The Parlog Building

While crawling and scraping through the dusty ventilation shafts, you are reminded of the movie Wargames, wondering what Matthew Broderick's character would have done. He, too, was trapped in a military installation and forced to rely on his wits to escape. But at least he had done something to warrant his capture and detention: By answering that

innocuous question - "Shall we play a game?" - he almost single-handedly instigated a global thermonuclear war. All you did was go out onto the porch in your bathrobe for the morning paper.

Two ex-wrestler types in $1,000 suits and shades were waiting. Some mornings it's just not worth the effort to get up, and you've decided this morning was one of them. The two gorillas drove to what you had always thought of as the local sewage plant, opened and passed through a concealed steel door in the side of a hill, and frog-marched you into the office of their superior - a beanpole in a $2,000 suit who also wore shades; he said his name was Frank.

They trained a floodlight on your face and began the interrogation. "Do you deny that you are the president of the 'Scrubba Queen' soap powder company?"

"CEO, actually."

"Answer the question, Mr. Scrub."

"Yes, I mean - no!"

"Do you know what goes into the soap powder boxes that your company ships to ports of call all over the country, and to Iceland and Guatemala?"

"Um, soap powder?"

"Now, don't you be coy with ol' Frank, Mr. Clean."

"I think I'm afraid I don't know what you mean."

"Cocaine, you big dolt, moved through Scrubba Queen - and cut the nursery rhymes. Cocaine is smuggled out in your soap powder through a drop in Poughkeepsie, where it's shipped to Aspen for sifting and refinement, then sent to Bermuda where it's sold on the street to fund a Soviet takeover of Liechtenstein. Don't act as if you didn't know, Mr. Scrub."

"But I didn't - I don't!"

"Bull, show him your muscle," Frank said. The ape on the left carefully folded his tailored jacket over a chair, rolled up his shirt sleeve and flexed. You were suitably impressed.

"Now, do you deny that you don't know what's being shipped in your soap boxes?" asked the beanpole.

"Yes!" you exclaimed. "All I know about are phosphates and the secret ingredient. Say, you wouldn't be from the 'Fresh Air for Fish Foundation', would you?"

"Shut up, Mr. Scrub. Now, do you confirm that you deny-"

Just then a horrendous shriek tore through the room and echoed metallically down through levels you could not imagine. The sound served as a catalyst to your memory. You suddenly realized that you had never found out what the secret ingredient was. You would have to have a serious talk with your new VP, Mr. Upscale.

"Omigod ! It's the Parlog Level 3.5 Radioactive Alert," shrieked Bull, who grabbed his jacket and raced after the other two.

"Wait," you called. "Don't you want to talk about the secret ingredient?"

But they had forgotten completely about you, so you shrugged and did what any avid reader of adventure novels would do in this situation: pry open a loose grating and shimmy into the ventilator shaft.

Your only goal was to make it through this maze and get back to your morning paper - the day just never seems to go right unless you've read "The Far Side."

The Parlog Building is a text Adventure for the 32K ECB CoCos l, 2 and 3.