TEST DRIVE MEME ( 012 )

[lifeaftr_mods]

Test Drive Meme #12

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 June 17th, and Applications on June 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.

There Goes the Neighborhood
Today, you're not merely waking up on an island. Oh, no. You're waking up in the world's most perfect suburb, complete with perfectly-trimmed lawns, white picket fences, and a uniformity that borders on the absurd. Not a fleck of paint is out of place, and not a blade of grass is out of line.

Mu has attempted to imitate the sort of fabricated happiness that adventurers dealt with in the month of May, but without the full power to shape fantasies to the whims of each individuals, has opted instead to attempt for a blanket, painfully generic alternative. It's a cheap attempt to mimic something that was already a falsehood to begin with, rote and uncommitted. Thus, much of this world is patchworked with palpable holes, both visible and otherwise: neighbors are featureless specters performing daily routines with robotic precision, entire swathes of the neighborhood are perfect replicas of the same painfully generic family, and, of course, there's you.

You obviously don't belong here. The framework of the narrative is so structured that it's not hard to realize things are amiss. The more you think about it, the more it seems like this entire fantasy is deeply, deeply amiss.

But then again, maybe not. Maybe you buy into it, completely and utterly. Maybe you're so eager to escape whatever life you lived prior to this one that you're all too eager to live in this Stepford-esque facsimile. The degree to which your character adheres to this structured world, and how much they remember from their true life, is up to you.

Do it for the Vine
This next scenario is far from pleasant, though it is much more real. The thick, tropical woodland might be difficult to traverse at first, but don't worry - it's about to get much harder. Do you like earthquakes? How about massive, twisting vines that swarm out from the undergrowth to attempt to snake up around your ankles and shins and root you in place, perhaps smother you in the dirt? Isn't it fortunate that you're being left to contend with both at once? Mu is compensating for the events of May, it seems; commemorating a god whose demise tore an island apart by mimicking with precision efficiency how that must have felt for everyone to bear dramatic witness.

The good news is that while the vines might be both eerily cunning and vast in number, they still are just plants, and plants can be easily pruned or burned. The subterranean rumbles of the ground as it cracks and ruptures underfoot might be less easy to contend with.

To that, our only suggest is simply to run. Good luck!

Taken for Granite
This particular brand of landscape is striped with cliffs and crags, a lifeless mountain range crooked along the horizon with rock the color of fired clay. And not far off from where you've stirred awake is...a rather eccentric rock formation.

By "eccentric", of course, we mean "moving". And by "moving" we mean "it is extricating itself from the ground like some unholy tectonic zombie and it's coming right at you RUN".

Formed entirely from an amalgamation of earth, rocks, ore, and valuable gems, the earth golem is surprisingly territorial for a glorified lump of mud. Approximately fifteen feet tall and half as wide, this lumbering creature has only one concern: the eradication of anything that steps into its territory. It is sensitive to vibrations in the ground, and is thus very difficult to hide from for those moving on foot. However, it is nearly blind and very stupid, preferring to wallop anything within reach using its massive, boulder-sized fists rather than employ any sort of strategy. Still, unless you're looking to travel to the other side of the area via the Golem Express, avoiding this creature's warpath may be a wise choice. Especially given its talent at re-assembling itself upon destruction.

---

LOGS ● OOC ● STORIES ● MAIN NAVIGATION

Comments

[postictal]

[I’ve never met anyone who made me feel like I was being x-rayed until I got on your bad side.]

[Only he didn’t, really. It wasn’t undeserved. It made sense and he knows that, he just - he’s not sure how to deal, when he’s the guy that knows something that Sans doesn’t. That’s not how this story is supposed to go. That’s not how conversations with Sans work.]

[Tim shrugs. Rolls his shoulders underneath the heat of the artificial sunshine.]

Sans the skeleton. You love bad jokes and your brother and doing as little as possible.

[You handed them the keys to end it all and didn’t even remember it.]

I met you, once.

