Determined, Allison pushes the Mars key into the lock of the mausoleum. It clicks open and as the stone doors swing wide, a stale, empty smell wafts out. Like an absence of rotting. Allison steels herself and steps inside. A set of stairs leads her down, but not into darkness. Torches on the wall light the way, until she reaches a large room at the base of the steps.\n\nIn the very center is a glass coffin. Allison's heart squeezes, but she approaches it slowly. There, lying peaceful and still beneath the glass is Arthur Kaddick. Allison's throat closes up on her, and she wants to laugh and cry. A loose part of her brain wonders crazily if she could wake him with a kiss to his solemn wrinkled brow.\n\nThat sets off the laughter, dark and aching, rasping out her throat like she's regurgitating glass. It takes a long time until the echoes fade from the stone walls, and even longer before she can see anything else about the room. It's cluttered in one corner, as if it had to be converted into a burial room from something else. Dazed and dead, Allison wanders over to the papers. Torn scraps with her grandfather's familiar scratchy handwriting.\n\n"When I told Rathke and Bird I planned to leave, neither of them were very happy. But now I have reason to believe that there's something wrong here. Something isn't right about Bird. Accidents keep happening, and I can't reach any of the portals home. I'm heading for the cave."\n\nThere's a noise at the top of the stairs and Allison drops the paper she's reading.\n\n"Allison?" calls Bird's voice. "Are you there?"\n\nThere's a lurch -- of rage, of fear -- and Allison freezes. Glancing quickly around the room, she notices a sword and an old wooden chest. Allison...\n\n[[grabs the sword.|End 7]]\n[[hides in the chest.|End 8]]

Deciding to take Hathorne's advice, Allison turns away from the welcoming, hypnotizing light of the forest path. She returns her gaze to the treehouse, which from the ground looks much bigger than she would have suspected. The ladder seems a bit more daunting going back up than down, but she manages it without too much difficulty.\n\nAt last she's standing in the treehouse again. The clock is still chiming away on the wall, though it had to have reached twelve chimes several minutes before. Now that she's back here, Allison realizes that she's not sure what to do next. The chiming is bothersome and insistent, and Allison's hand trails up to the chain at her neck. But the door too is unsettlingly demanding, because she has seen the enormous girth of the treehouse from outside, and that appears to be the only way further in.\n\nShifting her weight from foot to foot, Allison thinks. Then, she...\n\n[[examines the cuckoo clock.|Meeting Bird]]\n[[goes further into the treehouse.|Memories of Grandpa]]\n

<<silently>>\n<<set $jupiter_key_acquired = "no">>\n<<set $mars_key_acquired = "no">>\n<<set $visited_zenothilius_hathorne = "no">>\n<<set $kaddick_truths = "no">>\n<<set $secret_route = "no">>\n<<endsilently>>\n\n((In this game, you play as Allison Kaddick, a young woman who finds herself world-hopping without explanation, weeks after losing her grandfather. Try to figure out how the two events connect as you play the game. Occasionally you will reach an ending, and will be prompted with a "Try again?"; this will return you to the last major hub of the story you passed, with all your achievements intact. To reach some of the secret endings, you will have to meet several "Try again"s. However, each ending is a standalone. Full completion is not required to finish the game, as long as you are satisfied with the ending you have achieved. Use the restart button on the left side to "delete" your progress. Begin!))\n \nThe stars are never bright in her world. The world of Allison Kaddick is only glittering through a thick green smog. That is the way she has always known things. But she hasn't always known this world alone. Once, mere weeks ago, she'd had her grandfather to share it with. Allison twists the key hanging from a chain around her neck and thinks, looking out the shimmering glass wall of the apartment that is now hers alone. She hears her grandfather's voice muffled through memory, like time is made of cotton.\n\n"This is a winding key, and what it winds no longer exists. It is a mode without meaning, a relic without purpose. Therefore, wear it around your neck so that when the time comes for clockwork to exist again, you are ready."\n\n"How do you know it will exist again?" she had asked him at the time.\n\n"Clockwork is a thing that endures in the darkest attic corners. It will find a way to carry on."\n\nShe hadn't understood what he meant, and now she could never ask. The first of three stars large enough in the faintly darkening sky to be called suns begins to drift towards the fuzzily-expressed horizon line. There are still hours of daylight left, but Allison finds it hard to look out into the bland, murky atmosphere, and see all the glass apartments that mirror her own building. They cut into the sky, but like everything else, they're stuck in a low-hanging mire of green smog, and their architectural sharpness is cushioned by pollution. It's why the walls have to be glass, because otherwise not enough light would reach them. Allison leaves her lookout point and drifts towards her bed; only the soft smudge of a handprint on the glass stays behind to keep vigil for her.\n\nThey haven't found her granfather, Arthur Kaddick, in three weeks. But there is nowhere in the jutting spires of the buildings that he could possibly be hiding. While the underground connections were vast, everyone in the vicinity had been searching, no one could have missed him. She wonders briefly if he went out into the open air. She has never seen the worst of what it can do to people, but the profuse nosebleeds and violent headaches caused by exposure for mere seconds provides a not-so-tantalizing taste of the end result of too much time out in the toxic smog. It seems like a horrific way to die.\n\nShe slumps into bed, sinking into the soft pillow, but she can't sleep. It begins to dawn on her that she is well and truly alone. There's a twinge of something sharp and clear in the lowest part of her chest, like a sob, but it can't quite find its way out into the open. She tosses and turns for over an hour, until exhaustion finally sinks in, like a hateful but necessary lull.\n\n[[Allison closes her eyes.|Let Me Begin Again]]

Allison decides to visit Emily in the greenhouses. They've always been a soothing place for her, the plants growing lazily and unfurling their flowers and leaves in bursts of beautiful fragrance. She has to take the tunnels to the greenhouses, since they are connected to a different building. It's longer than the route to the bar would be, but Allison doesn't care.\n\nShe takes a deep breath as she enters the greenhouse area. The smell is grounding, sod and freshly-watered plants. It's somehow heavier than the smells she faintly recalls from her dream. If it was a dream. Allison shakes her head, and looks around for Emily. After a few minutes, she spots the older woman patting dirt into place around a tiny sunflower.\n\n"Emily!" she shouts, to get the other woman's attention.\n\n"Allie!" Emily calls back with a smile, waving.\n\nIt fades a bit after a few seconds, but over the past week both of them have gotten used to that. Allison walks over to her friends and settles down next to her.\n\n"Emily... Did my grandfather ever talk to you about clockwork?"\n\nEmily rubs the back of one of her gloved hands against her own forehead and frowns as she thinks. After a minute, she shakes her head.\n\n"Just once. He said he was leaving you something, is all," Emily offers.\n\nIt isn't as helpful as Allison would have liked, but she nods anyway.\n\n"Thanks."\n\n"Why do you ask?" the gardener wonders aloud, turning her full attention to Allison. "Is everything alright? Or... Do you think you have a lead...?"\n\nAllison isn't sure, herself, so she just shrugs. When a woman comes sailing into the gardens and interrupts them, she's relieved.\n\n"Allison, dear, Ben says there's some suit-wearing man to meet you in the bar."\n\nAllison and Emily look at each other, then back to the messenger: Ms. Sakura Togu. She's a beautifully corpulent eastern woman, whose family had been rich to the point of insanity before money had gone out of style, sometime in Arthur Kaddick's middle years. She still looks rich to Allison, if the descriptions in her grandfather's old books are anything to go on. She's the sort of woman who can glide through the halls like everything in the world is hers. It's a sight that always elicited awe from even the most stoic of witnesses.\n\n"Thank you, I'll head down there right away."\n\n"Be careful, dear, you can never trust a man in a suit," Sakura warns, giving Allison a short but definitely motherly expression before heading off towards the apartments.\n\n"Like a queen," Emily murmurs, shaking her head slowly.\n\nAllison has to agree. But, if Sakura's news is correct, she has no time to dally about in awe. And so, bidding Emily goodbye, she heads to the bar. It isn't hard to spot the man in the suit. Hands in his pockets is a tall, black man with elegant posture. He's looking down at the floor pensively.\n\n"Please sit down," he says softly, as soon as he spots Allison.\n\n"What did you need?" she asks at last, and [[takes a seat.|A Visit From the Suit]]

