test drive | 1

[unplug]

test drive

Welcome to the first test drive for Systemwide! We are excited to have you. All prospective players are welcome to tag in and test out their characters, be they unplugged or free born. We would like to offer a range of scenarios that can be expected during gameplay, which are also useable prompts for app samples, and of course, if something else about the setting strikes you, feel free to come up with your own!

Please put your character name and canon in your subject line, and indicate which prompt you are launching from.

simulation | maybe this is your first time. perhaps you've been here countless times. it's a room, as confined as a boxing ring, as expansive as a battle field, whatever you need it to be, whatever you're here to train for.

1.

Before you is a city of rooftops, empty of human life. This is a safe place, because while it may hurt you, at least it won't kill you. Perhaps you are practicing your influence over reality, leaping from rooftop to rooftop. Are you successful, or are you failing to free your mind? Perhaps you're helping someone else overcome their fear of heights.

And of course, an operator can always load up some Agent-like training programs to make it interesting.

2.

Congratulations, you know kung-fu, or maybe some other system of combat, like crazy parkour archery, cartwheeling with guns, or sword fighting on horse back. Perhaps you're trying out something even more fantastic, a magical skill or a superpower.

Show me. Or a friend.

mission | whether on board a ship or with your mind sunk deep into a Matrix, you will have to join the battle eventually. sometimes things go terribly wrong. what are you gonna do about it?

3.

Something's gone wrong with this extraction.

There's a lot of information to process. Your target's been extracted, and that's the good news -- your ship, in reality, is heading to their location now -- but the bad news is your team has been scattered. You could be anywhere within this Matrix, deep in the jungle, or lost on a subway train, or staggering out of the crashing waves of a night time beach, and the operator needs a minute to figure out your exact location before they can direct you to a port out of here, or send another operative to collect you.

All you have to do is stay alive for that long. Easy, right?

4.

You were warned of this. You've been prepared in endless simulations, with a dozen cautionary tales, training sessions with the EMP. Still, it's nothing like you imagined, when the operator shouts: "Sentinel closing in at seven o' clock. It's gaining."

And then the shriek of metal.

reality | as much as many Matrixes are designed to be a comfort, you have to face the real world sometime. or maybe this is the world you have only ever known.

5.

Annual celebrations are rare to come by, but the anniversary of Neo's Truce is one that always draws in the crowd. The event takes place in a massive cavern in Zion known as the Temple, and there is music, and there is dancing [a little NSFW].

Everyone is there.

Where are you?

6.

The wind on your face, up here on the desolate surface, tastes bitter, different to what it feels like in a simulated reality. It's freezing cold and always dark, but sometimes, you need a reminder about what it is you're fighting for. Or maybe you're seeing the wasteland of Earth for the first time.

Either way, you shouldn't be out here for too long. The machines might find you.

wildcard | choose your own adventure.

7.

Perhaps you're riding with the Dothraki, or sitting under the Sorting Hat for the first time. Maybe the pleather bodysuit is pinching under your armpits as the traffic of the 90's roars by, or the Nova Empire's sprawling city glitters, towering above you. Maybe you're showing someone around the place you called home for your entire fictional life.

Or perhaps it's nothing as fantastical as that: the Council meeting droned on for two hours, and you're just happy to be home, even if it's a tiny enclosure with rust-edged furniture. Maybe someone's coming over for lunch, and there are real greens in the protein slurry today; maybe you're about to ask to join a crew.

There are infinite worlds to explore, but try to remember that only one of them is real.

Comments

skye ( agents of shield ) | multiple scenarios!

[hacker]

[ simulation ]

Show me again.

[ Since she got back on her feet, she hasn't let herself rest. The compulsion to keep moving has Skye trying to mainline everything she can about bettering her in-Matrix training so she can escape the real. Not because she's too horrified by what humanity has become, but because she doesn't want to have to stop and think and question what that means for the reality she's known.

So in here, she feels better. She still dresses like a SHIELD agent in here—black tactical gear, leather hood that fits to her shoulder harness—and she likes it that way because this is where she can still feel like one. Anywhere else and she's just one more naked baby who was fooled for more than twenty years, one more to be told that none of that really mattered. ]

[ reality ]

[ Sometimes, she still wakes up from nightmares, scrubbing a hand over her face and remembering a temple that never really existed, remembering a father she'd never had. She has as hard a time accepting the loss of her reality as any of them, stubbornness always tethering her back to it.

That's why she has to go up to see it. Leave the ship, break away from the bleak desolation of the metal traps humanity has locked itself away in to climb up and check out what happened to the planet. It really sinks in then, staring out at the wastelands and darkness, feeling the wind whip at her face. It blows right through her, taking the bluster out, draining the last of her resistance to the very idea.

She leans her weight onto crutches helping her through the physical therapy, to get unused muscles into working order, staring out at the ashen desert. It doesn't make sense that she can look out and remember cities and skyscrapers, people buying coffee on their way to work, bustling through downtown L.A., squinting through sunglasses on the beach, can remember the news when Chitauri poured from the sky to invade, the stills from news footage that she'd overanalyzed. The days, weeks, months spent training, getting stronger, only to be too weak to even stand on her own feet now.

If she can remember all of it, how can it not have been real? Everything in her mind resists the image before her. Turning away, back toward the ship, she lets go of her crutches, leans over, and hacks up bile and some weird non-oatmeal that looks the same coming up as it did going down, shoulders shaking with the force of her violent gags. ]

simulation

[lostsoldier]

[ Downtime has been a difficult concept to adapt to, even before he’d been unplugged. Briefing, mission, debriefing, storage is a cycle ingrained in him as deeply as the metal ports that now line their spines in what they’re told is reality. Even the long quiet of a stake-out carried with it a certain focus that’s lacking here, a space that needs filling.

So he fills it with what he knows. And he doesn’t mind not being the only one. Black tactical gear is met with black tactical gear, even if there’s a little more leather on his than hers — and hers doesn’t come with a metal arm marked HYDRA red and a full face mask. Today at least the goggles are gone. At least you can tell where he’s looking.

At her feet, currently. Explaining is harder than doing. ]

Further apart, [ he says, with a nod to her stance. ] For momentum.

[ A shift of boots, and then he springs from the asphalt, metal and leather spinning in a mid-air corkscrew, impossibly fast and landed with a hard, rubbery squelch. Like so. ]

bill cage | edge of tomorrow.

[onyourfeet]

SIMULATION;

[ There are many places that Cage would rather be, and none of them are where he needs to be. This training simulation is a new one, but eerily familiar to him. The air is warm and smells like metal, these details stitched into the programming with an expert finesse. The training floor is big and industrial, and great, spider-like robotic horrors hang from mechanical arms from over head. They move with insectile, jerky speed, given to suddenly twitch and spin in a frenzy, and attack suddenly, from any angle.

He is decked out in familiar armoring, strapped into the power suit native to the world he came from, a lighter weight, more agile thing than the APUs in the real world. ]

Before we get started [ he says, possibly to the omniscient operator overhead, possibly to whoever is joining him ] I'd like to point out that the last time I did this, it was kind of a predetermined--

[ But a whine of machinery stops him from talking, and he moves faster than the clunky machinery he's encased it ought to suggest. A blare of machine gun fire fills the room, mounted off his left arm, sending the hanging mimic-like bot veering away sharp. The next one is slammed aside by the swing of his right, the screech of metal almost as intrusive as gunfire. ]

--

It's not enough to know where they are.

[ If Cage is taking any small amusement from standing where Rita had once stood, repeating her words, it's communicated in the half-smile on his face that is ever present anyway, only a private joke to himself. He's off on the sidelines, now, with a hand on the switch that stops and starts the training, as he watches the latest recruit fathom the machines put in place to test their reflexes, strength.

