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test drive meme

Since we know a lot of people are ready and eager to start playing around in this setting, welcome to the official Airlocked Test Drive! For this test drive, we do have a posting format:

In the header of your comment, put your Character's Name and their Champion title. You don't have to put in the canon if you don't want, but you can if you feel the need.

And the guidelines we ask you to follow are, please try to include at least one prompt in your top-level to reply to, and if you make a top-level try to tag out to at least one other person. We want everyone to get a chance to give their choices a fair shake, after all.

Here are some examples to get you started:

A - Arrival
You wake up in a bed that's not your own, in a shiny chrome room that has bright fluorescent lights that light up along the floor as soon as your feet hit it and glowing sconces on the walls. Whether it's much different from what you're used to or not different at all, it's time to figure out where you are and more importantly, whether you're alone.

B - Mealtime
Well sweet, at least there's a cafeteria! But wait, it seems like there's only hot food during certain times of day. The rest of the time if you go foraging in the kitchen you can find weird silver packages with the name of food on the side that...definitely don't seem big enough to hold the food in question. If you open it up, it seems oddly dry...

C - Zero G
A zero gravity room! Awesome! The walls and floor are textured to give you something to hang onto to crawl across back to the control panel, but if you're floating in the middle of the room you might need someone to give you a push.

D - Holo Deck
A room where all your dreams come true. Kind of. In a photorealistic display of light and sound.

E - Anything else!
Or Create your own!

This is not an official reserve, nor does it guarantee a slot in the game, but if you do choose to app a character that you test drove, you can use two minimum 20-comment threads or one minimum 40-comment thread (so at least 20 total comments from your character) in place of writing a sample. So have fun with it!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Yikes. If you thought that was funny, you probably need to get out more.

[It wasn't funny at all, the lame joke of the sour and apathetic.]

[Aaand there was the Junpei she remembered.]

I mean. I am here, aren't I? This is getting out, yes?

[It's not a laugh, and it's definitely not a smile, but the corner of Junpei's mouth quirks up a bit involuntarily.]

If you consider this "getting out," then you definitely need to get out more.

[He begins eating again, but for once, he's paying genuine attention to someone around him.]

You seem to be holding up well for being trapped here, though.

[Were she the type, Angel might have scoffed. She understood the predicament, was constantly wary of the threat looming over them. But it still seemed outrageous, calling this being trapped.]

Perhaps you and I have very different experiences with being held against our wills?

[She could move around, after all. It was hardly what she would call imprisonment. And as long as everyone cooperated, they wouldn't have to fear each other, either.]

[Whatever openness Junpei may have been beginning to, well, open to is immediately shuttered off. He pauses, looking at her, then returns his gaze to his meal, which he continues to eat like it's a job.]

Maybe.

[Wherever he's gone in his head, it's someplace dark. After a moment, though, he smiles thinly, sardonically.]

I have to admit, the last time didn't include catering.

[Oh.]

[For all her bitter comments, she had expected Junpei to be unfamiliar with such a scenario. After all, from what Angel had gathered, it wasn't normal for people to be locked away, either like this or as she had been before.]

[Maybe she was wrong, though.]

Sorry, I... [But whatever apology she might have uttered felt just as thin as the smile on the man's lips.]

You, too?

[Junpei resists answering for a while, but finally, he turns to her again with a long, measured--measuring, perhaps--look. He sighs, puts his fork down, and folds his arms on the table.]

Like I said. Maybe.

[He draws his index finger through the air in a circle to indicate--well, all of this. The space station, the kill-or-be-killed scenario, the PIPs attached to their arms insolubly.]

I "participated" in something like this before.

[Angel wasn't sure what to make of his words. Maybe it shouldn't have been so surprising, that more worlds than her own were unspeakably cruel. But something like this? A game forceably pitting (mostly) innocent souls against once another? Even that would have been next-to unheard of in the Borderlands.]

[Their death games were entirely voluntary.]

I'm sorry. [The words sounded lame, a mere pittance against the depths of horror he must have faced. At the very least, her expression -- wide eyes, upturned brows and a grimace -- backed up the fact that she was utterly horrified by the idea.]

[He shakes his head, not really looking at her.]

Yeah, well. [His shrug is stiff.] Same.

[It's unclear whether Junpei means he's also sorry for what happened to him or likewise sympathetic about whatever her captivity was about. After a moment, he releases a laugh that isn't really a laugh, just a soft recognition of irony.]

Funny. Never thought all I'd have to do to hear an apology was jump headlong into another one of these "games." [His head sinks into his hand with a tired exhalation.] I might've tried it earlier.

[For a long moment, Angel sat in silence. His revelation had destroyed her appetite, leaving her to almost glare at the plate of meat sitting before her. She pushed it away, and turned her attention back to Junpei.]

May I ask you something? [Without really waiting for him to respond, she continued speaking.] A lot of people keep saying we'll find a way out. That... things will wind up being okay.

Do you think they're right? Can we truly escape this sort of place?

[Junpei was alive, right? Surely that would bode well for them. But then, Angel had been snatched from a secure chamber herself. The man could have just as easily been picked up from one game and brought to another.]

[This time, he stays quiet for a very long time, not eating his meal so much as toying with it. When he finally speaks up, it's to ask a question:]

Have you heard of morphogenetic field theory?

[Angel had heard of a lot of things, had researched a great many impossible concepts and theories. This one, though. This was foreign to her.]

I'm afraid I haven't. What is it?

