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

[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. ]

[scission]

[A smile quirks the corner of his mouth, something a touch surprised in the slight lift of his eyebrows as he turns to look at her. His eyes are sighted behind the glasses, for now, the minor fluctuations in his self-image not something he usually struggles with in training simulations. But then, she's not behaving quite like his usual students.]

Trust is an interesting matter to bring up.

[How many layers of it had already been necessary to get to this point. How many layers it would have been necessary to shed. More idealistic people would call it a matter of belief, but perhaps neither of them are that way inclined.]

Do you trust yourself, Natasha?

[ex_spins462]

No.

[ It's straight-forward, at least, because what's the point in lying about it? She's spent too much of her life brainwashed to trust herself. There used to be ways to reassure herself that things were real, that she was herself, but she can't trust those anymore either. Not now that she knows that she wasn't. It's even hard for her to accept the new reality as reality, given the solipsistic possibility that she's just awoken into another dream niggles at her. ]

And don't ask me if I trust the Matrix. I wouldn't be here if I did.

[ She would have taken the blue pill and enjoyed blissful ignorance. ]