My dearest Ms. Short:

  I believe I can shed some light on the "mysterious"
telegram you recently received.  I recognize the
walkthrough presented as the solution to "Fit For A
Queen", my 1997 Interactive Fiction Competition entry.

  You will perhaps be confused because there is no
such entry in the IF archive, nor does anyone in the
IF community remember the entry or recognize my name
in that context.

  This inconsistency comes about because in 1998 I
made a (successful!) bid to become the first supermodel
to hold a seat in the US House of Representatives.  At
the time, I was concerned that my IF work, in particular
the subject matter of "Fit For A Queen", might prevent
me from getting into Congress, so I took certain steps
(involving an avacado, a forged Rembrandt painting, and a
time machine which could only travel in multiples of 17
years) to remove my entry from the competition; you will,
I hope, forgive my reticence in providing further details.

  I believe I recall the telegram, as well.  Periodically
after the competition, people would email me requests
for walkthroughs.  One day, the school computer network
was down, so, with nothing better to do, I read through
my old email, and found an unanswered request for a
walkthrough, which I must now suppose came from you.
Since the network was down, I could not reply by email,
but the university offered free five-sentence telegraph
service for graduate students, so, being in the dire
financial straits that graduate-student-hood is prone to
creating, I took advantage thereof forthwith posthaste,
and dictated the walkthrough by phone to the school
telegraph office.

  I can only guess at why the telegram took so long
to reach you; time travel can have mysterious side
consequences, as the story of the moth and the storm
is so wont to suggest.  My apologies, regardless.

  It is with no small trepidation that I include the
game itself in this email.  After losing my congressional
seat following the so-called Stevedore Scandal (in which
to this day I must insist I was entirely innocent!), I
switched to the most lucrative possible career for an
ex-congresswoman: hardcore pornography.  My new life as
a porn star is very simple and private.  As a female IF
author yourself I'm sure you can imagine how I hesitate
to release a piece of IF for fear of gaining the
attention of obsessive male stalkers who feel that just
because they've seen my body of work they somehow know me.

  But to hell with it!  Here it is.  I've converted it
to Inform, but I made sure the old walkthrough is still
valid (although, now as then, the walkthrough gives the
roughly shortest but hardly most plausible or fun way
through the game); the translation from the old SADIST
language was no mean feat (nor even a median one), but
they did't give me a MacArthur grant for nothing!

Margia McPolti, supermodel1998@hotmail.com