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

johanna mason | hunger games || wildcard + unplugged for 1 yr

[axeyou]

[It doesn't go well. Which, that's just a mild way of saying: everything goes to shit.

It was supposed to be a pretty easy mission: a whole crop of detachments, unplugging people from their worlds and dragging them out--coughing, choking, bald and naked, like a bunch of hairless babies. Get them on the hovercraft, someone get them a blanket, and get them back again, to their new home. Cue music.

Johanna isn't good at it yet, at any of it. She wants to be. God, she wants to be. Uselessness, idleness--it doesn't suit her. It never has, even if that "never" was never actually something real. Panem, District 7, the Games, the Capitol, and everything in between--just this huge fucking fiction. But that's okay. That's kind of typical. Some big thing, overseeing your life and managing it down to a detail, just to get something out of you--that was never anything Johanna had difficulty accepting.

There were two ships this time, and a whole load of people, more than she'd ever seen anyone try for at once. Admitting that would be stupid--she's new enough that there's an implied clumsiness, which she hates--but she thinks it anyways, when they're laying out the plan. But hey: she's never worried about stupid missions. Whatever.

It's not her that fucked this one up. It was probably a lot of factors, too much to coordinate at once. Maybe four of the ten were safely dragged onto the ships before someone started taking notice, and then it was all they could do to unplug their own operatives and get everyone out as safely as they could, just cut and run. Johanna could care less about people left behind. What she cares about is the implication of failure, and God, that makes her pissed. And she hates that they look at her--like she really did fuck it up. She didn't. The tension in the ship is nearly palpable; they zip along the empty levels, get back to Zion. Twelve hours of that, and everyone still looking at her, and Johanna nearly ready to murder them all, just so they stop. So what, if she came on this ship with a previous record? So fucking what. That didn't make this one her fault. She'd done what she was supposed to, for once. How hard can guarding senior operatives be?

When the ships dock at Zion, everyone filters off--the shaky newbies first, led by the hand, all of them still wrapped in blankets and staring at everything with wide hollow eyes. They usually get more of a chance to adjust and recuperate, but twelve hours, that's nothing. There's no way she ever looked like that, Johanna thinks, watching them. But there's no way she'll ever look like the other crew members either. All of them disembark, one by one. Johanna doesn't look at any of them, or try to talk to them. Furious, she stalks off the ship, one of the last to go. Other hovercrafts are landing and departing around her; there's the hum of activity, chatter of voices and the clank of footsteps. So good being home, right?

Wrong. Savage, angry, Johanna strides just a few feet away--just so she's around a corner, just so no one sees her. And then she punches the wall, once, hard--and then again, harder, so hard her knuckles split.

Fuck this. Freedom is great, but, seriously. Fuck this.]

[alsohawkeye]

[ Kate wasn't a senior operative when she helped extract Johanna a year ago. She's still isn't one of the senior operatives today, but part on technicality; the ship she's crewing on has a surfeit of old hands with enough miles under their belts to make her four years of heavy workloads look like a warm-up lap.

It isn't hard to tell she's started to chafe under it. When the captains were laying out the plans for this mission she wasn't shy about speaking up with questions and suggested revisions whether they wanted them or not, and she wasn't subtle about her frustration when her input in the field was ignored again as the mission fell apart around them. Maybe her plans wouldn't have turned out any better, but they could at least pretend to consider them, acknowledge that she has some worthwhile experience too, even if it isn't as much as theirs. It's possible that she turned this corner planning to put a fist through the wall herself.

But instead she finds Johanna having beaten her to the punch (ha ha ha). ] You know that wall is real, right? I hadn't pegged you for one of those who'd still have trouble telling the difference a year out.

[ She remembers everyone she's helped to unplug, though some are a lot easier to recognize in Zion than others. Johanna looks different with her hair grown out, but not that different. Even if she had she'd be remembered; the Panem matrixes are Kate's favorite sort to extract from, the kind that suck so hard that people are happy to learn their world isn't real, where Zion in all its dubious glory is a relief. Some operatives like the challenge of recruiting from happier worlds, but given the chance to pick her target Kate will go to dystopias every time. She has a running list of people she's come across and would like to see considered for extraction; Johanna is one of the few she's been able to cross off so far.

Not that she'd know that, or that it would likely gain Kate much if she did. There's a reason she snarks from out of arm's reach. ]

[axeyou]

[Immediately, at the sound of a voice, Johanna whips around. Her breath hisses out harsh from between her clenched teeth, a seethe that's not exactly silent. Raw anger is written across her face, and she makes no move to disguise it.]

Fuck you.

[Her knuckles are split and bleeding. The pain makes her hand feel hot already, in the curl of her knuckles. She doesn't unclench her hand. She doesn't dare to, not yet.]

Is that all you came over here for? Making stupid comments? Yes. I know it's real. Now get out of my face.

[It's not like she doesn't recognize Kate. One of the first faces she remembers, real, calm and pale and almost serene. A contrast to all of the fury Johanna had felt, newly unplugged, all sharp elbows and bald head and anger. She's still a contrast, almost an icy cool. Not always. But right now, that's what Johanna sees, and she hates it.]