I'm not an expert, so I'm not going to explain it very well. Essentially... it has to do with the way things change all over the universe at the same time, apparently without coming into contact with one another. Or the way an idea suddenly comes into your head and it doesn't seem to have any trigger. An epiphany, you know?

Morphogenetic field theory states that those things happen because our thoughts aren't actually hosted in our brains, but out in some great, invisible field through which consciousnesses and ideas are transmitted. It's not limited by the physical dimension, or even distance or time. So if a caveman discovered fire in Africa three million years ago, that discovery could spread through the morphogenetic field to Asia, South America, Australia, Greenland... and so on and so forth. Because our minds all actually live on that plane.

[Junpei, what the fuck does this have to do with anything.]

[Connected or not to the previous topic, Angel was fascinated by the concept. She mulled it over, eyes narrowing and brows drawing together thoughtfully. It was outlandish, that much was for certain, but hardly the weirdest thing she'd heard of.]

[No weirder than six women continually being "blessed" with weird alien powers, at least.]

What about time? Can a caveman's epiphany strike a man lost in the woods? Or is it limited by the temporal position of the original subject?

[The fact she's anticipated his next point makes him smile thinly again in spite of himself.]

Good instinct. The answer is no. It isn't limited.

[For a moment, Junpei seems far away and almost soft. Then he closes his eyes, breathes out, and continues.]

In the game I was in last year, we... well, most of us survived. [He shrugs.] And that was because some of us could access the morphogenetic field and make use of the information there to avoid getting our asses killed.

But how do you think that information got there?

Edited (Totally important distinction) 2017-05-03 10:32 (UTC)

[The expression on his face gave Angel pause, enough so that she had to scramble to remember what it was that the man had said. Further complicating things was the fact that this so-called theory was actually real. Usually, these sort of things were impossible to prove, vague conjecture by scientists with no real time on her hands.]

[How interesting...]

I... could hazard a few guesses. I suppose it would depend on what you made of the theory of time. [At least, something she did understand.] Is everything on one linear path, or are there branching paths and countless timelines to behold?

Assuming the latter was true... [And since Junpei had already informed her of one bizarre theory being correct, what was one more?] Could every timeline, in theory, contribute to that field?

[Oh, clever, clever girls. Junpei opens his eyes again and his smile is soul-weary, bitter, salted with irony and iron both.]

The reason we survived is because again, and again, and again, we screwed up and died. And all the information from those timelines was floating around for us to stumble into as we scurried here and there like drowning rats.

[Trial and error. He's thinking of ship rats, but the metaphor works for the lab, too, doesn't it? It was all just one big Ganzfeld Experiment in the end.]

So, sure. Escape is one of numerous possibilities, if we try enough.

[Junpei's smile said all she needed to know, even before he opened his mouth. She didn't even have the desire to argue what he was saying -- the words might not have made sense, the theory might have been incomprehensible, but she still knew it to be true. There was no faking the look in his eyes, or the haunted note in his voice.]

And in order to try hard enough, we have to die along the way, don't we? In some form or another?

Well, sort of. I mean, if you're working with the morphogenetic field, anyway.

[Food forgotten, he rests his chin in his hand.]

The three things you need to access it are a natural ability, a moment of epiphany, and clear and pressing mortal danger. And the danger has to be real. Hence, dead participants. Sorry, thanks for playing.

[He taps a finger against the table.]

But the last game I was in was created to make us access it, and designed to be winnable once we did. I don't know about this one.

But as long as you're here, you should be able to access it? Even if the rest of us cannot?

[It was slightly less than the silver lining she'd previously thought of it as (however bleak said lining was), but at least there was still a sliver of hope. Not that she imagined Junpei wanted to play such a role again.]

We... We'll all do our best to keep you from having to do any of that again, though. [At the very least, she would. Not that it meant much -- being that she was one girl against 18 other people.]

[Oh no.]

Whoa, slow your roll. I never said I could.

[He pushes himself up and starts gathering what's left of his meal. This conversation is over.]

You shouldn't rely on other people's miracles to get you out of a jam. You shouldn't rely on other people at all. The only person you can ever trust is yourself.

[He picks up his tray and meets her eyes once more, back to hard and prickly and defensive.]

Hope, faith, luck... none of that stuff is real. You're better off junking it with the rest of your childhood daydreams.

Edited 2017-05-03 12:55 (UTC)

[It was clear that she had struck a nerve. She should have known better, saying something like that -- expecting someone else to lend their gifts for a cause that wasn't their own. If Junpei had said something similar to her, expected Angel to use her siren abilities to keep the station from tearing itself apart? She would have snapped too.]

[An apology was already forming on her lips when he spoke once more. His cracked through her like a whip. He had no way of knowing, not really, just how much each of those concepts (including daydreams) meant to her, how they had pushed her through a time not unlike this one. Deep down, she knew that his intention was far more superficial than that.]

[But rather than finish what she had started, rather than apologizing profusely to the man, her lips pressed into a thin line and she simply averted her gaze.]

You are right. [This was all she managed after the span of a few breaths.]

[He sees it and he's not sorry. He doesn't have room to be sorry, not when all he can hear in his ears is a siren blast ordering him to get out.

His knuckles are white on the edges of his meal tray.]

Don't tell the others.

[He doesn't want them coming up to him, coming after him, asking him to save them with powers Junpei doesn't have, to save them for reasons he doesn't care about. He doesn't owe the people here anything, he's never asked anything from them, he's kept to himself and isn't attached because if he couldn't trust that person, then...

Then he can't trust anyone. Human beings aren't as beautiful as he thought.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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