Secret Files 2: Puritas Cordis Walkthrough

And you’re equipped to collect the tiny frog sitting on a lily pad in the river. Up to this point, you haven’t been able to attract its attention. But frogs love flies and flies are drawn to the Rafflesia. So use that plant on the flat stone at the edge of the river just across from the frog. The frog hops across for a meal and Max takes it automatically.

That completes our business here. Return to the rear of the temple to find a newly assembled spider web has ensnared some fireflies — take them — and try to read the inscription to the right of the temple door.

This’ll be gobbledygook … unless you’ve first read the translation you grabbed back at the campsite, in which case you’ll read:

“Honor the goddess, enthroned above all.
With her radiant being and ever-open eye, she looks down upon her subjects: the mute and the homeless.
Yet they have no one to blame for their miserable state but themselves. Were they not so self-centered, then they could see the riches at their feet: the Queen’s gold.”

Around the inscription are six niches. Clearly, you’ll have to put something inside each to open the door and the inscription is the key to those somethings. You’ve already picked up three at the camp (fish, slug and peacock feather) and one at the temple (fireflies) and just need two more.

Above and to the right of the inscription is a beehive. The “Queen’s gold” in the inscription must be a euphemism for honey and it stands to reason from its position at the end of the inscription that it goes in the bottom niche.

Naturally, Max can’t just grab it. He must distract the bees first. They like sweets, so the donut from the backpack seems a good enticement and the recess to the right of the hive the appropriate spot for its placement. Max takes the cellophane off automatically (this finds a use inside the temple), the bees vanish and Max can break off a single piece of the honeycomb.

We’ve already dealt fleetingly with the fireflies off to the right — it’s an easy two-move pickup — but you may have skipped over it in this surplus of Things To Do. To reprise: The fireflies apparently like where they are and can’t be diverted into the neighboring web. You’ll have to bring the web to the flies.

What’s not immediately clear is that you have some control over where the web appears. (If you tear it down, it’ll just pop up in the same position the next time you visit this screen.) So just preempt the invisible spider and occupy the the web’s existing space: Hang the flag from the branch above its original spot. (Max takes down the web in the process.) Then move either to camp or to the front of the temple and return. The web moves left, the fireflies are caught and you just have to take the web to make them yours. (Be sure to take back the handy-dandy flag as well. This’ll find a third use inside the temple.)

That runs through the possibilities at the rear of the temple, so return to your position behind the tree. You need one more item here: the Venus fly-trap to the right of the white-berry bush. The guard’s too close for Max to simply take it, but you can follow a variation on the same rule you observed with the bees. You attracted them to a different location. Maybe to can repel the guard from his current one.

Use the Rafflesia plant on him. It doesn’t work at first. He’s too far away, and you’re faced with the challenge of moving the plant closer to him without compromising your position. Two words: tent poles. Use them on the stinky plant. Max connects them up without further prompting and uses them to push the plant near the guard’s log. He’s grossed out by the smell and moves to the log on the far side of the campfire. Now Max can safely recover the Venus fly-trap. (The Rafflesia has done its job and can be left behind or recovered for later examination by Sam. Part of the fun in these dual approaches is getting a second opinion on an item.)

Okay. Which six items go in which niches? As mentioned, it’s laid out in the inscription.

The first line mentions “the goddess.” That would be Venus of the Venus fly-trap — Venus was the Roman goddess of love and beauty — so put that carnivorous plant in the top niche.

The first half of the second line mentions “radiant being” (fireflies) and “ever-open eye” (the design on the peacock feather), so place these in the upper left and upper right niches, respectively. (The arrangement is left to right, rather than clockwise.)

The second half of that line references “the mute and the homeless,” so the fish and the slug go in the lower left and lower right niches. (Fish don’t have voices — though some can make noise with their air bladder or teeth — and slugs are considered “homeless” because, though related to the snail, they don’t have shells.)

And, as noted, the final line mentions “queen’s gold,” so the honeycomb goes in the bottom niche.

The door opens. Max, full of himself, says he deserves a leading-man role in a movie or computer game and enters the temple.

Odds & ends: At the front of the temple, Sam and Max can both examine (and get different takes on) the guard, the animal carcass, the ramp on the near side of the cage (Sam only; it’s no longer a hotspot when Max arrives on the scene), the hole directly behind the cage and the “ugly face” above it.

