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?

005 ( text | un: revan )

[warcried]

There's a handful of us thus far, and more waking every day.

It's generally used for questions, collaboration, data management, that sort of thing. Optional, but quite handy.

Re: 005 ( text | un: revan )

[tailsections]

certainly seems that way. handy, i mean. wasn't something we had access to back where i'm from.

everyone's allowed to use it? no restrictions on the type of passenger?

[warcried]

[ type of passenger..? ]

I'm not certain our captors differentiate between us. But no, not that I've been able to tell yet.

[tailsections]

that would be a change for me then.

but they are captors? someone's figured that out?

i thought i was dead when i woke up and this was some kind of strange afterlife.

[warcried]

No one's met them, if there's even a 'them' to meet. We were taken against our will and trapped here, though, so I'd say we're captives, at least.

This would be a hell of an afterlife.

[tailsections]

guess some things never change.

( He'd boarded the train willingly, thinking it an escape not to a better life but a life. He would survive.

After awhile, he'd wished he hadn't ever set eyes on the hulking metal monster. )

yeah, guess you've got a point there. i don't even believe in any of that shit. pretty sure i'm heading towards a bunch of nothingness. but, not there yet. don't know if that's a good thing or a bad one all things considered.

004

[veristitalian]

[This time, Jasnah is caught along in the quake along with him. A panel 'explodes' right in front of her and sends her reeling backwards, down onto the deck in a sprawl with her arm thrown up over her face.

She swears her ears are ringing, except before she can realize that they aren't, she hears a man's voice. What the hell indeed.]

I have no idea.

[But she pushes herself up onto her elbows, then all the way to sitting. Anything more feels optimistic.]

Re: 004

[tailsections]

Usually if there's a sound like that, bad shit follows.

( Never from the engine though, not until the end. No, that sound always meant they were being visited by Minister Mason and her soldiers. It meant someone had done something and they were about to be made an example of.

Sounds like that didn't just happen and leave no trace. There had to be something. )

Maybe the engines of this thing just went to shit. Doesn't feel like we're losing altitude though.

[veristitalian]

That might be the case, but would it explain what we aren't seeing now? There were sparks, there should be scorch marks.

[Jasnah pushes herself up to check, dusting her hands off on her knees as she goes. She wears one glove, on the left hand, but has already become more free about using the safehand rather than holding it reservedly at her side like an Alethi woman should.]

Where's the damage?

[tailsections]

I -- I don't know.

( There should be damage, she's right. It makes him nervous, not being able to see what he knows is there. He'd spent years trusting the engine of a train not to give out and trusting the people in front to keep them alive.

He'd been a fool to harbor that trust. When he'd lost it, things had gotten harder but he'd also felt freer. )

No alarms. Warning bells. Nothing. Maybe we hit something. Maybe there's exterior damage.

[veristitalian]

No- I'm sorry, my point is that it should be here, right here, and it isn't.

[She says, glancing over her shoulder at him, expression hard, frustrated with this place, with these games.]

It didn't happen. We're seeing something that somehow is and isn't real.

[tailsections]

Hallucination?

( But that doesn't seem right, not when they both clearly experienced something and were physically affected. The whole thing was as vivid as a hallucination but unless they'd both been somehow drugged without their knowledge, that probably wasn't what this was.

It was a possibility but a minute one. )

We're being played.

( That is the more obvious answer. This whole place seems to have been built to frighten and terrify those aboard. They were being toyed with. Curtis' jaw tightens at the thought. Another mysterious vessel, another all power entity who did what he wanted and fuck anyone else around. )

[controlist]

( username: dearing )
It isn't usually that people need things like this.

[tailsections]

then, what's the point of it?

people really that desperate to talk to each other?

[controlist]

Some of them may be.

It's also a way of sharing information.

[tailsections]

i don't have any of that.

just got here. barely even know what i'm looking at half the time.

are those really the stars?

[controlist]

Then there's information you can learn. None of us has much yet from what I've read. Even the people that seem to have been here the longest haven't been here very long.

They look like stars. I haven't seen them like this before.

[tailsections]

comforting.

sounds familiar. just came from a place like that. we knew how long we'd been there but hard to learn information outside of where you were.

i can't remember the last time i saw the sky. never expected the stars.

001

[cheerleader]

[Oh my God.

This is terrifying. Claire wakes up because of his screaming. She's disoriented and terrified, and the fact they're in a tiny, dark space together doesn't help. He's distracted with his...screaming and she scoots herself into a corner of the small area, sitting up and pressing herself as tight as she can into a corner.

