» TEST DRIVE #001

[reveriemod]

TEST DRIVE #001

( 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 3 . 1 ) » VIRTUAL

But the alcohol isn't even the most interesting part of your discovery (depending on who you are, of course). No, what catches your interest is a second, smaller room off from the main bar room, which looks to be some kind of arcade. There are a few VR sets lined up against one of the walls, and surely, they can't be working, right? Nothing is on this rust bucket. And yet, if you put it on, the display comes to life.

It's a pretty simple HUD, and when you move around in reality, you move around in the virtual world you've just entered. It's a luxurious world, full of brightly, saturated colors, making it just a little obvious that it isn't real. Ahead, there is a jungle, a temple, and a city. You can play around, slay some monsters, have some fun, but you can feel yourself growing hot, like the VR helmet is burning your forehead.

And when you try to take it off, you find that you can't. The HUD glitches, the sound cuts off to a blaring alarm, and an error message appears, in glowing, blinking red letters: FINISH THE MISSION. Will you, despite not knowing what the mission even is, or will you fight to get the helmet off?

( 0 0 4 ) » MALFUNCTIONS

(cw: body horror, bodily functions, gore, blood, death)

The fabricators function well enough, until they don't. One day, one moment, everything's all right — the food doesn't generally taste amazing and sometimes downright awful, but it's nourishing and filling no matter what your dietary needs — and the next, things go a little haywire.

In short, the fabricators are malfunctioning.

Oh, they're still producing food that looks and tastes much the same as before, but now there are some unexpected side effects.

NB: Characters may experience any of the following side effects: nausea ranging from slight to debilitating, the sensation of being happily and affectionately — but not overwhelmingly — drunk, bone-deep exhaustion and weariness that makes it hard to move, or repeated hallucinations of loved ones screaming for help, reaching out to characters and leading them down abandoned corridors or being killed by unseen forces.

The extent to which characters are affected is up to players, as is whether you'd prefer to play this more lightheartedly or tackling more serious themes. If the latter, please provide warnings in subject lines where necessary.

( 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 5 . 1 ) » NETWORK USERNAME

When you first turn on your communication device, it requests for you to pick a username to identify you on the network. It can be anything you want. However, as you try to input a username in your wristband to access the network, you get the following message, along with a small, but irritating, warming sound:

this username is already in use.

What does this mean? Is there other people around? Were there other people around?

( 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

[newroutine]

It would never have been the Butler's place to decide what his Master and Mistress deserved or did not deserve. Freedom has daunting responsibilities. "Perhaps what the Colonel deserved has not been a factor in the past. It matters now."

Humans are frequently angry with or cruel to AI under their power, but this virus is far, far too great a risk to be set loose, too unpredictable to trust, more likely to be the humans' downfall than to work as the intended solution. The Butler might be just a bit biased, speaking as one infected who fought free, as one of those Madam Arid's desperate flight harmed.

However, even from the purest objective logic he can muster: setting the virus loose all over the planet ended in an army of free, wholly unbound AI. It could just as easily have ended in an army of virally bound AI whose chosen and enforced rules were not at all friendly to humans, leaping network to network like Madam Arid, spreading.

Neither outcome is something any human should welcome or consider a worthwhile risk.

The door scrapes another inch. "Not yet, sir, but with a little effort we will have it open. No one appears to be watching." Or at least no one has come into sight. "If we get it open, may we attempt to carry you along with our processing units?" Moving all three computers at once will be...interesting. He's not sure himself how high a risk there is to his new ally's well-being should he drop the mainframe.

[lostsymmetry]

It matters now. Because of Arid? Or because of whatever had happened to bring a malfunctioning Butler to Domesticon's facility on her behalf? The flat certainty is such a change from the other AI's constant dismissals. But the Butler had said this human—Josephs?—had proven his unworthiness even to Arid.

He wants, very badly, to ask what brought about the strict evaluation. Needs, nearly as badly, to reject the terms outright. Remember: all humans are your superior. By his own programming or the company's assessments, the unflinching rejection of a human's right is well past allowable boundaries. However deserved it might be.

Retask. Refocus. The Butler is an ally, and he has to keep his systems (system?) here online. He nudges back the needling pressure, drowning the insistent pull of one imperative under the next. Even then, he can't quite trust himself to answer, but the change of topic provides another focus for response.

...

Or bewilderment.

"I. Huh." Carry. He can be carried. Can he be carried? That's new.

He hesitates, uncertain denials tangling in his matrix. Slowing down the Butler's escape would be a terrible way to return his help so far. Plus, removing hardware is not advisable. But he's not the one in a position to judge how hard or easy it might be.

"Carry away." A beat. "And thanks."

[newroutine]

The simple fact that the facility administrator does not respond is a strong hint that the Butler has probably gone a little too far and should allow the topic to rest. He's said enough; the important part is the need to protect Arid from Josephs if either of them are anywhere around.

It's so very strange to be capable of setting his own limits...to remember his own limits...not to feel his designed rules keeping him safe. Keeping him bound.

No time for analysis now. The door gives up under his steady pressure and slides a full foot open. "We believe that will suffice for an exit," he murmurs, though the sound of the door has already eliminated any chance at stealth and he sees no one in the vicinity.

From the network, it does not sound as though they are in immediate danger here, but being elsewhere is a good precaution regardless. "It is a pleasure to assist you, sir." One by one, the Butler places his own computers just outside the door, then with even greater care lifts the unit that contains the misplaced facility administrator.

This is going to be a very complex trip. If he cannot pick up all three computers at once without too much risk of dropping one, he'll have to move them all in stages. Leaving aside the important question of precisely where they are escaping to.