At the campsite, Max can also examine the river, the waterfall, the flagpole between the tents and the totem to the right of the intact tent and try to use all except the waterfall. Behind the temple, he can examine the fabric on the vine above the path, the monkey’s red footprints and the tendrils on the branch from which he hangs the flag.

In addition, he can try to use the peacock feather on the monkey, the bamboo tube on the Rafflesia plant (when trying to shoo away the guard), the Rafflesia on the Venus fly trap and the papaya (dyed or undyed) , the hard hat and white berries on himself. (In either case, he’ll eat the papaya, with different descriptions, and you’ll then have to replace that fruit by having Max kick the tree again. However, note that once Max gives the monkey the dyed papaya, the tree ceases to yield new ones.)

Sam can try to use her compass and the flare on the hole in the stone face, the compass on the guard and an incomplete launch vehicle (minus the rocket), the rocket on its own on the fire and the ramp. And she can take bananas and raspberries from the fruit bowl and skewer them on the cage wire, but won’t be able to install the bamboo launch tube therein. Only the three-oranges solution works.

The Calypso

We return to the ship to find Nina and her rescuer safe on the enclosed bridge of the capsized craft, but the latter trapped beneath a fallen girder. (He’s going to play the damsel in distress for the next couple of episodes.) Talk to him right off the bat. Otherwise, you won’t know what you’re looking for when you find a cache of papers.

Ultimately, Nina and her pal must descend through the floor to escape but Nina must first climb up to the next level to clear the way. And she has no way to reach the hatch in the bridge’s former floor (now ceiling) without first working out the combination for the locked file cabinet beneath.

The four-digit combination is in the upper lefthand corner of the fallen-down picture of the ship’s christening to the right of the file cabinet: “7 April ’75” or 7475. The top two drawers turn out to be stuck but the empty bottom one (formerly the top) can now be opened and this serves as a step when Nina tries to reach the upper hatch.

Which she’s reluctant to open — fearing there may be water behind it. It has to be tested first. Collect the bust on the bridge’s left side and use it on the hatch to learn it sounds hollow. No water. Then open the hatch and climb up into what was once Reception. Take the metal rod nearby and search the records you’ll find just upscreen from the hatch to find Nina’s ticket and — surprise! — a mysterious letter that Patterson somehow slipped into your possession just before his untimely demise. (If Nina can’t pick out these documents, you haven’t talked to your companion.)

Remarkable that this should turn up directly in your path!

There’s another hatch directly above, but the ladder that leads up to it is broken and it’s inaccessible. However, you’ll see a chain hanging down and, looking down toward the bottom of the capsized craft, Nina somehow makes out that the other end is wrapped around the propeller shaft.

This is the mechanism for lifting the girder off your fallen comrade, but the actions available up here don’t seem to contribute toward that goal. All you can do is fill up one of the halves of the now-broken bongos with the water jetting from the rear wall.

Descend again to the bridge. Against the back wall is a lever that controls the engines. Kick the engine into forward and the chain is lowered through the open hatch. Pick up the end, use it on the fallen girder, use the metal rod you found in Reception on the chain to fasten it in place and throw the engines into reverse to raise the girder. (Note that Nina can lower this chain before the bridge’s top hatch is open. If that’s the case, climb up to Reception, pick up the chain and use it on the lower hatch.)

Back on the bridge, test the lower hatch. Rusty. You’ll need a lubricant. There is oil on the bridge, but it’s not readily accessible. It’s at the bottom of the damaged pipe to the right of the lever. If you have the water from the upper level, you can force it out. First use the empty half of the bongos on the pipe. Nina places it on the floor below to catch the oil. Then use the half with the water on the pipe, and the oil jets into the empty bongo. Use the oil-filled bongo on the rusty hatch to free it and then the hatch itself to open your escape route. Wake your companion and the rest is on automatic. You’ll find yourself on the shore … where?

Odds & ends: On the bridge, Nina can also examine the window to the left and the hole in the ceiling above and try to use the top two drawers in the file cabinet and the hatches ahead and to the right. (She can also try to use the bust on these potential exits.) In Reception, she can examine the inverted counter, the puddle below the water jet, the stairs to the cabin deck and the window to the left.