Finally, he stops screaming and Claire blearily blinks up at him through the tears that are in her eyes. Her heart is racing, thoughts going straight to the worst. Whatever is going on here, he's definitely going to kill her. She doesn't even realize her hands are pressed against and covering her ears until her voice sounds muffled in her own head.]

Please don't hurt me.

[It's not like she can actually be hurt, but it's easy to act like a terrified kid when she is in fact, completely petrified of why he's brought her here and what he's out to do. She can't make it out in the dim lighting, but he seems like he's definitely hurt. Panic fills her as she assumes he's doing exactly what her dad was so paranoid about, and is trying to use her ability to heal himself. Why does her dad always have to be right in the end? ]

If you want money or something, just call my dad. He'll get it for you.

[Maybe money will tempt him into being cooperative? Or maybe he'll just scream again. Either way, she's wildly looking around for an escape route.]

Re: 001

[tailsections]

[ There's someone else here. There's someone else here. Sweat burns his eyes and the taste of smoke and ash is still in his mouth. There had been an explosion, one that would have certainly killed him, but he's awake. Alive.

The only reason he knows he hasn't died is the pain where his arm used to be. If he were dead, that wouldn't be there.

But it is. So, he's not dead and what a disappointment that is. All that time, all that pain and he's still alive, still --

Okay, he has to focus. Focus on the other voice, unfamiliar to his ears. ]

What?

[ Curtis blinks several times, clearing the red tinged haze from his eyes and tries to see who else is here. She's young, younger than Edgar even. Young and terrified looking.

Because of him. Curtis can't even imagine how he looks right now but it's obviously bad enough that she thinks he's here to assault her. ]

I'm not -- I'm not going to hurt you. And I don't want your money.

[ He doesn't even know what he'd do with it. Wave it one of the ministers's faces for access to the front of the train? Get someone to put his arm back on his body?
Pay to eat his weight in something that was fucking protein blocks? ]

I don't even know you. Why would I hurt you? I don't know you. I'm just --

[ Confused. This place, small and cramped as it might be, was too clean to be a section of the tail. Either someone in front had stowed him somewhere or this -- this was something completely different. ]

What are you doing here? I don't recognize you.

[cheerleader]

[She doesn't completely trust him, and she's just about to start shrieking demands at him, but his last questions throw her off guard. Her hands drop away from her ears completely and she narrows her eyes as she tries getting a better look at him. ]

My name is Claire Bennet. I don't know what I'm doing here, or where here even is.

[Huffing at that, she pushes herself up to stand and cautiously steps in closer to him. If he's hurt, he's going to need some help. Not that she's trained to actually provide any, but that won't stop her from trying to be useful.]

Did they hurt you?

[Clearly, he's been kidnapped and is being held hostage too. The screaming makes a lot of sense in that case.]

[tailsections]

Curtis Everett. And neither do I.

[ So, wherever this was, he wasn't alone. He gives her a cursory look, eyes searching for evidence that maybe she was from the front section, that maybe the explosion had -- done something and brought them here together.

She's certainly clean enough to be from the front and but instead of lording her position over him, she's terrified.

That's different ]

No, this was -- this was Wilford's doing.

[ He's doing his best to use his coat to cover up the bloody remnants of his arm but there's nothing that can dull the torturous pain that's racking his body. Blood's coated the jacket sleeve and has dripped down underneath his feet.

Maybe he'll pass out soon and be free of all of this. He is so goddamn tired. ]

I don't feel --

[ Now that he's managed to stop screaming, he realizes that he can't hear the train underneath his feet. There had always been a steady but sure vibration there, one that seemed to foreshadow pain and suffering when each new day dawned.

Now, there's a hum but nothing else. ]

[cheerleader]

I don't know who Wilford even is.

[Which means that she's skeptical he'd want to kidnap her. But she can't really address that fact fully because she's concerned about him now. He's definitely hurt, so it's up to her to get them out of here.]

Look -

[She points past him, where metal grating has some light shining through.]

It's a way out. I can get you help for your arm.

[And then, without any regard for noise or potential danger, she starts to kick at the grating as hard as she can. Over and over again.]

[tailsections]

You're missing out on nothing by not knowing him.

[ In fact, Curtis hopes she never knows him or anyone like him. He hopes she's never exposed to that kind of arrogance and disdain for other people because it's more than likely she and anyone else will be crushed or suppressed under a personality like that. ]

I think my arm's past the point of repair.

[ That doesn't mean it doesn't hurt like a motherfucker, though. He's known a lot of pain in his life but never like this. Never this intense and all consuming. He's doing his level best to push it down and focus since he doesn't want to put all of this on her.

Even if she seems to be doing a damn good job of kicking at the grate. ]

You don't even know what's out there. What we might be about to step into.