Free A Game of Murder by Elise M. Stone

jumped at the sound of Rok’s voice behind her. “It’s easy. Is that all there is to it? Moving around and reading instructions?”
    “There’s a bit more than that, but not much. You can create variables and implement some simple logic statements like “if,” but if you want to do anything more complicated, you’ll need to use Inform.”
    “How soon do we get to Inform?” Faith asked.
    Rok slipped into the chair beside her gracefully. Faith wondered if he studied martial arts, or possibly dance. “Not until the next class at the earliest. I have to go slow enough for the senior citizens and our fiction writer”—he glanced in the direction of the girl—“who wrote some great descriptions, but doesn’t know anything about programming.”
    Faith frowned, thinking of the paying work waiting for her at home. “How many weeks is this course?”
    “I planned on four, but I’ve reserved the room for six in case I get behind or some of the students want to go longer. In actual time, the class will take at least eight weeks because we’ll only meet every other week. But you don’t have to wait for me if you don’t want to. Inform 7 is on the flash drive, so you can install it whenever you want. There’s a lot of documentation for Inform on the web. The club also has a Facebook group. Send me a friend request and I’ll add you to the group.” He bent forward as if to rise from the chair.
    Faith didn’t want him to escape. This might be her only chance to talk to him alone. “Mira wrote a Twine game, didn’t she?” she said quickly.
    Rok sank back in the chair. “Yeah. From what I heard, it was a pretty good one, too. At least that’s what Adam said.”
    Faith couldn’t remember how Rok had voted at the meeting. “Were you in favor of admitting her game to the competition?” She studied him as he formulated his response.
    Rok took a deep breath and let it out. His chocolate brown eyes stared at Faith as intensely as hers stared at him. “I’m not a fan of Twine games. I don’t think they really count as games since most of them don’t have an objective or a way to win. But I also don’t like the way Derek wants to keep women out of the club.”
    Rok’s gaze roamed the room as if he were looking to see if one of the students needed help. Faith assumed his real motive was different.
    He smoothed the front of his wrinkled blue shirt, focused his eyes on the young girl as he spoke. “Before Mira and her girlfriend showed up, Lorna was the only woman in the club. Derek was a lot harder on criticizing her games than even those Dennis wrote, which were pretty poor, full of bugs and typos, and silly without being funny.”
    Rok brought his eyes back to hers. “If allowing Twine games is what it takes to bring more girls in, I’m in favor.”
    Faith had a thought. “Were you romantically involved with Mira?”
    “Me?” Rok’s mouth quirked up on one side. “Not hardly.” He huffed air through his nose, as if stifling a laugh. Faith wondered what was so funny.
    “Anyway, I didn’t see the harm in letting them compete. I doubt a Twine game could win; Twine just doesn’t have the tools to write the best games.”
    The chubby teen turned in his chair and stared at them.
    “I’d better see if he needs help,” Rok said as he rose from the chair. “My email is in the ReadMe file if you need a hand getting started with Inform.”
    * * *
    Faith knew she should finish up some of her web business tasks—updating the performance schedule for the Prickly Pear for next month, adding the weeklong “Trail Riding for City Slickers” vacation package to the Crazy Creek Ranch site, tweeting and promoting her business on Facebook—but exploring the game resources Rok had pointed to on the flash drive interested her more. Besides, she told herself, she had to do her homework, didn’t she?
    The homework assignment consisted of playing two Twine games, then one written in Inform, and thinking about what