Text Adventuring in NYC by Seb Chan

Text Adventuring in NYC

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Use no scoring.

The release number is 1. The story creation year is 2019. The story genre is "Travel fiction".  The story headline is "A single day in New York City - a quick journey addendum to an email newsletter, Fresh and New, that was written about the medium of text adventures.

" 


The Hotel is a room. 

"You awaken in a small room - which was apparently sold to you as a â€˜large roomâ€™. 

You remember, through your jet lagged haze, that the Front Desk staff had asked if you wanted an upgrade when you checked in. You politely declined. 

The room is scarcely large enough to accommodate the Bed and your opened Suitcase. Your attention is drawn to a nice grey Hooded Robe hanging on a hook. Before you do anything, though, you  feel you should open the blinds and see what is outside.

Pulling up the blockout blinds you gaze out on the city. You canâ€™t see very much of it from the window, only fire escapes and water towers. You try to remember why the water towers are mostly made of wood. It would make a nice, if generic, tourist photo. You pull out your Smartphone to take a photo but, in framing the shot, decide against it. You put your Smartphone back into your pocket. 

There is an exit to the South."

The suitcase is in the Hotel.

The suitcase is an openable container. The suitcase is closed. In the suitcase is clothes. The description of clothes is "The suitcase contains your clothes that have been neatly taco folded by your daughter. She is an expert in neat packing. You miss her and the rest of your family.  There is nothing you need from your suitcase right now."

Smartphone is a thing. The Smartphone is in the Hotel. The description is "Your Smartphone stays in your pocket unless it is being used for selfies when visiting museums. Oh, and maps. But you've lived in NYC before so why would you really need a map?"

The hooded robe is scenery in the Hotel. The description of the hooded robe is "The robe is plush and has a nice hood. It fits well and you think for a moment about sneaking it into your suitcase. Then you look at the hotel price list and realise it is the equivalent of AU$225. You also realise that they will just charge that to your room if they notice it has vanished. It is clearly not worth that much."

Bed is scenery in the Hotel. The description of the Bed is "The bed lies in a bit of disarray from the fitful jet lag sleep you have just awoken from. The blanket lies on the floor and the pillows have been gathered together to give your head the necessary support. Hotel pillows are notoriously thin. 

If you weren't so needing coffee you might consider lying down for a kip, but you can't."

South of the Hotel is the Foyer. 

The Foyer is a room. "The foyer buzzes with life.

Noisy tourists momentarily block your path as you try to exit the lift. Eventually they part and you emerge into a foyer full of younger people sitting on couches all 'checking their socials' on Mac laptops. You wonder why they aren't using their phones, but then realise that they are procrastinating. At least they aren't writing a text adventure game.

To the south is the street. And the promise of coffee."

South of the Foyer is Grammercy Park Street.

Grammercy Park Street is a room. "Outside the hotel, you are on the street. Yellow cabs drift slowly past, weaving between Amazon delivery vans and pedestrians who cross on a whim. As you walk along the pavement you noice a faint smell of dog urine, and step over the smears of dog poo, the evidence of a city that has 600,00 dogs in it - and lazy pet owners.

A gaggle of tourists carrying shopping bags pushes past you, the corner of one their bags snags on your jeans. The scowl and press on. Usually tourists walk slowly, and you wonder about what has spooked them.

Looking up you realise that the skyscrapers of Manhattan are not actually everywhere. Instead they cluster around the major subway hubs, a legacy of better infrastructure below the ground and proximity to transport.

Walking around you notice that when there are skyscrapers they are mostly new ones. Thin towers like matchsticks, they look terribly out of place. 

You locate a cafe. And it isn't too bad. The coffee is of Sydney-standard, perhaps not quite yet up to Melbourne grade, but it hits the spot. Fortunately you remember to order an 8oz size and the barista remarks that you must be from Australia - 'everyone else orders a large'. By the time you add a tip, that coffee has turned out to be pretty expensive. Lucky it was decent.

South is the nearest subway."

South of Grammercy Park Street is Midtown Subway. 

Midtown Subway is a room. "The subway is unnaturally warm. The smells that waft upwards as you descend into it are familiar and reassuring. A homeless man with slumps on the remnants of a  cardboard box at the base of the stairs. You wonder to yourself how this can be in such a rich city.

