redmarsshit | test drive meme: december 2019

test drive meme: december 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. santapocalypse.

As the suns set over the unforgiving landscape around Anchor, a bright light flares in the sky, streaking low and fast across the horizon, throwing off flares of green, white, and red.

The impact...is not explosive. Just another flare of light, and then smoke to mark where the object went down. Whatever it was, it didn't come from the redshift. It came from within the planet's atmosphere, such as it is, and landed barely a few steps outside the city.

Characters who choose to investigate will find something strange at the bottom of the pillar of smoke. They'll find a small ship, one that seems to have been cobbled together with pieces of a dozen different ships from a dozen different universes. The cockpit is busted wide open, a red jacket caught on a piece of glass, with no other sign of the pilot. Except for, y'know, the red ringing the broken glass, but we'll just ignore that, shall we?

Scattered all around the vehicle, some of them scorched on the outside but otherwise unharmed, are boxes, boxes, boxes. None are bigger than a shoebox, and all wrapped beautifully with bows on top. Characters who start opening them will find box after box containing nonsense items that might be valuable to someone, but maybe not anyone here. But if they open enough, eventually they'll find something inside that could only be intended for them, it’s so specific, odd, or precious. Any other box they open after that will be empty.

Those that dare enter will find the ship appears larger on the inside. And it also seems to be mostly made of hallways. Hallways that lead nowhere, hallways that, from time to time, are filled with an ominous...jingling.

The source of that jingling is the reindire.

Twisted, monstrous creatures with talons in place of hooves, they will hunt whoever enters the ship through its halls and even back across the wasteland should characters attempt to run. Most of them can be calmed, even tamed. Eaten, if hunting for venison is your character's jam (have at, SSSSs).

Only one cannot be reasoned with, or easily defeated.

The largest of all the reindire, one with fangs and wings and a lust for blood. And a big red nose that shoots lasers. You wouldn't want it following you back to Anchor, would you? Best to defeat it out in the sands, where it can't do any real harm.

b. keep calm & carry on.

As characters have worked on improving the city, they've knocked a few loose screws back into place and rewired a few polarities that needed reversing and now, a new area has opened up. It announces itself with a loud screech as the bulkheads that kept it blocked off open up. The new space is huge, at first seemingly empty.

This space does what the VR rooms can't. It reads minds.

It won't show scenes from home, no, but it will create a facsimile of a place that your character would find most relaxing. And this isn't the simple visual experience of the VR rooms. This is full-sensory immersion. Characters will see, yes, but also be able to touch, smell, even taste what's on the air in their surroundings. If there is fruit, they can pick and eat it - it won't satisfy them, but they'll be able to taste what's there. If there's water, they'll be able to swim it in, and will even feel wet until they climb back onto the shore or out of the pool.

Some lucky souls will even get Anchor's therapy AI chiming in to their scenes, with suggestions like, "Talk to your anxiety the way you would to a friend. Ask it where it comes from, see what it’s doing for you, and redirect it into healthy self-expression." Or, "Have you tried yoga?" or, occasionally, "I think you really really need a nap."

The focus of the room is to help characters relax. Those rolling blackouts that have been happening around Anchor ever since the room opened up? They’re probably nothing to worry about. Right?

c. the network.

Need to get hold of someone, call for help, ask the city at large a question? Need to ask a friend to back you up on the reindire hunt? 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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"Oh!"

Reynir hadn't been anticipating that answer, but his expression quickly shifts from surprise to gently amused understanding. By the end of that first expedition he had been so excited to eat anything other than Mikkel's cooking that he had scarfed down a ten year old can of tuna and thought it was the best thing he'd ever tasted. So, yeah. He gets it.

And he fishes around in the pocket of his long coat, pulling out a little white cloth, neatly wrapped in a bundle with something inside. He holds it out to Foggy and offers:

"Then... do you want some ginger cookies, instead? They might be a little crumbly from being in my pocket, but they're good, and they're definitely not stew."

He'd been saving them as a snack for later, after he's finished with his work up in the Agricultural Sector, but Foggy's need is greater than his, right now. By a lot.

"So... are you saying you knew you were going to be traveling to a different world, you just didn't expect it would be this one?"

Foggy grins at the understanding that crosses the younger man's face. Most people have been there, when they've been stuck eating one thing for so long that they can't face anymore.

"Cookies... oh I've missed you, processed sugar. Thank you." He doesn't ask if Reynir is sure. The island taught him better. You accept offers graciously and return the favour when you can. He only takes one, enough to satisfy the craving and nothing more. He can actually make himself proper food like a sandwich. He hopes.

"Hm? Oh, yeah. We were on the island and were all meant to be sent where we asked to go. I was packed and everything, I have a bunch of crap with me, clothes, carpentry tools, my butcher's knives..."

"You are very welcome!"

Reynir waits a moment to be sure that Foggy doesn't want another, then he wraps that cloth up neatly once more and sticks it into his pocket again. He goes back to tending his stew as he chats away to Foggy about how he'd arrived in this place.

"Well, perhaps you will not be here too long before you end up where you're meant to be. And in the meantime, we've got plenty of technology. A lot more than I was used to, honestly. There are, like. Robots. And there's a sauna."

