabs up through your chest and pierces you right in the heart. Didn’t think that was possible? Neither did I, but hey, here we are! Ouchie!
That’s the last thing you think: “Ouchie!”
THE END
P.S. You don’t come back as a ghost, but you DO come back as a tiny smelly bug that gets stepped on real quick, so — that’s...something?
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» Restart? «
* * *
Letting go of the smallest balloon, you stop rising. Then you start falling. Your momentum is increasing at only 0.2 m/sec, but when I say “only” that’s still quite a bit per second and you’re quite a few hundred metres up, so anyway long story short, have you ever seen those images of a drop of water hitting a puddle where it bursts in that beautiful crown shape? In that magical moment, over so quickly that it can only be seen when it’s artificially frozen, we can see invisible beauty hidden in destruction.
Imagine that, but with your totally gross guts!!
THE END
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» Restart? «
* * *
Tying the body parts to the hot air balloons is the easy part, surprisingly. You manage to balance the load (i.e., chunks of human flesh) across balloons so that each balloon is positively buoyant. The hard part is moving them around in this relatively tiny and low-ceilinged room.
You get one balloon out the window, but in doing so knock a torch onto the curtain, leaving it considerably charred. You get another out, but manage to upset the pot over the fireplace and get stew all over the floor. With not much else left to damage, you get the remaining balloons out the window and watch as they float off into the sky, carrying most of the evidence of your crime miles and miles away, each to land in a different area. And please, who would bother investigating the discovery of just a SINGLE body part? Hopefully nobody, that’s who!
Turning around, you see the door open and who should enter but Corambis, Polonius’s twin brother! You recognize him from the royal courts.
“I unlocked the door, so you can leave no—” he begins, but cuts himself off, shocked. “What happened here?!”
You smile in what you hope is a calming manner. “As you can see, I was preparing stew when I tripped,” you say. “Stumbling backwards, I fell onto the table, hitting the wall, which knocked a torch onto the curtain, causing it to almost catch on fire. As I shoved the remaining torches in the stove to destroy them without a trace and prevent further fire hazards, I knocked over the stew, causing it to get everywhere, including on myself.”
“That looks like blood on you though,” says Corambis.
“Nope, it’s stew. See?” you say and then you draw a finger across your arm and lick off the “stew.” It’s disgusting. You throw up a little in your mouth, and then you throw up a little on the ground.
Corambis looks at you.
“I am not a particularly talented chef,” you say.
“Well...” Corambis begins, and then pauses. He seems to reach a decision. “Be careful next time, okay?”
“You got it, bro,” you say. You smile. Corambis looks at you and leaves.
Congratulations! You have gained 10 conversation points, your maximum hit points have gone up by 5, AND you have completed the optional sidequest of Nobody Will Miss Polonius (Murder That Guy Polonius for No Real Reason). Unfortunately Corambis only has a 1 in 2 chance of dropping loot upon quest completion, and it didn’t work out for you this time.
On the plus side, you have successfully killed a man, but it wasn’t the man you were supposed to kill. Remember? Claudius? The king who killed your dad?
Anyway, before you started this murder, I’m pretty sure your mom wanted to talk to you!
» Go talk to your mom «
* * *
* * *
Your first office
r looks at you, her eyes asking if this is really what you want to do.
You nod.
She turns and presses a few buttons on your console. “It’s been a pleasure,” you tell her.
“The pleasure,” she says, “was all mine. Good luck, Captain.”
You say, “You too, Commander,” and then your ship crashes into the Deltron ship hull and that’s the last thing you see for a really, really, really long time.
You do get reanimated in the distant future, but that’s another story (AND HERE IT IS: hyper-advanced future people use a form of beaming that works across time and transfers information instead of matter so that non-destructive duplicates can be made; this allows them to revive interesting historical figures from any point in their lives, so the hyper-advanced future people can learn about EVERYTHING, and anyway they got you by mistake this one time; you live in the future for a bit and it’s pretty cool because you can chill with all these historical people but they all sound really old-timey and the ones from really long ago are, like, racist? They’re all really super racist.)
THE END
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» Restart? «
* * *
Hamlet is at the door!
That’s right, turns out that simply wishing for someone to be at your door doesn’t change who’s actually there. You don’t control reality with your THOUGHTS, Ophelia. Sheesh.
Anyway, Hamlet opens the door and steps into your room. “It’s me,” he says. You haven’t seen each other for a while; it’s so great to see him. You run up and throw your arms around him and you smooch. It’s just like old times.
But the moment passes, and when you look at his face you can see concern written all over it. He’s troubled by something.
» Ask him what’s troubling him «
» Wait for him to tell you «
* * *
* * *
You go down to the hotel bar where you last saw Pat.
“Hey Pat,” you say, but Pat is passed out next to his drink.
Well. You sure know how to choose ’em, Ophelia.
You quickly return to your room to consider your remaining options!
