Part 32: Kitchen 2

[Music: Tinderbox]

Santa shoved Junpei aside and pounded against the door.

Hey! Lotus! You're out there, right? Open the door!

She wasted no time in responding.



The door won't open! Try opening it from that side. Please!
Ugh, fine. If you say so. Hold on...

Soon, they could hear Lotus on the other side of the door...



It's no use. It won't budge.
You've got more people in there. You figure it out.
...
...
...
...Goddamnit.



With every breath they took, they could feel the cold working its way deeper and deeper into their bodies.

A-A-Anyway... L-Let's f-find a way out... If we don't get moving, w-we're gonna be permanent residents!
T-T-Two heads a-a-are better than n-none. I-I'm sure we'll figure something out...
Y-Y-Y-Yeah. Y-You're right.



R-Right!

They pushed in close to one another, and began to search.

The quicker we get out of here, the better I think. I mean, hell, Tinderbox doesn't stop playing for this bit so that says a lot right there.



So, of course, we're going to meticulously search every part of the freezer as if we have all the time in the world. This thing over to the side seems like a good starting point.



It's frozen solid. I can't flip it over.



Of course, that one gets us nowhere. So there's these pipes by the door. Specifically these pipes. The other ones give us nothing.



Hmmm...
It looks like when the pipe burst the water hit the doorknob and froze it in place.



Warm? In this place? Well, maybe. Science isn't my fort by any means, but I don't think that'd be anything more than being merely relative to the environment.



Of course, maybe we can just dislodge the ice blocking the door handle and get out immediately.



Maybe it just needs more of a shock, you know?
More of a shock...



I've got it! If we smack into the door itself enough times, then we can break the ice off piece by piece!



Then that means we have to do something about that ice.
Yeah.

...Okay, so much for that plan then.



The only other idea I have, is maybe breaking the window and climbing out through it.

Well, something like that anyway.



There's too much mist to see what's going on over at the other end.

Damn, guess there's nothing we can do over by the door itself.



In that case, we better spin around and examine the rest of the room. This trapdoor conveniently in the floor looks promising. Maybe it leads to a passage that helps people leave just in case something like this happens!



Or maybe it's just full of crap.

Why don't we take some of it out, Jumpy.



(There are a couple bottles in here.)

Doesn't look like there's anything useful in there. That means I'm quickly running out of stupid ideas for how to get out of here.



Maybe there'll be something on this shelf that'll give me a few more.



Looks like pork...
...Huh? What's this? It looks like a...tag or something...



I think there's something written on here, but I can't read it like this...
If we try and pull it out, it'll probably rip.



Don't think we're gonna be doing that in this room.

Yeah, uh, I guess we're kinda fucked right now. Maybe there's something else on the shelf but I wouldn't count on it. Best to check just in case, though.

Everything's frozen in here.
It doesn't look like there's anything else interesting.

There's only one idea I have left.



And it begins by clearing out this area under the floor.



Well, we could use it to attach something to something else, I suppose.

We can't use this for the one obvious use it would have here. Whether or not that's a good thing, I'll leave up to you to decide.



There's also this bottle in the storange area, though. I have an idea for this, but it's kinda dumb.



Yes, it is...
(It's an empty water bottle. The neck is)



We don't have anything we can put in it, so that's kinda irrelevant. We do, however, now have a few blunt objects to use. Let's go try that door again.


wait, what

Why would we do that?
It'll turn into ice.



I dunno...
Ugh.

...Even now, Junpei can find time to make shit jokes. That's quite impressive, actually. Shame we can't use anything we have to break the ice/door/window, though.



So, we're stuck spinning around yet again and looking in the last part of the freezer.



Aside from two items in here, there's nothing in this cupboard at all. We can't even examine the thing itself.



It's frozen stiff.
Hey, June, can you say that again?
...Eh?
Say it again.
It's...really hard.
Again.
It's...really hard.
Th... Thanks.



N-Nothing. I'm fine.
If it's that hard, you can probably use it as a hammer.



Hmm, we could use it to break something. Only we can't use it to break anything we've seen so far and trying to do so gets no new dialogue.

So, instead, let's just examine the frozen chicken more.



It's like a hammer.
(Maybe we can use this to crush something.)

And again.



