reveriance | TEST DRIVE #002

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ She lets his hands linger, does a quick once over of him to make sure he's still all right. The shoulder should be mostly healed by now so there's no lump of bandages under clothes to determine anything from, but she doesn't see any strain in his movement. That's good, means that whatever brought them here didn't aggravate the injury. ]

I have no idea. I can only assume they found us, but --

[ She gestures around them even as mentally she brushes against his mind, reassurance.

And then she skips a beat, because that's not the same link that she had searched for only the first time a few days ago. Well, it is. But it isn't. There's more to it than she had seen in the cabin lying in bed together. That had been new and tentative and confused, neither of them certain yet and him not even knowing it was there. This is bigger, a deeper running current, one that could pull her in and hold her captive with ease. Her voice is slower when she speaks again. ]

I've been here a few days and haven't seen any sign of the usual suspects. Why do you feel different?

[ There were lights blinking next to him, tiny numbers. A range. The lights read est. 340 - 370 day discrepancy. So he knew. He knew, already, but it didn't make sense so he was redoing all his calculations again, eyes darting across her face as he took in every line, every crease, every nearly microscopic difference.

It made the hair on the back of his neck rise. ]

Jack. What's the last thing you remember?

[ She doesn't quite take a step back, because his closeness and the warmth of his hands are still a comfort, but something in the tone of his voice and the question makes her want to.

Something's wrong, and on top of the strangeness of this place she's not sure she's ready for something else new to be wrong. ]

The cabin, of course. We were going to leave in the morning. Head to New York.

[ Her voice is very steady still, but it's taking effort now to keep it that way. ]

Why, Marlowe?

[ He swallows, takes a step back, and the lights around him start flashing far more quickly - and far more encrypted. As if he's looking anywhere but her at all.

It was impossible. This wasn't a case of her losing her memories, she was physically a year younger than she had been - her features changed almost imperceptibly for anyone other than Marlowe. Marlowe knew, without a doubt, that this was her. There was no way they could fake him out. But she also wasn't her.

[ A halucination? Improbable. His own mind would offer the most up to date version it could, and anyone else projecting a vision into his head wouldn't be able to do so with that level of detail--

He took a step back, and then another, and he knew his heart rate was rising. ]

That was a year ago.

[ It shouldn't sting as hard as it does, the step away from her. It hasn't been that long that he's been close to her, has only even been in the past few days that she hasn't just frozen every time he touches her at all. Closeness to people, physical contact -- she can handle them on a professional level, if she needs to to sell an identity.

Actual closeness, the sort that comes from knowing and being known and caring, that's harder to compute. Marlowe in the past few weeks has been the first time in years, and as new as it still is, as strange as it still, it twists in sharp as a knife to have it removed.

She watches the data, sees the encryptions, the lack of trust, and that trust was still so new and building that she doesn't know what to do, just looks at him, her face going blank the way it has several times when he says things that she doesn't know how to process yet, has to take time to pick her way through. ]

I don't understand what you mean by that. It was just a few days ago. You were --

[ She pauses, tucks her hands into her pockets so they stop trying to twist together anxiously. ]

It can't have been -- I just got here.

No. You don't understand. You weren't taken a year ago.

[ He sounded grave, and he felt sick, like his whole world had tilted and gone off balance and it had nothing to do with space. ]

We've been- you've been there the whole time, we've--

[ But his words stuck in his throat every time and he tried to find the surveillance equipment that must be watching them, right now. There. That was probably a camera, even though it was unlike anything he'd ever known. And there-- ]

This isn't possible.

[ The lurch in her stomach and throat is too solid, like the floor beneath her feet dropped out. What he says doesn't make sense, can't be real. Can't mean what it sounds like. ]

I don't think there's a telepath in the world who could get into my mind without me knowing they were there.

[ Five minutes ago she would have sounded absolutely certain, but she doesn't anymore. Something is wrong, but what's wrong -- it can't be that. She's certain of it. But she doesn't know how to convince him of that. She doesn't have the reach into his mind that she would need for that, won't use it to convince him of something anyways. ]

It might not be possible, but something has happened.

TEST DRIVE #002

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