She leaps as far as possible... And just barely manages to catch the ledge with her hands. Trembling, Allison lets out a shaky breath.\n\n"I did it..." she mumbles to herself, laughing crazily in relief.\n\n"Here, grab on to this!" Bird calls, dropping a thick vine over the side.\n\nWith a smile, Allison switches her grip from a fingertip hold on the cliff to the much easier to handle vine. And then her world lurches.\n\n"Bird?!" she shrieks as the vine suddenly gives way, tossing her down into the gorge. "Bird!"\n\nAll she can see against the sky above is the anxious fluttering of tiny wings, and she closes her eyes and tries not to think about the spikes below.\n\n[[Try again?|Let Me Begin Again]]

The man in the suit settles in, as if for a long story.\n\n"My name is Rathke," he tells Allison, running a hand through the tight black curls of his cropped hair that are peppered with white. "Elijah Rathke. I worked with your grandfather. He and I built the Dreamscape together."\n\nThere is an angry scoff in the back of her head.\n\n"Thinks he and Old AK made the Dreamscape, does he? Bah," Hathorne mutters.\n\nAllison isn't sure what is so upsetting about that assertation, but shrugs it off and studies Rathke.\n\n"Dreamscape?" she asks at last.\n\n"He left you that key," Rathke says, gesturing towards the winding key looped on a chain around Allison's neck. "So I know you have the ability to go there. And my sensors picked up a disturbance in the beta-matter."\n\nAllison doesn't understand. She's never heard the term beta-matter, and has no idea what it has to do with anything he's saying. Rathke sighs and frowns.\n\n"Beta-matter is matter from the Dreamscape. If someone leaves or enters the Dreamscape, the balance of beta-matter will shift. So I know you've been there."\n\n"Thinks he's so clever, doesn't he?" Hathorne grumbles, little more than white noise in Allison's racing mind.\n\nAllison shrugs. Rathke seems to know more about the place than her, so she allows him the truth.\n\n"I've been there. It's... Strange. Are you the second man from the mural?"\n\nRathke bites his lip and nods.\n\n"So you've seen that, have you? Yes, I'm in that mural Arthur carved in Rosewood Canyon. That's why you have to trust me about this. Something is horribly wrong with the Dreamscape. It's split, somehow. It doesn't follow natural laws about time and space, and it can't be controlled. You can't go back there," he says firmly. "A dream like that will do anything to survive... Even at the expense of the dreamer. It's not safe for you there. Give me the key."\n\n"Don't do it," Hathorne orders.\n\nAllison clutches her key instinctively, frowning. It is dangerous, she knows. But at the same time, that world, the Dreamscape, is her only route to information about her grandfather.\n\n"I want to be nice about this, I know you're Arthur's granddaughter, but I'm not going to let you get hurt for being stubborn. If you won't give me that key, I'll take it," Rathke warns.\n\nAllison...\n\n[[gives him the key.|End 6]]\n[[runs.|Back to the Dream World]]

The cuckoo clock sits innocently, continuing to chime. Bird is still trapped inside, Allison knows this. She knows it very well. Whether it was Rathke or her own grandfather or someone else entirely who had restrained Bird, it doesn't matter to Allison. All that matters is that she has this opportunity.\n\nShe is dazed, but suddenly there is a match in her hand. She strikes it. Then, gently, like lighting the candles of her grandfather's birthday cake only a year before, she touches the tip of the burning match to the clock. As it burns, an inhuman shriek rises into the lazy evening sky.\n\nAllison feels tears prick at the corners of her eyes, but she leaves the treehouse as calmly as she can and sets out until it's just a smoking dot on the horizon. She isn't sure how to get home from here, or even if she can, but it doesn't matter. She heads to the Mars Room to pay her last respects.\n\nThere in the glass coffin, he lies like a fairytale, like a dream. Like he could come awake at any moment. But he can't, and he doesn't.\n\nAllison sits there for a long time, as pink light turns blue and dark, and green stars fill the sky.\n\n[[Try again?|Final Choice]]

Allison glances back and forth, but at last decides on the path to the right, the one leading to a lower portion of the treehouse. After crossing the mostly sturdy bridge, she opens the door on the other side.\n\nThis section of treehouse is much darker than either of the others. It smells a bit of mildew, and Allison wrinkles her nose. The walls are utterly bare, and the room is cramped and small. The only other exit is a square hole with a ladder hanging from it that leads down into the darkness.\n\nStill, there's no reason to go back. There's no guarantee that the other route will be any more pleasant or yield any better results.\n\n[[Allison climbs down the ladder.|End 3]]

Allison finds herself in the middle of the Dreamscape jungle. She is not in the treehouse, and all the warm, colorful light of before is gone. The hues are still vibrant, but they're no longer soft. The pinks and blues and purples that had lit up the trees and sky have been replaced with harsh red light that starts up an ache behind Allison's eyes.\n\n"What happened...?" she asks softly, grimacing.\n\n"You've been gone a long time."\n\n<<if $visited_zenothilius_hathorne eq "yes">>"Hathorne?"\n\nOut of Allison's head, Zenothilius Hathorne once again inhabits the almost-comical monkey-shaped body from before.\n\n"Yeah, it's me AK. And it looks like things went south while we were gone."\n\n"It was only a few minutes!" Allison protests.\n\n"Time flows different. It only takes a few minutes." <<endif>>\n\n<<if $visited_zenothilius_hathorne eq "no">>\n"What? It's only been a few minutes," Allison protests, unsure who it is she's answering.\n\n"That's all it takes," comes the response, though she can't tell from where.<<endif>>\n\nUnsettled, Allison doesn't respond, and begins walking through the forest. Everything seems darker around her, though the force of light hasn't changed. The plant life seems smaller, a bit withered. She wonders what could have done this.\n\n<<if $mars_key_acquired eq "yes">>She worries about the air-purifying plant that Rathke and her granfather had studied. Could it survive in these conditions?<<endif>> \n\nAllison finds herself at last in front of an odd mausoleum, with a lock over the door, and a Mars symbol engraved above the entrance. It sends a wave of shivers from her toes to the base of her skull and back again.\n\n<<if $mars_key_acquired eq "yes">>The symbol is familiar to Allison, and just as before, when she reaches into her pocket she finds a key with a matching symbol. A Mars key. Looking up at the intimidating structure, Allison... \n\n[[uses the Mars Key.|Mars Door]] \nputs the key away. There's something ominous about the door that she doesn't like. Even if it's answers, she doesn't want to see them. Just looking at the place feels like something cold has coiled around her spine.<<endif>>\n\n"I see you found it."\n\nBird's voice echoes from somewhere in the trees, but Allison's gaze is too taken up with the sight in front of her to search.\n\n"What is this place...?"\n\n"Arthur Kaddick's final resting place."\n\nAllison chokes down a breath of air. It tastes stale and cold.\n\n[[She looks up at Bird.|A Traitor Revealed]]

The Jupiter key turns easily in the lock, and Allison opens the door to reveal a flight of stairs leading down into the earth. She glances back at Ben.\n\n"I'll be waiting right here," he tells her reassuringly. "Arthur told me I'm not allowed down there; whatever it is is for your eyes. But if you take too long, I'll probably run down after you anyways."\n\nAllison smiles a little, pats Ben on the arm, and descends. The stairs go on for a long time, but at last she reaches a solid floor. The room is otherwise small, and the only other exit is a long tunnel stretching straight forward into the distance. It's the only way, Allison considers to herself, so she can't get lost. Determined to see what awaits, she takes a step forward and [[follows the path out.|End 5]]

