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

river song ( doctor who )

[retrorsum]

( SPACEQUAKES )

( considering how the doctor flies getting thrown around is not a new sensation. she moves to duck from the sparks, the next shake throwing her more off balance than it should have with her crashing to the floor.

river stays on the floor for a few moments, waiting for the quakes to subside. when she looks up, expecting to see open panels and loose wires, river's surprised -- there's no damage. if she hadn't been thrown to the floor, feeling the graze from the impact, she would have thought that she'd imagined it )

How very curious.

( she's pushing herself up to standing again, examining one of the panels that she'd thought she'd seen spark )

Some kind of gravity malfunction, though that wouldn't have caused the damage. A temporal event?

( she's musing aloud to herself, and anyone else that may be nearby )

( NETWORK | username: sweetie )

This place certainly is the mystery, isn't it? Locked doors and ominous voices, however is a girl to resist?

I have just one question. What is the one thing that feels strangest in this experience? Out of everything that's happened one thing surely stands out the most. And that could be very interesting.

( WILDCARD )

( throw something else at me, lets go wild )

spacequakes.

[oddbod]

[You're dead, is the first thing Clara thinks when she comes around the corner. A ridiculous, hypocritical thought, because so is she, and so is Jim, and so are a lot of people on this station, apparently. Life and time mean very little here.]

We had a gravity malfunction awhile ago. It wasn't like that.

[She doesn't assume familiarity - they met just once, after all, and psychically at that. It's most likely, she thinks, that this is a living, breathing River Song, one who never met Clara through a post-death projection.]

[retrorsum]

How long ago?

( clara's second thought is definitely right. this is a point much earlier in river's time stream, how long she won't reveal (honestly, she stopped counting a long time ago) but whatever has now happened to her is interesting.

and frustrating. changing her clothes, taking her vortex manipulator? very rude and that wasn't the strangest part of all of this )

I take it that it was repaired?

[oddbod]

A month or so. And you'd know if it hadn't. Most of us have got magboots- [She gestures down to the heavy shoes beneath her cuffed jumpsuit.] -but they don't stop your hair from trying to float away.

[There's the slightest bit of amusement to the recollection, deliberately inserted to hide the growing tension in her chest. River. River Song, her best friend's dead wife. One of the ghosts she could never quite measure up to (though she'd stopped hoping to, after awhile). Clara feels twenty-four again, small and insecure, both awed and threatened.]

I'm Clara. Clara Oswald.

[retrorsum]

( well, she supposes she's tying her hair up permanently for the foreseeable future. her hair was wild enough, as much as she loved it, without it floating away.

she turns from the panel, offering clara a small smile with her greeting, hand offered )

Professor River Song. So, considering that we're not floating away-- ( she had magboots but hadn't switched them on, and her hair was still by her head ) --how about a different theory? Something altering our perception, happening in another time-- ringing any bells?

( if anything else had happened before, or she'd managed to find someone that was actually informed about time and space. that so rarely happened )

[oddbod]

[She steps closer to River to return the formality.]

Could be either, I suppose. This place has been known to get in people's heads.

[Group hallucinations. It's a bit like Woodstock.]

Been known to mess with time, too. [She pauses for a moment - considering - and something like determination sparks in her eye.] ... The fact that you don't remember me is proof enough of that.

[retrorsum]

( as good as river is at keeping her face in check, you don't get to become spoiler queen without having a damn good poker face, there's decisiveness in her expression. thought, curiosity, and god if she doesn't feel a tiny bit frustrated at someone knowing something about her and not knowing them back. is this how the doctor had felt every time she uttered that one word? )

Now that is interesting. ( and she has no idea how to respond to it. that's a lie, she does, but damn if the rules aren't horrible ) As much as I'd love to know how and when we meet it might be safer if you didn't tell me too much.

( did she dare ask if this was someone the doctor knew or someone she'd met at another point? it would seem, for the moment, that she didn't )

So, removing people from different points in our time streams, the story of my life. You've been here at least one month, hopefully not alone in all of that time?

[oddbod]

[Clara smiles, a crooked, knowing thing, then reaches up and makes the common gesture for, My lips are sealed. She tosses the invisible key over her shoulder.]

Almost four, by now. And I haven't - there are close to a hundred of us.

[Not that that really means much, insofar as being alone.]

