» 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

[hopefragment]

Yeah. I'm guessing you did, too?

[He... assumes, because if she doesn't know where they are, she probably doesn't live here, either. And he really isn't sure if that makes him feel better, because she probably won't have any more answers than he does.]

Um... you don't think that window is fake, right? Like... I don't know, a giant TV?

[He still sounds pretty wary, though. If this is supposed to be a fun prank gameshow, he's going to throw a fit.]

[setpoint]

[That's not something she considered before, and so she peers at the window again, then shakes her head.]

No pixels.

[Unless this is some sort of unfathomably advanced tech, but then she thinks they'd have a whole new slew of problems.]

My name is Mako. And you?

[hopefragment]

N-No pixels... right.

[A muscle in his jaw tightens as he clenches his teeth, trying and failing to come up with another suggestion. It just can't be real, can it? It's just too far outside the ordinary. Too absurdly hard to fathom. Literally out of his world.]

Oh, um, I'm Hinata Hajime. I'm a... student.

[He seems like he wants to add something, taking a breath, but closes his mouth and glances back toward the window again.]

Have you ever seen anything like this, Mako-san?

[setpoint]

[Mako finally turns from the window to focus on him fully, shaking her head as she does. Poor kid. ]

No. Unfortunately not. Are you alright?

[hopefragment]

[He can't help but laugh at the question, shaking his head and running a hand through perpetually-mussed hair. No, he's not alright. Honestly, he's kind of felt like he's going to faint since he woke up here. But there's no way he's admitting that to a girl.]

Stuff like this is just so far outside my experience, I don't even know how to react. I mean, this is totally crazy, right? Being on board a space ship, or a space station, or-- whatever, around an alien planet? If that's really what this is, then...

[He takes a deep breath, trying to stay calm. Come on, Hajime, for once in your life, be cool.]

S-sorry. I'm sure it'll become clearer once we look around a little more.

[setpoint]

It's okay.

[It's obvious he's not okay, and who can blame him? Mako's not okay, and she's had military training and killed giant monsters. It's just that she's better at keeping it under wraps.]

Would you like to keep looking around the ship with me?

[hopefragment]

[Again, there's something really uncool about being comforted by a girl, even one old enough to be one of his teachers. Even still, it is kind of comforting, having someone who's offering to explore with him. Wandering around on his own was getting nerve-wracking.]

...Yeah, okay. Two pairs of eyes are better than one, right?

[He takes one final look out the window before turning, waiting to see if she's going to move on so he can go whichever way she was planning on going.]

Maybe... there's a communications room? I heard a broadcast from this watch, [he holds up his wrist to show it off,] when I woke up here. Maybe there's some more information there.

[setpoint]

There must be.

[Although getting to it will probably be the difficult part. She's run into more locked doors than she has in her life.]

Have you seen the sealed doors? I think it might be in a part of the station we can't reach.

[hopefragment]

Oh. I haven't, but...

[Well... there goes that idea. Hajime frowns uncertainly, bringing a hand up to his lips as if that might help him focus and think.]

Maybe there's a way to unseal it? I mean, there would have to be a way to unseal it from both sides, right? For emergencies.