redmarsshit | test drive meme: november 2019

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test drive meme: november 2019

Redshift: Welcome to the v͖͕̺̲̘̱̜͎o̴̦̣̠̦̘̹͞i̯̖d̛̪̬͈̱̦̝͍̕.

▶ Click here to read what characters will experience when arriving in Anchor.

▶ All TDM threads can be considered game canon, and current players are welcome to either top-level on the TDM so prospective players can tag them, or use the prompts for logs or network posts on the communities. All threads on the TDM can be used for Activity Check.

a. the truth hurts.

As though everything happening in the past month wasn't enough, there's been a minor explosion in one of the labs. No one hurt, if you don't count the hapless maintenance bot that caused the explosion in the first place.

But there are gases drifting through the laboratories, some of them making their way into the air vents, invisible to the purifiers in the system thanks to the explosion. And those gases are leaking into the air around Anchor, little pockets of danger waiting to be breathed in.

Those who breathe the gasses in might be the unluckiest Anchorites of all.

They're stuck telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth for the next five hours, give or take. Good luck with that!

b. retromedia.

Oblivious to what's going on inside Anchor, the shift rages outside, bringing shadows of things and places from other worlds, those things flickering into existence and out of it again.

The bad news is that the Whole Foods is gone.

The good news is the shift left something behind in its place.

A long, squat building, with cement walls painted over with stucco and punctuated by big windows. A flat roof with slanted sides, painted a deep blue. In bold yellow letters bolted to the roof, a sign:

BLOCKBUSTER
The sliding doors are broken, bouncing open and shut steadily, but the inside is clean and well-stocked with rack upon rack upon row upon row of VHS tapes, all of them neatly packaged in plastic boxes. Some of them have the movie covers on them, but most bear the Blockbuster logo and tiny labels running down the back, declaring the box's contents. There's a giant, somewhat busted up standee of Tim Allen as The Santa Clause, flickering holiday lights strung unevenly from the ceiling, and symbols of various seasonal holidays stuck up along the walls and windows.

Any movie you could possibly want lies within, or at least any movie you could possibly want that was released on Earth during or before 1994. And don’t worry if you can't find a VHS player in Anchor! There are whole shelves of VCRs tucked into one of the closets, apparently part of an aborted plan to rent out VCRs along with movies.

Poor Blockbuster. They were innovators. And now they're lost to the sands of the red shift.

c. sweet sweet self-care.

While sickness persists inside Anchor's walls, those in recovery seem to be getting better every day. And while the health bots have been working overtime, some of their processes have gotten a little borked up from all the work they've been doing.

Along with medical care, they're now administering lectures to their captive audiences about the value of diet and exercise, the importance of personal hygiene, and the healing properties of massage. Some of them are forcing massages on people just to prove their point, which, y'know, could be a lot worse. At least they're good at massages?

The spa bots are getting in on the action, nagging the healthy to come for relaxation and decontamination in one gloriously bubbly swoop. They've converted several of their spa pools into sweet-smelling antibacterial baths, so you can make extra-sure you got those visiting-a-sick-friend cooties off!

No, seriously, go with them. Before they drag you there and make you take a bath like an unruly two-year-old.

Believe them, it's worth it. If you complete a circuit of the spa, including the antibacterial baths and the fresh and zesty decontamination shower, you get a shiny sparkly holographic sticker that says "YOU ARE FREE OF DISEASE" in little cheerful bubble-letters. They designed them all by themselves, totally from scratch. Are you proud?

d. the network.

Need to get hold of someone, call for help, ask the city at large a question? Need to ask a friend which 1980s teen movie classic to watch at movie night? Maybe you need to hold your sat phone up to whatever crazy thing you're seeing and send out a recording to double-check if your eyes are deceiving you and what you're looking at is real?

Whatever the reason, the network is going strong, so feel free to include a post to it in your top-levels.

Navigation.

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[ arya has had a great few hours exploring anchor -- it's like being in the clock again, only smaller, and everything is new and strange and mechanical and there are metal things that talk! it's amazing! but now she's tired, and so she's curled up in the library with a book. she's sitting cross-legged against one of she shelves, with a knife she's stolen from the kitchens by her side (just to be safe!), reading a wrinkle in time. her brow is similarly wrinkled -- the book is good, but so confusing.

so when ben arrives, arya looks up, and instead of just registering the presence as she normally would, something drives her to blurt out: ]

This doesn't make any sense. You can't bend time, it's not a thing.

