Turbo Pudding

Tomorrow AgoLevel secrets

Every thing in Glimmerau has two answers

· The Turbo Pudding team · 4 min read

Clockmaker’s Lane at night, gray and still under hanging snowflakes: Mira, a girl with auburn braids, brass goggles pushed up on her head, a teal coat, a rust-orange scarf and a brown leather satchel, stands smiling with her eyes shut in front of the big window of Café Hesper, its name in pale letters on a dark sign above and the word Café on the glass, where a hanging lamp and two round tables with white candles wait in the empty room; to her right stands Tik, a small brass robot shaped like a pocket watch, with one big round eye and thin spring legs; a street lamp glows gold at the right, a dark door with a wreath stands at the left, and at the bottom left a girl in a long dark coat ducks, with a snowball hanging in the air beside her

It’s Tuesday, so here’s a level secret, and this one works everywhere in Tomorrow Ago. There are two ways to touch a thing. A tap or a click uses it. Press and hold, or right-click, and Mira looks at it instead. Most things in the stopped town answer both ways, and the two answers are almost never the same.

The picture at the top is Café Hesper in Clockmaker’s Lane, which has one of our favorite pairs. More on it below. And if you ever wonder what can be touched at all, the eye button at the top right of the screen shows you: for a moment, everything Mira can use glows.

Mitzi and the bakery

Step out of Grandpa’s workshop into Clockmaker’s Lane, and the Lutz bakery is the first shop you pass. Hold on the window, and Mira catches the warm-bread smell, stopped in the air like everything else: “I can smell it and I can’t have it. Torture.” Tap the door, and the answer is simply that it’s locked. The baker is out on the square with everyone else.

Mitzi, the baker’s cat, is stuck halfway between a barrel and the windowsill. Hold on her: “When time starts again she’ll land like nothing happened. Cats always do.” Tap her, and Mira keeps her hands to herself: “I’m not touching her. If I move her an inch she’ll miss, and she will never forgive me.”

Clockmaker’s Lane at night, gray and still under hanging snowflakes: Mira, a girl with auburn braids, brass goggles pushed up on her head, a teal coat, a rust-orange scarf and a brown leather satchel, stands on the snowy sidewalk with a sly, half-closed smile; right above her head Mitzi, a gray striped cat, hangs in the air mid-leap in front of the Lutz bakery window, where loaves and pretzels sit on the shelves under a small sign that says Stollen, a German Christmas bread with dried fruit; beside her stands Tik, a small brass robot shaped like a pocket watch, with one big round eye and thin spring legs, and behind them are the bakery’s dark door with a wreath, a barrel, a glowing street lamp and the clock-filled window of Brandl and Sons, with the corner of a snowy stone pillar in the foreground at the left
Searched “can a cat stop mid-jump.” Mitzi has, since 11:47.

Even the shop signs get a line. About the gilded pretzel over the bakery door, Mira admits: “When I was six I thought it was the town’s real money.”

Shop by shop

Next door is Brandl and Sons. Hold on the window: “Forty clocks in the window, and every one of them has the same opinion: eleven forty-seven.” Tap the door: “Old Brandl locks up with three keys and a prayer. Not tonight.”

Then comes the Stair Passage, three hundred and twelve steps up to the Upper Terrace, which Grandpa calls “the cardiologist’s friend.” After it is Kessel’s toy shop, with a rocking horse, tin soldiers, a toy tram and a dancing clockwork figure with one leg up in the window. Mr. Kessel makes them, and Grandpa fixes them when the twins “improve” them. Tap the door: “Shut. The twins are out here, so the shop is safe for once.”

And then Café Hesper, from the picture at the top. Hold on it: “Candles on every table, and nobody at them. Everyone went to the square to watch the Winding.” Tap it, and Mira sums up the whole night in one line: “The door’s locked and the cakes are hostages.”

On the market square

At the end of the lane, the square is full of things that answer back. In the middle stands Hesper Lind in bronze. Hold on her, and Mira tells you that she built the Great Clock in 1427 and founded the Guild, and that Grandpa tips his hat to her every morning: “She has never once tipped hers back.” Tap her: “Climbing the founder of the Guild is frowned upon. Grandpa told me. Twice.” Offer her something from Mira’s bag, and you get the shortest answer in town: “Hesper is bronze.”

The gingerbread stall is hung with iced hearts. Hold on it: “Gingerbread hearts with icing names: Anna, Josef, ‘For my Grumpy.’ I could take one. No one would ever know.” Tap it: “I would know. And so would Grandpa, somehow. He always does.”

Next to it is the stall of oranges and candles. Hold on it, and Mira finds mandarins in tissue paper and beeswax candles: “They smell of every Christmas I’ve ever had. Even stopped, they smell of it.” Tap it, and she would happily pay: “I’d pay, but there’s no one to pay. Everyone’s gone to the singing.”

The market square at night, gray and still: Mira, in her teal coat, rust-orange scarf and brass goggles, stands smiling softly with half-closed eyes in front of a wooden stall with a snowy roof and a sign reading Oranges · Candles, where rows of round fruit wrapped in paper and tall white candles glow under a string of warm lights; Tik, the brass pocket-watch robot, stands to her left; on the left a couple stands close together in front of the Gingerbread stall, hung with rows of heart-shaped cookies, and a paper notice for the Courier hangs at its corner; on the right an old man sits on the snowy steps of the Guild’s hall with its tall columns and a glowing lamp, and a chestnut seller in a cap holds out a paper cone to a child in a knit hat
People also ask: “what does Christmas smell like?” Mandarins.

Mira and Tik

You can hold on Mira herself, too: “That’s me. Fifteen, oil under my nails, and a scarf Grandpa says is ‘aggressively orange.’”

Hold on Tik, the little brass robot, and the answer changes with the story. Once the clocks have stopped: “He’s ticking. Nothing else in the whole world is moving, and he’s ticking.” Once he’s awake: “Brass, springs, one very curious eye. Grandpa built him. For me?” From then on he walks a step behind her all over town. And if you hand him something from Mira’s bag, Tik answers for himself, short and hopeful: “Not... food?”

Tomorrow Ago is free to play in your browser at tomorrowago.com. Hold on everything. More about the game is on its Tomorrow Ago page.

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