Winners of the 2001 IFComp

And close your eyes with holy dread

For he on honey-dew hath fed

And drunk the milk of paradise.

That queried his own deal:

He looked again, and found it was

A ticket to a meal.

He thought he saw infanticide

Per chance to make it real.

'I have but one regret,' he said:

'There is no time to squeal!'

For the University and the rest of the town, the mystery is beginning to pall. To those people, it's as if Claire and Scott Colborn suddenly stopped existing -- strange and inexplicable, to be sure, but forgettable in the long run. But for you it's as if the ground beneath your feet stopped existing, and you've been plummeting in freefall ever since.

Your brother Austin, though, has been a rock through the whole experience, handling the numbing details, the endless meetings with useless detectives, even sorting through Mom and Dad's lab in hopes of finding an answer.

Now you stand outside the lab door, clutching his note, hardly daring to hope that such an answer may have arrived at long last.

Two months out of journalism school you enter the workplace with big time dreams of network television news. Fame, fortune and glory, all writ large under the unrelenting gaze of the klieg lights. There are eight million stories in the Naked City, and it's your job to tell them, tell them best, and tell them first.

Unfortunately this isn't the Naked City. This is Pleasantville, USA, population 50,000. And you're not exactly working for the network news. You're working for local television station KTKO, the Knockout News Team -- a one camera, one reporter operation with a fat, balding old news director who smokes cheap cigars. Forget fortune and glory, for now your big career objective is not to have to give too many on-air endorsements of 'Kletus's Used Car and Farm Implement Emporium.'

OK, so maybe you're not Dan Rather yet. Everybody has to start somewhere, and at least this is a start in front of a camera.

"Stay close," your mother whispers, wrapping her arms around you, pulling you back into the folds of her silky blue kirtle. She rests her cheek upon your head. "It will all be over soon."

Embers swirl around you, thrown from fires raging in the corner towers. You marvel at their brilliance, and at the pillars of flames soaring high into the cold November night. How can things so terrifying, be so beautiful? And then you hear the screams. Your mother's grip tightens, and looking up you see the tears in her eyes.

"I'm sorry, child," she says, "there is nothing we can do."

"Come here, there's something I want to tell you," your old grandfather had said, "Quick, before your mother comes back in the room."

The smell of antiseptic and an unidentifiable odor that seemed to emanate from the very walls of the old-age home made you uncomfortable enough. The thought of your grandfather having a secret he wanted to share only made that unplanned visit to the Shady Pastures Convalescent Home all the more nerve-wracking.

"If you have any mind for it, go back to Dalton. Your Grandmother left something she wanted you to have." Before you could ask him specifics, he turned away as your Mom reentered the room with a bottle of water. The topic would not come up again, which was fine by you. No one in your family had been to the Dalton property since your grandmother died over eight years ago, and as far as you knew, the place could have burned down by now.

When you thought back to your childhood, you could remember spending the summers with your grandmother at the old house in Dalton, located on the Texas Gulf Coast. Grandma Eleanor Sorich always had smiles for you, and made you feel that she understood you better than you did yourself. When she eventually passed away, you were deeply saddened, as if you had lost one of your best friends.

Grandpa Sorich, on the other hand, was a different story. A bitter man who spent most of the time during your visits off by the Dalton Harbor with his drinking buddies. As far as you could tell, their marriage was more of convenience than love. At her funeral, he showed only the faintest hint of remorse. He spent the years after her death mostly silent in an old age home... until that visit.

It's been two years since your chat with Grandpa. In that time, you have often reflected back on the conversation, curious as to what would make your grandfather act in such a mysterious fashion, and curious about what your grandmother could've possibly wanted you have.

Finally, an unexpected road trip across the country has allowed you to make a brief detour at the old family property. You find yourself back in the draining heat of Dalton, Texas, assessing the old Sorich property your family all but abandoned years ago. It hasn't burned down, but indeed stood patiently waiting for someone to return. The house, like your grandfather, has not aged gracefully, and looks as if it too is just waiting out the rest of it's years....

That's not to say you have to stick to the walkthrough, though -- if you do, you'll miss a lot of background. So feel free to look around and experiment along the way. Have fun!

That is, until today.

You have never been outside Alpha Complex, and have never heard stories of anyone else ever venturing beyond the elephantine walls, you have never had a thought of venturing that way.

That is, until today.

This morning, you had a vision of something strange, something unusual, but altogether beautiful. Maybe because it seemed your first independent thought, if there is such a concept, but for some reason you were overcome with the vision. As you worked diligently at your post, reaching and pulling and prying and piercing in a repetitive motion in time with the machines which had always surrounded your workdays, a piece of paper drifted to the soil against a backdrop of the most verdant green. It was the most luminous, life-affirming vision you had ever seen! The image bounced upside-down against your ocular cavity, and you fainted on the the floor of the assembly line.

What followed was a bright orange light, probably shone into your eyes by one of the foreman bots that watches the floor of the megalithic factory for any strange, unusual, unexpected happenings. You, TEND-IR-FUT, are overjoyed by this light.

You awake, only to find yourself on the floor of Plastic Factory K, your eternal nightmare...