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 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 it and can give it a name. It is after the catch-a-cat game in our Discord’s Collaborative Nonsense channels, except that here cats are rescued rather than caught, and nobody keeps them.
In the shelter
Every cat rescued this week, newest first, with the name its rescuer gave it. After a week each one goes to a home, which is how a rescue ends.
Looking in at the shelter needs scripts.
Cats you rescued
Your own list needs scripts.
How rescuing works
- Cats turn up at random, one at a time, and a cat waits however long it takes somebody to come for it. Not even the shelter knows when the next one will be.
- The first person signed on to the CB to press brings it in. Anybody a moment later is told it is already safe. Looking takes nothing.
- 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, in the shelter or anywhere else on the street, and nobody is counted: no totals, no board of rescuers, no streaks.
- The cats you rescued are kept in your own browser, and only there, so you can find them after they have gone to homes. The shelter never knows which were yours. Forget my cats clears the list: what the shelter keeps.
- A cat stays in the shelter for a week, then goes to a home. The base station can take a name off a cat 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: How long does a rescued cat stay in the shelter?
Before the code: How long does a rescued cat stay in the shelter before it goes to a home?
Hint 1
It is in the rules about how rescuing works.
Hint 2
It is the same as the chalkboard's.
Last hint
Seven days.
Give me the answer
The answer is A week. A cat stays in the shelter for seven days and then goes to a home. Your own browser remembers the cats you rescued after that, and nothing else does.
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.
A cat stays in the shelter for seven days and then goes to a home. Your own browser remembers the cats you rescued after that, and nothing else does.
Quest code: WHISKERS
HOW LOUD DO YOU WANT IT?
Starts wherever your device says. Nothing moves, flashes, or plays until you say so.