They're the same as his world, impossibly fast, devestatingly ruthless, spinning four legged starfish mechanical monsters whose only objective seems to be slamming with lethal force into people and sending them flying. ]

You have to know how to kill them.

[ His thumb depresses red button, and the machines twitch to life, whirl in place. ]

Again.

[repetitio]

[ she joins the simulation, or perhaps she has been there from the beginning but silent — either way, she does not immediately make her presence known to cage or the person he is talking to, teaching.

rita is quite good at that, being silent. (not a fan of talking.)

it isn't until he says again that she steps forward. it isn't entirely familiar, not in the same way it must be for him, but she recognises the words and the intonation as something not originally his, a copy of someone else's words and tone. so, dryly: ] Are you mimicking me?

[ the phrasing is deliberate. ]

Kara "Starbuck" Thrace -- Battlestar Galactica

[starbucker]

Get that sentinel the frak off me!

[ Kara put her head down, muscles straining as she dragged the controls over and sent the Bellerophon spinning on the Y axis. The ship screamed its dismay, energy crackling against the narrow rabbit hole down which they'd found themselves, but the sentinels just kept on coming. She jammed on the gas, and the heavy hulk of a ship roared forward, the sound of displaced air and whirring engines bouncing off every hunk of concrete and broken pipe out there, but they kept moving, and moving meant alive. For now.

As soon as they were out of it, she was the first to throw herself out of the chair and go hunting through the ship, either for the weapons platform operator or whichever poor person got in her way first. Agitation always needed its outlet somewhere, and that had just been too damn close. ]

And where were you?


----


[ Dancing is good though. Dancing in a mass of bodies, nobody really looking beyond themselves to try and identify who the people they were writhing up against were? She could do that. It was a way to detach from reality - a way that wasn't the obvious - and after a long, hard mission that was exactly what he needed, the roll and thrust, the sweat and the rhythm. This was living.

Except sometimes she didn't know what living really was, any more. ]

Yeah. [ She panted under her breath. ] That's it.

[ Man, woman, other--it didn't matter. She wasn't really looking, and didn't care. A warm body could let her forget for a little while what was real and what wasn't, a mystery her life had taken on long before she'd woken from the Dream. ]


----


[ She'd asked for some personal time in the construct. At least, that was what she called it when she went back to her apartment to mope. They all knew she was doing it, but sooner or later someone was going to break her self imposed solitude.

It was funny. So sometimes she laughed. Sometimes she looked out the window at Delphi and thought: this isn't possible, all this is gone, and caught herself thinking it. Then she thought: I'm mourning a city that was never real in the first place. And then she thought: what did we go through that hell for? Had it just been some divine game? Why hadn't everyone come from a matrix where they'd had to suffer just to live, had to question their own humanity? Why was that fair?

She always came back to the same questions, and just like at home, there were never any answers. So she'd lay on her not!bed, and stare at her not!ceiling, and think about her not!life. It was a waste of time, but it was all she had left. ]

[hacker]

So this is you, huh?

[ When Skye steps into Starbuck's scheduled alone-time, it's as much to get a peek at what the hell she's doing in there as it is to follow orders and pull her out for some of that fancy piloting. She makes no real effort at disguising her interest as she glances around the apartment, surprised to find it so subdued. With as isolated as she made herself, she somehow expected something more …

Dramatic? Elaborate? Whatever it was, it wasn't this. But she's able to do the math quickly enough. Folding her arms over her chest, Skye hunches her shoulders, realizing that she's intruding on the reality that used to be home to the pilot. ]

octavia blake ‣ the 100

[grounderpounder]

simulation (1).

You want me to jump. [ sure, it was no problem at all when they told her, but now she's seeing the gap from this rooftop to the next firsthand and the only reason she's not straight-up calling bullshit is because after the decently humiliating process of extraction rehab, her pride can't take any more hits right now.

this is impossible. but she's gonna do it. ]

Remind me, why do I trust you assholes again? [ it's hushed just like the first part, like she's talking to herself because they'll hear her either way. don't worry, guys, she doesn't actually think you're assholes. she's just putting her game face on, with all of the sass and reckless abandon it entails.

octavia backs up now until she's just a yard or so from the opposite side of the roof. then she takes a deep breath, sets her jaw, and drops into a sprint for the edge. here comes the jump, in five steps, three, two, one, and she leaps. and she soars, at least that's what it feels like. she lets out a sharp exhilarated exhale, her mouth twitching into a grin, because this is actually happening. it's working.

...almost.

she aced the jump, in theory. in practice, however, her arc comes down a little short and the balls her feet just barely catch the rooftop before sliding off, sending her dropping down hard onto her elbows with most of her body dangling over the edge and slipping more by the second. she lets out a grunt and spits a disgusted expletive or two, attempting to wriggle up onto the rooftop with the leverage she's got, but her arms hurt like hell from the landing and this just isn't gonna be a thing.

if this were life or death, it'd be different. as it is, she finally gives in and lets herself drop over the ledge, landing none too gently on the top-floor fire escape. and she lies there on her back for a good few seconds, breathing and wallowing in her failed attempt. which brings her to: ] If you guys are laughing at me right now, I'm gonna find out. I'll make your lives a living hell, you know I will.

reality (5).

[ octavia hates crowded parties.

at least, that's what instinct tells her. she's been unplugged for almost a month now, but she was in the ark-to-earth matrix for almost eighteen years and some things are a little hard to shake. but none of it was real, right? is she seriously gonna let something that wasn't even real get under her skin? no way. she refuses.

and she's opting to get over that particular fear-based loathing in the form of what some might call immersion therapy: you'll find her smack dab in the middle of a crowd of people, her hands hovering above her head as she twists, bounces, and sways to the music. it's not quite how the locals dance, but it's close enough not to draw a ton of attention. her eyes are closed, but there's a sort of tension in her body underlying any kind of enjoyment the dancing might bring. someone should tell this chick to relax a little... ]

reality (6).

[ she shouldn't be out here. that's what they told her, as a suggestion rather than a rule but it was clearly a suggestion they wanted her to take. but here she is. she can't help it. before she was unplugged, her first step into the fresh air and lush forest of earth was the first time in her entire life that she felt... free. she wanted to see it - no, she had to.

but she wasn't expecting this.

it sucked the breath right out of her lungs, much worse than the cold could've managed alone. part of her says there's no way in hell that this could be earth. but she knows it is, deep in that twist in the pit of her stomach, and all she can do is drop down slow to her knees in the dirt and take in the desolate landscape until she remembers how to breathe.

she's been out here too long. octavia's not stupid, she'll realize soon that she should head back, but not for a few more minutes yet. not unless someone comes up to remind her, anyway. ]

Reality (6)

[systemwizard]

[Octavia's reminder doesn't come in the form of a sane, helping hand, but in an echoing voice that wends through the rubbish of the ruins that have accumulated over generations of people daring to visit the surface for more than a few minutes at a time.

It's a song, words half-lost by mumbling, but it's all earnest:]

...La branche était sèche, l'oiseau est tombé
La branche était sèche, l'oiseau est tombé
L'oiseau est, à la volette
L'oiseau est, à la volette
L'oiseau est tombé!

[and, if Octavia's at all interested to see who's come up here for long enough to get through a third chorus of a children's song, she'll find one rather less ramshackle hut set together against the elements. It's easy to spot when she looks for the light: the Captain has managed to steal a battery pack and an LED lantern, which pours a sickly blueish hue out into the dark of the wastes.

