Missed Classic: Lurking Horror - The Department of Alchemy

Written by Joe Pranevich

Welcome back to Lurking Horror! I skipped last week to close out on Stationfall, but we’re back now for a second helping of Lovecraftian horror. Last time, I found myself in a computer lab during a snowstorm with only a “hacker” to keep me company. The term paper that I was desperate to finish was somehow swallowed by the “Department of Alchemy” and I must venture through the wintery G.U.E. Tech campus to locate and recover my paper before it is due in the morning. Along the way, I explored some tunnels between buildings and a famously long corridor before stumbling on a tentacled monster on the campus’s famous dome. I survived that, only to be killed by a zombie-janitor when I interrupted him waxing the floors. 

I’m confused by the game’s tone so far. Nothing seems particularly “horror” here, more like the campy horror movies that used to be on at midnight hosted by Elvira. We’ve encountered two monsters, but the mixture of the magical and the mundane makes for an interesting contrast. It’s difficult to be scared by a zombie that just wants to wax floors, even if he does kill you. And why are we hunting for this paper anyway? Is it worth my life to get a good grade in this class? And if the city is blanketed by this much snow, wouldn’t they cancel classes? I’ll try not to ponder those questions as I continue exploring.

Pallet cleanser. 

Midnight Reorganization

I start this week by exploring east of the World War II-era “Temporary Building”. I have some theories how to approach the “zombie janitor” puzzle, but better to fill out the rest of our map first. Taking the underground passage east, I discover a dead end storage room filled floor to ceiling with pallets. I don’t know much about pallets, but I know that you can move them with a forklift! And fortunately, we discovered a forklift last time in the basement of a different building. I drive it over and have no difficulty reorganizing the pallets. I have “move pallets” a few times, but eventually we reveal a hidden passage on the eastern wall. That leads to an even more “Ancient” storage area where the boxes themselves are so old as to be falling apart. That room has a manhole cover so you can guess where I go to next.

Prying off the cover using the crowbar, I descend into a brick-lined passage. I’m not sure whether it is a sewer or just a different kind of campus maintenance tunnel. I give a passing thought to the sewer being a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles reference (their cartoon was just hitting it big in 1987, even though the comic started in 1984), but I doubt Dave Lebling is that sort of nerd. The tunnel leads north and south.

Exploring north first, I discover a room that gives me more trouble than it should. I’ll explain why in a second, but here is the description:

Renovated Cave

You are in a huge, cave-like construction. A path leads down to a floor roughly covered with smooth concrete. The walls and ceilings are high and reinforced with beams of wood, iron, and steel. In the center of the floor, you can see a large, flat slab of granite. The only exit is behind you to the south. 

I don’t know how you visualize this space, but I see it as a granite slab sitting in a cave at the end of the tunnel. Getting technical for a moment, we can manipulate the slab as if it is an object in the room: we can put things on it, take them off, examine it, or try (and fail) to climb it. I marked the spot on my map as a puzzle to explore later. Speaking as Joe-a-few-hours-later, this turns out to be a mistake. We can go “down” from here to a different room and a closer look at the slab. I’ll hold off telling you what I find there until I realize my mistake (next post), but what do you think? Did I just misunderstand the room description or is this something the testers should have ironed out?

Returning to the manhole and heading south, I discover a cinderblock room with a trapdoor in the ceiling. We can open the trap door only a few inches before it hits something. Peering in the crack, it appears to lead to a science lab of some kind. I might be able to use this to stash an object in that room later, but for now I leave disappointed.

Can you spot the lie in this picture?

Too Much to Say About Coca-Cola

As I make my way out of the tunnels, I get tired. Another game with a sleep mechanic! Unfortunately, sleeping is a bad idea: we die. At some point over the next several hours, “something clawed and fanged” finds and eats us. We will never wake. Obviously, we need to do what all good college students do when they need to stay awake: drink something caffeinated.

> drink coke

Delicious! Contains caffeine, one of the four basic food groups. Too bad they make it with fructose these days, instead of sucrose. You feel much more alert and awake now.

I expect that everyone in the world knows the story of “New Coke” by now, but this little bit of (presumably unpaid) product placement pays respect to a major beverage transition that shook 1985: New Coke. The story goes that Coca-Cola was losing ground to rival Pepsi in many markets. They conducted years of taste tests and market research to create the product of the decade “New Coke”. It bombed so completely that it is still taught in every business school. “Old” Coke was relaunched as “Coke Classic” only three months later. Perhaps thanks to the artificial scarcity, Coke sales actually increased!  But “Coke Classic” wasn’t really the old Coke, but rather a reformulated version that switched to corn syrup instead of sugar. (This was a cost savings: then, as now, the United States produced a lot more corn than sugar.) Some conspiracy theorists believe that the whole New Coke debacle was just a cover for changing the original formula, but for my money it is more likely that the company just took advantage of the distraction to do it rather than planning it from the outset. 

