TEST DRIVE #002

[reveriemod]

TEST DRIVE #002

( 0 0 1 ) » WAKE UP

Were you asleep or were you unconscious? It doesn't matter: when you come to, there's an odd taste in your mouth and there's a low-level mechanical hum in the air. Your head hurts and you feel nauseous. You aren't anywhere you know: everything around you is metal, from the floor you lie on all the way to the ceiling. You are dressed in a jumpsuit you definitely weren't wearing before.

"We tried to save the world. I think— I think we did the opposite."

The message repeats on a loop. If you look for its source, you find a comms device on the floor next to you. The logo on its wallpaper says REVERIE TERMINAL. Upon closer inspection, you find the same logo on your jumpsuit.

Welcome to your new home. What choice do you have but to explore your surroundings?

( 0 0 1 . 1 ) » WAKE UP WHERE?

When you wake up, you find that you're not alone. But more importantly, you find that you're in a closet. An empty closet, bar you and your new companion. It's small, cramped, and there is no door that you can see. The ceiling is low, there is barely any lights, only some coming from the tiny flashlight clipped to your suit's shoulder. You cannot be sure that there is any air coming in to the room.

Are these grooves in the wall supposed to mean something?

( 0 0 2 ) » OBSERVATION DECK

There were no windows in the corridor you woke up in and no windows in any of the crew quarters you might have checked for occupants — but there are plenty of windows on the uppermost level of the station, deck 1. In fact, there are windows from floor to ceiling all along the circumference of the station's circular deck, and it's possible to walk along it all. What it shows is a strange solar system you've never seen before and a planet that might resemble one you know, but certainly isn't the same.

You're in space. You don't know where you are. Neither does anyone else.

( 0 0 3 ) » BAR

On deck 3, you find the bar. Tucked away from the crew quarters, it's dimly lit, there are bar stools thrown down on the floor and what looks like some very old drink spills, crusty and dark against the bar top. But there is alcohol here, or at least, what you think is alcohol, in bottles with faded labels, most of them indecipherable. Take a drink, get drunk, start a fight, or start a party? You're stuck on this station, might as well make the most of it, right?

( 0 0 4 ) » SPACEQUAKES

One second, you are is walking. Magnetic boots are on, the ground feels solid enough, for a metal deck in a space station. Everything is perfectly fine, or at least as fine as it can be, given that you still don't know where you are or how you came to be here.

The next moment, it's like everything explodes around you. You're thrown against the wall as sparks erupts from electrical panels, as the whole station rumbles and shakes around you. You fall to the deck, earning yourself scratches from the grating. When you look up, it's like nothing has happened. No wires hanging from open panels, no flickering lights, no more shaking. Like an earthquake in space.

( 0 0 5 ) » NETWORK

The comms device you found next to you when waking up connects to a station-wide network, REVERIE NET. You have the option to post video, voice or text messages.

What will you share?

( 0 0 6 ) » WILDCARD

The station features a variety of locations, from sleeping quarters free for the claiming to a dirty swimming pool and a bar that still holds alcohol (though some of the bottles seem to have been opened a while ago).

Go wild, but don't wreck the place. It's your home for the foreseeable future, after all.

Comments

Curtis Everett } Snowpiercer

[tailsections]

( 001 WAKE UP )

( Curtis screams. He screams and he screams. He thinks that his voice is going to give out but he keeps screaming because there has never been pain like this. But, there's also never been satisfaction. Contentment.

This should have happened a long time ago. When Curtis closes his eyes, he waits for the pain to stop. He waits for the light to stop. Most importantly, he waits for the train to stop.

He closes his eyes. He waits.

He opens his eyes to the quiet. The train is gone. Beneath him is a floor so smooth and so clean that Curtis can't stop himself from falling to his knees and feeling it with the arm that's still intact.

His other arm is useless. A bloody mess of bone and muscle. Blood.

But, he is not dead. He is not dead. )

Hello?

( His voice is rough and scratchy from the screaming. It works though. So do his feet. Curtis moves, eyes scanning everything, everywhere. He's dead. He has to be dead. He's not dead. Maybe he was saved.

No, he's dead. There's no other option. )

( 002 OBSERVATION DECK )

( Is there anything more beautiful than what Curtis is looking at right now? The stars aren't all that bright but Curtis still has to take breaks from staring. For so long (too long, god, it had been so long), all he'd done was stare at the grimy sides of the train.

But now, stars. There were stars. There was an actual sky with stars. Stars that weren't blotted out by the harshness of winter or the necessity of the train.

