» 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

[oorah]

Hypersleep, right. [ his eyes focus on the faded label of the bottle held between two massive palms, though he isn't actually reading it. he just needs somewhere to look that isn't her face. his tone is as casual as hers, but his body language tense and uncertain. ]

Heard people are getting sick from it. [ he nods towards her coffee cup, indicating that he means the sludge the fabricators spun up. ] Any idea how long that might last? [ since she made it sound temporary. he takes a sip to stave off his hunger another collection of moments anyway. ]

[retund]

[ she tips her head, expression neutral as she tallies the odds. ]

If you're new to space, you're going be nauseous for weeks. [ her natural bluntness matches his casual tone. he hasn't said enough for her to assume he's a greenhorn, but too many people on board have revealed as much to her already. the sickness that some experience may be inevitable, regardless of the state of the fabricators. in fact, the fabricators being on the fritz probably correlates more with the accidental drunks that ripley encountered in the mess hall than the more serious symptoms. 'course she's a warrant officer, ever more technical than medical. ]

But it all depends on if the fabricators are malfunctioning from sudden overuse, or if they're completely broken — or if the food is the problem at all. [ an ominous statement, but she can think of several other potential causes of illness, ranging from a lack of quarantine procedures to a familiar monster. ] I was looking for a toolkit to tinker with one of the devices when I found you.

[ whoever he may be, wherever he may come from, as if any of that matters much on this abandoned terminal. ]

[oorah]

[ this is all good info and he listens intently, even while looking like he's zoning out. honestly, he's doing both with nothing in his system and a fifth of a bottle down already. still his freakishly good memory isn't likely to fail him even under those constraints. ]

Haven't eaten anything yet so I should be safe. [ he waves the bottle and makes a little face. ] ...Haven't touched that either, yet. [ frank pulls out the communicator and puts it on the table between them, looking at it like it's wronged him somehow. ]

[retund]

[ he looks a bit out-of-it, sure, but she's seen stupid before — and he's not that, not when he asks all the right questions.

her gaze drops from him to the communicator. ripley's own sits in her pocket, a choice born of residual skepticism over anything company-issued, perhaps. is his uncertainty the same? ]

Doesn't seem like you're missing much. [ pausing. ] Yet.

[ in her professional opinion, people have already started cluttering the network. no one appears to belong to the reverie terminal crew, either. ]

[oorah]

[ he nods. so she's been on the network. he knows he'll give in sooner or later, he's just not ready to take the leap yet. frank leaves the comms unit on the bartop and takes another swig. ]

Where are you from, huh? A galaxy far far away? [ a sudden, even uncharacteristic ask. but he's been noticing, how they seem split about 50/50 for space experience. she's definitely one of the spacey ones. and he's sure that outs him as one of the earthers. ]

[retund]

[ at that, she nods in acknowledgment. he confirms what she suspects, regarding where he falls on the earthling and space cadet spectrum.]

The Olympia colony on Luna. [ and while she'd like someone to recognise it, she doubts she'll find familiarity after hours of confusion, clarifying: ] Earth's Moon. [ not too far away, after all. she tips her mug this way and that, watching the liquid shift in lieu of staring frank down. ] But I was near another colony before I woke up here.

[ and she hadn't been alone. hope aches in her chest for the first time since she landed on that godforsaken hellhole. they nuked the colony from orbit. newt, hicks, even bishop might have survived — she doesn't ask the same question in return, but she looks at him expectantly. ]

[oorah]

The Moon. Right. Of course. [ he's already in space, why not embrace the rest?? frank looks down at the bottle again and shakes his head. ]

I'm from... planetside. New York. Hell's Kitchen if you've heard of it, sorry if you have.