In my part of the US at least, you can still buy Coke with sugar at ethnic markets. Many people call it “Mexican Coke”, presumably from where it is imported from. The Coca-Cola company also sells coke-with-sugar every spring for Passover, but you have to know to look for it. (For many Jews, corn is one of the “leavened” substances that are not permitted to be eaten while memorializing the flight from Egypt.) Until a few years ago, you could only get “New Coke” if you went to their museum in Atlanta, but I am told that is no longer available even there. 

Beware of ballet.

A Slippery Situation

With that, my exploration comes to an end. There was less new than I expected. With no further places to go, I steeled myself to figure out the mystery of the Infinite Corridor. Even before I return to the place of my death, I discover a new wrinkle: a street urchin has wandered into the building. He reminds me (somehow) of the dwarf from Colossal Cave and I want to throw my axe at him, but that is probably bad form in a realistic game. He’s dressed in 80s grunge and is probably only on campus to steal bicycles:

This is an urchin. He’s a youngish teenager wearing a ski hat, running shoes, and a bulky, suspiciously bumpy, threadbare parka. He’s jumpy and looks suspiciously at you.

He doesn’t seem to be doing any harm, but I also don’t immediately find anything that I can do with him. The “suspiciously bumpy” parka gives away that he has some mystery that we will need to solve (a hidden item? a second head?), but what that is will have to wait. 

The janitor is blocking the eastern end of the Infinite Corridor, just as I expect him to be. Let’s lay out the puzzle as I see it: the “Infinite” corridor is at least five rooms long. The janitor seems to move through the hallway at random, but whenever he’s in the room I cannot pass by him to the east. There was a container of floor wax in the first room, an electrical plug in the third, and an emergency cabinet (with axe) in the fourth room from the west. I already retrieved the floor wax and axe on my previous pass through. I died last time by cutting the cord to the waxer; instead of making it easy to pass the janitor, he was enraged and killed me. This time, I deduce that the floor wax must be the trick. I line it up such that the janitor is east of the plug. I spill the wax onto the floor and cut the wire. I flee west. The janitor is unable (for some reason) to safely cross the wax after me. After some struggle, he explodes into a “crowd of small screaming creatures”. That’s strange and I’m not sure why he had so much difficulty with a slippery floor (especially considering his profession), but let’s roll with it. 

With the janitor gone, I discover new exits to the north and south from the eastern end of the corridor. North leads to “Fruits and Nuts”, the Nutrition building. That leads to another basement tunnel and access to the Brown Building. Ascending to the surface, I discover a “strange mass” lurking just outside the building but there is no way to interact with it now. Climbing to the top of Brown, we discover a locked door to the building’s roof. Playing with it, the game reveals that I need the “master” key to open it. Maybe I have to ask the hacker for it?

MIT has a real door famously labeled the “Department of Alchemy”.

Department of Alchemy

Putting “find the master key” on my To-Do list, I explore south of the Infinite Corridor to find the Chemistry Building. Plain as day, I find the location I have been searching for: a door leading to the Department of Alchemy. It had been labeled on the G.U.E. campus map, of course, if I had remembered to look. The door is locked and just as I think I have two reasons to go back to the hacker for keys, I try knocking. That works!

After a short time, a professor opens the door and leads me into a lab space “out of a science fiction movie”. He is willing to talk, but doesn’t allow me deeper into the facility. I examine a signup sheet near the door to discover that the suicide note was written by one of the most frequently listed students on the sheet. I inquire about “Lovecraft”, the server that ate my assignment, but that doesn’t get him to let me pass either. He’s also strangely reluctant to show me his ring. 

When I show him the suicide note, things change quickly. He dismisses the student as having succumbed to “drug use, drinking, insanity” and must have fallen over the edge. He seems sympathetic and wishes that he could have helped. Even so, he looks at me now with a “predatory air”. Now, when I want to explore deeper in the department, he doesn’t stop me. The lab isn’t quite what you’d expect from a scientific institution:

The professor guides you to the center of the lab, where a strange pentagonal symbol is chalked on the floor. He cuts one of the chalk lines with a small knife you had not previously noticed, pushes you into the center of the chalked symbol, and redraws the line, muttering softly and rhythmically as he does so. “There, that’s done. Don’t move from there, it’ll only make things worse for you.” He makes some odd gestures at the archway and goes over to the lab bench. 