By this point the singing has devolved into jaunty whistling. Captain's been up here for a while, as is evidenced by the rosiness of their shockingly androgynous face and fingertips poking out of their layers and layers of grey woollen wattling. They're huge, big enough to look silly hunched over a very tiny stool, but the odd angle doesn't seem to bother them as they push various bits and pieces around a rusted piece of sheet metal and hoom and haaah over their findings.

It's impossible to stay quiet near the shack: either intentionally or inadvertently, Captain's left all kinds of crunchy rubble for interlopers to stumble over. The whistling stops if she manages to get this far and Captain offers an all too pleasant,]

"Hello? Who eez eet?"

wanda maximoff | marvel comics; early 616

[chuvihani]

simulation

[ Wanda has been on this rooftop a hundred times before, sometimes alone, more often with company. The first day she took this jump, she fell half-way and then gently sank, like the air was thickening quicksand, moving slower and slower until she'd been kneeling on unreal asphalt. The second time was actually worse, the third time startlingly bad, even if she'd never slammed into the pavement, exactly. It was baffling, that initial session; people didn't usually get worse at this with practice.

The nature of her magic — what she'd believed was magic, anyway, even if now she knows better — had once interfered with her understanding of her new surroundings. Wanda had lived a lot of years at war with her own mind, learning to doubt herself. For her first few months of real freedom, she'd wasted too much time questioning whether extraction wasn't a self-imposed trick, worrying over the instinctual ring of truth she felt in her gut.

Now she was better at trusting herself, and much, much better at the jump, but she'd never forgotten her first failures. Never forgiven them, either. She doesn't look pleased with herself when she clears the space between buildings. Just determined. ]

reality

[ Wanda appreciates the progress of the newly extracted. After a few weeks, once they've adjusted to using their bodies, they often start to push themselves, seeking ways to become stronger, and that is something she understands intimately. She's disinclined to hold anyone's hand unless they really want it, and hardly anyone out here ever does, but she's patient and not judgmental regarding the natural psychological roadblocks that come with discovering real life. She can be a bit matter-of-fact, actually, but it's delivered with a kind of quiet earnestness. ]

You're healing well. [ All of them, excepting the free-born, rose up dotted with those round metal pieces all over their bodies. She'd never felt so conscious of the idea of flesh before she was really awake, and the machine's ports were like old war wounds. She indicates her right arm with a light gesture. ] We have had these our whole lives, and they remind us where we come from. But the other marks will fade.

reality;

[hacker]

Not our whole lives.

[ Stubborn. Skye refuses to accept that the only part of their lives that 'counted' was post-wakeup, or in that pod. No, what she remembers from before, in the Matrix, that has to count, too. If it doesn't count, then who is she? Who are any of them? She reaches up, rubbing the port on the back of her neck. It fits oddly, and the short hairs on her head bristle against her fingers to remind her just how new she still is. ]

Wedge Antilles ✖ Star Wars (Legends)

[sfoils]

REALITY

[ Wedge skipped the identity crisis and jumped straight into duty.

It wasn't a slight against the others. Everyone has different methods to cope. But Wedge's coping mechanisms were always pragmatic—compartmentalize, go on. It'd been surreal to see himself as hairless as a fresh Imperial recruit, to feel as weak as a newborn baby. So he'd jumped straight into physical therapy to strengthen atrophied limbs, to feel more human and less like a number, expendable. Wedge never liked feeling expendable.

Absentmindedly, he cards his fingers across his scalp, liking the sensation of softness and resistance provided by a head full of hair. It'd been a couple of months since being unplugged. These were small comforts, meaningless in the grand scheme of the rebellion. But they all need their anchors.

Wedge stands on a corner to ignore the dancers. He stands at attention: chin up, chest out, shoulders back, stomach in. He's as still as a statue, but he addresses passersbye with a friendly demeanor. ] Sorry, I'm not a good dancer. [ He'd attended enough 'official parties' in his past life to dislike the artificial formalities of such events. ]

MISSION

[ Wedge takes to the hovercrafts like a fish to water. He's a steady and graceful pilot, guiding the ship through tunnels in maneuvers that can only be learned from experience.

But that damned Sentinel is still gaining on them. No amount of fancy maneuvers will delay the inevitable. ] Alright, everyone, [ Says Wedge calmly, fingers tightening around a lever, force of habit making him reach above his head for another lever that'll activate non-existent s-foils. ] brace yourselves. I'm going to engage that squiddy.

And I'm going to win.

reality.

[hwic]

Sad, isn't it.

[ Because of course the sound of someone being a buzzkill might attract Regina Mills, or the woman so identified when she was asleep in a pod. Just Regina, anymore. She appears at Wedge's shoulder in the area he has managed to qualify as the 'corner' of the giant cavern, her hands cupped around a mug filled with a liquor-saturated concoction of whatever kind on offer.

She had thought she might make an appearance, until it became apparent that appearances mean very little in a cave. ]

Celebrating the commemoration of something that didn't mean a damn thing, in the long run.

[ Her black hair has grown out a few inches, and she wears her home-grown garments of worn wool and cotton well, by now. She doesn't look at him, but casts sweeping judgement at the rave going on at large. Close enough in proximity to speak under the thumping music, rather than having to shout over it. ]

will.i.am graham / hannibal

[look]

reality

[ Will has always liked mechanical things, the simplicity of interlocking pieces fitting together. Some people like to play around in the code, but he doesn't want much at all to do with the Matrix. Point of fact, he prefers reality, even dingy as it is, the itch of his hair growing in reminding him of how his mother used to shave he and his siblings for lice. He's already known poverty. That it comes hand in hand with dirty work isn't much new either.

So it is that he's off on his own with a rustbucket of a hovercraft, familiarizing himself with engineering technology far beyond anything his Matrix-life ever touched. Will learned boat motors, but the physics of one combustion engine isn't all that different to another, so with trial and error he's learning how to keep one running.

Maybe his brain would be better off doing something else, something bigger. But at the end of the day when he falls onto the bottom bunk, he's glad of hard work, complicated work, to exhaust him so much he can slip straight into sleep. Otherwise he'd think too much: about who was real and who wasn't, replaying his life over and wondering about the AI, wondering what sort of Matrix allowed someone like Hannibal to thrive. To win. ]


simulation.

[ When Will does head into the Matrix to learn, it's with the reluctance of a man who doesn't want to be as good as he is. Will has been spooling and unspooling reality in his head like a nervous habit for nearly as long as he's been alive. He always had an overactive imagination — that was probably why he started to doubt, to feel like the world was out of whack in some essential way. And now it serves him with a flexibility of the mind that allows him to go with the program however physics-defying it may seem.

Will doesn't feel like a fighter. His potential for violence is a deep and creeping thing, but he's not a man of action. And yet, he knows that just like he used his skills to help the FBI catch criminals, he'll use them now to rescue others from the Matrix, because it's the right thing to do. Still. He's not exactly a team player. ]

Just jump.

[ Standing on the edge of the towering skyscraper, looking out at the perfect blue of the sky, his arms folded. He's supposed to be training someone, but he's given his lecture on how this all works and now he seems to just expect it to happen. Go ahead, ignore the vertigo. Just leap. ]

reality.

[yansa]

[ There are ways of figuring out which of the extracted folks you can ask questions. For Oya and the other free-born, the tales told of the machines' duplicity are chilling and often grotesque, but she has never been and will never be trapped inside one. She thinks that the people who escape all kind of have a haunted look, like they've seen some crazy shit, and she can only imagine what it was.

(The machines are not crazy, not to her. They have always been there.)