<<set kaddick_truths = "yes">>\nHurriedly, Allison stuffs herself in the chest and closes the lid. She can still peek out of the keyhole, but that's all. She watches Bird flutter down the steps, looking in every direction for her.\n\n"Allison?" Bird calls cautiously. "Are you in here...?"\n\nThe searching stops for a sudden, wrenching moment, when Bird perches atop the glass coffin, and looks down at the body inside.\n\n"It's been a while. Rathke hid this place from me. You know, if you hadn't tried to run away," Bird says with a wavering sternness at Arthur, "this wouldn't have happened. We could have been happy, you know. As a team."\n\nAllison feels angry tears spring to her eyes, and the beginnings of bile at the base of her throat. She wants to lash out, but has to stay hidden. The sword is too far away to reach, even if she sprang out now.\n\n"I didn't want you to die," Bird adds, and Allison finds herself stunned and indignant. "I didn't mean for things to get out of hand."\n\nBird continues to ramble for a while, but eventually seems to forget the search for Allison and leaves. Slowly, muscles and heart aching, Allison climbs out of the chest. She sits at her grandfather's coffin a long time, but eventually drifts back over to his notes. After reading through them all, she turns to leave, but bumps the table. A portion springs out, hiding a new note.\n\nCurious, she picks it up, and finds that it's... In her own handwriting.\n\n"Pull the red lever," it says.\n\nAllison has no idea what that means, or how a note with her own handwriting could get into the desk, but she stuffs it in her pocket and drags herself from the mausoleum.\n\nThe sky outside is black, but burning with the glow of green stars. Allison wanders off into the Dreamscape, aimless and alone.\n\n[[Try again?|Let Me Begin Again 3]]

Allison sends one last glance at the lever and runs. She just wants to go home. She just wants to leave. Whatever control the Dreamscape could possibly offer, she doesn't want it.\n\nWhole trees are cracking now, and bird is crashing through the wreckage after her, trailed by destructive vines. Allison looks back to see how much of a lead she has and trips. She hits the ground hard, and closes her eyes tight in pain.\n\nThere's a familiar jolt as everything freezes. Suddenly, Allison opens her eyes and finds herself jerked awake in the hallway she had hidden from Rathke in. He's standing over her, surrounded on both sides by a group of people Allison has to guess at because her sight is blurry with unshed tears.\n\nRipping the key from her neck, Allison shoves it into Rathke's hand. He puts it away and hen kneels down to comfort her. The figures Allison can at last make out are Emily, Ben, and Ms. Togu. They surround her until she feels like she's in a cuccoon of safety.\n\nThe next day, Allison talks to Rathke about what she saw in the Dreamscape, and they decide that though they both want to bring Arthur back to their own world, though neither of them wants years of research to go to waste, it's too dangerous to go back to the Dreamscape. They melt down the winding key in one of the building's incinerators.\n\nAllison watches its shape slip away, and tries to wash the red from her mind.\n\n[[Try again?|Let Me Begin Again 3]]

"Sorry, Bird," Allison snaps, eyes narrowed as she throws the lever. "But I'm the hero, and I decide how the story ends."\n\nIn a rush of light, the world around them fades. Allison finds herself in a blank landscape, staring down at an odd machine with levers of different colors. One is red, and the other is green. Allison reaches out her hand to touch one, when-\n\n"Allison, wait."\n\nThe voice makes her soul leap and fall all in the same second. It's the lilting, gentle voice of Arthur Kaddick.\n\n"Grandpa...?" she asks softly, and turns.\n\nThere he is, despite everything she's already seen and heard. There he is.\n\n"Hello, Allie-bird."\n\nAllison flinches at the nickname, once so beloved, and Arthur smiles sadly. He puts his hands on his hips and looks at the machine, before pressing a yellow button that Allison doesn't remember seeing before. A window-like image flickers to life. It's the treehouse, and the cuckoo clock is chiming incessantly, though it's muffled.\n\n"What is this thing?" she asks.\n\n"It's the controls we built in to the Dreamscape. Or added, I suppose," Arthur explains. "That red lever will take you back to when you first entered the Dreamscape, as if none of this ever happened."\n\n"And the blue one?"\n\n"It will let you enter that portal, which is now. A lot of time was spent for you to get here, so you've missed a bit."\n\nAs if to illustrate this, the image rewinds a bit, and Allison watches Rathke walk onto the 'screen', taking long dangerous strides with a struggling but bound Bird in his hand. He shoves Bird into the clock and leaves, but Allison can catch just the barest sparkle of liquid on his face. A tear.\n\n[[Allison looks up at her grandfather.|Final Choice]]

<<set $jupiter_key_acquired = "yes">>\n\nThe room is almost empty, but for a single pedestal. On it rests a key, big and heavy-looking and more real than the ground beneath her feet. Like it doesn't belong here at all. Allison walks forward slowly, unblinking, and reaches for the key. She almost expects something to intervene to stop her, but nothing does. Everything is utterly silent, except that she can still hear the chiming of the cuckoo clock from far away. A whisper in a dream that's already passed.\n\nThe weight of the iron key is comfortable in Allison's hand, and she spends several seconds inspecting it. The bow of the key is engraved with the same symbol that had been over the doorway: Jupiter. Allison doesn't hold it for long. Instead, she slips it into her pocket for safekeeping. Somehow, some way, the key must be important. And then she remembers why the word Jupiter seemed so very important.\n\n"I left the Jupiter door in Be"\n\nWhat the fragment Be meant is still a mystery, but if there is a Jupiter door, this would be the key to open it. Allison turns to leave.\n\nSuddenly, she is stopped by a sharp tug at her throat. Instinctively, she reaches up to pull away whatever it is, and finds coils of orange vine wrapping themselves around her arms as they already have her neck. They are much more forceful han the smaller, clinging vines from the desk in the study. Allison claws at them ferociously, but they just pull tighter, gaining enough force to actually lift her from the ground. Everything starts to get fuzzy with spots of black, like a dancing absence of stars. Vaguely, Allison can feel her feet kicking through open, thin air. Chunks of vine come off in her hand, leaving scars on the plant in their wake. But it's not enough.\n\nThe world goes black.\n\n[[Try again?|Let Me Begin Again]]

After a few minutes on the ladder, Allison reaches the floor. It's utterly dark all around her, and she spends several minutes adjusting her eyes to the lack of light. Finally, she manages to find a lamp in the darkness, and turns it on. Dim, fiery light illuminates the area around her, revealing several workbenches with plants on them. All have withered, but the tools and gardening implements scattered around suggest that they were intended to be alive during whatever had gone on in the basement.\n\nAllison wonders if these are specimens of the plant that had been written about in the research journal. At the time she had merely skimmed it, but now she wished she had brought the book with. Curious, Allison drifts among the benches, looking at the objects scattered across them for any sign of her grandfather.\n\nAt the far end of one table sits a framed picture, and Allison recognizes the person inside as herself. It looks like she's about ten in the photo, and Allison wonders just how long her grandfather has known about this world, and has come visiting it. She wonders when he even had the time.\n\nScrawled across the bottom of the frame in messy ink are the words "I want to be able to see you play outside."\n\nSetting down the lamp, Allison picks up the frame. It feels small and brittle in her hands. As long as she has known, the skies have always been a murky green, always been unbreathable. Always. Was her grandfather trying to change that? At last, with some regret, Allison sets the frame down again, and heads towards the ladder.\n\nSuddenly, something darts past her, like a bird or a bat, right at the lamp on the table. With a great crash, it falls to the ground, catching the floor aflame. Allsion runs for the ladder. She manages to climb it only barely before the fire, smoke pouring out of the entrance with her like an unwelcome barrage of people intent on pulling her into the crowd. Allison fumbles with the door for a moment, and loses her advantage. By the time she steps onto the bridge, its railings are already aflame. With nowhere else to go, she chances it anyways.\n\nHer stomach tilts as the bridge snaps and sends her plummeting towards brightly colored foliage. The force of the fall tears a scream from her lips, and Allison closes her eyes, trying to will herself away from her body. The feeling of impact never comes.\n\n[[Try again?|Let Me Begin Again]]