That book's fiction. Real time travel isn't anything like that.

[ Ben isn't exactly surprised, to see a stranger in the library - new people show up now and then in the Anchor, that's just the way things go, and he's always happy to help with book recommendations or whatever else they might need. But it is a bit surprising, that it's someone so young. ]

My brother can time travel. He disappeared into the future for like forty years and then came back looking like he was your age. Time doesn't like being fucked with I think.

[ Oh, no. He definitely shouldn't have sworn just now and also, probably he is only gonna confuse this kid even further. How come he had said all that? ]

Real time travel?

[ arya stands, head tilted to one side. she was confused before, but now, she's curious. curious enough to not get exasperated when ben tells her that the book is fiction, because of course it is! it's a story, and she's not stupid.

and then the stranger tells some story about his brother, and all arya can do is laugh. ]

You say that like it is a bad thing, to have an old mind and a young body! [ arya picks up the knife, balances the tip on her thumb, flicks it into the air to make it spin, and then catches it by the hilt. she's showing off, sure, but look at what a young body can do! ] I bet he can do this, and also be wise!

[ the dream, honestly. ]

[ Ben's not all that surprised by her incredulity. He's long since learned that the things he and his siblings can do will earn confusion at best and angry disbelief at worst from anyone who isn't like them. At least in his own world, everyone had heard of the Academy and seen enough proof to know it was all true. Here, he has to really make a case, sometimes.

But instead of doing that he responds to her more immediate assumptions, and not in a way that he would normally. ]

Maybe it's not bad in theory. But getting older didn't make him wise. Mostly it just made him sad and crazy and now nobody even listens to him because he looks like a preteen.

[ Oh. Sorry, Five. He probably wouldn't have argued about the crazy part, but Ben feels a stab of guilt, saying it like that. So harsh and unvarnished.

Ben looks horrified, mouth coming up to his mouth. There's definitely something going on. He shouldn't have said any of that. He hadn't meant to, planned to. It had just come out. ]

I didn't mean to say that.

[ Then, because she just keeps playing with that knife and Ben is Ben: ]

Stop it, you're gonna hurt yourself with that.

Edited 2019-12-04 20:28 (UTC)

[ arya frowns. why would you say that your brother is sad and crazy? jon is arguably also sad, but arya wouldn't just say that to a complete stranger. but then looks appropriately horrified, and he says that he didn't mean what he said, and now arya is on edge, too. then why did he say that? is something making him? ]

It's all right. My brother is sad too, but he got happier when we left Westeros.

[ arya also clamps her mouth shut, biting her lip, eyes wide. that was the exact thing that she didn't mean to say -- but she said it, and now she's just as bad as the guy in front of her. sorry jon! ]

I didn't mean to say that -- I, um -- I won't tell your brother if you don't tell mine!

[ arya says, flustered and trying not to show it. because of that, she's stopped showing off with the knife and is now just fidgeting with it, rolling it over her wrist and passing it between her hands.

and then this complete stranger has the audacity to boss arya around. she huffs. how rude!! ]

I won't. [ stop it or hurt herself. ] I've been trained. By Syrio Forel, and then by the Faceless Men of Braavos. The only person I would hurt is you, and I know that because I've hurt lots of people before.

[ that was way, way, way too much. arya would never confess to hurting people, not on a first meeting, not to someone who looks like they're from earth and probably hasn't hurt anyone in their life. arya backs up, horrified of what he must be thinking, horrified of herself and what she's just said. ]

[ Ben would absolutely call Five crazy to his face for a single corn chip, but that's not really the most important point right now. He's not here, and presumably neither is Arya's brother, so much more concerning is... ]

I didn't mean to say what I said, either. I mean, it's true, but I wasn't gonna tell you. I don't talk to people about my family because it always ends badly. I don't want to be saying any of this.

[ WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON.

A feeling that is only intensified when this kid says she's been trained, by some group he's never heard of in a place he's also never heard of, and that she wouldn't hurt herself. Then, Ben's expression shifts from worry to something much different. Kids playing with knives isn't great! It's universally recognized! He'd done the right thing, trying to get her to stop.

