<!--
	Title: Is it GUE Tech or MIT? Dave Lebling explains it...
	Author: Infocom staff
	Source: The Status Line, v7(1)
	Date: Winter/Spring 1988
	Transcription by Steve Derby
-->

Ever since we released *The Lurking Horror* by Dave Lebling we've been
getting questions from players about the setting. We thought we'd go straight to
the source and ask Dave for the straight dope.

**TSL:** Is GUE Tech really MIT?

**Dave:** I definitely based it on part of the MIT campus. When I was a student
at MIT, there was a pastime called "Institute Exploring" (also known as
"Tunnel Tours"). A group of students would go over to the main pan of the
campus at around 3am and try to visit some of the more obscure and off-limits
locations.

MIT is full of basements and sub-basements, and those are often with
crammed with incomprehensible equipment left over from some cancelled
research project. Late at night there are still professors and students working,
but for the most part all you see are security guards and maintenance crews.

**TSL:** So some of the locations in the game are based on real places?

**Dave:** Except for a few. As far as I know, there is no eldritch altar at which
students are sacrificed to nameless gods. But then, I was never a professor,
so I can’t be sure.

Most of MIT's buildings are connected by basements and tunnels, some
of which are not generally accessible to the student population, unless... Well,
let's put it this way. MIT students are very good at acquiring keys or at
"getting past" locks when keys aren't available.

Until fairly recently there was a door (not at quite the same location as in the
game) in the chemistry building that said "Department of Alchemy." Alas,
I'm told that what was behind it was a storage room.

There really is a skyscraper (well, twenty stories) on campus, housing the
geology department, among others. There really was at one time a semitransparent
plastic dome housing a tree atop the building. I have no idea why,
or what type of tree it really was. When I was a student, it was possible to get to
this roof by going the wrong way through a door that said "Positively No
Admittance, Opening Door Sounds Alarm." When we visited the roof, the
alarm didn't go off.

<figure class="float-left-half">
	<img src="/public/img/articles/sl-is-it-gue-tech-or-mit/mit-great-dome.jpg" alt="The MIT Great Dome">
	<figcaption><em>A stunning photo of MIT's Great Dome: Is the dome a grazing pasture for cattle, or a most elaborate single car parking structure for VW Beatles?</em></figcaption>
</figure>

The Great Dome, which has been featured in such masterpieces as Star
Trek, is often the site for elaborate decorations. In my memory it's been
disguised as a giant cupcake, a Halloween pumpkin, and so on. Rumor has it
that a cow and a Volkswagen have also been hoisted onto it.

**TSL:** The Infinite Corridor? Is that real?

**Dave:** The main building of MIT is almost aligned east to west. On certain
days of the year, the setting sun shines all the way down the Infinite Corridor,
just like the temple of the sun at Karnak, Egypt. MIT is reputed to have
more miles of corridor than any building except the Pentagon.

**TSL:** There can't really be a Tomb, can there?

**Dave:** Yes, there can! It's called the Tomb of the Unknown Tool ("tool" is
MIT slang for a nerd). It's roughly coffin-shaped, not quite as tight a squeeze
as in the game, and has no trap door inside it.

**TSL:** What about Miskatonic University? Is GUE Tech in Arkham?

**Dave:** Well, I have a theory about Miskatonic University. After all the troubles
they were mixed up in the twenties and thirties, they probably had a lot of
difficulty recruiting students. It was the Depression, after all. I think that perhaps
a benefactor, George Underwood Edwards, may have infused a lot of
money into several struggling small schools about then, and caused them to
merge into GUE Tech. After all, Yale University was renamed after its benefactor,
why not Miskatonic?

**TSL:** Do you really live on a hill crowned with a circle of stones?

**Dave:** Absolutely, although we've since discovered that the odd noises at night
were merely a raccoon.