» Cleopatra Slim «
» Antonio Tony «
* * *
* * *
Cleo takes a small step closer to you and puts her hand on your shoulder. “Ophelia, I know we’re still at the beginning of this ‘you and me’ thing, but I’d be happy to be that friend you need tonight. Sit there, I’ll get us some drinks, and we’ll talk all about it.”
But before you can move to the pillows she gestured to, a huge explosion rocks the hotel! Debris showers into the room, knocking Cleo unconscious. Looks like things are a bit crazy away from home too: you’re under attack!
BY TERRORISTS!!
Hah hah, screw this dating thing: you have three terrorists to kill!!
» Run down to the site of the explosion «
* * *
* * *
Right, you’re Ophelia! You are a beautiful and independent young woman, and although it makes you roll your eyes when you think about it, you’ve fallen in love with a prince. Prince Hamlet is funny and charming and he seems to like you a lot. You try not to get too excited about it, because you’re worried you might jinx it, but things really are going great.
Only...
Only it’s been hard doing the long-distance thing while you’ve both been off at university, and while you’ve loved studying capital-s Science and you’re sure Hamlet’s loved studying capital-u Undeclared, it hasn’t been easy. Now that you’re both back together in Denmark for his father’s funeral and his mother’s second wedding, it’s been harder still. Hamlet’s really sad, and you can’t blame him for that since, you know, his DAD DIED, but you wish there was something you could do to help him.
When you last saw him, Hamlet mentioned how the castle seemed cold and drafty, and for some reason it stuck with you. You’ve been sitting at your desk, trying to think of something you could give him that would help with that — a way of cheering him up a little, remind him he’s still got people who care about him. He wears these cloaks all the time, but then he’s taking them off in warm rooms and putting them back on in cold ones. If only there was some way you could keep the rooms at a uniform temperature, he wouldn’t need to be constantly adjusting his clothes throughout the day. But to do that you’d need some way of measuring heat and a way of transporting it throughout the castle, perhaps through a series of pipes...
Your thoughts are interrupted by a knock at your door. “Who is it?” you call.
“It’s me,” says your brother. “Come on, let me in.”
☠ Let him in ☠
» Tell him you’re busy «
* * *
* * *
“I’m busy!” you shout through the door to Laertes.
“I’m leaving for France soon!” he shouts back. “Don’t you want to say goodbye?”
“Apparently not!” you shout in reply.
“Whatever!” Laertes yells. He storms off, stomping all the way.
You sit in silence for a moment.
He stomps back. “Say bye to Dad for me, okay?!” he shouts.
“Okay, I will!” you yell through the door.
He storms off again. To France, I guess?
Brothers, am I right?
» Return to your work «
* * *
* * *
At your desk, you continue your work on the problem of automatically heating the castle. Hours turn into days and you’re generally left alone by both your family and your boyfriend. Your father ignoring you is no big deal, and while you’re a little worried about Hamlet not stopping by more often, he HAS asked you to leave him alone for a while while he mourns, and you’re respecting his wishes. But if you’re gonna be honest with yourself, you’ve also just gotten really absorbed in this problem.
You decide to split the problem into sections: delivering heat and knowing WHEN to deliver heat. It would be possible to put servants in every room and have them report when it’s too cold, but that’s both expensive and unreliable. It depends on the servant, the warmth of their clothes, how much they love to lie to people about what temperature their skin is sensing, and so on.
You’re wandering the castle grounds when it hits you. You’ve been thinking about how water expands when it freezes, and how that could be used to tell you when it’s cold, but it’s not much use for measuring temperatures outside the freezing point. Your father, Polonius, happens to wander by, talking to himself about the evils of drink. And you realize: ALCOHOL.
The right alcohol would expand linearly with heat, and by putting it in a slender glass vial you could measure the size of that liquid, which would correspond 1:1 with temperature! Put the same markings on each of these glass vials at the same temperatures, and you’ve got a universal, comparable, and consistent way of measuring heat. You wouldn’t have to rely on a servant’s impression; they could just tell you what line the alcohol has reached!
You run back to your room to start working on the prototype. Just as you complete it, you hear a knock at your door. “Who is it?” you call. And oh my, who should answer from the other side of the door?
Seriously, who should answer from the other side of the door?
» Your boyfriend, Hamlet «
» Your father, Polonius «
» Your best friend, Dromiceiomimus «
* * *
* * *
Hamlet is at the door!
That’s right, turns out that simply wishing for someone to be at your door doesn’t change who’s actually there. You don’t control reality with your THOUGHTS, Ophelia. Sheesh.
Anyway, Hamlet opens the door and steps into your room. “It’s me,” he says. You haven’t seen each other for a while; it’s so great to see him. You run up and throw your arms around him and you smooch. It’s just like old times.
But the moment passes, and when you look at his face you can see concern wr
itten all over it. He’s troubled by something.
» Ask him what’s troubling him «
» Wait for him to tell you «