But something that is far less universal, but far more intimately familiar to Ben, is children that have been taught how to use knives well enough that they're no danger to themselves. Diego had been doing tricks like that by the time he was Arya's age and younger. The parallel is impossible to ignore, when she says she's hurt lots of people before. Ben's shoulders slump, and he looks, not horrified, but so so sad, and tired. ]

Oh. So you're like me.

[ No... this isn't the tactic he should take. She's just a kid, she doesn't need to hear about his bullshit. He should be approaching this some different way, some better way. But he can't stop that truth from spilling out. ]

Someone trained me to hurt people, too, when I was a kid. Lots and lots of people. I tried to keep count at first but then I couldn't.

[ arya expects ben to go on guard when she tells him she's killed people. run, even, or pull out a weapon of his own if he's got one. but ben doesn't do any of those things -- instead he looks so sad, and to arya, he looks so old. arya feels bad for a different reason, now. at first she was worried she had scared him, but now she's done something worse, has upset him in a way that's harder to recover from. stupid, stupid. she doesn't know this man and she can't say whether or not she likes him, but she didn't want this meeting to go like this.

arya's stance softens, and she looks at the floor instead of at ben, ashamed. but then ben says he's like her, and she looks up, finally looking at ben properly for the first time. arya bites her lip and nods, slowly. she's like him.]

I haven't lost count yet. I have a list. Of people I have killed and people I'm going to kill.

[ arya feels like she's going to be sick. ben shouldn't know about any of this. it's her prayer, not his, and now she's only gone and made things worse. ]

You're not -- you're not supposed to know about that, nobody knows about that, you're going to think I'm crazy, like your brother, or worse.

[ why can't she stop? gods, why? ]

[ Ben does make the connection between Arya and her list of people to kill and Five with his list of people he could kill in order to prevent the apocalypse. But he just barely manages to keep that to himself, more because it's a stray thought, quickly tucked away by other things, than anything that was actually an accomplishment of his.

Because there are other true and pressing things to say to Arya. ]

I don't know if you're crazy, because I don't know you. You could be or not. Either way, I've got no right to judge you.

[ Sure, Ben can be harsh, when it comes to his own siblings, when it comes to lots of people over lots of things. But Arya is obviously, demonstrably a child. Someone had taught her to kill. Someone had led her down that path, and Ben has a very intense personal interest in believing with all his heart that that is not her fault. ]

Don't worry. Even though I know about it, I won't tell anyone. I'm very good at keeping secrets. I'm not normally like this. Something must be making us talk this way.

[ Ben's been in the Anchor long enough to recognize some bullshit when it crops up. This is definitely some bullshit.

Of course, knowing it doesn't remove the effects. ]

How long is the list?

[ Up to her to decide which one he means - the people she has killed, or the people she still wants to. ]

That doesn't mean you won't.

[ people don't much care, in arya's experience, what they have right and no right to do.

arya isn't sure whether or not to believe ben when he promises not to tell anyone. but she supposes she'll have to -- there's not much she can do at this point, no way to take the words back. what she does believe is that ben isn't doing this of his own accord. ]

I was in a strange place full of people from many worlds before. Once it gave us chocolate, to make us say strange things. This is like that, except I have not eaten anything since I came here. [ and now, she probably won't, not for a bit. ] Have you?

[ arya wishes she didn't have to answer the question, but of course, she does. ]

Ten-and-three people I wish to kill, ten-and-seven I already have. It's the easiest thing in the world, when you know how to do it.

[ is there gold in the castle?

arya thinks of the tickler, and the way her knife slid so easily through his skin, over and over. ]

Even easier if you want to.

[ arya looks ben in the eye this time, trying her best not to appear ashamed or scared of what he'll think of her. there's no way ben won't think of her as anything of a monster, arya believes, so she may as well keep him from thinking she's weak, too. ]

[ It doesn't faze Ben that much, that Arya has been to other strange worlds before this one. It's common enough, in this place. Klaus had been somewhere called Hadriel... and he knows that strange things happen in this place. Tricks, hallucinations. Substances with certain effects. A furrow forms between his brows, listening to Arya and he considers for a moment before shaking his head: ]

No, i haven't eaten since this morning, and I've lied to somebody since then so it can't be the food, but there are a lot of other ways we could've been drugged. It could be airborne.

