Mercy

When the next smallpox pandemic comes, none of our society’s hubris will
soften its devastating public health impact. You inhabit the shoes (“play” is
the wrong word entirely) of Dr. Peter Basham, in gentler times a pediatrician,
working overtime to process the hideous and deformed smallpox victims, racked
with pain, in a hospital of psychopomps only equipped to deliver mercy, not
cures. The social blows, though softer, are no less deleterious to our
cultural framework: not only has the outbreak deprived you of your career and
wife, but your conception of self and the very prospect of conducting a
meaningful existence in the face of so much random and arbitrary suffering.
Meanwhile, angry mobs prowl the streets, outraged at the medical
establishment’s inability to effectively counter the unchecked ravages of
disease. You shadow Dr. Basham in his final attempt to keep his head above the
rising tide of hopelessness and human misery.

In an unusually literal interpretation of the genre name “interactive
fiction”, the focus of this work is on conveying mood and atmosphere, using
them to further a feeling of immersion in its grim story. As such, it is less
a “game” inasmuch as it contains no puzzles, and while it is possible to
conclude the work by triggering one of several different bleak endings, the
only metric by which it can be considered “won” is to read and experience as
much of the optional content the setting is steeped in as possible.

Mercy