[I knew you, inasmuch as anyone says they “know” you.]

I guess it doesn’t matter, if you don’t remember.

[skelepun]

["Once" was such a funny word.]

Huh.

[His rictus remained perfectly wide as he slowly released his grip on the strange man's hand. Casual, as always. After all, this guy had him pegged.

As little as possible.]

Welp, looks like this convo's a little lopsided. You know my name, I should probably get yours, huh?

[postictal]

[By contrast, Tim doesn’t smile at all. He’s probably the most unsmiling guy he knows - but he’s also intimately familiar with the notion that people who smile constantly don’t necessarily do so because they’re happy.]

[He crams his hands in his pockets. Telegraphs with hunched shoulders and fleeting eye contact that this isn’t his idea of a good first impression either.]

Tim. I’m...I guess this is kinda weird.

[Almost says it: “sorry.”]

[Almost. Doesn’t.]

[skelepun]

For which one of us, y'think?

[It's a question asked with breezy, almost academic curiosity. Like trying to suss out which of two pies tasted best. Sure, this one knew the past and future, but this one had more cinnamon. Tough call.

Sans mirrors his posture a beat after Tim adopts his guarded stance, though with considerably less anxiety. The hands stuffed in his pockets weren't clenched, his shoulders weren't tight, and his eyelights remained fixed on Tim himself.]

You wanna go for a walk, Tim?

[postictal]

[He has the advantage here, it's true. He has the foothold, the benefit of knowing something of Sans the skeleton by simple past experience. Knows that he has a good memory, where Tim's is full of holes. Knows that he has a stare like inverse searchlights, black and yawning and picking straight into the core of him.]

[Knows that there's no real choice, no real answer to this question that counts in his favor besides the obvious.]

I guess it's good weather for it. [He lets his gaze drift, brief and resigned, in implicit acquiescence. Adds, slightly wry:] Birds are singing.

[Flowers are blooming.]

[Perfect weather for a game of catch. Don't you think?]

[skelepun]

[It isn't missed, but Sans doesn't call attention to it, either. He turns, as if Tim really was just commenting on the birds. Just another of the cookie cutter pleasantries he'd heard since waking up here.]

Are you sure they're not just piping that in? Sounds a little 'The Entertainer' to me, pal. [To his "ear," anyway. He waves for Tim to follow, starting down the middle of the road. Sure there were cars, but hey. People didn't get run down in paradise.]

Anyone else you know around here, or am I just special?

[postictal]

I've been here for...

[He has to stop to count. Ticks it off on his fingers, and eventually abandons the effort as he starts to follow. He's never played any of those shitty simulator games, those haphazardly coded, textureless nightmares of poor collision physics and endless draw distance, but that's the general sense of unreality that he's getting right now.]

[The roads are perfectly paved, and every house is the same. He walks.]

Almost a year now, I guess. Not here, but...the here this place is attached to. People come and go a whole lot.

[skelepun]

[At the mnetion of this place, Sans shifts slightly to get a better view of Tim's face.

The curiosity in his voice is distant at best, but undeniable all the same.]

So this is just one part of a bigger thing, huh? Is it all as thrilling as this, or should I manage my expectations?

[postictal]

Way bigger.

[A grim nod, a set jaw, and - and it's hard to look at him. It's hard to look at him, in the way that it's hard to look at most people, but him - him especially, in some ways.]

[Try not to forget that it's not judgment. Not yet.]

This place is an island. Doesn't look like it, but it's...like, a dream island, kind of.

rides the phone tag typo express

[skelepun]

And everything's on the one island or are we talking archepelago?

[He hops a curb, catching sight of a small park with an appropriately small bench. Sans makes a B-line for it.]

Gotta tell ya, I'm hoping for an Archie situation. I could do some good work with all those syllables.

TO HELL

[postictal]

Archipelago, I guess. Except the islands appear and disappear, and some of them have gods on them, and some of those gods really don't like us.

[Does he sound bitter? That's the bitterness, seeping in.]