Others, like the guy working on the messed-up looking hovercraft all by himself, don't seem like the sort who'd tell many stories. Oya finds that more reasonable. It's better that they start over; any long-standing attachment they may have to their false lives is sad and all, but she can't fully understand. Despite being a skinny teenager, she is toting a sack full of miscellaneous mechanical parts with considerable confidence, carrying it over her shoulder. ]

Hey. [ Her tone is casual, even a little brusque. ] You want to look through these, see if there's anything useful?

[ Lots of her family chose the engineering route. Not Oya—she wants to do health and wellness, and her age is not a big deterrent, if you're able to, you work, in Zion—but she's picked up a thing or two. ]

Chase Kilgannon | The Amory Wars

[the_vishual]

SIMULATION 1: TRAINING

Hello. [ She looks 8 or 9, but she's surprisingly calm as she surveys the busy, New York-esque rooftop. It's all of the hustle and bustle of an unfamiliar city in an unfamiliar world for her, but she's regarding them somberly. Constructs, sure. Who's to say she isn't one in a far more elaborate ploy? It's the one thing she's yet to adjust to--not being a pawn in something greater. Autonomy.

Enough reflection--she reaches out to grab the person next to her's hand, squeezing it slightly. ]

Don't be afraid. Jump.



MISSION 4: SENTINEL

[ In the city, in the simulations, she has power. She's the catalyst for a revolution in her world, the Vishual, the one that bears the Gift. Here, she's a small girl that can't do a single thing. There's a sentinel, she knows. She hears the screeching of metal and there's no energy here she's able to manipulate and throw. Nothing she can use because here, in the real world, she's nothing.

Chase screams, despite herself, and wishes more than anything her brother was here as she scrambles for her station. Feel free to either literally trip over her or scoop her up, as she's panicking and flying blind at the moment. ]

1!

[subjectzero]

[The thing is, they spent all this time after they pulled her out explaining that what she was used to wasn't real. Back home - because there's still a part of her that thinks of it as home - she could have done it. Soared across in a crackle of blue light, nobody to tell her otherwise. But now, after extraction and all the hard lessons that come with that, she hesitates. Wraps the delay up in sneering down at the small hand folding into hers and makes a sound like there's something bitter stuck in the back of her throat.]

Sure. Then what? Pajama party? Braid each other's fuckin' hair?

Dean Winchester → Supernatural

[righteously]

simulation;

[Alright, so, the thing is, Dean's had time to process this whole... virtual reality the matrix is real thing, sure. He's been through the denial and the angst and the disbelief or whatever, that's all well and good, and sure, he's buying it. He's on board. Cheat the system, yeah, great, awesome.

But when you're standing on the edge of a ten story building looking down at a plummet to the death and somebody's asking you to jump that bitch?

...]

Nope.

[He declares, holding up his hands and backing away. His head shakes back and forth firmly, adamantly denying the entire prospect.]

No, no, no, nope. Not happening. Nope.

reality;

[If you're in a communal dining area, best prepare yourself for Mr. Winchester, because he slams his tray down at the table without preamble or introduction, taking a seat with a disgusted look on his face.]

Seriously? Seriously? They've gotta be kidding with this crap, right?

[Is he even talking to anyone, or is he just yelling at his tray? Probably mostly the latter, to be honest, considering the way he's staring at what this crap-hole reality calls food.

Spoilers, he's completely unimpressed by it.]

This looks like a yeast infection on puppy chow.

reality;

[hacker]

Well, that's a colorful and disturbingly specific way of saying … exactly what I was thinking.

[ Summoning up a distasteful look, Skye pushes her tin bowl away, leaning back. Hungry, yes. Not that hungry. ]

DEUCALION | teen wolf

[scission]

simulation

[Is it strange to feel a sense of nostalgia for something that isn't real? It's a question that Deucalion has found himself thinking far too many times, the concrete of the rooftop settling under his feet once again, the wind whipping around his face. The temptation is to walk to the edge, as it always is, and he follows it, looking down on distant tarmac that he could almost call familiar for how many times he'd hit it.

If it was real.]

No one can tell you how, I'm afraid. Your limitations are your own to break.

[His voice is smooth, calm, invoking certainty even if his words lack anything as overt as encouragement. Training - guiding - is a role he'd fallen into reluctantly, all the mistakes in his past, but it still fits easily.]

It's time to jump.

reality

[The dancing doesn't appeal to him. He stays long enough to watch, the impressive visual of the cavern filled to the brim, just how many bodies make up the population of this city. But the heat and the beat drive him away, as if could still imagine how it might be, the scent of so many people pressed so close together, the drums deadening sensitive ears.

He works his way back, through the tunnels, up level after level to the dock. It's not unmanned, not even now, on a day of celebration. But there's something quieter in looking out, knowing most are deep under his feet. Looking up, the high dome of the cavern's ceiling.

Sight still feels like a gift, the short amount of time he'd had it restored before being pulled free meaning nearly nothing to all the years before. But there's no sky to see here, no rain, no green left alive. He must be mad to still think there's anything wolf under his skin, but it claws at him sometimes, an itch like an instinct choked and caged.]

[ex_spins462]

[ It would be so easy to fall back into the rhythm of following orders. But recent experience has shown Natasha the value of scrutinizing who's giving those orders very closely before capitulating. Which is probably why she's paying such close attention to Deucalion rather than the sheer drop at their feet. The dark glasses in particular intrigue her, like a blind man, though he moves in his surroundings easily enough and she'd made no note of such an affliction in the waking world.

Natasha knew there were differences, in and out. In the simulation her hair is shoulder-length again, strangely heavy after the freedom of being nearly bald. She has better muscle tone, too — but she won't forget that sitting in that chair letting her mind roam a fake world is close to how she lost those abilities to begin with. (Or never had them, to be more accurate, grown in a pod and atrophying slowly, but Natasha still feels like she's lost something.)

But once she's done analyzing Deucalion, she sighs and shakes out her limbs. ]

I've never really been good at trust fall exercises.

[ Trusting that he's telling the truth — or that he'll catch her somehow if she doesn't make it. ]

melinda may | agents of shield

[succinctly]

[reality]

What drew May to the party in the caves tonight is anyone's guess. She doesn't look like she's interested in celebrating. In fact, she's staying far above the dance floor, observing the throngs of people from a cavern up above. Arms crossed above her chest, she lets her gaze sweep the group.

She could have stayed away, stayed somewhere quiet and heard about the festivities in the morning. But when you get this many people in one place, when you make them forget the troubles they face for too long, people tend to get reckless.

She doesn't know all of them, but she doesn't want to see any trouble tonight. Sometimes the thing that people need to be protected from most is themselves.]




[simulation]

[Standing on the edge of the roof, May takes a deep breath. The air feels crisp here- clear and clean. It's a lie, of course. The air doesn't actually exist. But it feels fresh, which is enough for now.

Inhale. Exhale. The quiet up here is calming, almost so much so that she forgets what she came up here for in the first place.

Almost.]

You're not chickening out on me, are you? [She says, turning to glance over her shoulder at the person she was coaching through the whole 'flying leap from building to building' thing. There's the slightest trace of a smile on her lips, the question dry, goading.]

[hacker]

[ Even after everything that's happened, Skye is still the social butterfly she's always been. Joking, smiling, laughing, witty repartee. She's right at home in the mass of pulsing bodies crammed together in the caves. And it makes her feel better too, to go back to that.

But even down here, she can't forget the ports in her arms and her chest and her back, can't help but miss the brush of dark hair against her shoulders because it's buzzed now—or, more accurately, it never grew out in the first place.

