Act I
Chapter 1: The Beginning

You are JIMMY, an employee on the 23rd floor of the APEX MICROCHIPS COMPANY BUILDING. For whatever reason, you feel particularly apathetic about working today.

You are standing in your CUBICLE. On the left you can plainly see a FILE CABINET with a PINK STAPLER on top of it. There is a PIECE OF PAPER pinned to the cubicle wall. To the right is a COMPUTER MONITOR.

>> READ PIECE OF PAPER

The PIECE OF PAPER has scribbles all over it, for whatever reason. You don't recall. Hmm...

>> VIEW DILBERT COMIC

You thought this DILBERT COMIC was pretty funny, so you pinned it on your CUBICLE WALL. You don't remember if the company policy of APEX MICROCHIPS allows you to post funny things on the walls. Probably not.

>> Grab Stapler

You pick up the PINK STAPLER and stash it in your inventory. You have no real reason for doing so besides the inexplicable feeling that it may, at some point in time, come in handy.

>> Investigate Filing Cabinet
>> Investigate Blue Thing behind Filing Cabinet

The FILING CABINET is what it is: a FILING CABINET with three doors. Cool.

The blue thing turns out to be a LARGE BINDER. It would probably be on a table somewhere if you actually had some desk space.

>> Play Minesweeper

You would like to play the popular addicting game, Minesweeper, but your MONITOR seems to be off!

>> go to IT DEPARTMENT and requisition COMPUTER

Oh wow, it seems you don't have an actual COMPUTER, either. You're not sure if that's the way to get one, though. Perhaps you should look around some more, first.

>> Retrieve arms

You've already got arms, silly!

>> Open top drawer

You open the top drawer of the FILE CABINET and find 7 STAPLES.

>> Open middle drawer

The middle drawer of the FILE CABINET is suspiciously locked.

>> Open bottom drawer

You open the bottom drawer of the FILE CABINET and find 3 ONE-DOLLAR BILLS and a MAGIC 8-BALL.

>> Take all

Your PINK STAPLER was apparently empty. You load it with the 7 STAPLES you found.
You also take the 3 ONE-DOLLAR BILLS and the MAGIC 8-BALL and stash them in your inventory.



>> Use BINDER on FILE CABINET

You open the LARGE BINDER and place it on top of the FILE CABINET. Wow, this thing is huge! It's 4,096 pages long and filled with reports, diagrams, and otherwise utter nonsense. There's no way you can read this right now--you don't even know where to start. (The ironic connection between 4,096 being 2 to the 12th power and your occupation dealing with computer parts is not lost on you.)

>> Turn Monitor On

D'oh! Your MONITOR immediately goes into POWER SAVE MODE. Apparently it does that when there's no COMPUTER connected to it. Without a COMPUTER, this MONITOR is essentially useless.

>> View back of paper

You take the PIECE OF PAPER off your CUBICLE WALL and flip it over. It turns out to be a MEMO sent approximately six months ago, saying that your previously-broken COMPUTER is ready for pickup. You don't remember why you tacked it to your wall, backwards, and then scribbled on it. It probably seemed like a good idea at the time.

You also begin to wonder if you've done any actual work in the last six months.

Since the MEMO is a CLAIM CHECK and you don't want to take any chances (heck, it's been a while already) you immediately stash the CLAIM CHECK in your inventory.

>> Peer into the next cubicle

You look around the corner into the next CUBICLE. It appears to be completely empty.

>> Attempt to staple Dilbert Comic to forehead.

You consider this, but in the end decide it's probably not a good idea for two reasons: 1) It will probably hurt, and 2) It would use up 14.3% of your STAPLE AMMO.