THE BACKGROUND

It all started with a dead bird.

     A cat proudly deposited the carcass on the doorstep of her owner, a
Japanese schoolteacher who had received enough of these little offerings
to recognize something out of the ordinary.  She sealed the corpse in a
plastic bag and brought it to a biologist at the nearby medical school.
The remains were identified as Geococcyx californianus, a species native
to the southwest corner of North America.  What a roadrunner was doing
in the vicinity of Nagasaki's Heiwa Koen (Peace Park) was anybody's
guess.

     Other evidence was more dramatic.  A whaling vessel in the South
Indian Ocean was caught in a rain of radioactive ice cubes the size of
Volkswagens.  A popular film director scouting for locations in Utah
died when his helicopter encountered an aerial whirlpool of boiling
seawater; tropical fish and coconuts were found scattered in the debris.
And let's not forget the 50-kiloton blast that rocked Siberia in 1902.

     Don't blame Oppenheimer.  How was he supposed to know his atom
bombs were fracturing the structure of the universe?  After all, the
holes were small (only a few meters wide) and completely invisible
unless you knew exactly where to squint.

     So they went on building their hot little time machines and setting
them off in deserts, on islands and even over cities.  With the help of
Russia and other cooperative nations, we soon had hundreds of
transdimensional pinpricks scattered all over the globe.  It was only a
matter of time before somebody would be inconvenienced by one of them.

     The scientists, once convinced, were delighted by the discovery of
the Holes.  The Pentagon was unimpressed.  There were no obvious
military applications, so they let the university boys poke around
Bikini and the Salt Flats to their hearts' content ... until a Soviet
defector's dying whisper tipped them off to what the Kremlin had in
mind. It made the President's hair stand on end when they told him about
it.

     Such were the humble beginnings of Classified Defense Project
#43112.  Its official code name is Termite.  But the people who got it
going and keep it running like to call themselves the Time Police.


                             THE SITUATION

You play the role of a Sentry on duty at Project Termite's Alamogordo
Station.  It's your duty to monitor the Hole created by the first atomic
explosion, and to make sure nobody is in there mucking around with the
original Manhattan Project.  You wouldn't want some other country to get
The Bomb before we did, would you?.

This important but essentially dull job is made more interesting by an
array of technological gadgets the Pentagon has thoughtfully provided
for your amusement.  Among these are a variety of mobile electronic
sensors disguised as birds, reptiles and small mammals common to the New
Mexico desert.  You can push these lifelike critters through the Hole
and use them to scout around the test site without arousing the
suspicions of the bomb technicians, who might become upset if they knew
The Future was looking over their shoulders.  You can communicate with
the mobile sensors and keep tabs on their progress with big television
screens.

It just so happens that tonight is the night the Enemy has chosen for an
all-out invasion on the Manhattan Project.  They're determined to knock
out both the Bomb and the Time Police guarding it.

The story begins with Alamogordo Station coming under attack.  You and
your mechanical menagerie are hopelessly cut off from the outside world
as infiltrators try to destroy this side of the Hole.  Meep, your trusty
Electric Roadrunner, has detected an army of stainless steel armadillos
closing in on the shot tower at Ground Zero.  And there's something else
lurking in that pre-dawn desert; a mysterious Presence that will
eventually lock you in a bizarre three-way struggle against time.  The
future history of the world -- perhaps the fate of the universe itself
-- depends on your courage and resourcefulness.  No matter what happens,
you MUST make sure that the first atomic bomb detonates precisely on
schedule!

It is 5:00 AM on July 16, 1945.  You have twenty-nine minutes.


                                SOURCES

The circumstances of the Trinity bomb test are extensively documented.
It is possible to create a large and interesting map of the test area,
with enough detail to make the game surprisingly accurate from a
historical perspective.

     The three best books on the subject are:
     
     Lamont, Lansing, DAY OF TRINITY.  New York: Atheneum, 1965.

     Kunetka, James W., CITY OF FIRE: LOS ALAMOS AND THE BIRTH OF THE
ATOMIC AGE, 1943-45.  Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1978.

     Lawrence, William L., DAWN OVER ZERO.  New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
1946.