TEST DRIVE MEME ( 015 )

[lifeaftr_mods]

Test Drive Meme #15

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 September 17th, and Applications on September 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.

Drawn to You
The forest is dark, silent but for the snap-buzz of cricket song. Nearby, the soft babble of running water threads its way between the rough-barked trunks, though the origin of said water is difficult, at first, to pinpoint.

Granted, you probably aren't paying much attention to the forest, or the water, or the darkness. You're probably more concerned about the creatures flitting to and fro in sparse groups, most of them quite small. They tend to vary in appearance - some look to be totally benign, while others considerably less so - but all belong to the same species.

Scribblets are wily beasts, dream-haunters by nature, and they seem to revel in the idle torment they inflict upon those who cross their paths. You, dear travelers, are no exception. And while they are quite easily crushed into dust once caught, they are exceedingly slippery, agile creatures that are most difficult to pin down. If you're not careful enough, the scribblets will fasten a peculiar tether to you. It looks very much like it is made of the same materials they, resembling a sketchy line of crayon, drawn into the third dimension. Their intent, tonight, is to tie you to something that will make your life difficult - binding you to a tree trunk or to a branch far above the ground, tying your hands together...or even tying you to someone else. These bonds will only grow progressively denser and heavier the more you struggle against them.

Fortunately, the solution here is very simple. Like any drawing, it can be washed away if you find water. You'd simply better hope that you're able to collaborate with whoever you must in order to access said water, whether it's working alongside whoever you might be tied to, or convincing someone to lend you a hand.

You'd better hope the scribblets don't go after them either, by the way.

Quarantine Breached
Whatever this place once was, nature has long since claimed it for its own. A darkened, secluded laboratory now nearly swallowed by thick snarls of overgrowth is probably not your ideal vacation spot, particularly since there's a dearth of any decent lighting sources here. Drenched in shadow as this place was, it might have been helpful if you had thought to bring a light.

Fortunately, that problem is soon to be solved! Twin smoldering points of light abruptly ignite several yards away from you, paired with the pitched mechanical hum of engaging circuits. Another pair of lights immediately spritzes to life just beside it, and another pair, and another...and another...and...

Well, there seems to be a lot of them, doesn't there? "Attention," chimes a pitched, automated voice, doubtless issuing from one of the many automatons that have begun to stir awake, one by one. "Potential host sighted. Quarantine breached."

You must understand, traveler: the island of Umui was nothing like this. The guardian units there were conscious nurse-bots, charged with caring for the sick and dying populace of a hospice island. Most did so with as much care as they were capable. But in the initial days of Umui's exploration, a great deal of explorers' anxieties revolved around these fallen automatons, and what possible purpose they may have served.

We invite you to imagine a scenario in which this went horribly wrong.

Consider these automatons to be shadowy, overzealous mirrors of their long-dead, real-world equivalents. They have learned to become hyper-devoted to their task of keeping their patients safe; so devoted, it seems, that nothing will stop them from fulfilling those obligations. They intend to catch and sedate you so that you can be...returned...to a place of safety.

Unfortunately, this place of safety probably entails an inescapable four-walled room or a hospital bed, and it's doubtful, to say in the least, that enough of their programming remains for them to remember to care for and feed you once you've been returned to whatever passes for a quarantine zone. In a decrepit, dilapidated building like this, it's probably not pleasant.

Our advice is to simply not get caught. If this means doing some inevitable destruction to all this complex hardware in the process, well...at least there's no chance you'll be billed for damages.

The New Farm Simulator Looks Great!
It is possible that you vaguely recall being asked to take watch this evening. By whom? Oh, please, that doesn't matter! With the pleasant hum of crickets in the air, and a backdrop of paddocks and grain fields around you, there are plenty of worse ways to spend your evening than this. All you have to do is keep an eye on passive livestock. The farmer's life is a simple one, where your biggest problem is trying not to fall asleep before your shift is over.

In theory, anyway. While the scenery of the quiet countryside may be ideal, the state of the farm's buildings and and fences is far from it. For the curious creatures such as popo, there really isn't much to keep them in one place for long, wide stretches of fenceline ruined by fallen sections. Meaning that these massive, shaggy creatures can simply step over the crushed regions and start plowing their way contentedly in the direction of the fields of grain - fields that were certainly not intended to end up in some silly beast's stomach.

For others, sweet grains aren't as appealing as that sweet, sweet taste of freedom. A word of advice: once the popo are over those hills, you won't be seeing them again. And they might not be terribly fast on their own, but in a herd, they can get to be as dangerous as a stampede.

Hope you weren't expecting an easy night, because in LifeAftr, there's no CJB cheats menu to save you.

---

LOGS ● OOC ● STORIES ● MAIN NAVIGATION

Comments

[hyperlit]

[Some part of them acknowledges that this fervent need to do something will inevitably come up against the wall of there being nothing left to do, but the short-term relief in occupying themself with this desperate, frenetic energy outweighs that long-term concern.]