The ticket machine springs into life as you buy your Metrocard. The interface still hasn't changed. The tourist using the machine next to you can't get their credit card to work and you have to remind them to use 90210 as their zip code.

As you push through the turnstiles you notice that there is a new NFC/RFID reader being trialled. It says 'Test' on its screen and looks terribly out of place. You begin to work through the various scenarios for when it comes into operation and all those tourists start wondering why their cards won't work properly. And all the angry locals queuing behind them telling them 'just go through'.

East is the Platform."

East of Midtown Subway is Platform.

The Platform is a room. "The platform is scattered with people. It stretches around a slight corner as this is a part of town where the subway lines need to bend as they weave their way down the island.

Everyone is staring at their cellphones, ignoring the quaint old public art that lines the tiles on the platform wall. There are new advertising screens everywhere on the platform. These were defiantly not here the last time you were in New York.

A large rat scurries along the track. It is dragging a pizza slice behind it. Maybe it has a family to feed. Or is a meme-in-making.

Two different generations of illuminated information signs advise how many minutes until the next subway. They are out of sync. Like a city caught between the techno-capitalist-utopianism of the Bloomberg years, and the truncated reality of the present. 

The subway arrives on time - at least on the time that the older sign says. The newer sign still says '2 minutes'.

A subway car awaits to the East."

East of Platform is the Subway Car.

The Subway Car is a room. "You board the subway heading uptown. 

The car you have boarded is suspiciously empty. The seats around you gleam. 

Then the smell hits you. 

Putrid and possibly human.

You stagger and reel back, rushing towards the exit to the next subway car. 

You reach the metal door to the next carriage. The handle is damp. 

But you grab it anyhow and pull hard. 

Finally the door opens and the subway tunnel air refreshes your nostrils. You are going to make it into the next car without passing out. Phew.

As you enter the next subway car, you turn and look up the carriage to see a large skid of faeces halfway up the carriage, and near it a pile of something resembling vomit. Gagging, you close the door and retreat into the next carriage.

The next carriage is full of people. They pay no attention to your grand entrance. This is a regular occurrence for locals.

A couple of stops pass and the carriage mostly empties out. The tourists are off to the next item on their bucket list.

Left in the carriage is a mother with a child who won't sit still. She has given up trying to control her child, instead letting the kid maraude over the nearby seats. You feel for her. She looks exhausted and the kid is clearly pumped up on sugars right now.

A few seats away and older man with all  his worldly possessions with him sleeps waiting for a stop that will never arrive. But at least the carriage is safe and relatively clean.

You look down at your feet and a trickle of sticky liquid, possibly whatever the kid had been drinking, snakes its way down under the nearby seats.

Eventually your stop arrives. 

The doors to the North open."

North of the Subway Car is Uptown.

Uptown is a room.

"You are on the street. 

In front of you, to the north,  stands the museum.

A new foyer beckons to you with its double storey entryway and shimmering glass frontage. You wonder to yourself 'how much did this really cost to make?' and 'who forked out the cash for this?'."

North of Uptown is the Art Museum.
'
'The Art Museum is a room.

The Art Museum is a room. "The museum foyer is teeming with people. You've never seen so many people at a museum before and feel a little claustrophobic - even though the foyer is enormous. It might even be as big as a football field. There is a dearth of art in the foyer - or at least what you think of as art. Large video screens silently cast a glow over the white surfaces - and the white people. 

You've noticed that unlike the street, the colour of the faces in the foyer are decidedly uniform. You feel a bit uncomfortable at this realisation. Then again it reminds you of college. And you survived that, right?

There is an Audioguide here at a stand that is attended to by a Docent. And the exhibition opens out to West".

There is a Audioguide in the Art Museum. The description of the Audioguide is "The audioguide is actually a new fangled 'media guide'. It looks like an oversized iPhone with a lanyard cord to loop over your neck. It feels heavy but nice to hold. The docent tells you to 'swipe right' to get started. That feels weird.

Anyway, you put the audioguide around your neck and are now wearing it. You feel like a proper museum visitor now. You could open the audioguide to launch the tour if you wished."