(Maybe we can use this to crush something.)

And, hell, one last time!

Jumpy... It's...really hard. It's like a hammer.



Don't eat it!
(Maybe we can use this to crush something.)

There's only one thing left in the freezer, and it's in the cupboard.



It's this weird bag in the corner.



Can't you make that stuff cause an



Explode...?
Yeah, didn't you do that in school? You should never underestimate the power of expanding gas.

Either my schools just sucked, or I was ill that day because I never did anything like this. The most interesting thing we got to do was burning magnesium. Only, for obvious reasons, we never actually did that ourselves.

[Music: Silence]



Dry ice is just frozen carbon dioxide, right?
Yeah, it is.
I wonder how warm it has to get for it to turn back into gas again...
Hell if I know. How's that gonna help us, anyway?



They were about to move on when June spoke up.



From what I can tell from my 20 seconds of research, sublimation is just when a thing goes from a solid to a gas - or vice versa - without liquidising in the interim.

Any warmer than that, and it'll turn into gas. Any lower, and it becomes a solid.

Junpei looked at her, dumbfounded.

How do you know that?
Tee-hee. Despite my looks, I'm the



Looks bad to mess up when you're showing off.
Argle mouf *Mumble* *Mumble*
Oh, you're so cold your mouth's going numb?
Yef. Wats wite.



C'mon guys... Don't you think that's kinda weird? I wonder why it doesn't turn into a liquid first...

Santa was now shivering at an astounding rate, but his curiosity seemed unaffected.

Junpei, however, was not in a mood to discuss science.



Well, let's look at this way. That is weird, and we can discuss it now and probably freeze to death in the process. Or we can get the hell out of here ASAP and then discuss it when we're not going to die very, very quickly. Which sounds better to you?

His patience was wearing thin.



We don't have time for this crap--
Actually...

Junpei stopped mid-sentence, surprised by June's interjection.



This isn't really a good time for a chat about science!
But...I was wondering the same thing...
Wondering what!?



Right? It just seems weird. Water's a liquid between 32 degrees and 212 degrees... So why isn't that the case for carbon dioxide? H20 and C02 are pretty similar.



Look, guys, if we keep this up we're just gonna freeze to death! You good with that? You wanna die talking



He fixed both of them with a glare.

Now let's get back to work. Assuming you don't want to end up like a pair of ice sculptures.

Junpei turned around, the problem dealt with.

...Or so he thought.



...uh, what?

I...heard about it... Its melting point is 96 degrees.
Its melting point is 96 degrees?



Yeah. Well, you could also look at it as ice that won't melt until it's 96 degrees...
("Water that freezes at 96 degrees?" "Ice that won't melt until it's 96 degrees?")



Okay, so disregard everything I said above please and spill it. I wanna hear this.

Now that...that was difficult to ignore.

Junpei had to ask.

So what's this ice with a melting point of 96 degrees called?



[Ice-9]...?

[Music: Digital Root]

Originally, [ice-9] was a made-up



More specifically, a man named Kurt Vonnegut. It was used in at least one of his books, but I have never read any of them.



Wait. Hold up.
So is this thing called [ice-9]? Or is it water?
Like I said, if the ice is over 96 degrees it'll be liquid, if it's under that, it'll solidify.



So, uh, I tried to find out what a polymorph is in this context to try and explain it as best as I could, and just got confused.

The game gives us an example to put it in context, at least, so I'm gonna assume it gets all this stuff right.



They're both made of carbon, right? But depending on the structure of the



So you're saying normal water and this ice-9 are like that...
Yep.

She wasn't finished.



For 150 years after the discovery of glycerin, people cooled it, warmed it, and did all sorts of things to it. But whatever they did, it never crystallized. However, one day in 1920...



A seed is, of course, a sample of the original crystallized substance.

With a seed crystal, further crystallization of glycerin would be a simple matter.



It didn't end there. After that day, all glycerin in the world began to crystallize naturally when cooled to less than 64 degrees.

Before that day, no matter how glycerin was cooled, it refused to crystallize.

But once the crystallization had begun...

It was almost like... How do I put it...



Communicating in some way that we can't sense...

Junpei...



That sounds oddly impressive, actually.

...Was honestly impressed. It was, in fact, a pretty interesting story.