Allison steps into the cave, squinting to try and get a better view through the gloom. Some sort of iridescent rock glitters dimly along the cave walls, which are slick to the touch with water. Suddenly, a bright light flares to life in front of her, like an electric lamp from some distance.\n\nAllison rushes forward, chasing it further and further into the dark recesses. Then, all at once, the width of the cave explodes, dumping Allison into a massive underground room, roofed with luminous stalactites that glow like stars. There is a light source from somewhere, but the refractions from the stalactites make it impossible to tell from where it emanates.\n\nThe back of the cave wall is completely smooth, etched with a familiar scrawl. Allison rushes forward, running her index finger under the letters as she reads.\n\n"I have had a bad feeling for some time now. This world is closing in around me, ever since I declared my intention to leave it permanently to care for Allison. I must get out of this place. Though I do not remember the way. Something dark is here, and I have to leave. I cannot find Bird, or Rathke. I have made a grave mistake. -- Arthur Kaddick"\n\nA metallic chill settles in Allison's stomach. Then something punctures her side with a force that sends her body lurching forward like a ragdoll. It hurts, for a moment, and through the burst of pain, Allison can see a barbed tail, like that of a scorpion, twisting in her peripherals.\n\nEverything goes dark and fuzzy around her. Allison closes her eyes.\n\n[[Try again?|Let Me Begin Again]]

Allison takes the key from her neck and hands it over to Rathke. The man breathes a sigh of relief, slipping the winding key into his pocket and giving Allison a weary smile.\n\n"I'm sorry, I know Arthur wanted to leave the Dreamscape to you," Rathke tells her. "But he wouldn't want you in danger."\n\nAllison can understand that, and she nods silently. Her brain is somehow no longer buzzing with the Dreamscape, like it had been when she'd awakened.\n\n"What now?" she asks, more for something to ask than anything.\n\n"I'll be in touch," Rathke offers. "Make sure you're doing alright. It seems like you have good people looking after you. Arthur would be glad of that."\n\nThen he stands and leaves, slipping his hands back in his suit poackets. Allison sits and thinks just a little while longer. He's right, she realizes. Even though there's no way to learn more about her grandfather through the Dreamscape, that's not necessarily bad. For all she knows, he could return any day. And even if he doesn't, she still has Emily and Ben. She still has Ms. Togu. And now, she has Rathke, her grandfather's partner.\n\nThe word partner plucks a little painful string in her heart as she thinks of Bird. But it's gone soon enough, and Allison returns to her apartment.\n\n[[Try again?|Let Me Begin Again 2]]

<<set $kaddick_truths = "yes">>\nAllison picks up the sword, brandishing it in front of her. It's heavy, but the weight is almost soothing; she isn't so afraid. Bird flutters down the steps cautiously, and spots Allison.\n\n"Allison...? What are you doing with that sword?" Bird asks.\n\n"You're the reason he's dead, aren't you?" Allison demands. "Aren't you?!"\n\nThere's a swift change. Bird's head tilts forward menacingly, even for such a small creature.\n\n"No. You're the reason he's dead," Bird accuses. "It's because he wanted to go back to you that he gave up on our mission, our project. It's because of you! Without you, I wouldn't have lost control of things! The scorpion wouldn't have shown up! Arthur would have been just fine if it weren't for him missing you!"\n\nAllison stumbles back a step, but then holds her ground. She knows it isn't her fault. She knows that. Whatever Bird did, Bird is the only one responsible.\n\nBut then Bird begins to twitch. Wings moving in directions they shouldn't, the canary approaches slowly, so that Allison's hands begin to shake, and the sword along with them. Suddenly, huge vines erupt from the walls, scattering stone everywhere. A rock hits her in the head and sends a stream of blood into her vision. Allison hears the glass of the coffin shatter, but can't see it. The vines begin to twist around her, but Allison hacks them away until they lie in pieces on the floor.\n\nHer vision is hot and red, like the air around her, and Bird's laughter is ringing in Allison's ears. Everything is broken and distorted. Allison feels her hands moving and she can't stop them. For some reason, she can't stop them. A ripple of white-hot pain rushes up and down her nerves as she plunges the sword into her own body. Everything is wrong.\n\nAnd then everything is silent. Even over the blood pounding in her ears, Allison can tell that she is alone. Hazily, she can see a piece of paper lying next to her grandfather's destroyed coffin. Somehow, she manages to read it; a diagram. A machine. There's a machine somewhere in the Dreamscape that can change time, and send her all the way back to the beginning. If she pulls the red lever. She can start all over. She can kill Bird. And she can tell herself to do it, if she can concentrate hard enough. Just like transporting between worlds, she can transport things between times, that's how unstable the Dreamscape has become. And she can take advantage of that instability.\n\nMindlessly, Allison drags herself up to the desk in the corner and grabs a piece of paper and a pen. Sloppily, she writes four words.\n\n"Pull the red lever."\n\nThe pen drops from her hand as it goes numb, and Allison collapses onto the floor, closing her eyes.\n\n[[Try again?|Let Me Begin Again 3]]

Allison awakens laid out on the bed in her apartment.\n\n"Was it all just a dream...?" she wonders to herself.\n\nShe checks the time drowsily, but it is only a few minutes since she had fallen asleep. Was it really possible to have dreamed so much in such a short amount of time? And how much was real? As she sits up, the details begin to get a bit fuzzy, and it makes Allison frown. She needs to talk to someone, and soon, so she doesn't forget.\n\nBut who? There's Ben, down in the bar. Or Emily, who works in the greenhouses. Both of them are older than her, and good at giving advice. And both... Had been close to her grandfather. Allison sighs and stands. It's still early evening, and it should be easy to find either of them.\n\n<<if $visited_zenothilius_hathorne eq "yes">> But a part of her doesn't want to leave the quiet safety of the apartment. She sighs, hugs herself close, and stares out the window. [[Allison decides to stay in the apartment.|Hathorne in the World]] <<endif>>\n\nAllison...\n\n[[visits Emily.|A Trip to the Greenhouses]]\n[[visits Ben.|A Trip to the Bar]]

<<set $mars_key_acquired = "yes">>\n\nAt the end of the tunnel, Allison finds herself in a round room with a pedestal. She blinks away the deja-vu and steps forward. Atop the pedestal is a heavy iron key, just like the other one, but this time with the symbol for Mars carved on its bow. It's obviously important, just as the Jupiter key was, but Allison really doesn't feel keen to pick it up right away.\n\nShe swallows hard and puts a hand to her neck to assure herself that there aren't vines twisting around it. There aren't, but that still doesn't help much. Finally, she steels herself and grabs it.\n\nWith a rumble like thunder, one of the old stone walls parts, creating a doorway. Allison looks back at the door she came through, but can't seem to make herself walk back to it. The new door is strangely compelling, and she finds herself stepping toward it without another thought. The mental warnings of twisting orange vines recede like waves from a shoreline, but they do not sweep back over her again.\n\nThe path beyond the new entryway is dark and hot. Like an oven, Allison thinks, only the heat is more muggy and stifling than anything else. She's so focused on the heat that she doesn't even notice that she's stepped out into the open air until it's too late. In relief from escaping the heat, Allison takes a deep breath of thick green smog and begins to cough.\n\nAlmost instantly, pain wells up behind her eyes and in the upper reaches of her nose. A sharp, high pain that foreshadows the symptoms to follow. Allison can almost feel the blood dripping from her nose before it happens, and she stumbles back towards the door she exited. Black spots her vision in fuzzy patterns, and the migrane explodes into her skull from its initial dull ache.\n\nGasping, she finally manages to get back into the building and slam the door behind her. The deep, low heat only makes everything worse, and Allison finds herself on the ground.\n\nIt's hard to breathe, and she closes her eyes.\n \n[[Try again?|Let Me Begin Again 2]]