[ Ben realizes how that might sound, that he might be giving wrong impressions about himself, and so he adds: ]

It wasn't a big lie. I told my sister I had slept well, but I didn't sleep well, I had an awful nightmare and woke up crying.

[ Wow, it just keeps on getting worse, doesn't it? He hadn't meant to go into quite that much detail.

But he can't worry that much about it because this kid is here, saying how easy it was to kill people, how many more people she wants to kill, and he thinks maybe this is different, in some ways, to the killing he'd done. It's... personal. Deliberate. Ben rubs at the back of his neck, feeling a crawling unease. But it is not at Arya, precisely. More at whatever sort of world had made her into this version of herself. ]

It... was never easy for me. It was always so painful, and disgusting, and I- I never wanted to, but I felt like I had no choice, and I felt sick after, every time.

[ His face is full of nothing but sympathy, though. Because surely, Arya had felt she had no choice, either, in one way or another. She'd been brought to this. Children don't just want to kill. ]

I've killed a lot more than seventeen people. I've killed a lot more than thirty people.

[ Just so that she understands he has even more blood on his hands than her, that he'd meant what he said about not judging. Quietly, voice full of sadness: ]

Why do you need a list?

[ arya frowns. she hopes this isn't airborne, because if this place's very air is poisonous, then there's probably nothing she can do, short of locking herself away until it wears off. she has half a mind to do that anyway, now that this stranger knows her secrets, now that he probably hates her.

but then ben says his secrets, and arya's eyes widen, filling with not disgust, but recognition. he wasn't kidding, when he said that he was like her. arya swallows and relaxes just a little, although she still grips that knife tightly -- now she knows that she'll need it, in case the worst happens. ]

Then you are a better person than me, even if you have killed more than thirty. It is better, probably, to feel sick than to feel nothing at all.

[ arya finally drops her gaze, looking down, ashamed. her voice is smaller, hollow and almost breaking. ]

I chose it. There was a war. They killed -- [ arya breathes sharply, struggling to say the next word ] -- killed my father, and mother, and brothers, and -- and they were hurting people...

[ arya bites down on her lip, hard, trying to get herself to stop, wanting so badly not to say this part, the part that makes her sound weak, like a stupid little girl. ]

And I was scared. The list is my prayer, to make it stop.

[ arya looks back up at ben, full of remorse. ]

I'm sorry. I did not want to say any of that, and I am sure you did not want to hear it. [ of course, arya can't just stop there. ] Why did you have to kill?

[ Ben listens to Arya's reasons, and he can see how much it's hurting her, giving these answers. He should have found a way not to ask it - even if he had wanted to know, and even if the answer makes his heart go out to the girl. She may think it makes her sound like a monster, but it would be very hard indeed, to make Ben Hargreeves think any child was a monster, no matter what they did.

And Arya by the sound of it has many, many reasons. War. Grief. Revenge. Righteous outrage and justice. Coping. Self-defense.

He doesn't think she is a bad person, and he doesn't think she is weak, for being scared and needing to find ways to deal with it. He'd done awful things because he was scared, too. Her insistence that she felt nothing at all... he isn't buying it. There's a difference between being cruel and cutting off your feelings to survive. Ben's been in that place. Only briefly, but. He knows what it's like. ]

You don't have to apologize. I did want to hear it. And I don't think you're a bad person. You sound like you have had a very hard life, and like you are doing the best that you know how to do.

[ After all that - war, the loss of her family - Ben's own little tragedy seems very little, indeed. He shrugs. (These are the things he does, too, to diminish it, distance himself from the reality of all the violence). ]

It's what I was taught to do, all my life. I was born with powers that make it very easy for me to kill a lot of people very quickly, and so my dad made me into a tool to do that. I didn't- I didn't want to but. There are lots of ways to get people to do things they don't want to do. Especially when they're just little kids. So he would lock me up and starve me til I was willing to hurt animals and then he would lock me up and starve me til I was willing to hurt people and eventually he would just threaten my siblings and after a while he didn't have to do any of it. I just stopped fighting. I wanted to be useful, and I believed it when he told me I was a monster. I could at least be a useful monster for him.

[ what is it with earth people, and their kindness? a westerosi would not care about what she'd done, but wouldn't be kind, either. ben seems quiet, maybe shy, but arya starts to get the impression that he's good. there are so many people that arya knows who love to hurt others, or who treat death as a gift, that to meet someone who isn't like that is refreshing.

arya shrugs back. ] I try.

[ sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. some days are better than others. going back home was awful, but arya hopes fiercely that this place will be better.

arya, it's clear, has seen some shit. has been through the horrors of war, of grief. has been forced to be a servant and a soldier, has witnessed more death than she wants to think about. but she's lucky in one way: aside from a perfectly regular sibling rivalry with her older sister, arya's family life has been good. idyllic, by westerosi standards. both her parents were loving, caring, honorable. arya knows that her parents, especially her mother, wouldn't approve of what she's become. but she also knows that, at least once, long ago, they both cared.

but ben, it seems, didn't have that. he had something much worse. even though ben's father called him a monster, arya knows in her gut that it's his father who is the monster. arya frowns, stiffens up into a stance that's almost aggressive. she doesn't know ben well, but she knows that he has been kind, and honest, at least right now. which means he didn't deserve that -- to be locked up and starved by one's own father. ]

That's horrible! [ arya blurts, her expression disgusted. ] I know what starving is like, and I cannot imagine why anyone -- why a father would do that. So he must be no true father, if he did. He is the monster.

[ arya adds, softer this time: ]

I'm sorry.

[ Arya is angry. Ben can see it in her body language, as he speaks. She might be small and mysterious and from a world he doesn't know but he can recognize the signs. Some things transcend universes. Ben feels guilty and uneasy, then, seeing that. It's such a tough choice to make - knowing how much he ought to tell her so she doesn't feel alone, so she understands he has also been through things when he reassures her, and also, knowing what he ought not to tell to someone so young. Not because she couldn't handle it, but because she shouldn't have to. There is a difference between respecting her, and treating her like an adult when she is not one. ]

It is horrible. I don't know if I should've told you. I don't really talk about it. It only makes people really sad and angry, and I don't like remembering anyway.

[ Ben's looking down at his own hands, now, picking at a stray thread in the cuff of his hoodie. Arya's indignation on his behalf is a good thing. He ought to feel good, knowing she's angry about it. Like it proves he was right to be so bothered all these years. But on the other hand, Ben just feels queasy. His father was his father, biology aside, so if his father had been cruel to him in ways that fathers shouldn't be, that must mean something had been wrong with him, to cause all of it.

It's such a tangle, in his mind. ]

Maybe. Most days I think that, if only - if only because of the stuff he did to my brothers and sisters. Worse stuff. But some days I think he was right, at least when it came to me. That he was just doing his best, to keep everyone safe from. A thing like me.

[ Ben should stop talking. He knows he should stop. This is all much too heavy and too personal and too much. But the words keep coming. ]

But if- that was what he really wanted, why didn't he just kill me when I was still a baby? Or give me drugs to suppress my powers like he did to Vanya? He wasn't... doing the only thing he could to keep me from being the evil violent thing I was born to be. He had to - force me to kill, so that I would kill the people he wanted killed.

I don't know if you had a choice, since something is making us talk.

[ arya squirms a little. she even though she doesn't have much control over what she's saying, she feels bad that she's made ben remember all these horrible things -- after all, he wouldn't have said what he said if it wasn't on his mind, first. but that's what she does, isn't it? she's been hurting people, making them feel uncomfortable ever since she ran from her father's execution. the witch on the isle told it true. wolf-child, blood-child. i see you.

arya smiles a little, twisted and rueful. ben doesn't look like he's capable of doing that much damage. but then again, arya doesn't look it, either. ]

Perhaps. But I don't think he'd need to do that. I could best you in any fight.

[ arya knows that she's just bragging, and that if ben has been trained to kill like he says he has, then there's a good chance she couldn't beat him. but she doesn't want him to feel like he's the only violent thing in the room. ]

I am a tool back home, too. A person used for war. But I was in a place like this once, and in these places, you can have a better life, so long as you take it and hold it tight.

[ arya picks up a wrinkle in time again and offers it to ben. arya doesn't particularly care if he's read it or not -- she likes the book, and wants ben to have a good thing after a hard conversation. if he takes it, she'll nod, satisfied, pull her hood back up, and leave. if she stays any longer, she could say worse things and make her and ben more upset. she doesn't want that -- this much honesty has been enough. ]

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test drive meme: november 2019

why men great till they gotta be great (truth hurts!)

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cw abuse

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