aftr_ooc | TEST DRIVE MEME ( 015 )

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*test drive meme

TEST DRIVE MEME ( 015 )

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

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[LIke a shot of ice from head to his spine, a fresh inflorescence of pain spidering out from the nerves clustered at the back of his neck, uncoiling until they press up against the backs of his lids when he blinks, dense like a migraine. In his head. He remembers. He - ]

[What is it that spools up in his guts, clenches like some writhing, squirming thing? Disgust, maybe.]

[Or maybe the taste of blood, from where his teeth have dug into his tongue.]

Feeling's mutual.

[Ignore it.]

[Focus, instead, on kicking over a table and bracing one shoulder against it to push it toward the door, to assist in the makeshift barricade.]

[Church can't ignore his feelings. Literally, he can't. His ability to regulate anything he feels disintegrated with his sanity, with every piece of himself surgically removed.

He does not remember this. He does not remember why he feels everything so strongly, so on the surface of things. Only that he does, and that he's learned to shove a lot of those intense feelings in the direction of anger. No wonder Omega in his head felt right at home. He's spent so much time being angry because that was comfortable. Safer.

Getting his feelings out by exerting effort and strength such that he doesn't have the power to feel much will only work for a short while. It's enough for now. Because he doesn't know how he feels.

About what happened. About Washington. Everything happened so fast, and then it was over, and then he was here. Whatever he feels, he feels it a lot, but he can't do anything about it right now.

Except make a lot of noise scraping things along. Looking for another exit. Helping Wash barricade, as Wash helped him not be dismantled or stunned or whatever the fuck these things would have done. They're not enemies, they're just...

Complicated. It's always complicated. Just like Tex.]

[Time and space should have allowed him to be more at peace with it: with what he did, and what he asked Church to do, with what Church agreed to do. In theory, it's something he learned to live with. Mostly it's just something he doesn't think about, because thinking about it would imply some form of closure.]

[So it leaves them like this: piling up old, broken furniture in front of a door so they don't get swarmed by robotic things that look like the automatons on Umui if they were developed in the complete opposite direction of where they actually ended up.]

Church, [he says, because it's what C.T. would want him to call him,] what's the last thing you...remember?

You know what the last thing I--

[His teeth clack shut. Or they would if he had teeth. The effect is the same, cutting off the swell of anger that he's not sure is deserved, or, maybe it's fully deserved and then some, but he can't be mad about something he agreed to do, right? That's on him.

Apparently it was always on him. Everything. Every single fucking thing that ever happened in that canyon, and to the Freelancers.

If Wash was right.

He leans his back against a wall and slides down, elbows on knees. Door's not going anywhere.]

So we're doing this, huh? The last thing I remember is a bright white light coming for my ass. And the rest of the AI. All the AI except for Epsilon. The Meta was losing what was left of his shit. You were bleeding and dying. That's what I remember.

[Don't ask the details. He remembers them too clearly, too vividly, and he's pretty sure if he thinks about the details, he's going to start screaming. Alpha. Alpha. We missed you. Don't.]

[That's what he thought.]

[A thousand and one explanations stacked up against each other - justifications, responses, unhelpful fucking asides like Caboose could never really replace you except for the times when he did. Epsilon simply became a different iteration, and then, later, he'd start calling a busted-up Freelancer agent Church because it was easier than thinking about the possibility that Church might not ever come back, said Freelancer's personal identity issues in relation to that name be damned.]

[If he doesn't get the opportunity to again, he might as well take it here and now.]

[Do something right, after doing everything, everything, so completely and utterly and absolutely wrong.]

I'm sorry, Church.

[His head snaps up at that. The Wash he knew was gruff, just this side of crazy, and willing to do whatever it took to get the job done, whatever the job was. So an apology, with an unexpected side of softness and sincerity doesn't fit that worldview.

He stares. Whatever he was expecting out of this, that wasn't it.] You're--

I-I mean you--you're sorry.

...Why?