[The dichotomy of what they are about to attempt, compared to what they have tried previously, must be absurd. This squiggle had repelled bombs and swords and all other attempts to sever it. And yet, when they pour carefully over the dark scrawl that looks as though it might have been sketched out by a child's wobbling hand, it almost seems to rinse the dark lines away, as easily as chalk over pavement.]

[Their shock is telegraphed solely by the blink of their eyes.]

better?

[smallkindness]

[Yes, they will run out of things to do but it is something the Guardian will cross when they get there. As best as they are able to.

It is indeed very absurd. The Guardian had fought against many and triumphed against all except for the inevitability of death but now was stopped by a child's doodle. And now something seemingly so strong is being washed away like ink, not even carrying the stubbornness of blood seeped into clothing that refused to come out. It is...strange. Weird, to be more blunt.

The Guardian bends their arm carefully. The limb still feels half asleep but they should be better once they get moving again. Still, they bow their head.]

Yes, thank you.

[Bound to the tree, the Guardian knew they would not be able to get to the water unless someone ran across the drifter. It would have left them stuck in place and at the mercy of whatever hostiles that found them.

The Drifter's aid saved them from that scenario.]

[hyperlit]

[The Guardian picked them off the ground and saved their life and led them to the possibility that they could be devoted to an end goal that was not their own, that they could do as they did and pay their kindness forward.]

[The Drifter washed away some scribbles with some water.]

[They doubt this covers the full extent of their debt.]

hurt?

[HERE IS...WHERE THEY SHOULD START, THEY GUESS.]

[smallkindness]

[It is indeed a good place to start and a far easier one to answer. The possibilities of injuries rather then whatever this is.

The permanence of death for those who were chosen to follow the Jackal was not the same as others. Cut down by others, ripped apart by Judgement...it blends together after a while. But as the Guardian knelt in the ground and hacking up blood in the Barren Hills, they knew their time was up.

And then they woke up.]

No, I'm fine. They just strung me up.

[The Guardian had not been particularly eager to see if the doodles' childish pranks ended there.]

Are you okay too?

[Did the Drifter wake up here too? How long have they been wandering around these forests?]

[hyperlit]

["Okay."]

[To denote physical fitness and wellness. They are "okay," in the general sense. In the sense that they are not immediately injured and that they are not at any risk of dying in the near future. They are, of course, at the risk of dying eventually, because that poison still corrupts their lungs and there is no peaceful way to contradict that. They are "okay," in the general sense, because they can still stand and walk and breathe and fight and think with reasonable clarity and not spend too much time doubled over coughing. They are "okay," in the general sense, because even if their muscles are atrophied and their skin blistered with blood sores and their constitution is so low that several short blows would be enough to completely immobilize them, they can still dash and swing their blade, even if every motion hurts because every motion has always hurt, for longer now than they can remember it not hurting.]

[They are "okay." They would venture.]

yes

[They are not okay.]

[This should not be happening, and yet - it is. It is, in fact, happening, and there is no avoiding it, no steering clear of it, no disregarding it.]

[Except to look at them, directly, and issue it bluntly:]

are you real

[smallkindness]

[It is the "okay" of someone who is not healthy. The Drifter has not been harmed by any creatures that lurk in this forest but that is where it ends. They both are still sick, still waiting for the moment that their heart squeezes and that familiar taste of bile and blood clogs their throat. The Guardian remembers the days far in the past where things were "okay", when they did not need technology to run longer then usual without doubling over and hacking their lungs up in a nearby bush.

(When things were still hard but "okay" because their family was alive.)

The Guardian appreciates the Drifter's blunt question. It became...difficult, eventually, to tell if it truly was their time before they woke up, be it by the Jackal's hand or the end of Judgement's brutal hallucinations. And there truly is no other way to confront this but directly.]

I'd like to think I am. [Fight, for just one more day.] Are you...?

[hyperlit]

[It's a less certain answer than they'd like. It's..incomplete, and indirect, and it does not suit the question that was so. So they stop thinking about it, which is a tactic that is serving them less and less.]

yes

[Even if the Guardian's response has shed a new line of doubt upon that sort of answer, they still respond to the affirmative. Yes. Act as though they are more certain than they actually are.]

forest
dream

[smallkindness]

[It is strange to have to work their mind around this. That after more then a thousand "deaths" at the hands of Judgement and others they would still question the nature of reality when the Guardian's last death had been so very final.

There is a simpler way to confirm if this was real or not but they do not. Some welcome touch, some do not. Now was not the time to ask about it.]

Who's dream is this?

[The Jackal's, the Drifter's or the Guardian's? Or someone else entirely?]

[hyperlit]

[Whose indeed? The Drifter is not in any position to tell. They are not terribly predisposed to meander down the walkways of solipsistic musings, just by default. Their shoulders shift, very slightly, their cloak rippling in the tiniest shrug.]

does it matter

[What else is there to do but...think? But thinking is not their prerogative, not their specialty, not their preferred means of passing the time.]

[So, instead, bluntly, as a counterpoint:]

you were dead