aftr_ooc | TEST DRIVE MEME ( 011 )

Test Drive Meme #11

Hello, and welcome to LifeAftr! We’re pleased that you’re expressing an interest in the game. Here, you can test the waters, gauge how your character may fare in the world of LifeAftr, and even gain some in-game incentives, if you so choose.

Remember that Reserves will open on May 17th, and Applications on May 24th!

Two important notes:

1. LifeAftr's test drives take place on the island of Mu, which exists apart from the real world and possesses a dream-like quality that characters are innately aware of from the moment they appear on its shores. No need to panic or fret. Dreams are odd things, after all - and anything can happen in them. Why would anyone question where their mind chooses to wander in its sleep?

2. Due to the nature of Mu, threads in our test drive can not only be accepted as thread samples in your application, but can be accepted as game canon as well. In fact, certain choices your character makes in Mu have the potential to bear in-game consequences, largely in the form of test drive reward items.

Damn It, Todd
The island breeze is cool and pleasant, temperature-wise. The sun is beaming cheerfully overhead, and the waves lapping up against the beach are a crystalline aquamarine. The place may as well be a postcard, with how picturesque it is: from the thick copses of palm trees to the soft white sand, it's a truly gorgeous, becoming setting.

It makes up for the chaos of its inhabitants.

Mu has adopted what promises to be a highly frustrating backdrop for its dreamers, this fine evening. The island looks normal enough, seems normal enough, but for whatever reason, the physics and general behavior seems oddly...glitched.

We don't just mean in the general sense, either. At random intervals, you may find yourself being launched several feet in the air by an invisible abuse of physics, or clipping through trees at breakneck speeds. Maybe you're walking around several feet above the ground, or your hands are much larger than the rest of you. Regardless, the possibilities are virtually endless and promise to be, for the most part, quite harmless for those afflicted - just very annoying. Whether you're swimming in the air, repeating the same lines of dialogue over and over again, or stuck halfway through the ground, it's not clear how one is meant to undo these glitches once they set in.

You could always try helping each other! Though that may simply make things worse; who can say if these glitches might bleed into one another and complicate things even further?

(Oh, and they do. They absolutely do.)

This is Dragonna Suck
When you wake in a lovely, tranquil woodland, it perhaps seems too good to be true. The trees are dense with canopies flowering overhead, and the grass has formed a thick, plush carpet on the forest floor. There's the sound of birds chattering happily in the branches, and the rustle of forest creatures in the undergrowth. That's around the time that a loud, angry roar splits the silence, and something very large and very green barrels into the clearing you occupy with large, barklike claws.

This, dear adventurers, is a rootwyrm. While undeniably draconian in appearance, the effect is offset by the fact that the rootwyrm's skin is more akin to the texture of bark than it is scales. One can generally discern the age of these creatures by counting the number of rather stubby legs that support its ample middle - the youngest will only have two, while the oldest will have as many as twelve.

Rootwyrms move slowly, thanks to the turtle-like shell that sits astride their back in lieu of wings, but they make up for this by hitting quite hard in a fight. Instead of breathing fire, rootwyrms spit a caustic, stinging acid if they can't get close enough to their prey, though they'll be more than happy to try and dispatch you the old-fashioned way: with an extremely large set of reptilian jaws.

Did we mention they don't like trespassers? And that you're standing square in the middle of their territory?

You're Pollen My Leg!
The open spread of the grasslands allows for a clear view of the cloud-scudded sky. This particular setting is that of a meadow, vast and seemingly infinite, hosting a sweeping expanse of rolling hills. The wind's rippling over the fields of rich green and buff-colored grass lends itself to the impression that the hills are in constant motion, as if you're standing in the middle of a verdant ocean.

Naturally, such is not the case. As you roam the landscape, you'll probably notice the dollops of color sprinkled here and there: flowers growing in bright clumps amidst the tufts of grass.

They're not ordinary flowers. Why would they be? They're in full bloom, meaning that thick spores of pollen have begun to waft freely into the air. Careful not to draw too close, because this pollen, when inhaled, ingested, or otherwise interacted with in any nonspecific capacity, will have a variety of...side effects, depending on which particular plant's spores you've just unwittingly imbibed.

There are five variants you may encounter in your dream-travels, each of which will have a different result, depending on the color.

[ ♆ ] Blue flowers will induce short-term amnesia and general confusion. Forgetting your sense of identity, difficulty discerning the difference between right and left, and an intense sensation of vertigo are all common side effects.

[ ♆ ] Red flowers will make you intensely and inconsolably angry at just about everything. You know that guy who chewed gum behind your ear that one time? Fuck that guy! That person over there, with the yellow shirt? Fuck their shirt! Yellow is a stupid color, and you're stupid for wearing it!

[ ♆ ] Green flowers will induce a loss of one important sense - sight, smell, taste, touch, or hearing - though loss of powers is also known to have occurred.

[ ♆ ] Purple flowers will induce silence. We hope you aren't very talkative by nature, or that you can communicate exclusively via rude hand gestures, because now you can't speak at all.

[ ♆ ] Orange flowers will fill you an indescribable terror regarding just about everything. The slightest motion, the most innocent hello, the most harmless small animal - all will tap directly into every primal fight-or-flight response to danger you have.

These status effects can and will stack, by the by. Maybe start up a little game of pollen bingo, and see how many fanfiction tropes you can rack up in one day.

LOGS ● OOC ● STORIES ● MAIN NAVIGATION

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It turns out the human brain is really fucking good at replicating the exact feeling of a digital brain being stripped down to its base components, being cannibalized, being wrung out to the point of complete and utter numbness. He wrenches halfway upright, trying to parse an unfamiliar face through the blackout haze of static screaming in the pounding dome of his skull.