Allison Kaddick's Strange Worlds

When Allison Kaddick wakes up, it's in a half-crumbling treehouse in a place where the air is clear and crisp and biting like what she has always imagined an ocean would be. As she turns, soft but pungent smells enter her nose; the sweet and somehow vaguely nostalgic smell of rot, as if she's inheriting the familiarity from some distant ancestor. The forest has retaken the structure in a most profound way, moss clambering over the rotted-through walls and mushrooms bowed gloomly in the corner to hide from the dim pink light of the setting sun. The genus are all unfamiliar to her, though she has spent many hours in the greenhouses.\n\nShe can't understand how she got here, and her head is fuzzy and aching. The entire wall facing the sunset is gone, which is somehow settling and familiar, bringing her back to the glass-walled apartments. A rickety ladder sways in the evening breeze. When she takes a stumbling step forward, a clock chimes. It's hanging on a part of the wall that still seems stable enough to hoist it. A cuckoo clock. She remembers the pictures of them that her grandfather showed her -- a sharp tug at her heart stops the thought short. Something should be popping out, she remembers that. Like a bird. But all it's doing is chiming. It's broken. A door that was once painted blue, though most of the tint has peeled away, stands beneath it and slightly to the left.\n\nA cuckoo clock... Allison brings a hand to her neck and grasps the winding key strung on a chain there, even as a shock of grief wracks her body and sets her fingers trembling. She...\n\n<<if $secret_route eq "yes">> Stops. And she remembers something she hadn't before. A whole world of lies and truths spinning around her, and who is at fault, who is the reason that she is alone. And how very simple it would be to get her revenge. Allison... \n[[approaches the clock.|Secret Deaths]] <<endif>>\n[[winds the clock.|Meeting Bird]]\n[[leaves the treehouse.|Strange World Turning]]\n[[goes deeper into the treehouse.|Memories of Grandpa]]

The rusting knob of the once-blue door twists easily under Allison's hand, even as it lets out a violent squeak of protest. The clock goes on chiming as Allison steps over the threshold, but once the door slams shut behind her it's muffled enough to ignore easily. Like the outer room of the treehouse, this one is overtaken with sprigs of wild plantlife. It appears to be something that was once a study. There's a desk against one wall that's gathering some sort of vine at an alarming rate. Both the right and left walls house enormous bookshelves, which are broken only by the interposition of doorways. There are no doors, which lets the pink sunlight stream through them to form odd patterns on the floor. Each one leads to a rope bridge, thankfully in some good repair. Allison sets them aside in her mind and approaches the desk first.\n\nIt takes several minutes to clear away the orange vines, which like to cling to anything they touch. By the time the top of the desk is clean of them, Allison finds that there are more than a few tendrils clinging to her clothing and hair. They aren't strong enough to restrict movement, however, and she finds the contents of the desk much more interesting. A journal sits there open, penned in a familiar scrawl though faded. She can only make out a few broken phrases.\n\n"the far reaches with Rathke and Bird today", "will take some time to excavate the M", "but time moves slower here, so I don't feel so bad for"\n\nShe continues to flip through the entries, all in the exact same condition.\n\n"left the Jupiter door in Be", "obviously not an ideal situation", "Rathke is starting to catalogue them n", "this could be our big break"\n\nAnd then she comes to the last writeen-in page and is able to distinguish a few full sentences at the very bottom of the page.\n\n"I could continue hopping like this, and not lose any time, but I need all of my attention on Allison now. I have been selfish long enough. Maybe someday we'll come back to this world together."\n\nTogether. Hot tears prick at the corners of Allison's eyes. Why had he not returned, then? She searches frantically for other entries or other journals, but there are none. The only other book on the table appears to be a research journal, dedicated to a specific plant's air purifying properties. Allison turns away from the desk, brushing off the orange vines as best she can. If she wanted to keep going, she would have to choose a path. Allison examines her options carefully. The left path leads to another section of treehouse that appears to go up. The section connected to the end of the right path leads down. There is otherwise no indication of their difference, that she can see.\n\nExcept... At the top of each doorway is a planetary symbol. The symbol for Jupiter on the left side, and the symbol of Earth on the right. They probably mean something, but Allison has no way of knowing what.\n\nAllison...\n\n[[takes the left path.|Jupiter Key]]\n[[takes the right path.|Basement Jungle]]

Something about the word Jupiter prickles at the back of Allison's memory, so she walks over the bridge to the left, and opens the door on the far side. Like the first door, it creaks noisily, but Allison doesn't see it as ominous. Inside the new room is a spiral staircase, leading, as Allison had suspected, into the upper branches of the tree.\n\nShe gets glimpses of swaying green leaves here and there through half-artificial knots in the wood, widened substantially by termite and rot. The stairs, though, are sturdy and strong beneath her feet. Allison climbs up them for what feels like forever, racing through rippling green and pink light.\n\nFinally, she reaches the top. There is one more door waiting, hanging half-ajar. It makes an eerie noise as the wind swings it in a small, gentle arc, back and forth. But it's the only route forward.\n\n[[Allison steps through the doorway.|End 2]]

The bar (which is still called such, even though alcohol has not been in active sale for years) is in the basement of the apartment building Allison lives in. She takes the elevator down twelve floors, and steps out into the dim bar, which is almost empty. Ben is the only other human there; bartenders had been replaced long ago by machines, but he had refused to give up his post and there was no reason to stop him doing it.\n\n"Allie!" Ben calls, waving a dishrag which he had been using to clean a small glass. "The usual?"\n\nAllison just smiles uncomfortably, unsure whether to answer yes or no. Ben's smile drops a bit, and he sighs. Allison feels a bit sorry for ruining his cheerful facade, but she can't help it. When she sits down on one of the stools, he pours a glass for her anyway.\n\n"It's Bakery, this time. I thought maybe you could use..." Ben trails off.\n\nAllison stares down at the glass in front of her, filled with an airy, cloudlike substance. This is what had replaced alcohol, but she herself had never known anything else. With so much smog outside, scent and taste were always a precious commodity. Allison drains the glass, feeling the cool vapor slide down her throat, filling her senses with the scent and taste of baking bread. It's soothing.\n\n"Have you ever seen clockwork, Ben...?" Allison asks slowly.\n\n"I... Can't say that I have..." he answers, scratching at the salt-and-pepper scruff on his chin. "It's been a long time since clockwork."\n\nAllison sighs and nods.\n\n"That's what I thought."\n\nThey are both silent for a long while.\n\n<<if $jupiter_key_acquired eq "yes">> Allison puts a hand in her pocket casually, and finds something heavy there. Confused, she pulls it out; a key with a planetary symbol on it... \n\n"I've seen that key."\n\nAllison turns to look at Ben, and holds up the key questioningly. He nods. She studies it again herself, and finds that it does, actually seem familiar... With a twinge of pain, she reaches to cup her throat softly. Somewhere in the back of her brain, she can feel the cool slide of orange vines creepng over her skin...\n\n"How?" she chokes out at last, to draw her own attention away.\n\n"Arthur showed it to me, a long time ago... There's a door here in the back of the bar that it goes to."\n\nAllison follows Ben curiously, through what used to be the staff section of the bar. At last they come upon a small door, engraved with the same symbol.\n\n"That's Jupiter, all right," Allison mumbles.\n\nShe runs a hand over the carving, and then looks down at the key in her hand. Allison...\n\n[[uses the Jupiter Key.|Mars Key]]\nputs the key away. She doesn't want to know what's behind the Jupiter door. Not when she's still plagued with the uncomfortable phantom sensation of tightness around her neck. <<endif>>\n\n"Hey, Allie?" Ben says suddenly. "Some guy was asking for you. Tall man, in a suit."\n\nAllison frowns. She doesn't know anyone like that. Seeing that, Ben frowns too. He offers to sit in on the exchange. Feeling a bit of an uncomfortable prickle about the whole situation, Allison agrees. The two of them head back to the front of the bar, and there he is. Hands in his suit pockets is a tall, black man with elegant posture. He's looking down at the floor pensively.\n\n"Please sit down," he says softly, as soon as he spots them.\n\nBen moves to sit at the same table as the two of them, but a hard glance from the man in the suit sends him back over to the bar to watch carefully from a distance. Allison is fine with that arrangement.\n\n"What did you need?" she asks at last, and [[takes a seat.|A Visit From the Suit]]

