The faces are coming out of the walls again.

This is normal. Coder's fuge, the madness that sets in after the 72nd consecutive hour of hacking. Shadowy shapes moving out of the corner of the eye, voices, chills and dread.

But you can't slow down now. The ship date slipped three times already. No more. Not for hell or high water.

	Clear()

	Style("box pinned")

You are: John Carmack

The date: 9:13, December 9, 1993

	Style("box")

'Robot.' The face on the wall hisses. 'Nerd aspie.'

Hmm. The hallucinations aren't usually this bad for another eight hours. This is negatively impacting your concentration.

You jab the hallucinatory face with your finger. It <i>bites</i>.

	Fx("Sound/dspldeth.wav")

The tip of your finger is <i>gone</i>, blood gouting from the stump.

The malevolant face rolls down the wall into the center of the room, gaining mass and substance as it does so.

Brimstone gush rolls from its forked tongue as it flexes its newgrown talons.

This is not good. You have three critical bugs left in your bug queue, and distractions like this will make you miss deadline.

The monster screeches and hurls itself at your throat.

	Clear()

The hellspawned demon charges across the starship hanger. At the last moment you raise your plasma rifle and fire point-blank, sending it tumbling backwards in a shower of gore.

FUCK YEAH! You pound your fists on the desk. This is the best fucking videogame in the history of videogames. You -- you and the other John and Kevin and the others -- have made the best fucking videogame in the history of videogames.

Now all you have to do is finish and upload it by midnight.

	Clear()

	Style("box pinned")

You are: John Romero

The date: 9:29, December 9, 1993

	Style("box")

You check your to-do list, scattered across your desk in post-it notes.

- Make totally awesome cyberboss death animation (more gibs?)</br>
- Record totally awesome screams.</br>
- Add totally sweet deathreap ep. 3.</br>

Fuck. Videogame development is awesome. Ever since you were a kid wanted to do this. You are living the dream.

A shadow falls over you.

'Hey Kevin, you wanna record some totally sick dead-screams?'

Kevin is breathing on the back of your neck unnervingly, so you turn round.

	attack|kill|hit|fight|run|flee -> now its pissed

Hunched in front of you is the sickest thing you have ever seen. Like a thing off a heavy metal album cover. It is mostly made of raw meat, escept where glints of chrome cybernetics break through, and it is watching you with mad piggish eyes. Fetid breath rasps over its rusted steel teeth.

It is simply the most amazing thing ever. Kevin <i>has</i> to see this.

	Fx("Sound/dssgtatk.wav")

Its jaw slams shut on the space where your right forearm was a moment ago. You back back painfully against your desk.

Shit. You try to edge past the creature to the door.

It lunges at you, jaws agape --

	-> Carmack Rescue



now its pissed:

Sharks. You go for the eye if it's sharks, right? You swear you read it somewhere.

Your finger meets a disgusting resistance and then an even more disgusting <i>pop</i> inside the creature's most jabbable eyesocket.

'You useless shit-eating kid!' the demon howls, gore gouting from the socket. 'Still playing videogames at your age? You'll always be a failure!'

	Fx("Sound/dssgtatk.wav")

It lunges at you, jaws agape --

	-> Carmack Rescue



carmack rescue:

	Fx("Sound/dsshotgn.wav")
	Fx("Sound/dssgtdth.wav")

-- and flies laterally into the wall, blood gouting from its temple.

John Carmack is in the door with a smoking shotgun.

	yes -> demon infestation

	no -> I can rationalise this

'I need a second pair of eyes on the problem,' he says. 'Are there demons in the building?'

You really have nothing to say to that.

	-> rescue Kevin


demon infestation:

His face lit up. 'I knew it! To dismiss it as hallucinations would be the irrational choice by this point!'

	-> rescue Kevin


I can rationalise this:

This can't be right. You know demons. Type VI demons have 12d6 hitpoints and a poison attack. But they're not really <i>real</i>, are they?

A mad scream rattles the building from upstairs. You and Carmack look upwards simultanously.

What are the odds of two people halluciating the same sound at the same time?

	-> rescue Kevin


rescue Kevin:

'We have to find Kevin,' you say.

'Yes. He was responsible for two of the last three deadline slips. We can't let this delay him.'

You catch as glimpse into Carmack's office as you pass. Holy shit! There's something that looked like it was once humanoid in there, but it is torn into so many pieces that it is unrecognisable.

