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

[polyphemus]

The ocean's not blue.

[ You know, granted. A glance up indicates the sky, its soft textures of black cloud, defined by the electrical storms that bloom within them. That's the colour of the ocean.

Bruce does not settle next to her -- he keeps a moderate distance so that she isn't craning her neck to look up at him, though, bundling his arms around his person as he shifts his weight back onto his heels. ]

But it's still there. Wet, the whole thing. How's dealing going?

[hacker]

[ It takes a moment after her eyes drift up for it to really process. Ocean's not blue, but why is he looking at— Oh. Lightning casts slightly lighter grays over the coal clouds as it cracks through them, and it sinks in. Black sky, black water. A nod follows, and she caps the canteen, holding it in her lap. ]

Last thing I remember before waking up here, I was zip-lining down into an underground temple. Suddenly, I'm trying to learn to walk again, except I know how, and my body just won't do it. I feel useless.

[polyphemus]

[ His smile is subtle, like he doesn't really mean to and can't help it. His sympathy is kept on a leash, one that reaches as far as bringing her some water, offering the question sometimes people need to answer.

Banner isn't that kind of doctor, but he was her doctor, briefly. ]

You're what, three weeks after waking up for the first time, I'd say you're doing pretty okay. Give your body some credit.

[hacker]

I don't bed rest well. Or I … didn't. [ As much as the Matrix can count as experience in the area. ] Simmons hated it, she'd— [ Well. She wouldn't do anything. Skye rubs a hand over her face, not sure how to finish that statement. Connections are hard to let go of. Imagining life without Simmons is probably the hardest next to losing Coulson. ] It just sucks. I joined SHIELD because I wanted to help people, to do something important. Now I'm just sitting around with nothing to do all day but stew.

[polyphemus]

Well.

[ Bruce turns his attention back to the blasted landscape. Distant thunderclaps shiver through the air. It really is a horrible sight, and he's gotten inoculated against it over the same period of time it took for him to get scruffy again, and longer still. It still strikes him, though, when he lets it. ]

A lot of people are gonna say it doesn't matter, what you've gone through before now. Like it'll help.

[ The tone of his voice implies he doesn't think that's true. ]

You came here because you want to help people too, probably, which is more than I can say for everybody. Most people come here just to live in the world, instead of save it.

[hacker]

If they didn't want to help, they were better off in there.

[ She points down, back inside the ship. Where they can jack back into the Matrix, into some program that shouldn't feel more real than this world but does anyway. ]

Is everyone in the Matrix real? I mean, they have to be, right? Like we were. Even if the world's fake, the people there, they're not.

[polyphemus]

[ Banner does not immediately reply to that first part, letting it slide by with the kind of passiveness resultant of being particularly chill about these things. He thinks he mispoke, maybe -- he does that, not all the time -- but isn't in a hurry to correct either of them.

She has good questions, anyway. ]

Some are. Most are. But they'll populate some constructs with AIs designed to play house along with everyone else.

[ A beat passes, and he says; ]

You should reserve some judgement, 'til you get to Zion. You won't want to run out or anything.

[hacker]

So you can keep a blank slate to indoctrinate into this world all creepy-like? No thanks.

[ Rebuffing the very notion, she shakes her head scornfully. ]

But you can tell me how to know the difference. People, they die in the real world if they die in the Matrix. But programs wouldn't. So how can you tell?