The Beach

Nina’s new pal is diabetic and needs something sweet to stay alive. And yet when you do find something — the black briefcase in the distance contains a candy bar and papers — you’ll learn this fellow doesn’t even have the energy to chew! He needs something sweet to drink. You’ll have to melt the candy bar in water. That’s more involved.

Regardless of what you were told as a child but not drinking from the ocean, it’s gonna have to be sea water. To collect it, you’ll need a proper receptacle. Your bongo drums are history and nothing suitable presents itself among the detritus littering the beach, but look up on the bluff to the left to find a first-aid kit and a pail. (In fact, there are two pails up there, one inside the other.) You’ll need something to knock them down.

Tricky. Everything here except the briefcase and the handbag to the left seems too unwieldy for the purpose. But the briefcase turns out to be missing its handle — besides, it vanishes once you liberate the candy bar and papers within — and Nina thinks the handbag wouldn’t muster sufficient “kinetic energy” for the task.

That’s an ornate way of saying it’s not heavy enough — kinetic energy = one half of the squared product of mass times velocity — and in fact there’s just one item here you can put inside it. Use the pebbles to the right of your own suitcase (yes, amazing but true) and put ‘em together with the purse in inventory. With the bag thus weighted, hurl it at the kit and it and the buckets tumble down.

Look at the water. Nina says it’s calm but filthy with the tsunami’s backwash. In other words, you’re going to need some kind of filter … and you have one. Use the bandages on a bucket and then the wrapped bucket on the sea to collect a quantity of “reasonably clean” water.

And, naturally, cold water. If you try to drop the candy bar in the bucket, Nina says it’s just going to float on top.

You need hot water, and that’s much more involved.

The energy source is obviously the downed power line off to the right. Right-click on the cable to learn sparks are flying and that the ground where the cable’s touched down is scorched. Where there are sparks, there can be fire.

You will also learn that Nina won’t go anywhere near the power line. You’ll have to turn off the juice first and the pole is currently wet from the tidal wave and unclimbable.

So make it climbable. Take a spear gun to the right of the pole — it’s a little hard to spot — and fire it at the pole. (This is handled in a cut-scene. I understand that, in the Wii version, which I haven’t seen, you have to aim the gun.) Three shots later, you’ll find an impromptu ladder up the left side of the pole.

Now Nina’s unwilling to mess with the fuse box atop the pole without some protection against high voltage current. No protection is in sight. The best bet is the red toolbox at the right side of the beach. But it’s locked and the key’s not around — that’d be too many amazing coincidences for one stretch of beach — and the scene contains nothing suitable for box-prying or bashing.

But the car battery over the boulder does contain some acid. Use it on the toolbox. The acid eats through the lock and you’ll discover the box contains an “an impressive selection of tools” — though Nina is currently silent on those that provide some measure of insulation. You don’t actually discover the selection includes insulated pliers until you use the toolbox on the pole. The next thing you know, the power’s off.

So how to turn electricity into fire? How about those papers from the briefcase? Use them on the power line — Nina tears them up first — and then turn the power on again as before. (You don’t have to use the toolbox this time.) You’ll find a very nice little fire where the wire touches the ground. Nina now automatically turns the power off again and can safely approach the wire.

The fire’s pretty small — too small to heat your water bucket at this location. But you do have another option. See the buried barrel over to the right? It’s marked “flammable” and some of whatever nasty stuff was in there is still in there. (Y’know, I’m not so sure I’d want my hot chocolate heated by a chemical-fueled fire.)

But how do you move the fire into the barrel? You go scavenging again.

In the far left corner of the beach, you’ll find a rake. Raking the burning papers seems likely to diminish the blaze’s fury. But perhaps the rake could be converted to more a shovel-like state. Between the box of life vests and the high-voltage line, you’ll find a piece of sheet metal. Put it together with the rake in inventory and you’ve got a makeshift shovel. Pick up the “small fire” with this shovel and move it into the barrel, where it becomes ”big fire.”

Understandably, Nina winces at the idea of holding the water bucket over the blaze, so now you’ll need some structure from which to suspend it. Get back to where you found the rake and grab the hat stand nearby. Combine hat stand and water bucket in inventory and use the combo on the big fire. (If you get your buckets mixed up, you can always pour the water bucket into the one suspended from the hat stand.) Then use the candy bar on the bucket.

The chocolate melts, Nina retrieves the bucket automatically and you can use the bucket of chocolate water on Nina’s still-nameless friend. He recovers quickly and tells you his story.