'It interrupted my focus,' Carmack explains.

	Clear()

	run -> run from imp

	shut door -> run from imp

	close door -> run from imp

There is someone in the stairwell. You think they must be in a lot of pain from all the steel rods driven through their body. You push the door open an inch more to check --

	Fx("Sound/dsbgsit2.wav")

-- not a person. Not <i>human</i>.

It's steel spikes strike sparks from the wall as it turn on you.

A globe of eldritch fire appears in its claw.

	Fx("Sound/dsplpain.wav")

You are incinerated.

	-> Game Over


run from imp:

You close the door hastily. 'Let's try the fire escape, ok?'

An instant later, the door bursts inwards in gout of hellfire.

	Clear()

	Style("box pinned")

Meanwhile, downstairs.

You are: Adrian Carmack (no relation)

	Style("box")

'Mister Abrash, welcome to Id Software!' you say.

He shakes your hand. 'It's a pleasure to be here.'

You can hardly believe it. Michael Abrash, hacker legend, Microsoft bigwig, wants to speak with you, tiny independant videogame startup? This is the most important meeting of your life. It is vitally important that nothing goes even the slightest bit wrong.

Three hideous creatures are sqaubbling over a corpse in the break room.

Abrash peers at them over his glasses. He seems to be wondering if this is business as normal at Id Software.

You take a deep breath.

'The realities of independant game devlopment may be a little different to the ivory-tower world you are familiar with, Mr. Abrash. Get an axe.'

	Clear()

	Style("box pinned")

Meanwhile, upstairs.

You are: John Carmack

	Style("box")

Kevin's lower body is gone. His intestines and ropy network of veins are streched to make a gruesome pentagram of occult geometries.

Quite an elegant reduction of the four-dimensional dho-na manifold to euclidian metrics, although its implementation in entrails is almost certainly a negative opitimsation. Perhaps a recursive Lisp functor?

Each of his hands are working independantly, sketching freehand images of monsters with blurring speed. When a picture is complete, a howling demonic spirit rises from the pentagram and flies away into the world.

	yes -> dirty liar

	lie -> dirty liar

	no -> too honest

	truth -> too honest

'Is Kev ok?' John Romero asks nervously from the corridor.

	-> Poor Kev

dirty liar:

'Yes. Yes, everything is fine. Kevin says he loves us all and is too engrossed in his work to speak right now. We should respect his privacy.'

	-> Poor Kev

too honest:

'He has been transformed into a flesh portal to the nether realms,' you explain cautiously. 'This is the exact thing Tom Hall tried to warn us about.'

	-> Poor Kev

Poor Kev:

Romero barges into the room.

	Clear()

	Style("box pinned")

You are: John Romero

	Style("box")

	kill -> mercy kill

	shoot -> mercy kill

Oh no. Oh fucking no. Not Kev.

'Kill. Me.' he hisses.

You try to reassure him. 'It's true you have been torn apart to become a conduit for horrortrocities from beyond damnation. But still. You gotta laugh.'

Kevin's haunted gaze tells you exactly how full of shit you are.

His hands are still sketching frenziedly. they're making a demon that is very nasty. A big one.

	Fx("Sound/dsshotgn.wav")

Kevin's head explodes like a pulped tomato. his hands fall slack at his sides.

Carmack blows the cordite smoke from his shotgun. 'The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.' He says. 'Or the one.'

'That is bullshit! You can't use Spock as an excuse to <i>murder</i> people!'

His eyes are like two chips of blue ice. 'Game development is an optimization problem. Sentiment is not productive.'

	-> endgame



mercy kill:

Carmack solemnly hands you his shotgun.

Kevin. Oh, Kevin. You were going to go to the launch party together.

	Fx("Sound/dsshotgn.wav")

On the other hand, those demon sketches he is cracking out are totally sick.

	-> endgame



endgame:

Carmack shakes his head. 'But that isn't important right now. The upload deadline is...' he checks his watch. 'In ten minutes.'

'The bugs?'

He shrugs. 'Not ship-stoppers. Triage. Let's go.'

	Clear()

	Style("box pinned")

The server room.

The date: 11:47, December 9, 1993

You are: Sandy Petersen

	Style("box")

The row of lights on the 56k turbo modem glow invitingly. They are you last link to the outside world. The last oasis of sanity in a world gone mad.

	open -> real time

You haven't slept for forty-eight hours. Mad gibbering leering faces glare at you from the walls. Something is pounding at the door hard enough to bend the lock inwards.

