Toxic Sewage (A (Love) Story) is a Z-machine 5 interactive fiction story written with Inform 6 and is © 2002 by John Cater. It was a participant in the first Speed-IF Jacket event.
In this (short) story that delights in overusing parentheses, you play as someone who came (here) to a sewage treatment plant hoping to find your (lost) love, Josephina. But you were (almost) too late...
This solution is by David Welbourn, and is based on Release 1 of the story.
SPOILERS AHEAD. Reading a walkthrough prematurely can sometimes diminish one's enjoyment of an interactive fiction story. Please make an honest effort to play the story before reading this walkthrough.
Sewage (Treatment Plant (#5)) Control Room
> s.
(Administrator's) Office
> x photograph. x desk. open drawer.
> x papers. push button.
Pushing the button unlocks and opens the door to the research laboratory.
> n. n. n.
(Research) Laboratory (north end)
Note: Once in the sewer, you cannot return.
> open cover. d.
(Sludge) Sewer (three locations)
> x ladder.
> n. n. u.
Platform (Above the Sewer)
> x me. w. w.
Inside (The Dome)
> x creatures. x openings. x glistening.
> taste honey. in.
(Queen's) Chamber
> x attendants. x jelly. x queen.
> take jelly. give jelly to queen.
*** BZZ BZZ BZZ ***
From the prologue of the game:
"Oh, come on. This kind of exaggerated amorality impresses nobody." -Sam Kabo Ashwell
"The overuse of deeply nested quotations and parenthetical phrases made my eyes water and my head spin. Hopefully next time, katre will show some restraint in his baroque sentence formations." - Caleb Wilson
"The brutally blunt writing fearlessly illuminates the sociopolitical climate in which questions of class are addressed. Unlike any other entity in our information saturated world, it provides a consistent and excoriating social commentary." - Duchess
"I feel like I've waded through sewage--and that's NOT an allegory.? This game had some of the most accurately-rendered sewage-swimming scenes I've ever seen." - Jason Love
"After this game [...] I felt like I couldn't walk for several minutes." - Duncan Cross
"I really loved the anthropomorphised bees!" - Atholbrose
This walkthrough is provided free of charge since I wrote this walkthrough prior to January 2015 when I began my Patreon account. I've since reformatted this walkthrough to use my currently preferred style. I hope you enjoy it!
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