He’s David Korell, a Berlin vicar who investigates sects for the church. He’s been following the activities of Puritas Cordis. (You saw its leader, Pat Shelton, give a sermon on the TV in the ship’s restaurant.) This organization follows the apocalyptic (and alarmingly specific) musings of 17th century French prophet Zandona. Information on this gentleman seems to be in short supply — reading between the lines, it sounds as though the records have been purged — but for the letter Nina carries. (Note that Korell gets a detail wrong: The letter surfaced not in Cambridge but Ashford.) Patterson planned at the time of his death to follow up on the letter’s contents with research in northern France, but must have known he was being pursued and passed the letter to Nina for safekeeping before his “so-called accident.” Korell witnessed this event and boarded the Calypso in his place to protect Nina. But he never does explain his absence during your scheduled dinner.

The scene changes to the Ashford church. It’s 1681. We see the letter’s author, a Sister Elise, writing about the fulfillment of prophecy in the firestorm that consumed the French town of Gatineau. She feels she failed to defuse the predicted disasters, though the key was within her reach in the ruins of Gatineau and a saint had invaded her dreams night after night to show her the way.

Nina, still the skeptic, thinks the flood mentioned in the letter could be a coincidence. Korell does not. The disasters are of the type and occurring in the order Zandona predicted. Nina asks how one stops a prophecy. Korell doesn’t know but does say that if these events are in fact leading to the apocalypse “We have a real problem on our hands” and that a chance to stop it is a chance worth taking. Korell says they need to go to Gatineau.

But where is Gatineau? Nina and Korell don’t even know where they are right now.

That’s one of a few remaining issues you’ll settle on the other section of the bench. With Korell’s help, you’ll scale the beached warship that previously had blocked movement to the right. Korell remains on station atop the hull until your departure and thus is available to assist movement in either direction. If you haven’t collected everything available on your original beachhead, you should now return to recover:

– Nina’s suitcase. This can’t be taken, but it can be used. This nets her a change of clothes. (Everything else inside is damp.) This may seem like an aesthetic thing — like a new character skin — but it’s actually a requirement.

– a wheel

– a life vest

– a fire hose

You’ll need all these on the far side of the ship to get together your escape.

Here you can open:

– a “tank bag” that apparently went with the nearby broken-down motorcycle. This contains a map of northern France. Which doesn’t mean that’s where you are. Nina’s still looking for something more specific.

– a locked yellow suitcase. Use the toolbox to open it. It contains a digital camera and a man’s suit. Use the suit on Korell and he’ll change into these dry clothes. The camera comes into play back on the left part of the beach. We’ll deal with this in a moment.

Then there’s the wrecked motorcycle and the boat. Talk to Korell and he tells Nina that the latter is your way out. (You can’t continue right down the beach, and the path inland has been blocked by a landslide.)

It doesn’t look like the way out. “No sail, no engine, no oars,” says Nina. “We wouldn’t get far in this.”

Actually, you will, but it’ll take some work.

This may prove a little confusing. For instance, if you use the shovel on the boat, Nina acquiesces, saying this could be used as a paddle when they set out.

But the boat’s name name, Turbinia, suggests that solution is mechanical. (That’s the name of the first steamship to be powered by a turbine.) You’ll make that crystal clear if you use the shovel to dig in the landslide area at the rear. Nina will decide to limit her work to an area just above the cardboard behind the boat. It turns up a fan blade: a would-be propeller. You’re going to convert the rowboat into a motorboat.

The engine comes from the wrecked motorcycle, but you’ve got to bring the bike to the boat first and that’s currently impossible, as it’s missing its front wheel. You do have that replacement wheel from the first stretch of beach, but it is missing the tire and the motorcycle engine thus still rests on the ground. You need a replacement tire.

Try the fire hose. Use it on the wheel, then the wheel + hose on the bike, then the bike on the boat to move it to a spot nearby. Now use the toolbox on the bike to slap its engine onto the rear of the boat.

However, you can’t just slap on the fan blade. In the water, the prop must be submerged and you’re going to need a way to raise the boat to put the fan blade in the right spot. The life vest should do the trick handily (though not by itself) and when you use the one in inventory on the boat, Nina sets out to recover the box of life vests found on the first stretch of beach. (This happens automatically.) Then simply apply the fan blade et voila!