Looking around, I notice a lab bench, a computer, and a vat of tarry liquid. Unfortunately, I find myself sealed into the pentagram and unable to escape. The computer containing my term paper sits just out of reach. As I struggle to escape, the villain begins to monologue. 

The professor is preparing something at the lab bench. “Alchemy is my chosen field, and I’ve gotten ridiculed for it. It’s like chemistry, except that chemists don’t recognize that some natural laws are enforced by persons, not physics. Some of them will grant power, or knowledge, but they must be placated, or even bribed. They are not of this earth, not demons or devils, and they aren’t always friendly. To me it’s just an unpleasant necessity on the path to power. When I’m done, they won’t laugh anymore!

I cannot step past the chalk line. Any attempt to rub it out is futile; my hand passes through it. I try spilling the coke, but even the power of cola is unable to pierce the magic. 

The professor enters another pentagram, and begins a highly choreographed ritual. “This may seem a little silly to you, but the symbology is what’s important. Certain alignments, certain aspects. In a few moments, it won’t matter anyway,” he remarks. “There is very little room for error here, so be calm.” He chants, he brandishes strange instruments, moves about inside the pentagram, and occasionally points to you. It becomes clear exactly what he meant by the word “bribe”. 

Is he selling me to some otherworldly creature!? I pour what I believe is liquid nitrogen out of the flask. I try to break the line using my magic stone. Nothing seems to be able to get through.

The chant grows more complex, with rhythms and cadences that make you want to stop your ears. The room appears to be getting darker. 

A thick black mist begins to form in the room. Parts are darker, and parts lighter, and the dark parts form a disturbing shape. The professor chants and calls more loudly now, and you realize the calls are being answered.

I give up. I have tried every item in my inventory to get out of the pentagram. No amount of “Floyd, help!” or pleading with the professor helps either. This whole exercise feels like the Plato scene in Stationfall, a railroaded sequence where you either have what you need to escape… or you thrash for a few turns while stuff happens. 

The room is now freezing cold, though the windows are shuttered and tightly curtained. Low, bone-rattling vibrations shake the room in cadence with the chant. The black mist is growing thicker. The professor chants more rapidly, producing strange guttural sounds, scarcely human. 

What was the first one of these scenes in an Infocom game? The lab scene in Leather Goddesses comes to mind. Are there any in earlier games? Certainly not long ones like this.

The black mist swirls wildly around the room, and a deep bass voice gibbers out of thin air. The professor’s brow drips with sweat. 

A thing like a tentacle with a demonic face wraps slowly around you. The room recedes as you are pulled away. Before you die, you see what the tentacle is part of. 

I'll save the rest of this game for takeout.

Wrapping Up

With one more entertaining death out of the way, I take stock of my remaining puzzles because I clearly don’t have what I need to solve that yet. My most immediate opportunity seems to be with the hacker and the keys, but even that doesn’t go as planned. I know from the roof door that I need to have the “master” key, but the hacker has four keys of different configurations and it’s unclear which of those I am supposed to ask for. I become briefly excited when the hacker asks me to bring him food. With a bit of trial and error, I reheat and deliver to him the Chinese food from the kitchen. He seems pleased with that and willing to help me, but what should I be asking him about?

During some final experimentation, I also mistakenly turn off my flashlight in a darkened room and die immediately. It doesn’t say I am eaten by a grue, but it is certainly the implication. 

That leaves me a few open puzzles and no obvious leads:

• A locked door on the roof. I need to work out what key it needs or which of the hacker’s four keys are the “master”. 
• An urchin wandering the halls. He has something hidden under his coat, but I find no way to encourage him to share. I offer him the “funny bones” and he eats them, but still doesn’t share.
• A pentagram that I cannot escape. The professor cuts the chalk line with a knife, but I have found no knife and the axe doesn’t work. 
• A trapdoor I cannot open.
• A slab that I can find nothing obvious to do with.
• A mysterious mass in the Brown courtyard.

Map as of this post.

As I pause to take a frustration break, I leave you with the unhelpful response as I investigate the mysterious mass.

> what is mass

Excellent question.

Excellent question, indeed!

Time played: 1 hr 10 min
Total time: 3 hr 00 min
Score: 25
Inventory: crowbar, plastic container (now empty), fire axe, bronze plug, flashlight, smooth stone, assignment, Coke