on the street · the lights are out · the only light is the torch in your hand
Somebody has to go and look
Rescue A Cat
Shine the torch, bring it in, give it a name
Out there now
Searching the street needs scripts.
Rescuing or adopting a cat takes a CB handle and the community password: sign on at the Community Center, then come back. Looking takes nothing.
The lights are out on this end of the street, and every so often a cat turns up in the dark that needs bringing in: under a parked car, halfway up a drainpipe, in a soggy cardboard box. Nobody knows when the next one will be, so look in when you pass. Signed on to the CB, the first to press rescues them and can give them a name, and anybody can adopt a cat from the shelter, who then lives in Profile on their CB radio. It is after the catch-a-cat game in our Discord’s Collaborative Nonsense channels, except that here cats are rescued rather than caught. There is a dog shelter too.
In the shelter
Every cat waiting for a home, newest first, with the name their rescuer gave them. Signed on, press Adopt and they are yours.
Looking in at the shelter needs scripts.
Adopted, for good
Every cat ever adopted from this shelter, a month at a time, kept for good. It never says who adopted them: that is between each cat and their person, in their person’s Profile.
Reading the book needs scripts.
Cats you rescued
Your own list needs scripts.
How rescuing and adopting work
- Cats turn up at random, one at a time, and a cat waits however long it takes somebody to come for them. Not even the shelter knows when the next one will be.
- The first person signed on to the CB to press brings them in. Anybody a moment later is told they are already safe. Looking takes nothing.
- A cat stays in the shelter until somebody adopts them. When the shelter is full, the next cat waits outside until somebody adopts one.
- Adopting is first to press too, and a cat is adopted once. They go into Profile on your CB radio, which follows you to any device you sign on with, and onto the list of everybody adopted, for good. That list never says who adopted anybody.
- Your pets are kept under your handle, scrambled so the store does not list handles. Until you claim your username from Profile on your radio, a handle is not an account, and anybody who signs on with the same handle sees the same pets; once it is claimed, only your password reaches them. Forget Me in Profile deletes them; the cats stay on the list of everybody adopted, with nothing connecting them to you. What the shelter keeps.
- No cat is rarer than another. Every coat, every marking and every place is as likely as any other, so no cat is a prize and none is a disappointment. Some have three legs or one eye, and they are cats.
- Nothing says who rescued which cat, anywhere on the street, and nobody is counted: no totals, no board of rescuers, no streaks. The ones you rescued are kept in your own browser only.
- The base station can take a name off a cat, wherever the cat is, if the name should not be on show.
- Nothing moves, at any setting. Every cat is drawn sitting still in the torch’s pool.
The game
The game is our community’s own, from the Collaborative Nonsense channels in our Discord, where it was catch-a-cat; here it is rescue. The dark, the torch and every cat are drawn for this room. It is set in Fuzzy Bubbles, by Robert Leuschke, and PT Sans, by ParaType, and credited in the liner notes.
Job marker — a torch somebody left on the kerb, still on, with two eyes shining back from the dark beyond it
You have found a job marker. The Adventurer’s Guild is a shopfront on the street, and it posts jobs that send you round these rooms. Take the code below to its board and that job is done. Nothing here is scored, nothing expires, and one is a perfectly good number of jobs to do.
The job: Where does an adopted cat go?
Before the code: When you adopt a cat, where on your CB radio do they go?
Hint 1
It is in the rules about how rescuing and adopting work.
Hint 2
It is a button on the radio, beside Sign off.
Last hint
It is where your username is too.
Give me the answer
The answer is Profile. An adopted cat goes into Profile on your CB radio. The list of everybody adopted keeps them too, for good, and never says who adopted them.
Taking the answer is a real way through this, not a lesser one. Nothing is watching and nothing is written down.
Quest code: WHISKERS
That is the one.
An adopted cat goes into Profile on your CB radio. The list of everybody adopted keeps them too, for good, and never says who adopted them.
Quest code: WHISKERS
HOW LOUD DO YOU WANT IT?
Starts wherever your device says. Nothing moves, flashes, or plays until you say so.