Test Drive Meme #5

[spoofer]

Test Drive Meme #5

You wouldn’t wake; i couldn’t sleep for years.

INTRODUCTION ⇄ FAQ ⇄ APPLICATIONS

CRASH LANDING

Exit one dimension, enter the next. It was chaos: pressure against your ears, light bending in an impossible, unimaginable way. The very molecules of your body vibrating against one another. If you have windows, the view outside makes no sense. Even if not, your hands, your face, your feet seem like an uncertain thing. It's the feel of reality itself tearing apart, reshaping, reconnecting, thread by thread.

And suddenly, there's a beach— or ocean, whichever you land in. Smoke. Fire. Salt water churning up, fizzing around.


Maybe you crash, in a ship wrecking into sand. Maybe you merely stumble out of a portal, a ragged wormhole in space. Or maybe you fall off the back of an incredible steed, some creature that carried you into this place. Either way, there's pandemonium around you. Incredibly, severe injuries are far and few between— nobody's screaming about the dead. But you might have to help pull someone free of wreckage, or move quickly to salvage burning belongings from the landing craft. Maybe it's the crafts themselves, that you're trying to salvage.

Likely, you don't know them, these other strangers who arrived here^[1]. Maybe you don't trust them— you just came out of a dying world, after all. But you all have one thing in common: you're here now.

When you get a second to breathe, maybe you'll see it. The brilliant green forest across the sand. Beyond that, the glint of a faraway city.

THE RAIN

Here comes the rain. Trickling down the rafters and tinkling down the trees, it starts as a drizzle and steadily increases to a downpour. Maybe it catches you by surprise, chasing you indoors or to share the umbrella of a friendly stranger. There's something oddly elaborate about the gutters of Xistentia's city-- it clearly carries the water toward the temple in the East, a storm system that causes the lamps to pulsate without threatening to shut down.


You'll notice too that you're prone to nostalgia which even infiltrate your dreams, memories sad or happy. This is easily a private experience, but you might find yourself wandering the city to get away from old ghosts or feeling invincible in the glow of memories. More oddly, whether or not you're an artist, you might be inspired to draw on the windows with your finger in the condensation.

Personal symbols, detailed illustrations, these inextricably lead back to the nostalgia. Whatever it is, it might pull someone to ask.

NETWORK

By now, the city of Xistentia has a population of over 400 people. Shops line the streets of downtown, and increasingly well-trodden paths will take you into the agricultural zones nearer to the forest or even down to the beach. There are still distinctive animal presences around— careful with that— but the most common critters you'll see are birds crapping on your stuff outside and tiny winged hairless people creeping your food.

One afternoon, you are taken from whatever you’re doing - taking a walk through the city, sunning yourself on the beach, running around in the forest shoring up defenses - by a message, appearing on your Daemon’s network screen. It’s a simple line of text, that reads:

PHOTO SENT

It would appear that your daemon accidentally sent a picture, perhaps one from your photo roll or instagram, or a random shot of you or your surroundings. Wait. Was that a public network post? Wait—

IMAGE CODE TEMPLATE
<center><img src="URL HERE"></center>

CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE

hells yeah

Footnotes

1. Some of these can be nameless, plot-device NPCs to facilitate interactions! But even in this case, please avoid gore in describing their current state of being. Anyone dead or catastrophically injured will have disappeared by the time your characters make it to Xistentia. There are no corpses or dying here.
   
   
2. But like OOCly ask permission ofc.

Comments

[smileslie]

[Mandy isn't sure if Gildad's behavior is because of her form, or because she's...well, hers. Either way, generally speaking, it's not a problem. But occasionally, the cat makes the m most inappropriate, unhelpful remarks.

Also like the person she's paired with.

At any rate, while she hasn't been playing the dual role of hostess and bouncer for awhile now, she's been helping more people than she would like to think about get around back home when they couldn't stand, so she doesn't lean too much under Juno's weight]

Don't mention it. [she grins, although it doesn't quite meet her eyes. She hardly notices that she's trying to catalog the scrapes and cuts as she works to get them out of the sand. She hasn't done that in ages, finding someone beat up and thinking quick about if she can deal with it herself] How much of that blood's yours? Because, if it's as much as I'm seeing, we might want to get you a virgin Screwdriver for starters.

[jokes about drinking are easier than...well, the whole sight around them]

I do know quite a bit about getting blood out of clothes, though.

[monologue]

[ there are a few cuts and scrapes, a shoulder that's sagging a bit unnaturally (thankfully the fall didn't reopen the sutures), but other than that, he doesn't look too bad. well. alright. there is blood on his coat in general. and on his hands, but he doesn't seem too bothered. As he looks down himself, juno gives a little bit of a shrug, face in half a rictus. virgin screwdriver. now that's something he's absolutely not going to get behind. blood loss or no. ]

I'unno. I think it gives it gives it a... [ what are they calling it these days. ] panache. Or whatever.

[ bloodstains. detective chic. that's how it works. still, he laughs (it hurts a bit, but he's learned how to chuckle around a few achey ribs). ]

But not all of it's mine. [ mostly the hands, he's pretty sure. some cuts on his forehead have already stopped bleeding, thankfully. ]

[smileslie]

[that makes Mandy properly laugh herself] I had a friend who would have said something like that. I think he used blood for lipstick on more than one occasion.

[talking about Jack to someone who isn't Arthur, even in a vague sense is...she doesn't even know. Sometimes the nostalgia is a comfort in these moments, and sometimes it's the worst thing in all the bloody universe]

Don't tell me you're one of those heroic idiots who gets themselves even more fucked up helping other people. [but it's said...warmly. Because those people are better than she and Brian ever were, for all their talk of 'revolution'. She starts digging through her purse with her free arm--it's amazing how adept you become at multitasking when you have to run wardrobe and lights for a band while making sure all of them show up where they're needed]

At any rate, I've got some kleenex, if you want to clean up a bit until you can get checked out proper. [she says, holding out the tissues she found by feel while keeping her eyes on the path]

[monologue]

[ juno snorts a little bit at the remark. nothing better than a shade made by your own body for your own body. ]

Yeah, uh, save heroic for someone else. Just a detective getting my hands a little dirty.

[ the word tastes like acid in his mouth as something small is pushed in his direction. he glances and murmurs a little "thanks." the tissues are... they're appreciated. unexpected, but appreciated as they're held out to him. he hesitates a second, glancing at his own cut up fingers and taking a couple (maybe a little roughly, his head and his body don't feel all that in sync right now, like he's still half on mars, half here, like he's dreaming and. wow. maybe he did hit his head or something. juno's been concussed enough to know when he is, but.

no, no. too much thinking, not enough blood wiping and pressing down to staunch any of the remaining free bleeding. ]

Name's Juno Steel.