WARNING: the following contains story - but not puzzle - spoilers.
Okay, I’ve finished the game (apart from Puzzle 135, which continues to frustrate me) and I have to say that that was one of the most depressing stories I’ve encountered in a long time.
The Professor and Luke “rescue” Flora from the Tower (which she could leave at any time, mind you). The Professor becomes her guardian, and she elects to leave her fortune behind so that the “people” of the village can continue to go on as before with their (artificial) lives.
Or, to put it another way:
[ul]
[li]A young girl has been given away to a strange man as a prize for solving a bunch of puzzles. I’m fairly sure that’s illegal in most Western countries.[/li]
[li]Bruno, the only other actual human in the village, who has been keeping up all the robots out of devotion to Flora and her late father, is now condemned to stay in the village on his own and continue to repair the robots (which appear to break down frequently, judging by the number of “disappearances” mentioned earlier in the game).[/li]
[li]Bruno will have to do this without his workshops, which were in the Tower, which is now a pile of rubble.[/li]
[li]And that’s assuming Bruno got out of the collapsing Tower (which he probably did - Luke escaped from a point much further from the exit, and the drawbridge crank turned up at the end which Bruno had).[/ul][/li]
Nice.
Did I miss anything?