She tries to act normal anyway when she sees May, slipping off to the side and pulling the sleeve of her flimsy gray sweater back up her shoulder and giving a nod of acknowledgment. ]

Getting in touch with the party animal within? [ Impossible to imagine, but that's why it's a joke. Skye doesn't even need to add the wry, lopsided smile that she gives. ]

JOHN CONSTANTINE | constantine (film)

[ashing]

simulation

[For a man that had been as difficult to extract as John had been (angels and demons were a headache for even seasoned operatives to navigate), you might think he'd show a little more gratitude for it. But John had his ideas of reality punctured enough times, and as much as he may be failing to pick up the mechanics of this one, it's caused no shift in his attitude.]

Screw you.

[Is his response to being instructed to jump, only delayed by a moment for him to step forward, take a peek over the edge. This may not be real, the jump might be completely possible, but that still doesn't mean he's going to do it.]

reality

[He's ignored all offers of crutches to get him around, using the walls and railings of the ship to lean his weight as he drags weak, difficult limbs into moving. He prefers it, somehow feeling like he's getting a better sense of the ship, this place by having his hands on it constantly, reality in its solidity under him. Though that was as easy to trick as anything, wasn't it?

It's a late hour, most of the crew asleep, and he shouldn't be up, stumbling around. If he falls, hurts some weak part of this frail body, how many more hours of rehabilitation would that be? But he's never been one for listening to caution, and he's got a destination.]

Someone told me you're the person to talk to. [He says instead of greeting, when he finds who he's looking for.] About something a little stronger.

[Than protein slop and water. Humans were humans, as far as John's concerned, and where there's humans, there's alcohol.]

reality

[subjectzero]

[She doesn't much like sleep. There's a learning curve, she's told, a trick to separating what you thought was real from what is, and until she's mastered that, sleep - and the dreams that come with it - is something she accepts only reluctantly.

This stranger isn't really any more interesting than not-sleeping, as far as she can she, and her eyes barely flick over him.]

They'd be right. Maybe you come see me in a month or so, when it won't knock you flat on that pasty ass of yours.

Tony Stark | Marvel Cinematic Universe | Simulation & Real

[servomotor]

Wildcard Simulation

Get out.

[He doesn't even turn around to see who it is. He certainly ostensibly busy, here in this sprawling complex of blue lines and translucent geometry, scrolling panes of code that look nearly like the stuff that the Matrix is made of, but. isn't quite. The body render keeps Tony looking like himself, black hair, pruned beardstache, the rudimentary clothing provided to all residents of Zion, simple and organic and familiar to those who've ever met him.

Quite unlike the high-tech sprawl of icy light and sophisticated program structure that he's playing with.] Not taking visitors, [he clarifies, makes a shooing motion over his shoulder.] Private reunion. And you know, who doesn't understand what putting a sock on the adjacent headjack means?

[The more tech-savvy of you might realize that that's AI code he's fooling with.]

---

Jump Program Simulation

My mind is already free, [he says, loudly.] Two thousand miles in a rough-draft repulsor suit trumps a seventy foot long-jump. That repulsor suit came outta here. [He taps his head.

The wind whistles over the rooftops. He looks a little bug-eyed. It's different, without a literal jetstream of singular intellectual genius to ride along.]

---

Wildcard Real

[The brown glop slides off the tip of Tony's spoon. He stares at its downward, gravitational movement, with the fascination that a much younger boy might watch the plump pulsating innards of a translucent caterpillar approaching the final stages of its wingless life.

With obvious resignation, he winds up taking a slice of bread out of the communal plate, slathering brown onto grain with something that certainly isn't gusto.] Bottoms up, [he says, and then the liquid crunch.]

[OOC note: I'm quite RLed at the moment at least until Tuesday, please forgive for slowtags.]

wildcard simulation

[hacker]

[ Rather than allow herself to be shooed out, Skye takes Tony's dismissal as invitation to see herself around. This is the part of the Matrix that she hadn't seen yet, and it feels leaps and bounds more familiar than anything she's been facing so far. It's not just the familiar oversized button-ups and jeans, or the blunt bangs and shoulder-length feathered hair being back. The lack of ports. It's the code, and actually being able to remember the things that she loved in her fake-life.

And it's all around them, better than any hologram SHIELD had to animate its file storage. She reaches up, indiscriminately poking at the coding to try and get an idea for what she's looking at. She hasn't been awake long enough to spot-recognize the Matrix codes yet, not by far, but some of it does reek of familiarity from her old life. Her brow furrows. ]

What is this?

Horse | Native OC | Mission & Sim & Real

[bloodhorse]

Mission: Sentinel Interruptus

[When he yanks the probe out, he isn't gentle, not by a long shot. There's no time for ceremony or apology, even as the bizarre sensation fades out, replaced by a flood of adrenaline. You all heard his voice within the Matrix, and his operator's headset is still camped firmly around his short-shorn head.] One's almost through the upper hull, staboard, [he says.] He's still jacked in.

[He nods at the operative beside you, still prone and wired up on the chair. It means a couple things. They're two hands short, and a few more seconds out from EMP. Maybe it also means they're going to have to suck it up and bake one of their own to save the ship and everyone else, but they have options until then, and that's what Horse means when he stoops down and forms a stirrup with his hands. You can go faster up the ladder when you skip as many rungs as Horse is tall. And their biggest turret is up there.]

I'll be right behind you.

---

Wildcard Simulation

The Agent program doesn't start until you get in the car, [he says, a tinny voice in your earpiece. Horse is entirely correct, of course, but

the restaurant is so lovely: the steak sumptuous, the plaza sprawling in sunlit elegance outside, mannequins striking poses from storefronts and elegant fonts presenting designer brands above them. There's a sparrow bouncing around optimistically on the balcony railing beside you. Mosaiced skies roam gently over the facades of skyscrapers a few blocks down at the speed of a warm autumn wind. It'd feel real, if his bass-deep voice weren't stupid questions like:]

What are you doing in there?

---

Wildcard Real

[There are enough people in Zion that not everybody knows everybody, but few enough that anybody's likely to know something about you. One of those things that some people know about Horse, and many other Natives of Zion, is that Irkallans elicit in them an insensate and single-minded rage, a reaction as visceral as dogs with cats. Or what, presumably, dogs and cats are supposed to behave like, based on the Machines' understanding programmed into thousands of Matrixes across the planet.

That's what makes the refugee envoy that docked six hours ago so tenuous. Deserters' deserters. They new boatload of Irkallans are supposed to be segregated with the thin but convenient excuse of quarantine-- for everybody's safety.

But it's not hard to guess that somebody made an exception, when the sound of footfalls from the entryway behind you are matched with a complete change in the air inside the tavern. There is instantaneous ugliness on Horse's face across from you; his shoulders bunch, his eyes lock on the doorway. The clatter of cups and talk dries up like it was scorched. The bartender, a dozen yards back, stops in the middle of drying a carafe.]

[OOC note: I'm quite RLed at the moment at least until Tuesday, please forgive for slowtags.]

Mission

[sfoils]

[ Wedge's job description isn't gunner. Sure, vaping snubfighters in his 'other' life involved shooting all kinds of weapons, but he flew his own ship, relied on his own maneuvers. Trusting someone else with the piloting while he shoots is the inverse of his ideal situation.

But he also understands adaptability, and duty is duty. If everyone got to pick what they wanted to do all the time, then this wouldn't be a rebellion, now would it? ] I would've lost that Sentinel by now. [ Is he joking or is he serious? Too late to ask, for he's already at the turret. ]

peter quill | mcu

[retrofire]

A | WILDCARD SIMULATION

[ This isn't what he's supposed to be doing. It's only a matter of time until someone shows up and tells him they have work to do, drags him out, and when that happens the scene will change; engines will roar overhead, lights will blare over the grassy hilltop, and then they'll have a legitimate training scenario. Something that requires reaction, not explanation.