The Audioguide is a closed openable container. In the Audioguide is a Multimedia Tour. 

The description of the Multimedia Tour is "The tour looks quite interesting. You find the stark iconography appealing and wonder whether it also does museum selfies?"

The Docent is a person in the Art Museum

Instead of doing something to the Docent:
	say "The docent doesn't want to talk. They are obviously underpaid and overqualified. They scowl and you make a hasty retreat to the exhibition. After all, you didn't really need help and were just trying to be friendly.";
		move player to Art Exhibition.

Every turn when player can see the Docent: say "[one of]The docent mutters 'damn tourists' under their breath[or]The docent fiddles with their jewellery nervously and looks down.[or]The docent rolls up their sleeve to reveal some tattoos that they are probably quite ashamed of now.[at random]"

West of Art Museum is Art Exhibition.

Art Exhibition is a room. "Contemporary art glistens all around you. You had expected to see a more visible presence of technology in the works but instead there are a lot of reflective sculptures and abstract paintings. After a while it all starts to look the same.

Moving to the next part of the exhibition you see strange works that look unfinished. They are all made of discarded fabric and rubbish.  You probably should examine the Label to figure out what it all means.

The exit to the exhibition is to the West."

The Label is scenery in the exhibition. The description of the Label is "The label is a standard museum label. 

You try to read it but it doesn't quite make sense. It is obvious from the label that the collection of fabric and rubbish is an artwork acquired by the museum in the last year. The artist is apparently making a comment on the disposable nature of contemporary capitalist society and the fabric refers to the complex global trade of materials than underpin capitalism. But instead of being clear about what the artist is trying to say with their work, the label undermines itself through its use of International Art Speak. 

At the bottom of the label, it says 'Acquired with funds from the Opoid Endowment'."

West of Exhibition is Queens Subway.

Queens Subway is a room.

"You exit and board the subway again.

This time it is only locals. The travel back and forth from Queens on this line and it is untarnished by tourism.

You exit the subway in Queens. To the north is the Sidewalk."

North of Queens Subway is Sidewalk.

Sidewalk is a room. "The sidewalk in Queens is wider than in Manhattan. There are definitely no skyscrapers here. Instead the streets are lined with bodegas, family restaurants, and thrift stores. In between these are single storey warehouses behind whom rollerdoors you expect to see a range of import and export businesses.

Taking a turn, the shopping strip you find yourself amongst residential housing. Not the apartment blocks of Manhattan but low rise houses. The streets have far less traffic, too, and kids zip past of bikes and scooter. Somewhere in a back garden there's a kids party going on and a piÃ±ata is being slowly bashed into submission. You hear the shrieks of joy as its candy guts obviously spill out onto the a concreted lawn.

A little later you pass an old man pushing a shopping cart heaped high with a mesh of cans and bottles. He is pushing it to a recycling centre where he will get meagre change for his next meal. It makes you think back to a scene in Tim Maughan's Infinite Detail, which you just finished reading.

In front of you to the east in the Other Museum."

East of the Sidewalk is the Other Museum.

The Other Museum is a room. "This museum is different to others. It is more immediately welcoming and there are short looping videos playing on the wall opposite the ticket desk. Younger people might mistakenly say they were GIFs. They aren't, they just look like GIFs.

Buying a ticket you process upstairs and see all the videogames from your childhood there. Sitting down at an old 4 player Track & Field machine from 1983, you relive your youth in an instant. Unfortunately your old childhood trick with a velcro wallet doesn't work here as they've smartly covered the two run buttons with a a raised bezel. 

You wonder about why this museum is able to ignite memories of the past so effectively and why the previous museum left you feeling cold.

The exit is to the north."

North of the Other Museum is Back at the Hotel.

Back at the Hotel is a room. "You exit the museum and head to the subway. You are feeling exhausted by now and realise you never ate lunch.

You pass a taqueria and step inside and order pescado and carnitas tacos, washed down with a grapefruit Jarritos. You wonder why something so simple is so hard to replicate the taste of in Melbourne. 

Eventually you arrive back at the hotel and fall into a deep slumber.

Until 3am.

Gah. 

Jet lag.


This is the end - at least for now."