Because I guilted you into doing something with no sure end result, and it didn't even work.

[Because C.T. missed you. Because Caboose missed you.]

[Because, Agent Washington, you're so eager to view yourself as acceptable collateral in your own plans that it doesn't occur to you that other people might not feel the same.]

[There's probably a more elegant, tactful, and respectful way to put that! There are probably kinder ways of framing the fact that his heroic sacrifice didn't do anything it was supposed to, even if, in the end, it proved to be essentially pivotal in getting things to a state where they could be torn apart they he meant them to.]

[Most things, anyway.]

You didn't...guilt me. [But he trails off, because...he did. That's part of it, that's part of why he is angry, even if the fire is dying down, or has yet to really build up yet, he's not sure. That's part of Why You Hate Agent Washington, but he's never hated Wash save for that he's a Freelancer, and--

And it was guilting, wasn't it? Needling at him. Picking at his insecurities. God damn deliberately. If I'm right, if Wash is right.

And maybe Was was wrong.]

What do you mean? What do you mean it didn't work? What--Wash, what's the last thing you remember?

Mostly you, dying again. Epsilon, this time.

[Congratulations, Church. This is your legacy. Dying in the effort to save people you claim to hate. Claim to - a difficulty when you're talking to the one person who has every memory of just how easily they broke you by telling you which agent died because of your mechanical, computational error this time.]

Well, it didn't...not work. It just took some time.

[Years of it. Plus or minus a villain arc.]

I'm not Epsilon. [Harsh and sharp. With no room for doubt or error.] That tin can isn't me! Which the fuck is is, Wash, am I Church, or am I Epsilon, or am I-- [It hurts like acid climbing up his throat.] Alpha?

It wasn't you. It was a different you. It's...

[Should've kept your fucking mouth shut, shouldn't you? Should've known when to leave them be. Someone should have locked you in the cell and swallowed the key - ]

Church, the last thing I remember is from years after that.

...You're supposed to be dead.

[It's not even an accusation, or a threat, and while it's angry, it's just...a statement of fact. Confusion, but fact.]

That was the plan. I wanted to find out for sure what--what I was, and you wanted to take care of your buddy the Meta, and we wanted to give the guys time to take Epsilon and get it somewhere safe, and neither one of us was supposed to get out of that alive, Wash. That was the plan. How do you fuck up something like dying?

Y'know, if you're not me, who can't die.

It was the plan. I thought it was...going to be.

[One hand up against the golden shielding of his visor. Wants to bury his face in his hands. Wants to rake his hands through his hair. Wants to ascertain the structure of the bones in his face and the lids on his eyes and the feel of the keloid braille texturing the back of his neck, assure himself that it's him, that it's him, that's not him.]

[Doesn't.]

It's just that none of it went according to plan.

Welcome to every day of my god damn life.

[His helmet thunks back against the wall. Then does so a few more times. Was it all for nothing? Did he go along with some idiotic, suicidal plan for nothing?]

What about the guys? Did they make it out, too?

Did-- [Did I? Unfinished, unspoken. No. Of course he didn't. Not the motherfucking ghost. All those other deaths were just practice for the real deal, wasn't it?

Then how are they here?]

They made it out. They were all...fine.

[Until he got to them. Until he let disappointment eat into the roof of his mouth and curl barbed wire up in his guts and those morons couldn't even do the one thing, the one thing he asked them to do.]

Except they didn't turn in the Epsilon unit. Caboose took it to try and...rebuild his memory of you, I guess. The UNSC caught up to me in time to keep me alive.

[Because with all those memories stored in his head, who wouldn't want to get their hands on that kind of real estate?]

Jesus, that's what happens when you put Caboose in charge of anything. Oh, man, did--did he try to convince Epsilon it was his best friend? Probably left Tucker out completely.

So nothing even got done. Everything we did--everything we--I--of course the plan would get fucked up. Nothing ever goes to plan. You know that by now. Why the fuck did I ever let you talk me into something that was obviously gonna fail, because we can't get a fucking win to save our asses.