And, yeah, gods are real. Hope that's not a game-changer.

that's where my house is

[skelepun]

Archipelagods, you mean.

[Sans smiles a little broader. Yep. Some good work, alright.]

Are they the type to make a lot of prophecies or just mess around with ya? [While not fully cognizant of the details, he'd had some dealings with both.] I ask 'cuz the former usually has a goal in mind, at least.

second star to the left of memory lane

[postictal]

Neither, technically. They just don’t like people like us staying on their turf.

[If he were the type of person to smile, he might’ve cracked a vague grin at that. A pity that he simply shifts on the spot, a solemn acknowledgement of the joke paired with a potentially palpable uncertainty as to how best to communicate said acknowledgement.]

[In the end, he simply steers past it.]

I guess you could say they don’t care for anomalies.

[skelepun]

[Uncertainty wasn't a laugh, no, but it wasn't apathy either. The guy was sketchy as all hell, but nobody radiating that much anxiety could ever be confused with not caring.

That provided some security, despite the writing already on the wall. People who cared, even in small ways, could usually be counted on to transfer that care to their actions. It'd have to do for now.

Something Sans is grateful to keep in mind once Tim starts dropping words like that. It was too exacting to be coincidence.]

And that's what we are, you mean? Seems to me like something or someone had to bring us here first.

There's your anomaly.

[postictal]

In theory. But we don’t know what.

[He fingers the square of his lighter in his pocket. What the hell do you think you’re doing, Timothy? You some kind of idiot, showing your hand this early in the game? Like some kind of amateur? What kind of fucking liar can’t maintain tactical silence for one minute, could set fire to this entire line of fake houses and watch them go up like radioactive beacons you fucking maniac - ]

[Breathe.]

[Uncurl fists in your pockets. Keep walking. It’s already obvious what you are, so don’t forget: unreliable narrator.]

But we’re the ones who don’t belong.

[skelepun]

I guess we're not. [He shrugs past a family of white bread people with white bread smiles, giving Tim a Look in response.] Could be worse. We could belong here.

[He gives the kid a once over, trying to make heads or tails of his peculiar behavior. He knew more than Sans did, which meant he was useful, but the erratic anxiousness was rapidly setting Sans' teeth on edge. He was spending an awful lot or time with his back to Tim for a guy who seemed deeply unhappy to be here on this walk with him.

When they arrived at the bench, Sans takes a seat and gestures to the empty space beside him.]

You, uh. You wanna take a load off man?

[postictal]

[To be fair, Tim isn't a generally happy fellow. A guy who never smiles and a guy who never stops smiling. Aren't they a pair?]

[Weren't they ever.]

[He takes the time to survey the bench briefly, wonder at whether it's actually a choice or merely being presented as one, before finally acquiescing to sink into the seat beside him. Everything from the downward tilt to his chin to the slope of his shoulders communicates weariness, but there's too much tension clenching his frame to suggest anything but nerves.]

I'm not good at this. The whole...introduction thing.

[skelepun]

[Sans doesn't stare at Tim while he sits. In close proximity to another person, there were plenty of less direct ways to observe someone. The way someone breathes, their pulse, the angle of their shoulders. These were things that could be felt as much as they could be seen.

Running a hand over his skull, Sans leans against the far armrest.]

I mean, technically, we've already been introduced, right? I'm just lagging behind. [He elbows Tim gently, in a way he hopes reads as genuine.] You don't have to take it all on yourself, pal.

[postictal]

[Tim goes rigid immediately at the touch, taut and involuntary and - you can't just be fucking normal for two seconds always have to make it a fucking trial always have to make a goddamn scene out of it just calm down just relax just just just ]

[Breathe.]

[Exhale. It's fine. He's fine.]

I just don't expect you to not...know.

[It's Sans. He holds...maybe not all the cards, but he holds cards, obscure ones, ones you wouldn't think he has, when he'd rather flash a joker and act like that's all he's got.]