redmarsshit | 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.