Employee Lounge You stand in the break room of the Everything Development Corporation. This is where noders come to take a break from their lengthy hours of literary labor. Noders of a certain age refer to it as the "Bullpen", but most affectionately call it the "Catbox", for the same reasons. In the northwest corner, across a morass of stackable plastic lawn chairs and a few round tables is a vending machine. Next to the vending machine is a pair of pneumatic dispatch tubes and a rack of message capsules. A bank of monitors on the south wall display ENN, the Page of Cool, and Random Nodes. > examine vending machine The vending machine is equipped with a coin slot, a bill feeder, the standard ten-and-twenty-four key input pad and an LCD. The front of the machine is a large glass pane, behind which are racks of nutritionless, but tasty treats like Astronaut Ice Cream, capsules of Sticky Monkey™ wacky wall walkers, Eloi Lotus Blossom Sour Candy, Golden Trinkets™ puffed soy crunchies, My Li'l XP Whore cheese and crackers, Ching!™ mint flavored condoms, Pirate Boy™ peanuts and tropical fruit snack mix, Stack-o-Crisps in a waveguide antenna (hedgehog flavour), and Xyzzy Daze™ snack cakes with Ritalin. A small brass plaque is affixed to the side of the machine. > read plaque This vending machine is placed on Everything2 in accordance with rule number 167/b of the American Cliché Society which requires every work of interactive fiction to contain at least one vending machine. > put 10xp in bill slot The vending machine sucks in the ten-XP bill like a child eating a noodle. > press e The vending machine's display confirms your selection: E. > press 2 The vending machine's display confirms your selection: E2. Inside the vending machine, the coils in the slot labeled E2 begin to turn, pulling a package of Golden Trinkets™ puffed soy crunchies to the fore. Behind the glass, the coil stops turning. That package of puffed soy crunchies is going nowhere. > pull machine The vending machine looks very heavy and you would not like to be crushed by it. How would you node crushed under the vending machine? Besides, there is likely a security camera hidden in the room somewhere. > kick machine Violence isn't the answer to this problem.