"I'm trying," he says - today, he is Alpha, a shattered holo-projection huddled behind a partition in the diagnostics ward, crumbling beneath the strain of too many no-win scenarios being foisted on him, sick the phantom pain of something he's missed (beta) something he's missing (beta) something that's never been a part of him (beta) because it was never here -

"I'm just - it's too complex, okay? It's too much, I just need, I need a new way to think, I need more time, that's - just give me more time and stop sending your agents into the fucking field when I can't account for what's gonna happen to them."

His reply confuses her, but at the same time, it makes things a little clearer. While she doesn't know what he's talking about, it tells her that he thinks he's somewhere else. Not a physical wound that's tearing him apart, then; it's something in his head, or his heart, and Mira knows she can't heal that as much as she wishes she could. What can she do, then?

Help him through it, as much as she can.

"Wherever you think you are--you are not there. You are on an island. Whoever you think I am, I'm not them." Almost hesitantly, she reaches out to touch his arm. If he knocks her away, she won't even be upset, though. He has every right to, but if it helps bring him to his senses? Then that's good.

I am very confused, says every fragment in an aching synchrony. To some extent, this much is familiar: him, taking orders from someone who seems to understand what's happening. Ready to give him orders (unless he's the one giving orders) or ready to issue some new query he'll have to throw himself against until they gut him for something else, anything else.

"I just needed more time. I just needed more time to think." It still fuzzes his eyes, blurring them, the pressure of the headache that is so unlike the way a program is deconstructed, that is distinctively human in ways it shouldn't be.

(Which one is he? Which one is he, today?)

There's a hand on his arm, skin against the gray-and-yellow striped plating of his power armor. Realizes that AIs aren't suspect to that kind of sensory feedback unless they're tapped into someone else's nervous system. Realizes this is a tangible body.

Tries not to retch over the realization. "You could probably throw up in your helmet and it would take care of it for you," says someone in the banks of his memory, a blur of turquoise. "Agent Washington would likely drown," says a spark of green glowing at someone else's shoulder.

Tries not to retch.

Remembers there's someone else here, talking to him, keeping him steady, which means he should probably address that.

"Which...who are you, again?"

She doesn't reply to the first thing he says. To do so... it wouldn't help to pull him back to reality. Gently, she tightens her grip briefly on the metal of his armor. She fights the urge to tear the strange helmet off his head; she'll give him time, explain things slowly. Wait for him to do it, because doing it herself seems like such a violation of personal boundaries, and that is the last thing he needs.

"I did not gave you my name, not just yet." She pauses. "My name is Mira. You are on an island. You have been brought here like everyone else, as a new chapter in your story."

There's no prefacing. There's no PFC or Captain or Agent, which implies that she must be a civilian. Isn't he meant to be restricted from two-way interaction with anyone who falls beyond the uppermost echelons of the Project's chain? Always seemed like a pretty fucking stupid rule. What would the harm be in talking to any of the Agents, the people he's supposed to be protecting? Supposed to be -

Simulation, some part of him says, a low warning tone. You can parse this.

"Just...Mira? Not - I dunno, Doctor, or anything like that?" Something about the dry crack of the words against his teeth is both familiar and deeply, intensely wrong in ways he can't place. That's him, isn't it? Pointed remarks and wry commentary and the way he can communicate the rolling of eyes via holo-form projection alone?

Unless he's got it wrong.

She shakes her head. Usually, she'd be flattered--doctors help people, and that's what she wants to do above all else. But she's not a doctor, just a young woman who happens to excel at healing, among other things.

"No. Just Mira." She keeps her hand on his armor, gives it a light squeeze with every reply she gives him. He hasn't shaken her off, and that's a good sign. "What is your name?"

The pressure is comforting in some ways, but...still confusing in others. When did he get a body? Occam's razor eases the strictures by increments - if it is a simulation, something new, some complicated scenario he has to decode, then it's one with way more fucking variables than is standard. But when's the Director ever done shit by the book?

"Alpha," he says, trying to shake away the echoes that introduction invites: Beta, and then Epsilon, and then Dr. Leonard Church, and then...others, less distinct, other names that swim beneath a layer of code.

(It's code swarming in his metaphysical veins here. Isn't it?)

"Wh - listen, if the Director's here," he says, fresh urgency coloring the words into coherency, "we can do this...later, okay? I need to talk to him. Tell him it's fuckin' urgent."

"Alpha?" she repeats back. It's... a strange name, a name that doesn't sound quite like a name. Still, she nods. "A pleasure to meet you."

... And back to the confusion. He's somewhere else again, and Mira shakes her head. It's likely that the person he's looking for is here, but for now, it's best not to tell him a lie. She wonders if he thinks she's part of his home.

"No--I have not met anyone here by that name. As far as urgency, you have little to worry about. Time halts at our homes when we are here."

He shakes his head as though to clear it, trying to dislodge...something, trying to shake something loose. Feels like a loose bolt in his gears. Like there's something he's forgetting.

There's too much he's forgetting.

"Yeah, okay, nice try, but you can shut it all off now," he says, snapping the words out in a perfect imitation of Alpha's caustic default. "I just...I need to talk to him. Who gave you the idea for time dilation, anyway? 'Cause I'm pretty sure I'd've remembered if it was me."

TEST DRIVE MEME ( 011 )

am i though......AM i...

u are and i accept that part of u

flatterer

blows kisses

uwu

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