test drive | 2

[unplug]

test drive

Welcome to our bimonthly Systemwide test drive. Please feel free to use this venue to test out any prospective character you may have, whether they're unplugged or free born. Comment below responding to one of our scenarios, or invent your own, and make sure to tag around. Note that any test drive tag can be used as an in game sample for application. Reserves are open, and applications will open on April 25.

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

the matrix | the air feels real, but you know it's not because you have been told as much. due to the fractures of the matrix, you could be standing in a landscape familiar to you, or one that's intensely alien. this could be your first time, or your thousandth time. this could be the real deal, or just a simulation. either way, all you are experiencing now is coding.

This is a familiar battle to you, with familiar demons. An extraction mission gone arwy, or simple spying and recon -- either way, Agents -- either of the suit and tie kind, or something more monstrous -- have detected your presence, and you're going to have to fend them off while looking for an escape route (in the form of a pay phone, or an invisible backdoor of your imagination). But this time, you're among friends in the form of your crew.

Alternatively, you're out of your depth, in an alien landscape, but you're better, faster, stronger than you've ever been before. Or at least, maybe someone on your team knows what they're doing. Either way, you are advised to run.

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.

A new recruit has opened their eyes. What was your involvement? Perhaps you're simply staying out of the way, and you're seeing the expanses of the human field towers for the first horrifying time since you were blind and helpless yourself. Perhaps you're acting as guardian angel, holding the unconscious quarry's hand, or tending to their medical charts.

Perhaps you're the new recruit, feeling the metal floor of the hovercraft beneath your feet, stepping out to explore this new world while still aching muscles protest from all this new strain. You almost don't believe that this has happened, but nothing has ever felt so real before now.

wildcard | choose your own adventure.

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 you're just practicing in the simulation stations.

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. Perhaps you're participating in key events, whether it's something to celebrate, or something sad.

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

Comments

reality

[a_lister]

I'm fine.

[It comes across as a snap, but it's not bad as it could have been, nothing truly toxic in the resonance of her voice. Zora pulls her arms back to herself, straightens, shouldering the heavy duffel bag over her shoulder again. Back in the Matrix, it had never mattered that she was slight and thin. Indeed, it had been fashionable. It kind of sold her whole image.

Here, though, it's far from useful, and she doesn't have her power to compensate. It's discomfitting, the part of her that made her a superheroine gone now. And worse, even if the part of Simons that made him a supervillain is gone too, he's faster, stronger. And she has little doubt he's done things. She doesn't know exactly how she learned of his reputation, but she does remember:] You worked for Johnny Royalle.

[Recognition had shocked her into tripping over her own damn feet a moment ago, but she's more composed now. All the discomfiture and powers introspection in the world can't stop her from stopping to gawk at someone from home.]

[clonings]

[ There's a lot of pride here, Simons had noticed. Especially from those unplugged. He'd be lying if he said he didn't feel it, either--the feeling that, somehow, they had enough stubborn pride to pretend to know what was going on. Especially when they were first integrating.

Simons will refuse, after all, that he's weak. Even if he is: he's relied on his powers of so long. He needs the other parts of him, as he still doesn't feel whole, and it's hard to discern that he's just one from many in his head. Idly, he wonders if he's liable to go insane, dealing with reality.

Maybe it was better before he woke up. ]

He's not here.

[ His tone is flat, point blank, and the only reason he doesn't convey any emotion is because he's shut that part of him down. Tried to, at least. It's harder in reality--there might be a hint of sadness there.

Yes, he supposes. He misses his friend. Misses Johnny terribly. Wishes he could help wake him up. Simons tilts his head to the side, the slightest cant. He knows the girl. He's pretty sure she's stopped into many of the clubs he works at. Johnny's clubs. ]

Do you think we can wake other people? [ From our world, he means. But he's never been one to elaborate ]

[a_lister]

[She tries not to look surprised at his question, the personal quality of it; only half succeeds. Of course, he was different when he was at work.

And every time she'd gone into a club, dressed up in purple and magnetic sheens, that'd been her job too.

Zora twists her mouth, considering it for an instant. At the end, what gets her isn't that they're in the same boat now, the same as all of the other unplugged. It isn't that villainy and heroism have evaporated, leaving them in the same post-apocalyptic drought of hope. It's a meaningless thread of kinship, leftover from the old world: she gets how alone he feels. They were both powers, and it meant so much to her once, that it can't be gone from her yet.]

It's not allowed. [Her voice goes a little softer.] There's a schedule, there are risks. Extractions-- that's what they call them, [she straightens a little.] Extractions raise a lot of attention from the Machines. Going back to the same place twice is too dangerous.

[A beat.] Who did you want? [The obvious answer would be Johnny, until you remember Simons' power; how little she knew of its mechanics then, and even less about the way it functions with the Matrix now.]