Honestly, what more could people need?

Foggy is already heading for the fridge, hoping to find the makings of a good old lazy sandwich.

"Robots, huh? And the sauna, do I have to hike up a mountain to visit it? Does it have magic powers? The hot spring had magic powers, it was sort of awesome. It was healing up my bullet scar really nicely. Oh! Is there ham in here? I haven't had ham in so long, and I don't have to butcher anything to get it."

"No, no hiking required. I can draw you a map, or show you the way there, once this is done. I'm preeeeetty sure it's just a regular sauna."

But he realizes, then, that the reason Foggy is asking about potential magic powers of the sauna - kind of a weird one, Reynir had thought - is because he has visited a hot spring before with healing powers. Reynir's eye go wide at that and he asks excitedly:

"So you've been to a healing hot spring? I've heard about these, in the world I'm from. Places that have been blessed by the gods or covered in runes to give them healing properties, but I've never actually been to one before."..

Then, a little comically, it sinks in what Foggy said had been healing, and Reynir asks, alarmed:

"You were shot?!"

He looks extremely alarmed at this, which is, perhaps, understandable. The human population in his own world is low enough that a person shooting another healthy, non-infected person is rare and extremely taboo and shocking.

"Okay, slow down, buddy." Foggy has an easy affability about him, like he's got a handle on things. "Yes, I've been to a healing spring. When there's a limited amount of medical supplies available, it becomes a bit of a blessing. And yeah, I was shot. Where I come from, New York City? Most people get shot at at least a few times. I'm a lawyer, so getting shot is more or less an occupational hazard."

He's good at blowing it off now. Of making himself not care about it.

Reynir actually stops stirring the stew, one hand coming up to cover his mouth in an unconscious gesture of horror. He is, it would seem, a rather credulous person, and taking Foggy completely literally, when he says he's from a city where the majority of people are shot with guns a few times. Reynir has never met someone who got shot. He's never met someone who met someone who got shot. The idea that it could happen more than once in a person's life, that it would be expected, is completely unthinkable to him.

"Is it?"

Foggy is making so light of all of it, and Reynir is thrown. Foggy must be a fierce warrior, to have survived such a world. Which is admirable and all, but a bit daunting, as well. Suddenly wary, Reynir asks, carefully:

"You... aren't planning on shooting anyone here, are you?"

Edited 2020-01-11 21:58 (UTC)

"I've never shot anyone or anything in my life," Foggy replies honestly. "I don't own a gun, I never have owned a gun, despite it being both my right and possibly a good idea, but honestly, a home with a gun is more likely to suffer a fatality than one without."

He knows a lot of these random things. "I'm a lawyer, not a soldier. Even when I was shot, it was wrong place, wrong time. They were shooting up the office of someone I was visiting."

Immediately, Reynir sighs with relief:

"Oh, good, okay. That's a relief."

Reynir isn't sure exactly what he would have done, if Foggy had answered in any other way. But he's glad to hear that Foggy isn't carrying a weapon with him, that he seems to have no intention of bringing that kind of violence from his home world with him.

"I've never shot anybody, either, but I- well it sounds like that's a lot more common where I'm from than in New York."

Reynir turns back to the stew, takes a tiny bite to test it and starts sprinkling in some more seasonings, even as he asks:

"Being a lawyer means you're a scholar, right? Like, you're really really smart and went to school for a long time?"

Surely that is true in other worlds, too. Reynir knows a girl who had left his village to go to the capital and become a lawyer - she had been the very smartest one in Brúardalur, and everyone was proud of her accomplishments.

"... yeah, I guess. I mean, I did go to college for a long time and a lot of people think I'm pretty smart."

He graduated cum laude with putting in nowhere near enough effort. Matt was summa cum laude despite his constant campaigning for disability rights and access on the side. "I'm the first person in my family to graduate from college."

His father, grandfather and brother are all butchers. Another branch of the tribe have a hardware store. A third are in groceries. All small mom-and-pop places that won't survive the gentrification of Hell's Kitchen, probably. Not without a hard fight.

"Praise the Lord, there's peanut butter!" Foggy pulls it out of a cupboard and hugs it. "I missed you, oily, nutty goodness."

"So you ARE really smart." CONFIRMED, no modesty, false or otherwise, is going to get in Reynir's way. He smiles, and when Foggy mentions he's the first in his family to go to college, declares: "They must be really really proud of you."

Reynir looks back to the stew and explains:

"My parents have a little sheep farm in - well, it's a village you wouldn't have heard of even if you were from my world. My brothers and sisters were the first ones in our family to go off to Reykjavík and get cool jobs. One of my brothers is a sailor, and the other one is a mechanic, and my sisters are nurses..."

He trails off with a tiny shrug. There's a lot implied, there, by the fact that he is not including himself on that list.

When Reynir sees the peanut butter, his freckled nose wrinkles and he asks, with confused friendly disgust:

"You actually like that weird stuff?!"

"Yes and no. They're proud but I think also a bit scared. That I'm too much like Rosalind and not like my parents." It was impossible to forget he was a bit different when he went to college, took up law, wasn't like the rest of the Nelson clan.

