Portal

Where are all the humans? Upon returning from your 100 year voyage in the milky way, you find earth empty and abandoned. Between the decaying remnants of civilization, you discover a terminal for Worldnet, the global network that recorded all human activities. The answer must lie deep in its database. Anxious, you log on.

Portal is a computer novel - an attempt of creating and adapting a novel specifically for the computer. The story of the boy Peter Devore, his incredible discovery and the mysterious portal are told by an AI named Homer, who reconstructs it piece by piece out of database fragments. As the plot develops, you acquire accompanying information by accessing eleven additional databases - for example a historical archive, military files or social backgrounds. As you switch between the databases to uncover new details, an extensive sci-fi story unfolds.

From the front of the box:

"Homer, a biological computer. The final link to the past and the only conduit to the future. But Homer is dying and access grows weaker moment by moment. Will you discover where everyone has gone or will the doorway to humanity close forever, leaving you totally alone?"

From the back of the box:

"It is the distant future. The 21th century has long since come and gone. Returning from a failed 100 year voyage to 61 Cygni, you re-enter earth's atmosphere to find that the world is not as you once knew it.

Where once there was teeming humanity, now there is quiet. The empty shells of mile-high skyscrapers stand at rest in the awesome silence. The vista, nothing but forests and meadows, rivers and lakes, is beautiful but eerie, for there are no people...

Finally, you discover an on-line computer terminal that you can operate. Through it you contact Homer, the ultimate achievement of man's technology - a living computer. Together you and Homer must unravel the mystery of the vanished civilisation before it's too late. If not, you face an eternity of total solitude."