Dial-Up Days

A text adventure set in small-town America, late 1990s.

Setting

You're a kid with a pager and a problem. Your homemade network has a node down, and you need to fix it. The town is yours to explore, but be careful—your activities don't go unnoticed.

Basic Commands

Movement uses cardinal directions and contextual pairs:

• north, south, east, west — street navigation

• in, out — enter and exit buildings

• up, down — stairs and ladders

Interaction:

• look — examine your surroundings

• examine [item] — inspect something in your inventory

• search — look for hidden items

• talk [name] — speak with someone

• use [item] — interact with objects and terminals

• use pager — check your device

• sleep — end the day and rest

Freebies:

• To run a program, simply point to the .exe (absolute or relative path)

• Use telnet to remote from bot to bot or hijack from your pager

• Use ftp for large file transfers

• Make good use of environment variables (set) to manage IP addresses and other information

• clearlogs to cover your tracks, eventvwr to investigate incidents

Time

Each day has 24 moves divided into four phases: morning, afternoon, evening, and night. Some locations are only accessible during certain phases. Sleeping resets your moves and advances to the next day.

Heat

Your actions have consequences. The more attention you draw, the harder things get. Heat decays over time. If it gets too high, you'll have company.

Tips

• Pay attention to what people say

• Not everything is as it appears

• Some doors only open at certain times

• Your pager is your lifeline