Ignoring Bird's warning, Allison finds herself walking into the lake. The wooden canary tugs at her clothes, pecks at her head, but all Allison can see is the bright light shimmering like a mirage of heaven through the green water. Without hesitation, she dives under the water and begins to swim down towards the light.\n\nFish of strange shapes and colors watch as she pases, but to Allison they're just streaks as she swims by, deeper into the lake. She barely even notices the burning in her lungs, she's so enraptured by the blinding glow under the deep waters.\n\nEventually, though, her humanity catches up with her, and Allison realizes what has happened. She's too far down to reach the surface in time. Involuntarily, she takes a gasp, and sweet-tasting water rushes into her lungs. Spluttering and choking, Allison loses track of up and down, of the surface and the light, and tumbles in spirals in an unknown direction. She begins to panic, and tries to let out a scream when suddenly she hits the panel of light. Allison closes her eyes in pain and everything stops.\n\n[["Wake up."|Let Me Begin Again 2]]

While the water is hypnotizing, Allison is able to shake herself from it.\n\n"Alright, Bird. Let's go," she says.\n\nThey head towards the blue path, and back into the woods. It's much darker between the trees, and not just because night is coming on. The glow of the plants can't seem to penetrate the sheer gloom exuded by the trees. Allison feels suddenly cold, but can't quite manage a shiver. Bird flies on ahead of her, seemingly unconcerned.\n\nAt last the trees part again and they come to a gorge of sorts. The drop is steep, and Allison can see the spindles of spikes at the bottom. Her stomach turns at the width of the gap.\n\n"Now what...?"\n\nBird flies over the gap easily and settles on the other side, which looks much more welcoming than the dark path they have come from.\n\n"Just jump over! It isn't as far as it looks, you can make it."\n\nAllison isn't so sure of that, but maybe her eyes are playing tricks on her. After all, Bird seems to know this world much better, and if Bird is confident that jumping the gap is possible...\n\n[[Despite her fears, Allison attempts to jump the pit.|End 4]]

The man in the suit settles in, as if for a long story.\n\n"My name is Rathke," he tells Allison, running a hand through the tight black curls of his cropped hair that are peppered with white. "Elijah Rathke. I worked with your grandfather. He and I built the Dreamscape together."\n\nAllison studies him.\n\n"Dreamscape?" she asks at last.\n\n"He left you that key," Rathke says, gesturing towards the winding key looped on a chain around Allison's neck. "So I know you have the ability to go there. And my sensors picked up a disturbance in the beta-matter."\n\nAllison doesn't understand. She's never heard the term beta-matter, and has no idea what it has to do with anything he's saying. Rathke sighs and frowns.\n\n"Beta-matter is matter from the Dreamscape. If someone leaves or enters the Dreamscape, the balance of beta-matter will shift. So I know you've been there."\n\nAllison shrugs. Rathke seems to know more about the place than her, so she allows him the truth.\n\n"I've been there. It's... Strange. Are you the second man from the mural?"\n\nRathke bites his lip and nods.\n\n"So you've seen that, have you? Yes, I'm in that mural Arthur carved in Rosewood Canyon. That's why you have to trust me about this. Something is horribly wrong with the Dreamscape. It's split, somehow. It doesn't follow natural laws about time and space, and it can't be controlled. You can't go back there," he says firmly. "A dream like that will do anything to survive... Even at the expense of the dreamer. It's not safe for you there. Give me the key."\n\nAllison clutches it instinctively, frowning. It is dangerous, she knows. But at the same time, that world, the Dreamscape, is her only route to information about her grandfather.\n\n"I want to be nice about this, I know you're Arthur's granddaughter, but I'm not going to let you get hurt for being stubborn. If you won't give me that key, I'll take it," Rathke warns.\n\nAllison...\n\n[[gives him the key.|End 6]]\n[[runs.|Back to the Dream World]]

Just to silence the chiming, Allison steps forward, slipping the key from around her neck. It fits the clock perfectly, and as she winds, the chiming at last stops and a small wooden bird pops out of the top. Though it's clearly made of wood, it flutters like the real thing, seemingly frantic to escape into the open room.\n\n"Thank you," the bird says at last, and Allison starts at the realization that this creature is not only moving but capable of speech.\n\n"You're... Welcome...?" she answers slowly, somehow unsure if that's the proper sentiment to be expressing.\n\n"My name is Bird," the little canary explains.\n\n"You're a bird..." Allison confirms slowly, "And your name is Bird?"\n\nBird scoffs, rustling wooden feathers, beak tipped up in a haughty manner.\n\n"I'd like to see you do better. What's your name?"\n\n"Allison Kaddick."\n\nBird jumps in an almost comical manner, stumbling forward a few inches with wings outstretched.\n\n"... Did you say Kaddick?"\n\n"Yes," says Allison, crossing her arms over her chest. "Why do you ask?"\n\n"I knew an Arthur Kaddick once," Bird explains, and there's a twinge of melancholy to the words that sends a chill straight to Allison's heart.\n\n"That's my grandfather."\n\n"We were partners, actually," offers Bird upon hearing this. "We traveled all over this world."\n\nAllison isn't sure what to think about that. She's always been aware of her grandfather's adventurous nature, but... To traverse an entirely new world? When had he found the time? And why hadn't he told her? Allison loops her necklace back over her head and clutches the winding key fiercely. She and Bird stare one another down for a long moment. \n\n"I guess that makes us partners now," decides Allison. "My grandfather's been missing for a few weeks now."\n\n"Partners, huh?" Bird seems a little skeptical, but otherwise doesn't protest the arrangement.\n\n"What did the two of you do here?"\n\nBird shuffles a bit, apparently thinking. Meanwhile, the sky begins to darken around them like time is speeding by. In its place are the blooming, flourescent glow of various pieces of plantlife. Somehow, the air is changing.\n\n"We explored, and studied the world. There was a certain plant Arthur was interested in."\n\n"Will you show me around? I... I was hoping he might still be here in this world," Allison admits.\n\nBird agrees, and the two of them descend to the ground by way of the ladder. Bird flies off in what seems to be an arbitrary direction, and Allison follows. They travel quickly through the brightly-colored foliage, sun setting pink and purple around them. Every so often, Allison spots the limb or eye of a strange creature peeking out from between the leaves of the trees.\n\nThe two journey all over, in the course of several hours. Bird shows Allison all of the places that Arthur used to spend time. A section of the woods where the rain falls upwards and Allison is able to catch the drops on her fingertips turns out to be his thinking place. A canyon made of marbled wood where he had carved a mural is next. Allison traces over the lines with her thumb, following the pattern as a whole with her eyes. Arthur, another man, and Bird are depicted in an almost religious way, like one would see in the stained glass murals of a cathedral. In the first panel, it appears the two men are just meeting Bird. Afterwards the three of them set out. Finally, the figures are all gathered around an oddly-shaped plant, like a fern but more branching. They surround it the way worshippers gather around a relic.\n\n"Who is the second man?" Allison asks first, though she traces the contours of the plant design.\n\n"That's your father's partner, Elijah. He was always coming here with him. They were looking for the same thing," Bird explains.\n\n"The plant?" Allison guesses.\n\n"Yeah, they wanted to bring some back to your world, but never managed to figure out how. Sometimes things went back and forth between here and their world, but they could never control what."\n\nBird and Allison watch the shadows in the carvings grow ever darker with the fading light, unable to tear themselves away from the carving. After ten or twenty minutes have passed, Bird urges them onward.\n\n"There's a secondary base of operations nearby. Maybe Arthur is there," Bird suggests.\n\nAllison and Bird race on through the trees until at last they tumble into a clearing overlooking a glassy lake. The water is green and cool, and Allison steps towards it.\n\n"Wait!"\n\nThe shout stops her, and she looks down at Bird, who is perched on something that seems to bear at least slight resemblance to a cattail.\n\n"Don't go in there," Bird protests. "That lake is dangerous. We need to follow the path around to the other side."\n\nAllison backs away from the lake and nods slowly. She turns to look where Bird is gesturing with a wing and sees a little path glowing blue that winds back into the woods on the other side. Despite the glow, it's a little dark, and Allison wonders if there will be enough light to see her way properly. Just as she takes a step towards the path, a light flashes across the lake like a warning with blinding strength, bathing the world around them in white. Squinting against it, Allison is able to tell that whatever is producing the light is coming from the bottom of the lake. She stops and stares for a few moments, unsure how to react. She can hear Bird urging her towards the forest, but it's distant, like a shout from across an ocean. Allison...\n\n[[continues down the path.|A Strange New World]]\n[[follows the light.|End of a Dream]]