Until then, it's just a quiet, green slope, slate beneath the night sky. Light pools beneath a few dim streetlamps a few yards off, closer to the building. It spills out from the glass door of the hospital, too, quiet and uninterrupted.

Not for him. There's music streaming through the headphones Peter's wearing, sound vague and tinny to anyone who approaches him where he's seated, sprawled out on the grass. The way he's tapping out a rhythm on his leg makes it look like he's distracted, nonchalant, but the way he watches the hospital door like he's expecting someone to walk out of it says otherwise. ]

B | REALITY

This music is terrible.

[ And super loud, which is why that's more or less shouted into your ear. Peter isn't even looking at whoever he's decided to submit his review to, gaze wandering over the sweaty excuse for a dance party that's writhing over the floors below. The level — balcony, sort of — he's currently standing on is crowded, too, and there are spots of movement that qualify as more dancing; but there's comparative quiet, and some actual sitting down and relaxing. ]

You wanna get some air? [ Well. Air, with air quotes, which he adds on the second go. ] You know, air.

[ Or whatever passes for it on this sorry excuse for a planet. It's an open invitation, apparently, and if you happen to be standing next to him, you qualify. ]

B

[hacker]

[ Usually, the person shouting in ears at a rave is the Creep Guy who needs a lesson in personal space, but today it's apparently the Downer. Skye keeps her body undulating along with the rhythm of the music, but cuts Quill a look over her shoulder, eyebrows raised. A brief once-over, and she at least decides to offer him an answer instead of just herding him out the door all bye, Felicia. ]

What—is this, like, your first rave? [ Dropping her hands to her sides, she straightens her legs out, tipping her head to the side. Then again, some people are thinking they're coming out of the Dark Ages, so maybe she shouldn't judge by appearances. She nods behind him for the nearest exit from the main cave area, squeezing out after him. ] So what's your idea of good music? Barry Manilow?

Sirius Black | Simulations & Real (cw indications of past trauma)

[berk]

Wildcard Simulation 1 (X-Men Cinematic Universe)

[It's fairly obvious when Sirius Black figures out what his mutation is. In the middle of the street, he entirely stops paying attention to the girls in bell-bottoms and the blokes with big hair and the squashed-looking American cars and how tight and structured all the Muggles clothes. He falls sharply silent, his head turning steadily on its axis as his feet keep moving, his attention fixed, unmistakably, upon the big yellow dog leashed to the parking meter there.

His face changes a little. His fingers start to open, telegraph a reach, almost, for the little furry face, the friendly tilt of ears, the nose coming to meet his palm.

--but then he pulls back, nonchalance settling firmly into place. He looks nearly like he did as a free man, none of Azkaban's cold and hungry years having left a shadow or a tincture to his square jaw. Not here.] What've you got then? [he asks, looking up. His hand goes in his pocket.]

---

Real Party

[He's supposed to like a party. 'Party.'

There are any number of excuses that might suit: it's not very British, this mad knot of bodies. It certainly isn't very wizardly, the organic intensity of it, music beating through like the air itself has a heartbeat, sweating with the passion of every person contained therein. He's been to London, he's seen how dense the Ministry is, and the Quidditch games would in the greatest championships, attract turnout that was physically impossible for the arenas to hold. You know, were it not for magic.

But magic isn't real. Just as mutation is not real, and Azkaban wasn't real, and the disparate pieces of his life were not real, from the wand that chose him to the peculiar matter of thestrels. This sequence of thoughts is completely irrelevant to anything, but it's still what he thinks about as he stumbles around a table, upends himself over a recently-emptied keg and vomits inside its reverberating hull.

Five minutes later, he's well beyond the crowd. The stone is cold on his shoulder. He tries to compose himself, but they don't produce mirrors here with either magic or mechanical manufacturing processes, so his efforts are a little unbalanced. His hair smears black across his forehead; his eyes blink green.]

[OOC note: I'm quite RLed at the moment at least until Tuesday, please forgive for slowtags.]

Real party;

[ampelos]

[They didn't do stuff like this back home.

It just wasn't a part of the way society had functioned. Sex wasn't important, there wasn't this kind of dance and music, and people didn't allow themselves to be as close as they all were right now; it was entirely too intimate.

He struggled with the idea that this was reality, and everything back home was not. It was easier for him to just explain it as some kind of traveling. Eben had left his home using a form of travel long since practiced, passed out, and when he'd woken up, he was here. That was over a month ago, and he still believed he'd go home some day.

But, it was too much. He'd been adjusting, but everything happening behind him was a bit hard to understand. Eben's head turns upward sharply when he sees the other, and he stops, hands up and out. He didn't think the other was going to hurt him, but he figured it best to immediately show he wasn't dangerous, just getting some space.]

Sorry. I don't mean to interrupt.

sherlock holmes | elementary

[virtuoso]

A | SIMULATION

[ It's a dangerous game, giving a reset button to an addict. Sherlock's sitting at the edge of the building, legs dangling over the edge and swinging idly, heels tapping the bricks. His posture's hunched, slightly, hands folded together in his lap as he watches the skyline, eyes squinting against the sunlight.

He tries opening them wider, just to see if it stings. It does, even though it shouldn't.

The sound of footsteps doesn't make him turn around, though he does straighten his back as he speaks up, loud enough to be heard over the echoing sounds of the city. ]

A mind is a terrible thing to waste. Famous quote, famously misquoted by many. Who said it first?

B | MISSION

It's cheating.

[ A piece of wall falls on his shirt as a bullet clips the corner he's hunkered down against; Sherlock ignores it, focused on the teammate who's similarly shielded just to his right. He's got a gun in his hand, unloaded. There's a cartridge in his other palm, but he's using it to gesture rather than bothering to push the clip in. ]

I don't use guns. I know how to use them, obviously, but I wouldn't have before, so I don't see how it's not a matter of—

[ This time it's a bullet hitting the far wall with a sound that almost sounds like a ricochet. It doesn't, but it's enough for his sentence to stutter. ] It's a matter of personal integrity.

[ Sorry you're stuck with the asshole who wants to play this mission on crushing mode, bro. ]

B | Mission

[mrsnippy]

[For this mission, as usual, Snippy has imagined himself right back into his G-tech mask and coat as soon as the danger hit. He's scowling under his mask now, the expression mimicked by the covers of his goggles. Who the hell did he manage to piss off that meant he had to be stuck with Holmes? ]

It's not cheating if stops you being killed. G-Damnit, can't you make it up to your personal integrity when we're not in danger of being shot?!

[He leans out around his corner and fires off a round of precise shots; perhaps this is why he's been paired up with the other man, as he's got no hesitations about using his ability to snipe

At least put the clip in your gun!

lestat de lioncourt | vampire chronicles.

[damnedest]

WILDCARD SIMULATION;

I want to see the sunrise.

[ He says this out loud when he senses someone approaching, or rather, entering the simulation, and only tips a look back at them after the fact.

It is pre-dawn, a world confined to the laws of an Earth where vampirism is impossible, and so he is some in between thing -- no strength and no weaknesses, but his projected self-image is far departed than the creature strapped into the chair in the control room. He is white-skinned, his eyes feline bright, his hair yellow and long. Inhuman, by all appearances.

His clothes are simpler than he was once accustomed. Not unlike that standard fare offered by Zion, but cleaner, less ragged. His nails are long, and seem as strong as diamond. ]

If it is all the same, to you.