Wow... That's pretty interesting. But...uh...
What does that have to do with ice-9?

To his surprise, it was Santa, and not June, who answered.



A lot like...? That would be bad.
If water everywhere started freezing at 96 degrees... Man...



At any rate, we're not gonna have to worry about the end of the world unless we can get out of here pretty damn quick.

[Music: Silence]

He was right.

Junpei shivered.

All right guys, I think that's enough of that. I didn't think we'd get quite this far off-topic. I mean, I know I'm kinda at fault here, but we can't be screwing around any more. Seriously...



I freakin' hate the cold. So, let's get crackin' all right? We gotta find a way out of here.

Santa stomped off, clearly doing his best to pretend the cold wasn't affecting him.



Junpei looked at June, nodded, and resumed his search of the room.

That really was a rather interesting, albeit lengthy, discussion.

We now have the dry ice, though, and that can explode apparently so let's use it!

[Music: Tinderbox]



Didn't you find some dry ice earlier?
Yeah?
There's warm water coming out of that pipe... Warm water and dry ice...



Well, there's only one way to find out. Let's try it!



[Sound Bite: Combining...?]

Hmm... it doesn't appear to be working. Well, in that case there is only one solution!



Use our dodgy chicken-hammer to make the dry ice smaller!



You should be able to get it into anything you want now.
Can't you make that stuff cause an explosion if you seal it in something that's airtight?

So you keep telling me. I'm pretty sure the ice by the door is airtight too, so this is perfect!



You gotta put the crushed dry ice into the water bottle.

Oh, uh, sorry about that. I guess this'll work almost as well.





If it explodes, it could probably blast away the ice on the door.
So...how are we gonna get it to stay against the doorknob?

(A water bottle with dry ice in it. A little water in there will make it explode. If I can attach it to the doorknob, then it should blow the ice off the door.)

Perfect! I noticed a little ridge in the ice on the door, so it could probably rest in there or stand on it or something.



We're not gonna get the result we want unless you can hook that bottle to the doorknob somehow.



We need to figure out a way to attach the bottle to the doorknob.

Man, and I liked my idea just fine. If that's too risky or not good enough, though, we do have one last thing...





We just have to put some water in it and then if we can give it a good whack with something--



It'll explode, and break the ice off the door.
Then what are we waiting for!? I can't take this cold any longer!

(A water bottle bomb. All I gotta do is put a little water in it, and give a good whack. The pressure of the gas inside should make it explode.)

We just made what we hope is a bomb out of ice, a bottle and some rope. MacGyver would be proud!



Now let's put this baby to the test. If this one fails, we're kinda gonna all die so it really has to work. Hopefully.



All right, that's set.
So...uh...what do we do now?
We just need to give it a little, uh, tap. The bottle's already about to pop.



A small rock? A small rock...

Junpei looked down at the floor...

Scattered across it were pieces of dry ice left over from the larger chunk he'd crushed earlier.



He pulled his sleeve down over his hand to keep from getting burned, and grabbed the chunk of dry ice.

It was a pretty good size... About as big as a pool ball. He figured it would be just about the right size.

All right guys, stand back. Actually, we should probably hide somewhere.

Both Santa and June looked at him with new concern.

Where, exactly, do you expect us to hide, genius?
There isn't really anywhere big enough...
Yeah, there is!
Look! Right here! We can hide in there!

Junpei pulled open the door to the small cellar.



Get inside, quick!

Santa and June nodded and jumped down, into the hole. Junpei quickly followed.

In his hand, he could feel the chill of the frozen carbon dioxide, even through his sleeve.

He tightened his grip, took aim, and prepared to throw.

All right, here it goes!



Oops!
That is a really sad excuse for a joke, man...
Sorry, dude. All right, for real this time. You guys ready?
Yes! Whenever you're ready!
Just throw the damn thing...
All right, here I go!



[Music: Silence]

Junpei threw the chunk of dry ice as hard as he could. With the same motion, he ducked down into the cellar with Santa and June, just as--

...

[Sound Bite: Live or Death]



...

Junpei leapt up out of the cellar and ran to the door.



Yeah! It's gone!
The blast must've shattered it!
Yes! All right, let's see if it opens!







Kitchen official art.