<<set $secret_route = "yes">>\nAllison drifts through time like she's drifting through sleep, and everything goes a little fuzzy at the edges. She wonders if she'll even remember why she did this, that she did this, when she wakes up in the past. But the burning of her heart continues despite everything, and she has faith that that will keep her on her course.\n\nJust as the whirling and gentle falling become almost too much, everything freezes.\n\n[["Wake up."|Let Me Begin Again]]

Allison ignores Hathorne's advice. The fact that the path lit up the very second she began to think of her grandfather has to mean something. And as far as she can see down the path, there doesn't appear to be anything dangerous. She starts jogging down the mushroom-lined trail.\n\nOn a split-second's thought, she glances back towards the monkey-like body Hathorne had created, only to catch it crumbling back into a haphazard pile of stationary plant matter. It gives her an odd feeling high in her lungs, like she's taken in too much air or made a mistake, but there's nothing to do but continue forward.\n\nAllison keeps running for a long while, until at last the path ends at a cave. Its opening gapes wide, and Allison isn't entirely sure she wants to enter it. However, when she spins around to glance back down the path, it has all but disappeared. The glowing, guiding light that had led her on twists and turns through the vibrantly colored foliage is gone.\n\nShe waits a few moments, but it doesn't reappear. Allison takes a deep breath, in and out, and steels herself.\n\n[[Then, she enters the cave.|End 1]]

"You're a god?"\n\n"I'm a creator," Hathorne clarifies, making some sort of undefinable distinction between the two that Allison tries to appreciate. "They didn't make this world, AK. I did. They just found it. Buncha arrogant bastards. But I knew what they were doing, and it wasn't bad."\n\n"The plant, the purification," Allison guesses in fragments. "They were trying to fix the air in... In our world."\n\nHathorne nods, crossing two twig arms over one another.\n\n"It was a fine attempt."\n\nAllison frowns. Rathke had quit the Dreamscape after Arthur's death... So there was no one working on the research. No one but...\n\n"I want to continue their work," Allison admits at last.\n\nHathorne lets out a soft laugh that bounces around the empty white air.\n\n"I had a feeling you'd say that."\n\nSuddenly there's a weight on Allison's back. She reaches over her shoulder and finds... A scabbard? Hathorne's makeshift body shrugs, as if to say 'I thought you might need it'. Allison gives a dry smirk in response.\n\n"I can still switch back and forth, can't I?" she asks at last. "Between the Dreamscape and home?"\n\n"Just call my name," says Hathorne.\n\nWith a start, Allison finds herself in the treehouse, staring up at a horizon just turning pink with morning sun with a sword on her back and a dream in her soul.\n\n[[Try again?|Final Choice]]

Allison winds the clock gently, and out pops Bird, struggling against coils of wire. She frees Bird, watching the avian stretch stiff wings silently.\n\n"You came back for me," Bird says softly.\n\n"Did you think I wouldn't, Bird? We're partners," Allison says with a sad smile.\n\n"... Thank you," the wooden canary replies.\n\nAllison just shrugs, and scratches her arm uncomfortably.\n\n"I am the hero, after all."\n\n"So you are," Bird answers after a long moment of silence.\n\nAllison walks over to the edge of the treehouse, and sits with her legs dangling over the side. Bird hops over to rest beside her.\n\n"Did Rathke do that to you?" Allison inquires at last, gesturing back towards the clock with her head. "Try to trap you like that?"\n\n"Yes."\n\n"Because of what you did to my grandfather."\n\nThe reply is less forthcoming, but the same.\n\n"Yes."\n\nThere isn't much else to say, so Allison just sits in silence. She knows what happened, and why, but it still doesn't seem like enough. Enough substance.\n\n"Why did you do it?"\n\n"I didn't want him to leave. He was... The most important person to me."\n\nThat doesn't make it ok, Allison thinks to herself. Not at all. She wonders how she can find herself sitting so calmly next to a being that wanted her dead, that had the capability to hurt their 'most important person' just to keep him from leaving. The sky starts to haze a little, and Allison isn't sure if she's tearing up or the world is shifting around her somehow to fit the new paradigm.\n\n"I thought you hated me," Allison manages at last. "You wanted me to die."\n\n"I just don't want to be alone," says Bird. "No one ever stays. People come, and people go, but sometimes it feels like I'm the one standing still and watching this world move too fast around me. I have chosen my ground, and I will wait here until the end of time."\n\nAllison understands that, somehow. It's all wrong, but she understands. The ache of being alone. It was what she had been feeling all along.\n\n"He's gone now, you can't change what you did," Allison answers thickly, past anger and the ghosts of tears and a sick longing for home.\n\n"Are you going to leave?"\n\n"It would serve you right if I did. If I gave my key to Rathke and never came back here again, if no one ever came back here again."\n\nThe words pour out like a waterfall, skipping stones and repeating in rushes of emotion. They fall hard and break against the clear pool of the air around them. Bird flinches.\n\nAnd suddenly there is a feeling in front of them, a ghost, an apparition, a song. A wisp of nonexistence, of pure consciousness and nothing else, and it is smiling in only the way Arthur Kaddick can smile.\n\n"I know your face," he says. "It is familiar."\n\n"As if it were my own."\n\nAnd Allison and Bird realize suddenly and painfully that they have spoken in unison. But there's not enough time for that feeling to erupt into anger or sobs, because the ghost, the illusion, the man Arthur Kaddick, speaks again.\n\n"You think death is the end, don't you? But it's not. Death is the halfway point. Death is where we start our story."\n\nAnd then he's gone, like a figment. Mist in the wind. And Allison knows now that she can't leave, not permanently. Arthur Kaddick had loved this Dreamscape too much. And it was the Dreamscape he had left to her. Her inheritance.\n\n"We're partners, though," Allison says softly. "And I don't want to be alone."\n\nThey sit in the treehouse as the sky grows dark, letting their consciousnesses ease into the cool night air like it was a hot bath. Someday, the ache would go. But that would take time. For now, they sit content to let the pain roll over them in dusky waves, and wait for the morning sun.\n\n[[Try again?|Final Choice]]

"Rathke's been back to the Dreamscape," Allison says quietly, feeling a twinge of regret for practically forcing him to chase her back to such a dangerous world.\n\nShe wonders if he thinks she's dead. If that tear was for her or her grandfather. Or both.\n\n"Yes, he has."\n\nShe looks up at the image of her granfather, the only other person in the near-blankness around them. He looks kind and tired and Allison wishes they could stay like this forever. But they can't.\n\n"You're not real, are you?"\n\nShe looks through the window in time and space where she can see the cuckoo clock once again chiming in vain. She looks because she can't meet her grandfather's eyes.\n\n"I'm real to you."\n\nShe can't argue with that.\n\n"What do I do?" she asks him.\n\n"Whatever you think is right."\n\nAllison wishes it were as easy as it sounds. She stands there for a long, long moment.\n\n[[Then, pulling the green lever, Allison steps through the portal.|Meeting Bird 2 - True End]]\n\n<<if $kaddick_truths eq "yes">> Then the words "pull the red lever" sear across her mind, and Allison remembers. [[She pulls the red lever hard and steps through the portal to the past.|Time Enough]] <<endif>>\n\n<<if $met_zenothilius_hawthorne eq "yes">> Allison looks back at the image of her grandfather. It begins to waver and then fade away as she lets him go. The process is slow, and painful, but she can't focus on any sort of dilemma while she still clings to a false hope that he's alive somewhere.\n\n"Allison."\n\nAt last she looks up, and sees Hathorne, silly makeshift monkey body and all. She only realizes when she has to wipe them away that she has been crying.\n\n"Hathorne?"\n\n"I can't bring your grandfather back," Hathorne says to her. "But if there's anything else you want, I can provide. There is very little that's out of my power."\n[[Allison studies Hathorne, and finds that she believes every word.|Hathorne's Ending]] <<endif>>\n