[ Each word carries a special sort of weight, an inherent drama, an ironic lilt. The setting is a rocky beach, and he is perched on an outcropping of ocean-facing cliff, with a dark sea passive beneath him. The beginning of a sunrise is beginning to warm the horizon, and an artificial wind rustles artificial dunes in the background. ]

[echopraxia]

( anna - anya, as she had previously invited him to call her, too flint-eyed to convey the appropriate friendliness of the gesture - is only a few steps behind him, the accumulated scars and blemishes of ordinary life lived after zion melted to nothing by the way that she still sees herself, untouched and untouchable by time. in an abstract way, she hopes to find death as suddenly and violently as she began the life she never really lived; she searches her reflection each day for signs of age, and it unsettles her in ways that her pride will never let her put into words.

her hands are clasped behind her back, her hair pulled away from her face. she comes to stand beside him, all regal placidity, and eventually she says, )

And are you satisfied by it?

( without any particular expectation that he will answer her. )

Steve Rogers | MCU

[paragon]

1. simulation.

[ Steve already knows he can make the jump.

even if he hasn't managed it yet (he's only been inside the simulation a couple times now), he still knows he can. sure, he relied on this body for the task before, but part of that was in trusting it to carry him through rather than what one might call hard proof that it was able to traverse the distances. he learned his limits through mind over matter before, and he can do it again.

there are no amount of heights Steve Rogers won't jump from. the challenge is making himself believe that it isn't gonna hurt like hell when he lands. ]

Don't look down, huh.

[ he wonders what the truism is when you fully intend to fall. ]


6. reality

[ he doesn't remember the ice; at least, not the expanse of it, a vast stretch between continents, through decades. he remembers hitting hard. he remembers cold like he'd never known before — and he'd thought he knew from cold. there was never much between his bones and the winters in Brooklyn, but it turned out there'd been enough: always something there to keep it from going too deep, to keep it from killing him.

the surface could probably kill him, even without the machines here to lend a helping hand. it might be the only real cold he's ever known, but it still constricts his chest in a way that feels too familiar. he can't seem to inhale enough of the metallic air to fill his lungs, and the dread that curls inside them with it is a dull sort of apprehension that he only half pays any mind to.

he sits down on the ground, the wind painfully cold through his clothes, but he doesn't fold his arms. instead he rests his fists on his knees, jaw tight against the shivering. he's not too proud for it, not anymore; he just knows that once it starts it's harder to stop.

— Steve thinks he's alone out here, but it's not really by choice. he just doesn't have much in common with those who've long gotten their strength back, or those still trying to find their legs; he already knows how to live in this body, and that it's unlikely to ever become much stronger. that kind of thing doesn't happen in the real world. ]

reality

[lostsoldier]

[ Steve isn't alone. But he wouldn't be the first person to overlook the Winter Soldier when he didn't want to be found, and especially out here, perched among the rocks, bundled in drab layers, as colorless and still as the landscape around them. This bleak, freezing desert feels real to him in a way nothing else does — not the simulation, not the Matrix, not even the illusion of safety in Zion. Nowhere's safe. At least up here there's no pretending. And he likes the quiet. The solitude. The space to gather his thoughts.

Thoughts that free-fall out of his head the moment he catches sight of those skinny limbs settling in the dirt. His neck cranes to follow. He knows the set of those shoulders. The cut of that silhouette. His heart lodges in his throat.

(Denied enlistment due to poor health, Steven Rogers was chosen for a program unique in the annals of American warfare. One that would transform him...)

He could leave. Stealth doesn't come to him so easily yet as it once did; his limbs are slower and clumsier than he ever remembers them being, but he remembers how to be quiet, how to step lightly if not move swiftly. Twenty feet back to the manhole. He could make it. His mouth presses flat. His eyes keep flicking to those shivering shoulders.

Instead, after a soft rustle, a lump of fabric comes sailing over the ridge, landing in the dust a foot or two to Steve's left. His throwing arm isn't what it used to be.

It's a jacket. As in, Maybe you should put one on, Steve. ]

Cole | Dragon Age: Inquisition

[bigfloppyhat]

simulation.

[A boy (a young man, more like-- a man's frame, with the awkward, unsure movement of a boy) sits on the ledge of the roof of a skyscraper, peering down at the ant-sized people below. He seems undisturbed by the height, but it's difficult to tell exactly what he's thinking due to the gigantic-brimmed hat perched on his head. Swinging his feet, he stares intently, silent, until he hears someone join him there. You can almost sense him relax. When he speaks, his voice is gentle, light, but clearly perturbed.]

It's too quiet. All those people, and not one of them is there. They're not even spirits, not really. I can't hear them. Everything... echoes. Beeping and whistling, like birds, but wrong.

[His head tilts to the side, revealing a sliver of his face under all that hat-- pale, gaunt, spotted with teenage blemishes. Lank blonde hair hides his sunken eyes.]

Were they always this way? I can't remember...


reality.

[The surface is dark, cold, oppressive. Wrong, by every definition. Not at all the world he remembers. The realization that this is real, and that his world is not, squeezes his heart in his chest. It's a sensation distinctly unfamiliar to him, and a deeply unpleasant one.

But here he stands, staring at the sky, desperately trying to convince himself that any moment now, the heavy black clouds will part, and the Black City will appear above, and he'll know this is all just a terrible dream. Any minute now.]

If this is what it means to be real, then I take it back. I don't think that I want it at all.

[reality]

[hellbrokeloose]

Well, if you’re certain.

[ No judgment.

Metzger has already seen it: the wind, the wreckage, the heavy black clouds. He’s German, no taller than 5’7” -- dwarfed by the ship idling at his back -- and older, grizzled silver about his whiskers. The pulse of his hovercraft’s jets thrums through through the ground into his boot heels while he unpockets his network device.

He’s been slithering in and out of these tunnels for thirty years, give or take. ]

Climb back in. [ He hooks a thumb back at the hatch, busy checking his messages. ] I’ll return you to your snot bucket.

[mrsnippy]

[Simulation]

[Charles knew it was all a simulation, knew it because he'd seen it loaded, but he was still have major difficulties disregarding the Law of Gravity. This was his sixth attempt at jumping off of a building and the sixth time he'd found himself lying in a pained heap on asphalt.]

G-damnit. [He groaned and levered himself up] Okay, trusting you enough to actually jump off a building is freer than I'm meant to be. This is a total failure.

[Reality 6]

[Charles stood shivering in the darkness of the overworld, hardly trusting himself to breathe. Something about his personal Matrix had gone terribly wrong years ago, so that he'd lived alone in a wasteland similar to this in many ways, struggling to survive with companions he now wonders were ever actual people or just glitches in the system.

Standing here now, realising how much he'd been dreaming of the real world, his main feeling was anxiety for the missing tech he'd worn that had kept him sheltered from radiation. He'd been told it was safe to stand here for short periods, but he still felt convinced that he was killing himself with each breath.

He smiled at the person standing beside him, a quick, unconvincing flash of his teeth as he asked.]

"Would you believe me if I told you this is actually better than where I'd been trapped for the last decade?"

reality 6

[lostsoldier]

[ Company isn't usually what he comes up here for. It might not last. But at the question, he quirks an eyebrow at the other man. That might even be a hint of humor in his expression, if you look close enough, like he's stumbled upon some small private joke. ]

Yeah. [ Yeah, he can imagine a few worse places. ] What was it like?

Stephen Bloom | The Brothers Bloom

[dostoevsky]

Wildcard: Real

[ Real, imagined—after he was unplugged, Stephen didn't spend much time hung up on that distinction. Everything's an act. Experience is real. What bothers him is—

What bothers him is being the severed half of a codependent pair, having a brother he'd die for who isn't his brother at all, out in the fields somewhere.