[Let him go off for a while. Let him ramble. It buys time to think about what to say next. They used Epsilon to replace you, and then they used Washington himself to replace Epsilon, and then...]

[Where do you even start?]

You're here now, aren't you?

I don't even know what that means. We're dead but this is supposed to convince me we're not?

Wash, neither of us knows how we got here, and none of this makes sense, and none of this...feels...right. I don't know what being here now even means if I don't know where 'here' is and I don't know when 'now' is!

I know where I am. I just don't know where you are. If that makes any sense.

[It probably doesn't. Cryptic motherfucker. Stop being cryptic, motherfucker.]

A couple months ago, I wake up on these...islands. And sometimes stuff like this happens on them. Dreams where you end up in someone else's head. [But he's spent enough time in other people's heads to be used to it. To not find it as inherently bizarre as, maybe, he should.]

You're not in my head, what the fuck are you talking about!

[He's back on his feet, hands wild, because none of this makes sense, and Wash, for all his apologizing and truth-telling, is still Wash, to the point and cryptic and seriously messed up.]

I wouldn't dream about a place like this, and you can't get into anyone's head, and unless I'm in your head, then this place! Is just! Bullshit! And you're bullshit! Am I dead? I'm just literally dead, aren't I? I literally died for nothing because you had a stupid fucking vendetta that I didn't even want a part of! And now I'm in your stupid fucking purgatory hellscape dreamworld!

Calm down.

[He snaps it with less alacrity than the situation maybe warrants, but he has no idea if these things hunt by sound and he doesn't want to find out.]

I don't know how to explain this in a way that makes sense, okay? I went in there with three things that needed doing, and I didn't end up doing any of them, and I didn't even begin to start figuring out why until years after.

You took care of all the AI, that's something you did. All the AI that didn't remember, so they couldn't prove anything. All the ones who weren't the key.

[He stomps across the room, away from Wash. See, now he's thinking about it. He doesn't want to. He doesn't want to think about being the Alpha, because if he does, then he has to think about everything he was told about the Alpha, and all the things that implies, and the tightness in his chest is bound to just implode him until he's nothing. Because he's a shell. Something that was whole and now is not and now will never be again.]

I should scout ahead. [He says it, growls it really, to the wall.] They can't catch what they can't physically hold onto, right? Can't catch a ghost.

[Took care of the A.I. Not the Meta. The Meta would linger, and he'd order around the pulverized shell of his best friend until the day on Sidewinder when he came up against the barrier of his own assumptions, the default-baseline of instinct that was really, really, really, really fucking stupid when it came down to it. As if any part of him still existed in there, as if the Meta would have been easy to stop just by wiping all the computers from their head, as if there was any part of Maine still in there - ]

[The exhaustion is evident in the slow incline of his helmet, the slump of his shoulders. The way he looks away.]

...sure. Just...be careful.

[Don't get yourself killed like I did, right?]

What do you care, anyway?

[The body goes very still, though the fingers are still curled, head still angled down. With a flicker of light, Church, the ghost, makes himself appear, hovering in midair.]

Don't tell me I'm the one doing the guilting this time. You got out alive, whether you liked it or not, and got rid of me. I caused all of this, didn't I?

[He wishes he could shove the words back into his mouth, or vocal processor, or whatever he has. He hangs there awkwardly, just as the moment does, his phantom form giving a flicker of anxiety. And then he disappears through one of the solid walls.

Definitely not running away or anything.

He still wants his body after all.]

Because it's like you said. I dragged you into my vendetta. You didn't have any reason to believe me, or...

[Was that complacency on his part? Or just the calm self-assurance that none of it would ever be a problem? That he wouldn't have to think about apologies or forgivenesses?]

[Three things. Three things, three things, three things. Bring down Freelancer. Bring down the Meta. Die with his name clear.]

So I guess I owe you.

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TEST DRIVE MEME ( 015 )

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