Curtis raises a hand to the glass and starts connecting the stars. He doesn't want to stop looking. Ever. )

( 004 SPACEQUAKES )

( Curtis is alive. It's taken awhile to be fully convinced of that fact but there is no way that the pain he'd just felt from being flung across the deck and into the hard wall would happen if he were dead. )

Right into the good arm. Of course. Fucking bad luck.

( Curtis levers himself to his feet, expecting to see a mess to clean up but there's nothing. The floor is still clean, the walls intact, the area undisturbed. )

What the hell.

( That wasn't right. Something wasn't right. )

( 005 NETWORK )

UN: EVERETT

can anyone see this? am i doing this right?

what do people use this for? are there really that many people here to need it?

[mirrortide]

Don't look at Lapis, it's not her using her hydrokinises. She's innocent here, for a change.

"No clue. I was asleep on my hammock and then I was suddenly here? I don't even know what part of the universe this is in. It's not a star system I've seen before."

[donkeyballs]

Yeah, well, neither was hearin' that no one here's even heard of the Martian colonies. So I feel you on that.

I'm guessin' you've never been to space then either, right?

[charlieoscar]

[Martian. Colonies. It felt something like he imagined having a stroke did For a second he could swear he tasted burnt pennies.]

Can't say as I have. [He thinks of the little blue girl - Lapis, Not A Rock - and adds--] We had a space program, and Mars was El Dorado, but it all got mothballed after the virus hit.

[donkeyballs]

Virus? What kind of virus?

[bombshelled]

a human can be fucked up, messed in the head, and wrong
but "defective" makes it sound like they were put together in a factory.

products are defective. people aren't defective.

[mirrortide]

wrong and defective are the same thing arent they

[charlieoscar]

He's silent for a long beat, his gaze distant as he runs some mental calculations. He's not buying it - not entirely, he can't - but neither can he just stand there, thumb up his ass.

The Nostos, or whatever it was, would wear off eventually, hopefully, and in the meantime, his men were probably looking for him and he needed to put himself into a position to be found.

(And if it didn't... he'd cross that bridge when he got to it.)

Decision made, he refocuses on her.

"Have you seen anyone else? Or anywhere--" he gestures slightly to the room they're in, "--else? Anything that might tell us anything else?"

[bombshelled]

it's the fucking
idk
WORD CHOICE

they mean similar stuff but you don't use them for the same things.

[ The words she's looking for are "synonym" and "interchangeable," but she only barely pays attention in school so what does she know? ]

[charlieoscar]

[A beat.]

The Red Flu. Then the Red Rust.

Don't worry, I've had my shots.

[mirrortide]

theyre the same thing for us gems so i dont really get it but whatever

wrong

you have a wrong sense of humour

is that better

[donkeyballs]

I ain't worried.

I ain't even heard of it. But that doesn't mean much - my history ain't all that great.

[bombshelled]

idk what you mean, "gem"

maybe
or maybe your joke is just really shitty.

[mirrortide]

it means im a gem duh

no way everyone loves my jokes

[false. only peridot loves her jokes, and occasionally, amethyst.]

[marineris]

bitching about MREs is a good start. what year are you from?

[charlieoscar]

[It catches him a bit off guard, seeing it so casually disregarded. Sure, someday it would be, if the world managed to keep chugging along for length of time, that was history for you, but he'd never thought he'd be alive to see it. Someone not brought still, if even only for a moment, by the sheer weight of its name and the things it had done. Had taken.]

Lucky you.

Sounds like you might think we share a history? You're from the future?

[It took a lot to type it.]

[bombshelled]

what, like a ruby, diamond, that kind of gem?

sorry to break it to you, but
your joke sucks.

[charlieoscar]

[Here, he pauses. The last time he'd talked things like dates with someone he'd been left with one hell of a headache and enough existential dread for a couple lifetimes.]

2016.

[donkeyballs]

2350

And possibly. Can't say for sure. Met a couple people here that were from the early 21st century and they'd already met aliens - which sure as hell didn't happen back home.

So, uh. There might be parallel universes.

I'm making this worse, aren't I?

un: gallowsCalibrator

[iustitia]

COM3 1N!

[charlieoscar]

[The burnt penny taste was back.]

300 years. Aliens. Literal ghost ships. Parallel universes.

No, it's fine.

[mirrortide]

obviously im a lapis lazuli

have you considered that you suck

im already crying

[mirrortide]

thats not how the joke goes

[marineris]

we're a couple centuries off, then.
don't worry, apparently that's normal around here.

[donkeyballs]

It ain't, but you'll find you get used to it quick.

There's a reason I told you where the bar was.