Pounding...

'Open up, fuckass!' cries an exasperated voice from outside. 'We have the disks!'

You're not so sure. Could any human voice sound so vulgar, so mad with fury?

'Sandy! Open the fucking door! We have to ship the fucking game!'

You nervously push a chair under the doorhandle. Better safe than sorry.

The voice rise to a pitch of screams, and then go silent.

You drove the demons off. You did the right thing.

You think.

	-> Game Over


real time:

Romero, mad and bloodstained, and Carmack, shotgun in hand, barge in.

'Get your ass in gear! We have to upload now or we'll miss deadline!'

He slams a fistful of diskettes into the upload server.

	Clear()

A towering demon smashes though the doorway. Its horns scrape the ceiling.

	Fx("Sound/dsshotgn.wav")

Carmack fires his last three rounds into it but it doesn't even flich.

With a dismissive gesture it sends him smacking back into the pile of discarded game consoles. You don't have time to check if he is dead.

Romero leaps at it with the howl of a madman and is smashed aside.

'Noobs,' it chortles.

As the demon's enormous fist hurtles down to crush the life from you, you close you eyes and metally prepare for extinction.

	Fx("Sound/dscybsit.wav")

-- But the demon falls backwards, blood and black oil firehosing from the stump of its right leg. Michael Abrash is on it, severing it's left arm, hacking into its huge guts with a double-bladed greataxe.

'This takes me back to my undergraduate days!' he laughs lightly, wiping the hellgore from his eyes. 'This twohanded pattern-welded daicleaver is very well made.'

'Thank you, sir,' Romero says. 'We made it for our D&D sessions. It really increases immersion.'

	Clear()

'Was it worth it?' Abrash asks the three of you, glancing around the corpes and gore fill room. 'Did you guys get your game uploaded?' 

It sinks in that you did it. You really did make it.

Carmack is watching his hand held in fromt of himself, as if to measure the amount of trembling in it.

'I can't even imagine my life without this game,' says Romero wistfully.

You fucking well made it. This right now is the best feeling of your life.

As you prepare to face the tidal wave of twisted flesh and steel that will unquestionably destroy you, you take one last glance at the CRT to see how your masterpiece was recieved.
	
	Clear()

	Play("https://www.youtube.com/embed/uf47DQj_2Gg?autoplay=1")

	Fx("Sound/dsbospn.wav")

	Style("box online")

12:02 12/10/93 | DooBieSmokeR99> When sequel?

	Wait()


Game Over:

	Fx("Sound/dsbospn.wav")

	Style("box online")

GAME OVER

	Wait()

>remove distraction. a demon torn to shreds on the carpet. 'it was negatively affecting my concentration.'
'the realities of independant game devlopment may be a bit differnt to your ivory-tower world. Get an axe.' i was a hacker one, you know
quite an elegant reduction of the four-dimensional dho-na manifold to euclidian metrics, although its implementation in entrails was almost certainly a negative opitimsation. perhaps a recursive Lisp functor?
'you useless shit-eating kid!' the demon howled, gore gouting from its eye socket
upload the game to compuserve! hold the line! real time dancing lights, dialtone, commandline ftp, ascii progress bar + spinning widget. we did it! any last words?
'I need a second pair of eyes on this problem. Are there demons in the building?' >yes. his face lit up. 'I knew it! To dismiss it as hallucinations would be the irrational choice by this point!'

'It's true you have been torn apart to become a conduit for horrortrocities from beyond damnation. But still. You gotta laugh.' Tim Willit's haunted gaze tells you exactly how full of shit you are.
his hands are still sketching frenziedly. they're making a demon that is very nasty. a big one
'The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Or the one.'
'This takes me back to my undergraduate days!' he laughs lightly, tossing the axe in one hand. 'This twohanded pattern-welded daicleaver is very well made.' 'Thank you, sir,' says Romero. 'We made it for our D&D sessions. It really increases immersion.'
Hold onto your butts!' he cries. 'We just went REAL TIME.'
As they prepare to face the tidal wave of twisted flesh and steel that will unquestionably destroy them, they take one last glance at the CRT to see how their masterpiece was recieved
12/10/93 DeVolVeR> when sequel?
