Greetings! The following is part of an interactive fiction project we’re running on Meh for April Fools Day. Feel free to join in, or, if you’re just shopping, ignore all this and scroll down to the features.
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You expect to find yourself in a crawlspace or a vent, but you’re in no such place. In fact, you’re not inside anymore at all. Above, you see a pale gray sky, interrupted only by a jagged mountain directly ahead of you and the tallest trees rising out of the forest to your right. A breeze brings the sulfurous smells of a swamp to your nose.
You’re amazed, but when you turn to leave and report this to your supervisors, you find a man with wide piercing brown eyes wearing a top hat, a bow tie, and a wildly striped tuxedo. He stands in your way, blocking the door. Or does he? As in: does he stand or does he hover? And also: does he really block the door? Can he really block the door when he appears to be–and this causes the hair on the back of your neck to stand up–almost translucent?
He seems to sense your unease, holding up his hands and smiling.
“Please, friend,” he says, “I mean you no harm. In fact, I will deliver to you the opposite of harm if you do me just one favor. You see, my name is Iirkë. I am the spirit of corporate success. But I’d like to be more than that. I’d like to regain my tangibility and rejoin the ranks of the living. Once I am returned to my natural form, I will have the power to jettison you into a stratosphere of success you have never experienced with just the snap of my fingers!”
There’s something odd about his tone, but you can’t help it. You’re seduced by the promise and so you ask him what you need to do.
“There are three talismans,” Iirkë says. “Any one of them, when placed upon that altar–” he points to a small stone stump at the center of the clearing where you find yourself “–will return me to the world of flesh. But beware, these talismans will not be easy to retrieve. One is held by an old man at the top of a treacherous mountain. The other, by a great warrior who roams the nearby forest. The final, by a conniving witch who lives in a small hut at the edge of the swamp. Choose a path, retrieve the talisman he or she holds, bring it back here to free me, and I shall in turn free you!”
With that he vanishes, leaving you to decide which way to go.