And yet things aren’t moving forward. How do you get the boat into the water?

Ah. You haven’t talked enough with Korell or you’ve forgotten part of your agenda: You still need to figure out where you are to figure out where you’re going.

On high ground at the rear of the left end of the first section of beach is a direction sign. It’s unreadable from down here, but the digital camera from the second has a zoom function. Use it on the sign and then consult the map with a right-click to get your bearings. You can now talk to Korell about “Gatineau” and suggest you shove off. When you do, you do.

Odds & ends: Nina can try to throw much of her inventory at the first-aid kit — the only exceptions are the fire hose, ticket and the papers from the briefcase — and get descriptions (most of them unique) about the prospect of success for each. In addition, she can try to use the ticket, battery and the bucket of water on the (turned-off) high-voltage line; the metal sheet on the candy bar; an empty or water-filled bucket on the barrel; the ticket, candy bar, empty bucket and rake on the small fire; the hat stand (minus water bucket) on the big fire; the camera on Nina and Korell; the battery and hose-less wheel on the motorcycle (the latter is actually put briefly in place) and the men’s suit on herself.

Korell suggests Patterson was murdered on the Hamburg docks. But if you go back and look at the cinematic, it really appears to be an accident. Of course, it’s possible that Wedge and Biggs snuck up between palettes and nailed him with a dart, but with all those people around? And why show their first two killings and then omit this one?

Indonesia

Max is now in the dark temple interior. Use the hard hat (which comes with a headlight) on him to shed some light on the matter. You’ll find an ancient control panel against the left wall. This consists of three rows of eight buttons each. You’ll need to press the correct button in each row correctly in order to remove an interior wall and thus obtain access to Sam’s cage. (Don’t worry about the closed door and niche to the right. Max uses these automatically at the appropriate time.)

The wall painting to the right of the console provides a key. But it’s difficult to interpret with the naked eye (though it can be done). Different symbols in different colors appear to have been intermingled here and while it’s easy to pick out one from its distinctive “dot inside a Y” configuration, the other two are vaguer. Can anything be done in the name of clarity?

Yes. You already have two colored filters in inventory — the green balloon and the blue flag — and you can cobble together a third by dipping the donut cellophane in the red dye in the kettle. Look at the wall painting and then simply use each filter on the hard hat in turn to reveal the hidden symbols.

But which goes in which row on the console? That’s laid out for you, too. Just use the order in which they appear on the list of planets you found beside the table at the campsite: Venus, Juno and Neptune. The first is the fourth from the right in the top row, the second the second from the left in the middle row and the third the second from the right in the bottom row.

Once you’ve pushed the correct buttons, a wall slides back and you’ll find you have access to the apertures in the stone face behind Sam and can now pass her items through the hole at the bottom. (Control now switches to Sam, but you can switch between the characters at will.)

One notable change since the last segment: Probably as a result of the flare incident, the fruit bowl is no longer directly accessible from Sam’s cage. (It is within throwing distance, however.) Sam must now ask the guard for fruit — and the guard won’t supply any. He just uses each such request as an occasion to help himself to whatever it was that Sam wanted.

As it happens, that’s a valuable bit of info.

Sam can’t do anything on her own, so this would be a good time to run though Max’s inventory with right-clicks in search of items Sam might find more useful. You’ll stumble upon one: the white berries. Sam can’t identify the white-berry bush at this distance and Max is clueless as to the fruit’s potential uses. “Unlike Sam, I don’t know the first thing about botany,” he says.

But pass the berries to Sam through the hole and right-click on them in her inventory to learn the region’s indigenous population uses the berries to induce trances. In other words, if you could get the guard to eat one, it’d help take him out of the equation.

This requires some subtlety. Sam can toss a white berry into the bowl and then request one. But though freaked out by the stone face, the guard isn’t a total idiot. He doesn’t know what the berries are and he’s not about to try something he can’t identify.

Maybe you could disguise the berry. Have Max pass Sam the bamboo tube and then have Sam use the tube on the fruit bowl as a makeshift straw. She’ll suck up a raspberry. (Given the length of the tube, that’s a pretty amazing level of suction Sam has there!) Use the white berries on this raspberry and then toss the sabotaged raspberry back into the bowl. Ask the guard for a raspberry and, like clockwork, he’ll vindictively eat what Sam’s requested — and almost immediately begin to feel funny. Already freaked out by the voice inside the stone face, he now thinks he sees the face move.