But what he'll admit bothers him is that he could have done it better. If someone's in the business of scripting worlds and guiding lives, they should have hired him. Just look at the virtual world he came from: great hats, but not nearly enough pirates. ]

You miss it? [ he'll ask anyone with ports who wanders past looking distant or lost. People who want to visit their old haunts can, sure, but it's a risk, a waste of resources. If they don't bump into agents, they might bump into the AIs that are filling the holes they've left in their loved ones' lives. Nothing more awkward than that. So here's Stephen, at a console, writing software instead of cons, tugging up each sleeve on his ratty grey sweater with the same crisp flourish he'd do a suit jacket, putting his hands on keys. He can't recreate worlds, but he can recreate houses. Favorite diners. Parents and ex-boyfriends and beloved old pets. ]

Come on, sit down, tell me about it. I'll write it for you.

[sfoils]

[ There are too many people in this place who dismiss and disdain their experiences in their past lives. Wedge doesn't believe that; emotions are no less real in a simulation than they are in 'real' space, like reading a book and hurting for a fictional character makes it no less valuable because the character is fictional.

This line of thinking allowed Wedge to skip the identity crisis most people undergo after being unplugged. Some thought it eerie, but others, kindred souls, understood. Wedge gravitates towards these people.

There's word around that there's a guy willing to write up sims of things you miss. People you loved. Wedge sees no reason not to indulge it.

He sits down, hands on his knees. ] I was an ace pilot. I flew these ships called X-Wings. Here... [ He rummages through his pockets for a folded piece of paper, and hands it to Stephen. It's a diagram. ] ...this is what they looked like.

I'd like to fly one again. No training exercise, no hostiles. Just flying.

rita vrataski | edge of tomorrow

[repetitio]

SIMULATION

[ she uses different simulations to train; nothing else would make sense because familiarity lessens the training effect after a certain time. still, there is one that she returns to when others are used for their purpose and then discarded.

if anyone else were to enter the simulation, they would find rita vrataski surrounded by the whirring of metal, machinery designed to mimic the mimics. the air smells of oil and metal and her eyes are closed where she is resting the weight of her entire body on the palms of her hand, perfectly balanced despite the noise and the danger.

there is a sword strapped to her back, but she isn't wearing armor. ]

REALITY

[ the anniversary of neo's truth always draws a crowd, and zion is celebrating right now. the music is loud, and rita's blood is pounding through her veins in time with the bass of a song she doesn't know.

most people are barefooted, some are half-naked or even closer to fully undressed; rita is wearing combat boots and black kevlar, hair pinned back but for the strands that always escape no matter what she tries. (some days, she thinks of shaving it all off, but she never actually picks up the razor.)

she isn't here to celebrate.

instead, she keeps to the edge of the crowd, her pace steady as she walks. anyone trying to draw her into the pulsing midst of the crowd is brushed off, not harshly but decisively. she has an objective, and it isn't dancing.

she ducks deeper into a corridor of the caves that remains unlit and then disappears. there's an exit ahead, and she wants to breathe the air up top, unfiltered and cold and bitter.

it's more real than any celebration could ever be, to her. ]

Reality

[mrsnippy]

[Snippy was already sitting outside the exit, appreciating the air just as she planned to do. He'd spent ten years in a radioactive wasteland after his world ended, stuck behind a respirator and praying he'd find more filters for when his current ones ran out.

He'd also been desperately lonely, so waking up in the real world had seemed a miracle, except now he found he just couldn't handle large crowds. It left him disgusted with himself, so he'd gone seeking some peace and quiet and whatever comfort he could inhale.

He looks over his shoulder when she comes out the door, already scowling balefully at the revellers he's expecting have come to interrupt his brooding with their canoodling. She's something of a surprise]

You look about as ready to party as me. You're not here to tell me to get inside again, are you?

bellamy blake | the 100

[necessitas]

SIMULATION

[ it's a simple simulation: a gun range, paper targets lined up at a distance. the range seems so large that there is no telling where it ends, how many rows there really are. right now, only one of them is occupied: bellamy stands with his rifle against his shoulder, finger on the trigger for a long moment before he fires.

the target already has four holes in it, this latest shot adds a fifth to the forehead of the black figure on the paper.

it hasn't been a long time since he's been unplugged, since he's regained his strength and muscle mass. some reflexes are still ingrained, though, and hadn't needed to be relearned. he can still aim properly, but he'd needed to relearn how to brace for recoil and how to handle his gun.

there are times when bellamy wonders if waking up wasn't a mistake, whether he wouldn't be happier still inside the matrix, unknowing. it doesn't matter, though: leaders do what they think is right, and he knows that this is right in a way that makes his own comfort or happiness entirely secondary. it hadn't been a priority up on the ark and it hadn't been on the ground, why should it be now?

necessity trumps everything else, and there's a war to fight.

there's a war to fight, and so he lets out a slow breath and then lifts the rifle again. even when he hears someone else walk the length of the gun range, someone else plugged into the same simulation, his focus doesn't waver until he's made another shot, this one in the target's shoulder.

only then does he turn to see who else is making use of this simulation. he needs to recharge, anyway. ]

MISSION

[ the extraction goes well initially, it's only their retreat that doesn't. bellamy is taking the rear when the operator shouts sentinel at your seven o'clock, closing fast, and he hears the shriek of metal even before he manages to turn, weapon lifted and not going to be enough to do more than slow it down.

of course, slowing it down is all he really needs to do, right?

so he shouts to the rest of this unit, ] Run. [ and fires. ]

kate fuller | from dusk till dawn: the series

[forgive]

simulation (1);

[ This is still new to Kate, and while it's frustrating and confusing, it's a break from all the physical therapy that goes into being 'awake.' And flexing her mind's muscles seem important as anything — if not more.

She tries not to focus on the wind hitting her face, cutting through her long hair (that will be gone when the program ends), and the endless horizon of buildings and pavement below. None of it is real. She practically trampolined right off it during her first attempt. No one ever makes the first jump at least, so she's told.

Her stubbornness and strength has gotten her this far — or it did back home. ('Home' she has to remind herself.) Because when she believes in something, she believes in it with all her heart and soul. Maybe that has to be the case here, even though the evidence before her is telling her different. But when has that ever stopped her from having faith?

Still, she looks over at her current training partner with an expression of exhaustive disbelief when she's asked to do it again. ]

Are you kidding? I mean, you saw, I literally fell on my face. How am I supposed to clear that jump?


reality (5);

[ The hardest parts of her recovery have passed; she can actually walk on her own and it's been at least a week since she hasn't cried herself to sleep at the thought of her family — or what was her family. That's not to say she doesn't still think about Scott, who was still out there somewhere and he wasn't a ... culebra. Those things don't even technically exist. So there are some bright sides to this dark situation. Kate wanted the truth and she got more than she bargained for. But did God still exist? Was God now these machines who harvest humans, construct their whole lives? Or was He still out there somewhere? And had it always been their path to save each other and she was just seeing it now?

Her hope remains and it's the thought of finding and unplugging Scott one day that keeps her going. Maybe even Richie and Seth, if they aren't already, who knows. They all deserved to know the truth. Though she can't say anyone else will accept it the way she did. Eventually.

But it is nice not to think about that for a short time. Being in Zion, surrounded by crowds and music, reminds her she isn't alone and it's all of these people who are fighting too. Not to mention the fact that all roads seem to lead to a club of some kind. She only hopes this is exactly what it appears to be, a celebration and not something else — not a trap (old memories die hard).

Navigating through the packed bodies, Kate inevitably starts bumping shoulders with those as she tries to get by. ]

Excuse me.

simulation

[believability]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure this is the part where you're supposed to be pulling out some Matrix-style mind tricks. [He looks down at the ground way below them] Either that or someone's getting off watching us painfully splatter and start again. Probably the second one.