test drive meme: november 2019

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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.

Comments

cw abuse

[benhargreeves]

[ 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.

[enumerator]

[ 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.

[benhargreeves]

[ 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.

[enumerator]

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. ]