"Nice place, AK."\n\nAllison starts in surprise and turns around, but is met with only air.\n\n"Hathorne...?" she asks cautiously.\n\n"In your noggin, AK. I came back with you."\n\nAllison blinks a few times to set herself right, to regain her mental equilibrium.\n\n"You can do that?"\n\n"Sure. Of course I can."\n\nThe odd spirit-creature seems fairly confident that it's a normal sort of occurence, but Allison isn't so sure. Still, she has no proof either way.\n\n"Why did you come back here with me?" she asks at last, walking up to the wall and looking out at the murky sky.\n\nThe view is somehow different with Hathorne resting in the empty corners of her brain like a lounging houseguest. It's less personal, but also oddly beautiful in a new way. Now that she has something to contrast it to.\n\n"I didn't want to have to wait for you in the other world, AK. If you haven't noticed, time works a little differently there than here," is the only answer supplied. "I spent so much time waiting for you to show up in the first place, after your grandfather was... Well, gone."\n\nBefore Allison can verbally or emotionally respond to Hathorne's words, there's a knock on the door. She hurries over to open it, and finds her upstairs neighbor on the other side.\n\n"Ms. Togu?"\n\n"You can call me Sakura, Allison, you know that," answers Sakura Togu.\n\nShe's a beautifully corpulent eastern woman, whose family had been rich to the point of insanity before money had gone out of style, sometime in Arthur Kaddick's middle years. She still looks rich to Allison, if the descriptions in her grandfather's old books are anything to go on. She's the sort of woman who can glide through the halls like everything in the world is hers. It's a sight that always elicited awe from even the most stoic of witnesses.\n\n"Sorry, Sakura," Allison corrects with a smile. "Did you need something?"\n\n"Some gentleman wants to meet with you, is all," Sakura answers, examining her perfectly-maintained nails and soft, rounded fingers as if for a sign of any nonexistent flaw. "A man in a suit. He's down in the bar now, dear. Ben asked me to call you down."\n\n"Thank you, I'll head down there right away."\n\n"Be careful, dear, you can never trust a man in a suit," Sakura warns, giving Allison a short but definitely motherly expression before heading off down the hall.\n\n"Certainly is graceful, isn't she? Carries herself like a noble," Hathorne comments admiringly.\n\n"I think so to," says Allison after a beat.\n\nSaying no more, she heads to the elevators and down to the bar. It isn't hard to spot the man in the suit. Hands in his pockets is a tall, black man with elegant posture. He's looking down at the floor pensively.\n\n"Please sit down," he says softly, as soon as he spots Allison.\n\nShe can hear Hathorne chuckling bitterly in the back of her head but isn't sure why.\n\n"What did you need?" she asks at last, and [[takes a seat.|A Visit From the Suit B]]

"You knew he was dead...?" Allison asks softly. "Then why did you help me look for him when we first met? If you knew all along, then why-"\n\nShe cuts off with a choked sob.\n\n"If you knew, you would have just left," Bird intones, voice odd and murky in Allison's ears.\n\n"That's not good enough! I almost died traveling between worlds, and he was gone all along!"\n\n"That was the point."\n\nBird's pitch is suddenly eerie and low.\n\n"Bird... It was you who...?"\n\nAllison thinks back to the lake, to its hypnotizing call. To the water rushing into her lungs. Allison struggles to breathe. Bird looks up at her, head tilted.\n\n"Sorry, Allison."\n\n"Sorry? You tried to kill me!" shouts Allison, burning tears springing to her eyes. "I trusted you! We were partners!"\n\n"I was never your partner. I was his partner, and you ruined everything!"\n\n"How did I do that?! How?!" Allison demanded.\n\n"Because he wanted to spend more time with you! Even though time here goes faster! Even though he could spend hours here and still return to your world minutes later! He felt like he was spending too long without you, and he wanted to leave!" Bird accuses.\n\n"You... You killed him for that...?" Allison stammers, unable to cleanly articulate the maelstrom of violent hatred in her heart.\n\n"It was an accident!" Bird says defensively. "My power got out of control. Because you interfered with our status quo!"\n\nAllison knows this is wrong, knows Bird's logic is flawed. It's wrong. It's all wrong. With waves of turbulent emotion crashing around her ears, Allison runs. She feels like her heart is swaying from side to side, dangling by a thread above a roiling pool of madness, and she runs. The trees and the plants blur around her, streaks of red flashing past, like the whole world is cracking.\n\nAnd then suddenly there really is a break in the Dreamscape. A rift. It looks just like a blank wall peeking out from underneath torn wallpaper. Allison slows to a halt, staring at it with dazed incomprehension. In the rift is a large white lever, labeled "CONTROL". Allison thinks she could use some of that.\n\n"Don't touch that lever!" Bird screeches, voice wild and rabid like Allison has always imagined a harpy. "I'll kill you!"\n\nAllison...\n\n[[pulls the lever.|To the End]]\n[[runs.|End 9]]

Allison runs out of the bar. Rathke, who is surprised by her sudden movement, is left scrambling after her. Realizing that waiting for an elevator would take too long, Allison heads for the tunnel system between the apartment buildings. She doesn't know the routes perfectly, but she knows them well enough to stay ahead of Rathke as he pursues.\n\nAfter several minutes of running, she ducks into a shadowy corner, breathing hard. There's no sign of Rathke, and Allison grabs her key, pressing it close to her heart. With a sigh of relief she closes her eyes.\n\nIn that instant, there's a sudden jolt, and Allison [[jerks her eyes open.|Let Me Begin Again 3]]

<<set $visited_zenothilius_hathorne = "yes">>\nShe has to leave, and quickly. With some struggle, Allison clambers down the rope ladder, and finds herself standing on springy blue moss. Everything around her is brilliant and alive, even as it decays. The sun is still setting, and fireflies blink like Christmas lights in the pink air around her. Everything is so clear, and she can see for what feels like miles through the trees. For a moment the ache dulls. Allison's mind is reeling and overturned by the alien beauty of the world around her.\n\n"Well, now! Who are you?"\n\nAllison whirls around, but there is no one there.\n\n"You won't find me that way!" the voice, an odd mix of raspy tones and a high, clever pitch, taunts.\n\nA small coconut resting on the ground twitches, then rolls over to a pile of sticks and an old log. Allison watches in amazement as they begin to form a lopsided, monkey-like body, with the coconut as the head.\n\n"What are you?" she asks.\n\n"If I told you that, you wouldn't believe me!" the monkey laughs. "But as for who... I am the renowned Zenothilius Hathorne."\n\nThe body takes a deep bow, seemingly unaware of how utterly ridiculous it looks.\n\n"And you must be... Miss Allison Kaddick, am I right?"\n\n"Yes," Allison answers, voice slow and confused. "How did you know, Mr. Hathorne?"\n\nThere is a sudden trilling, echoing laughter.\n\n"No "Mr." for me, AK. I'm afraid that many of my world defy gender determinations, myself as well. Zenothilius or Hathorne will do just fine. And as for your question, I know lots of things, AK," Hathorne responds. "About this whole wide world. And yours too."\n\n"Mine too...?"\n\nHer thoughts leap immediately to her grandfather's disappearance, and a tiny hope begins to burn at the bottom of her heart. As it does, a previously indistinguishable path through the trees blooms into light. Along the sides, little mushrooms begin to glow cheerfully, and the trees rustle and reflect soft, cool colors.\n\nAllison looks down the lighted path, which seems to glow welcomingly with soft blue and purple light.\n\n"I would head back to that treehouse before exploring much farther if I were you," Hathorne suggests. "But that's just my own advice."\n\nAllison looks back and forth between the path and the treehouse for a moment, and then she...\n\n[[follows Hathorne's advice.|Back Again]]\n[[continues exploring alone.|Unseemly World]]

Jackie Belding