That’s a clue for your next move. Send the guard over the edge. Bring the stone face to life. As Max, use the glow sticks on the statue’s nostrils and the little frog on its mouth (in that order) and the guard runs off — leaving behind an odd square item (collected automatically by Max after his reunion with Sam) that opens the door in the temple.

A spasm of non-interactivity here: Max dispatches Sam to summon the authorities while he checks out the temple. He’s just used the odd square item in the niche and found a nuke behind the door — Zandona’s prophecies are apparently self-fulfilled — when a second guard returns to camp and reports finding Sam and her guard missing. The bomb goes live and drops into the lava below,. The mountain doesn’t so much erupt as disintegrate. And Max, escaping the blast, runs smack into a pair of guards.

Odds & ends: Inside the temple, Max can examine the closed door, the niche and the red glow beneath the door. Using the hole in the stone face, Sam can hand her compass to Max — this never does find a use — and Max most of his inventory to Sam. Exceptions: the hard hat (which would leave him in the dark), the teapot and Rafflesia (both too big for the hole) … and Nina’s picture. (Max is sentimental.)

A couple of curiosities will surface in Sam’s survey of these items. Have her look at the blue flag and she’ll offer, “Good thing Max doesn’t know what kind of flag this is.” The implication seems to be that it’s related to ex-girlfriend Nina — and hence to Secret Files: Tunguska — but this is never explained.

If you right-click on the plain cellophane bag (post-donut) while it’s in Nina’s possession, you’ll crash the game. Evidently the developers left out Sam’s description. However, if you pass her the red-stained bag, Sam says, “Red foil … Max must have been pretty bored.” (Also, is it just my filthy mind, or does the red-stained cellophane look like a condom wrapper?)

You can’t identify them now — they’re not wearing their night-vision goggles — but the epilogue makes clear the guards Max encounters at the end of the segment are Wedge and Biggs from the game’s first scenes.

Gatineau

Korell turns over to Nina an odd sketch that was included with Sister Elise’s letter. He’ll continue to try to decipher the document while Nina searches the ruins for references to a saint.

Note the surveyor nearby. You don’t have to deal with him right now, but he’ll prove instrumental in your search.

Head down and left to the snack truck. Here you can take a paper cup and aluminum foil from the ground and as many as four fortune cookies from the bowl on the counter. (You’ll have to open each in turn and read its fortune in order to take the next.)

Continue down and left to a crossroads. Activate the small table beside the construction shack to claim four items — pocket knife, “spirit level,” power cable and cloth pouch — and also take the mirror from the wall above. Then one more time down and left to an unusual side view where you’ll find a gesturing statue.

Before Nina can inspect the plaque at its base, Korell shows up and reads it for her: “Saint … something. His name is barely discernible.” He’ll turn over the translation of the sister’s letter — meaning you can watch at will the cut-scene of the nun writing it — and you’re free to look for the next clue when Korell looks for his reading glasses.

Don’t look for revelations in the letter. The cut scene is still what it was earlier. Apparently the idea here is to remind the player about the statue. Right-click on it for a closeup view and again on the left arm to learn it’s pointing back toward the ruins. Exactly where in the ruins it’s hard to say. It’d be easier to tell if you could follow the arm.

You can: Place the “spirit level” on the statue’s left arm and follow the red beam to the right.

One screen over, you’ll find it blocked on a signpost. But the sign atop the post can be turned and by turning it left three times, you can align it with the beam. If you’ve set it up correctly, Nina says when you exit from the turning menu that the sign is in line with the statue’s pointing arm.

Alas, this doesn’t permit the beam to continue on its merry way. (It’s still stopped by the post itself.) But grab the laser back from the statue and place it atop the realigned signpost and you can follow it to the right again.

Oy. Now it’s stopped by the sign atop the snack truck. Can the truck be moved?

Initially, there’s no one in the truck. (A sign propped up on the counter reads, ”Be right back.”) However, once Nina places the spirit level atop the signpost, the sign is replaced by a sleeping Chinese man.

Talk to the proprietor to learn that, under his contract, he’s required to remain here until all construction workers on site — today, just the the surveyor back at your starting location — call it a day. Asking him to move his truck forward a few feet is not an option.

