A Tree as Lovely as a Poem

A Tree as Lovely as a Poem

The death ray lies on the floor, completely inert. You know it's probably waiting for you to lean in close and see what's wrong, and then it'll self-destruct, so you decline to give it the pleasure, and you head deeper into the ship. You walk down a series of increasingly cramped, increasingly festive corridors until you find yourself in a vast chamber lined with cyborg recharging stations. None of the cyborgs are in their stations, though, because they're all holding hands around a giant Crimbo tree.

As you creep around the outer edge of the room, a cyborg sounds a pitch-pipe that it has grafted onto its wrist, and the cyborgs all begin to sing: "Oh Crimbo tree, oh Crimbo tree, how symmetrical are thy branches / oh Crimbo tree, oh Crimbo tree, how perfectly arranged in the Fibonacci Sequence are thy ornaments..."

It's all very disconcerting, and you're not inclined to stay for more verses (which would probably involve the Pythagorean Theorem and possibly advanced calculus). You quickly scavenge the nearest recharging station, then make for the exit.

You acquire an item: General Assembly Module

As you exit, the entrance hatch seals shut behind you and the entire ship powers down. Looks like it's going into power-save mode for the night.

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Occurs in A Sinister Dodecahedron.

References

• The adventure title refers to the opening lines of the poem "Trees", written by Joyce Kilmer.
• The song the cyborgs sing is a revision of O Tannenbaum/O Christmas Tree. The new lyrics include a reference to the Fibonacci Sequence, a numerical sequence where the next number in the sequence is the sum of the previous two. The most well-known example begins at 1, and continues thusly; (0),1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144...