Conversation 506: INVENTORY / BAD ROMANCE

Excrutiating Love Story book. Graad-y black-and-white-rainbow book. Ends with lensgrinder in somewhere. "Sixteen Days in Coldest April." something thought it was a romance book, but its misplaced.

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This is a listing of every "entry" in a given game conversation as scraped from the game files. Entries often contain written dialogue, as well as conditional logic governing their appearance to the player. They also link to other entries, sometimes automatically and sometimes through player action. This page is best used to search for a specific word or phrase, as following the links in this format can be difficult. For an experience that better accommodates the branching structure of these conversations, see the corresponding interactive page.

Column definitions:
  • ID: a numerical index for the entry within this conversation.
  • Character: the character speaking or acting.
  • Dialogue: prose containing spoken dialogue and other description.
  • Conditions: logical checks governing this entry appearing or occurring.
  • Links: entries that might follow this one, depending on conditions and player choice. Most links are internal to this conversation, external links to other conversations are marked with the format (conversation ID, entry ID).
ID Character Dialogue Conditions Links
0 None
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1 None
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2 None
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3 None Variable["inventory.coldest_firsthub_reached"]
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4 None (Variable["inventory.coldest_firsthub_reached"]) == false
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5 Sixteen Days of Coldest April In your hands you hold 'Sixteen Days of Coldest April', by Yekartina Dahl. The cover image shows a row of concrete apartments, above which span a black-and-white rainbow.
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6 Sixteen Days of Coldest April You stare at the now-familiar black-and-white rainbow. The book feels heavy in your hands.
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7 None
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  • 18
  • 12
8 Sixteen Days of Coldest April Indeed. The book is *unusually* heavy in your hands, as though the cover were lined with lead...
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9 Inland Empire They *would* do that in Graad.
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10 You Look at the back cover.
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11 You How long is this book, anyway?
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12 You [Put the book away.]
13 Sixteen Days of Coldest April The back cover is dominated by a black-and-white photograph of the author...
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14 Sixteen Days of Coldest April She can't be much older than her mid-30s in this photograph, and yet from this cover the eyes of a sad, old woman stare back at you.
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15 None
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16 Sixteen Days of Coldest April You flip through the book. The pages are thinner than you realized, and the type quite small and tightly set. It's nearly 600 pages long.
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17 Conceptualization Real art is dense and difficult. If it didn't feel like you had to wrestle a suicidal bear to get through it, you weren't really reading.
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18 You Start reading.
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19 Sixteen Days of Coldest April In cold, detached prose, the author describes a scene from one of the Yugo-Graad Riots in the Twenties. Youths overturn motor carriages and set trash cans ablaze while heavily armoured guardsmen dash in and disperse them in a flurry of baton blows...
  • 21
20 Sixteen Days of Coldest April In excruciating detail, the author describes the socio-economic conditions that have brought the people of Yugo-Graad into the streets -- centuries of humiliations and despair. And then, during these riots, two young people meet...
21 Encyclopedia The Yugo-Graad Riots took place from '27 to '29, fuelled by ethnic unrest and the state's repressive tactics. These events are often seen as marking the end of a brief period of liberalization known as the Yugo-Graad Spring. Like all such periods, it is frequently memorialised in art and literature.
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22 Pain Threshold Fuck it. Do it. It can't be worse than what you've already felt.
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23 You Read ten more pages...
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24 You No. I won't subject myself to Graadian realism.
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25 Sixteen Days of Coldest April You've made the right life choices today, sir.
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26 None
  • 7
27 Sixteen Days of Coldest April Their happiness is fleeting. A cruel jest. The absurdity of the state totally crushes them and they end up betraying each other. She becomes an official for "the regime" and he, a lens-grinder in Ferdydyrke. The end.
28 You Feels heavy.
  • 8
29 You What does she look like?
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30 Sixteen Days of Coldest April It would physically hurt you to keep reading. Are you sure?
  • 22
31 Pain Threshold Good stuff. You fucking *loved* this.
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32 Shelf of Romance Stories At the beginning of the book, ethnic unrest has taken Yugo-Graad by storm. Windows and mailboxes are smashed, motor carriages turned over and set on fire...
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33 Shelf of Romance Stories Black smoke hangs above cobblestones speckled with droplets of reddish-grey blood. Militant guardsmen, decked in heavy armour, have been called in to control the riots...
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34 Shelf of Romance Stories As ethnic tensions run wild, a pair of young lovers meet each other on the street. Somehow, in the middle of all the chaos, they manage to lock arms and look into each other's eyes.
  • 36
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35 You What happens next?
36 You That doesn't sound too bad...
37 Sixteen Days of Coldest April They go through a brief and somewhat awkward love affair, and in the end they betray each other and succumb to the absurdity of Graadian life. The man becomes a lens-grinder, completely abandoning his former existence...
  • 39
38 Sixteen Days of Coldest April She spends the next several decades standing at a conveyor in a Sosnovor fish processing plant. The smell of fish guts slowly seeps into her hair and skin... as every single one of her dreams dies, one by one.
  • 40
39 Sixteen Days of Coldest April He toils through the daily drudgery at the Lenka Polyfabricate. Happiness and fulfilment have eluded him his whole life, and in the end... he has nothing to do but dedicate himself to the craft.
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40 Sixteen Days of Coldest April The memory of their short time spent together tortures the former lovers ceaselessly, until the end of their days... Years pass in solitude, their bodies growing ever more decrepit.
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41 You And the woman?
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42 You This is terrible...
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43 Sixteen Days of Coldest April As life leaves their remains between the soiled sheets, their final thoughts are filled with regret.
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44 You Why can't I put this book away?!
  • 43
45 Sixteen Days of Coldest April As ethnic tensions run wild, a pair of young lovers meet each other on the street. Somehow, in the middle of all the chaos, they manage to lock arms and look into each other's eyes.
  • 47
46 You That doesn't sound too bad...
47 You What happens next?
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48 None
  • 49
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49 None Variable["inventory.coldest_pt_fired"]
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50 None (Variable["inventory.coldest_pt_fired"]) == false
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51 None
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