June Alworth
You"You told them the margarine was fine. You said it the way you test a bruise."
A dying lab. Four scientists. One last cheque. A stranger sets down a tin of soup and asks a question — can you close the gap between the real thing and the powder?
Four scientists whose funding died, holding a building slated for demolition. Brilliant, broke, and each one exactly the wrong amount of principled. You play June — the one keeping the notebook.
"You told them the margarine was fine. You said it the way you test a bruise."
"The work matters. The work has always mattered. The work also has to be paid for by Friday."
"It isn't equivalent. I can measure the exact amount by which it isn't — and I'm writing that down."
"I can build you a trap that catches the smell of a real tomato. What you do with it afterwards is rather your business."
"I'm not asking you to lie. I'm asking you to sign. Those are completely different things, and only one of them pays."
A text adventure that plays entirely inside Telegram as a Mini App. No downloads, no installs — just tap and play. Eight episodes, each a new problem in the powder — and each solution making the compromise a little deeper.
Tap the link. The game opens right in the app you already have. Nothing to download.
Colour, texture, shelf life, the smell of real food. Every fix makes the product better — and the lie on the label larger.
You write it all down as June. What you sign, what you withhold, and the exact word you use for "fine."
Every problem you solve makes it worse.
a 30-second taste. the full recipe costs rather more.
From the tin on the bench to the demonstration that clears the cheque. Each episode a new problem solved, a new line crossed. Episode one is free.
A dead grant, a demolition notice, and a stranger with a tin and a cheque.
Peggy counts what's living in the powder. The number is not reassuring.
Everyone agrees, in principle. Principles are cheaper than the alternative.
The smell of real food, bottled and sold back to you. Clive is thrilled. He shouldn't be.
The slogan writes itself. So does the small print underneath it.
There are two records now. One of them is the truth.
The distance between what the label says and what the powder does. Someone has to close it.
The demonstration. The cheque clears. You read the year back in your own handwriting.
Blind tasting. Cleared by legal. Results, as ever, complicated.
"Tastes exactly like soup. That is the entire problem, and I could not put the story down."
"Devastating and delicious in equal measure. Docked one star because I now distrust my own pantry."
"We ran the numbers. The numbers, it turns out, were the villain all along. Forty pence a serving of pure dread."
"Slanderous. Mr. Stubbins is a valued partner and the powder is, and I cannot stress this enough, EQUIVALENT."
"1973 has never looked so much like right now. I read it in one sitting with a bowl of the real thing, out of spite."