[retrorsum]

( river smiles again. clever girl. her information is good too, helping her to build a better picture of what was going on though there were still too many gaps. she didnt like gaps )

Sizeable number. Would I be right to assume that they would tell a similar story to you? ( at least in terms of being plucked from home. god forbid if they all somehow knew her ) If so-- who is doing this? A cry for help from the message, one clearly sent too late.

( she pauses, mentally pulling everything together that she knew so far, seeing if there was some familiarity to anything that she'd heard before )

[oddbod]

[Clara nods. Get ready to mind a lot more gaps than this, Dr. Song.]

There are only guesses.

[It's said a bit apologetically. Deeper down, Clara almost feels embarrassment at the fact that she doesn't have any more answers, after all these months. The Doctor would have solved it. The Doctor would have busted everyone else out ages ago, but she hasn't solve a single thing.]

The station was clearly designed for a human crew, but it looked abandoned when we woke up here. No signs of recent life. [She thinks of a coffee cup on a desk, a book on a duvet. It had called up thoughts of nuclear fallout, at the time - pictures of the playgrounds and classrooms and sidewalks stopped still in Pripyat, as though they could burst back into motion at any second, were it not for the slow decay creeping over them.] Most of it's still blocked off. I think whoever's pulling the strings is still on board, somewhere, messing with us.

[retrorsum]

A reasonable assumption.

( it was certainly easier to mess with people when you were still there, or very close nearby. without access they wouldn't be able to scan and determine just that.

oh well, they hadn't been able to at least. she was going to give this one hell of a try, see what she could pull out. starting with-- )

What makes you think it's designed only for humans?

( curiosity over judgement. she wanted to think that clara had seen something to give her that conclusion rather than it coming from a human perspective. she seemed more switched on than most )

[oddbod]

[She anticipates the question. After all, the Doctor has needled her enough for being "Earth-centric" during their travels; she doesn't want to offend anyone, least of all River.

(She also doesn't want to come across as anything less than razor sharp and extraordinarily intelligent).]

See enough planets, meet enough people, and you start to realize how to tell the difference. It's in the details. The contents of the first aid kids, the equipment in the gym, the coffee cup left in the control room - they might not be exclusively human needs, but they all add up to someone with a hell of a lot of biological similarities.

[retrorsum]

( it pulls another brief smile from her. good answer, one that also answered that unasked question of river's. sure she could be a time traveller in her own right but something felt very 21st century about her. one of the doctor's friends, then )

Can you take me to that control room? If there's anything to see that's usually where it'll be.

( she doesn't doubt that clara's looked, and maybe others here were also familiar with space travel, but one more set of eyes with a different set of experiences might spit something else. at least it's a new mind to bounce theories off and river feels like clara will be good to do that with )

[oddbod]

Yeah, it's down this way.

[A gesture and a couple of steps backwards, before she turns in the command room's direction.

She's a good deal smaller than River, her legs shorter, but she walks with confidence and purpose, like she's leading a much larger mission than "show River the command room".]

[retrorsum]

( river doesn't say anything as they walk, keeping her attention focused on any and all mental notes that she can make about her surroundings.

and then they're there. she makes a quick scan of the room before selecting one console to work on )

Let's see. Station map, always useful, environmental controls, logs-- ah.

( it wasnt quite a sensor or scanner but the radar. she falls quiet for a moment, focused on looking at it, at seeing if she can tweak it.

and then she asks a question, not looking up from her console )

How long were you with him?

un:castiglione

[oorah]

there's nothing interesting about this place lady. it's a torture chamber, plain and simple.

[retrorsum]

even torture can be interesting, it's all about the details.
but that also didn't answer my question.

[oorah]

yeah well, i'm not really in the business of giving psychos something to rub one off to.

[retrorsum]

usually i get a drink before the name calling starts.
besides, i could very well be the best chance of getting out of here.

[oorah]

how do you figure?

[retrorsum]

i haven't found a place that could hold me yet.

[oorah]

you've been to a place like this before? a killer space station hundreds of years in the future?

[retrorsum]

you'd be surprised how common it is.

[oorah]

[ just like that frank changes his tune and starts trying to tell her what she wants to know ]

what's the weirdest thing? my friend fell through a door. into a door? like it was made of liquid. i lost my hearing and my sense of touch for a while for no reason. another friend of mine had the life squeezed out of him only to come right back. that's all this place is. weird horrifying shit.

anything like that stuff happen to you before?

[retrorsum]

There are many things that can affect our minds. Subtle changes to our perceptions, psychic influence. It's hard to narrow down what could be the cause without more information.
Which leads me to ask what changed your mind.