"How many siblings you got? Two brothers, but how many sisters? I only have the one, little brother, Theo. He's a butcher, like Dad. And yes, this stuff is a staple of my childhood and I have missed it."

Reynir blinks a few times, wondering if it would be prying to ask, but Foggy has been friendly and willing to talk about himself so far and answer questions, so he asks:

"Rosalind? Who is that?"

It doesn't surprise him too much to hear that Foggy's parents were proud and also scared. His own mother was so scared any time his siblings talked about their thrilling lives, their many adventures. She would have kept them all at home, if she could. Even if her fear was always the most intense and overt when it came to Reynir...

"Four. Two older brothers, two older sisters. I'm the baby."

He could leave it at that. Simple, really. Just the youngest who had stayed at home, in a family that was bland and normal and not at all complicated.

But what family is really like that, after all? And Foggy doesn't seem like he's going anywhere, now that he's reunited with his beloved peanut butter, so Reynir explains:

"See, the thing is my siblings are all immune, and my parents aren't, and I'm not, and that - probably doesn't mean anything to you, but without getting into the whole thing, it's a big deal in my world. There are lots of doors that are open for them, because of that. There's... this program people can be part of, to make it so non-immune parents can be surrogates for - babies that will be born immune, because they're genetically... someone else's. But I, um. Well, all my siblings were born through that program and I wasn't so it's pretty obvious I was just kind of an accident. It doesn't mean we're not a family or make them any less my real siblings -"

A hint of defensiveness, there, which speaks volumes.

"-it just made things complicated, kind of."

Edited 2020-01-21 21:32 (UTC)

Foggy listens and no, he doesn't get what the sickness is that Reynir's siblings are immune to, but he understands the importance of it and the way that it makes him feel different, that he was natural and an 'accident'.

He starts making his peanut butter sandwich. "Yeah. I get complicated. I don't tell most people this, but I think you'll get it. Rosalind is the woman who gave birth to me. She and my dad had a thing, but not for long, and when she got pregnant, he wanted a baby and she didn't because it would interfere with her career. Anyway, long story short, she had me and my Mom and Dad raised me. She kept an eye on me, but we didn't really have anything to do with each other, I have my parents. But when Theo came along, they didn't treat me differently but I was aware. That he was genetically theirs and I'm, not."

Foggy has a drive that no one else in his family has. He clawed his way into a scholarship, then got through college and got the placements others would kill for. He was a bit too much Rosalind's child in that way.

"So I sort of get it." He gives a smile. "Want a hug?"

Foggy's story doesn't really surprise or shock Reynir, but he gets it, why Foggy wouldn't tell most people. Reynir had only learned once he left his village how awkward it could be, explaining family situations like these. In Brúardalur, everyone already knew the whole story; once he got to the city he learned how uncomfortable people got, hearing about it.

Technically, given what Foggy is saying, he and Theo are half-brothers, and he is his father's, at least. But Reynir knows that technicalities mean very little, most of the time. Theo, from the sound of it, followed in the family tradition, and Foggy went another way. His mind, from the sound of it, had come from his mother.

He wonders how Foggy feels about the choice his mother made. Whether it's a source of pain, whether it ever was. He had felt a much, much milder, version of that himself, knowing his siblings were deliberate, were wanted, and that he was merely... inadvertent. An unforeseen complication.

So, yeah:

"I absolutely do want a hug."

How nice, to meet someone who just... offered like that. Reynir would think it was a joke or a trick, if it weren't for Foggy's tone of voice. Either he's very deadpan, and quite manipulative, or he really means it.

In any case, Reynir turns off the heat on the stew, which is done by now anyway, and moves in for a hug. Apart from Onni, it's not like he has a lot of physical contact with anyone. Or... any. Which is fine, but he does miss it.

Kisa, meanwhile, has woken up from where she was napping on a chair pushed into one of the tables. She lets out a little chirruping meow, hitting the floor with a soft sound of paws and stretching thoroughly before padding over, curious about the newcomer.

Technically, Theo's his half brother and Foggy has never thought of him as that a day in his life. His Mom loved him as much as she loved Theo and he had never felt any different in that regard.

Foggy opens his arms and gives Reynir a Nelson Special. His family are good at hugs, big warm, whole hearted things that make even prickly, blind alleycats called Matt relax and soak.

He hugs Reynir like he would hug Theo at that age.

That right there? That was a GOOD hug. Reynir has been in this place a while now, with only Onni to hug and often only in moments of extreme emotional upset, for one or both of them. And Onni, as much as Reynir likes him, isn't the world's best hugger, yet. There's reasons for that and Reynir gets it, he does, but this? It's really nice. A nice change.

"Thank you-"

He blinks, drawing away and realizing:

"Wow, I'm so rude, I'm asking all these personal questions and talking at you about my family and I didn't even ask your name!"

Foggy hugs Reynir until he's ready to pull away and then he laugh and grins. "I'm Franklin Nelson, but you can call me Foggy, all my friends do. For reasons lost to the sands of time."

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test drive meme: december 2019

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