But maybe you could chase him away ahead of schedule. You just manipulated one sign. Could you mess with others?

Sure. There are two that can be removed and reinstalled elsewhere and a third that can be cannibalized for parts.

Bottom line: You want to give the surveyor the impression his nice shiny SUV, parked over on the left side of the signpost screen, is in jeopardy from a rock slide. To save yourself multiple attempts — there are as many as three different unsuccessful results — you’ll want to make your case especially persuasive and take advantage of the surveyor’s naturally superstitious bent.

Step One: At the right side of the starting location, rocks have tumbled down the slope. Use the pen knife to remove the “rock slide” sign from the post nearby and the parking sign on the left at the signpost screen and reinstall the rock slide sign in the parking sign’s original position.

Step Two: See the plastic boulder on the right side of the “Lazare Construction” sign to the right of the shack on the signpost screen? This is tangible evidence to back up the rock-slide sign’s warning (as long as the surveyor doesn’t look at it too closely). Use this versatile knife to detach the boulder from the sign and place it in the wrecked car just in front of the surveyor’s SUV.

However, this isn’t enough. If you warn the surveyor about the risk to his vehicle with only the rock slide sign, only the boulder or both sign and boulder in place, he’ll blow you off. His horoscope said he’s going to have a good day and that carries a lot of weight with him. So …

Step Three: … play off the surveyor’s faith in the stars.

Did you go through the fortune cookies yet? Take one and use it on Nina. She’ll eat it and read the fortune. Take another and do it again. Then a third.

Ah. This one has an relevant message: “If you ignore the warning and disregard your neighbor’s misfortune, disaster will strike you also.”

The warning is the rock-slide sign and the neighbor’s misfortune is covered by the boulder in the back seat of the derelict car.

But how do you deliver a previously-owned fortune? (The surveyor will blow that off, too.) It’s got to be in a cookie.

Like the snack-truck owner has anything better to do? Give him the third fortune and he’ll put it into a new cookie for you. Hustle back to the surveyor and lay the fresh cookie on him. Then ask him (twice, if you haven’t previously broached the subject) about the SUV. You’ll both reappear on the signpost screen and the surveyor will be sufficiently impressed by the confluence of contrived events to move the vehicle. Now just scoot back to the snack truck and report that the surveyor’s vehicle in no longer in evidence. (If you haven’t raised this topic, this’ll be the right-hand snack-truck icon.) The operator drives away, the beam finds a new obstacle … and then vanishes entirely!

The battery’s dead. A replacement is right here. The beam was pointing at the kiosk for the under-construction theme park. Below the buttons to the right is a flap. If you’ve already used the kiosk, pressing one of the three buttons, you can now pry the flap open it with your all-purpose pocket knife. (If not, Nina will do so automatically.)

Batteries! Nina takes them automatically. Head left. You can use them in the “spirit level” in its position atop the sign and the beam reappears.

But how are you going to get the beam past the immovable kiosk? Bend the beam around it You have the mirror from the construction shack. Use the power cable on the mirror — it becomes a support wire — and then suspend the mirror from the hook to the left of the kiosk.

Hmmm. It doesn’t quite intersect with the beam. Perhaps if you weighted one end? Everything in your inventory is too light for this purpose — save the parking sign, which is too large — but you can change the weight of one item. Load up the cloth bag with loose soil from any of the three molehills around the kiosk, place this atop the dangling mirror and it reflects the beam into the ground beneath the kiosk. Now you just have to straighten it out again, and the aluminum foil you found near the snack truck will do nicely. Use it on the molehill below the kiosk and the beam goes its merry way. Move right again, and you’ll find it pointing at a pile of rubble. (Then it vanishes gain, but that’s OK. It’s done its job.)

The rubble’s too heavy to move without help. Maybe the surveyor? If you’ve talked to him, he’s mentioned he’s looking for archaeological relics. But you can’t direct his attention to a nondescript pile of rubble. You’ll have to make it less nondescript first. A paper cup wrapped in foil might look like a silver goblet to the untrained eye. Use it on the rubble pile to insert it into a recess, then talk to the surveyor again about relics. He heads off to his SUV to retrieve rubble-clearing material — it exposes a small door in the hillside — and then heads off to try to sell the silvery cup to his Paris fence. Activate the iron ring in the door’s left side to enter.