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

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.

[realsmuggler]

No, [She answers offhanded, turning back to look at him. She does miss her wardrobe though. Even if none of it is real, it extenuated her personality well enough. The floppy hats, big sweaters, the chainsaws she once learned to juggles. It's all physical possessions, she knows. She can easily be rid of it all-- setting fire to it herself.

But there's a sense of separation at it now, and she feels the same way he does. All things tangible in her world doesn't matter. What she has with Bloom is real, all games and cons aside. So she looks a little sad at his offer, and shakes her head.]

No, but you should tell me yours for once.

angry

[unwrit]

[The unwritten life is, as it turns out: not so great.

But Bloom isn't wandering, not anymore. Stephen's voice drew him here, to this room, where Stephen is talking, like always. That same familiar gesture. Tug up on his sleeves, a flourish: ta-dah. In profile, from behind, from the front, Bloom would know his brother, who is not his brother at all.

And Bloom doesn't miss anything, and he doesn't want it written. He has been sitting, just sitting, and every now and then he touched his fingertips to the back of his neck, to the cold metal port that mades the tips of his fingers sing, a little, like accidentally touching a live wire. Except, it didn't. It was just cold. He just wanted a little of that electric feeling. Maybe that's what Stephen's voice is, that electricity.

Everything else seems quiet, and hushed, a dead chill of dead air. He can't sit alone. He wants to be alone. In the door, when he looks at Stephen, whose skin does not look as grey as he knows his does--Stephen, who still looks alive, who still smiles the same way, even here--Stephen, who is not really his brother. Who was never his brother. Bloom folds his hands over each other and remembers the pressure of Stephen's hand, an echo, a memory that never really happened. Just a pulse of electricity in his brain.]

It was all written already. Someone else wrote it.

['Someone'. The corner of his mouth tugs, up, and then very quickly down. Brittle, he folds his arms over his chest, and he does not shuffle into the room, and he does not shuffle out, just-- stands.]

You can't do it over.

[emptychamber]

[Given that he's at a console, it isn't hard for Emily to turn up at the man's shoulder. Even knowing her old life was just a drama, played out to keep her busy, she can't quite shake decades of care that dictates not giving away too much while seeming to be an open book. You can take the woman out of the spy story, but you can't take the paranoia out of the ex-spy.

Still, she has a faint smile as she asks:]

Trying to give people a little bit of home?