Test Drive #8.

[powersthatbe]

Welcome to the Synodiporia Test Drive Meme! Below the cuts there are three new prompts, and here are the prompts from previous test-drives, which you’re still welcome to use in this post. When you comment, be sure you specify what prompt you want to play with, and please put up your own threadstarter - it makes for a much more friendly environment that a forest of bare toplevels! OCs are especially welcome!

Our upcoming app round runs April 24th-30th, after which we’ll be introducing new characters into the middle of our ongoing plot, The Digital Frontier, a story of exploration and revolution inspired by the TRON franchise.

Prompt #26 takes place in Liminal Space, where a strange purpose is at work shifting the landscape and summoning phantom images.

Prompt #27 takes place in the current Jaunt, the Digital Frontier, inside a computerized prison.

Prompt #28 gives new players a chance to imagine their characters as long-time Veterans of travel between worlds.


Prompt #26: The Garden of Images
Liminal Space has taken the form of a greenhouse, with a few notable exceptions. The plants are forked radio antennas, the lianas and creepers fiber-optic cables, plots of stage-lights and orchards of microphone-stand saplings alternating with pumpkin patches of speakers and subwoofers.

And, of course, instead of panes of transparent glass, the greenhouse is made of television screens. Some are dim, some lit, some blue or staticky - but on others, there are images of other Travelers, elsewhere in the garden, long departed, or yet to come, engaging in conversation as if they were there right now. Vivid memories from past Jaunts are replayed on the screens, and Travelers who stand close to one of the camera-trees may find their own image displayed there, green-screened into some sort of re-enactment.



Prompt #27: Living in a Digital World
The walls are glossy black, lit by green grid-lines defining energy conduits, and projecting flickering laser-grids over the doors to the cells. While the lights flicker, the power failing in this ancient relic of a building, the security systems are still live, and they’re not friendly - bursts of power that shove people into cells and activate the doors, needles of flickering blacklight that sweep along the hallways, herding strays and cutting anyone too slow into neat squares - dark chambers that play white noise until the mind goes blank and then begin implanting new programming with bright pulses of binary code pouring light into the retinas.

Explorers are just as likely to be caught as inmates, and every faction inhabiting the Grid has representatives trapped here - green-lined Cryptos who have been trapped in this prison for centuries, purple-flickering Automata, mad viral program-people little better than vampires or zombies; paranoid red-coated Defenders seeking to stamp out threats on the Grid; curious blue Miners, either here to excavate the prison or hide from the System that oppresses them… and of course, the Variables - Travelers who know they’re Travelers, lost and trying to blend in.




Prompt #28: The Boys Are Back In Town
From one world to the next, they’ve been through the wringer - the blood-soaked, amnesia-inducing night in the tropics and concrete bunkers that made up Moebius, where Travelers were slaughtered, autopsied, and revived again with the scars to show for it, time after time. The decadent techno-pleasure dome of the Spark, where the Travelers all but started a civil war, and ended by sending the last remnants of humanity falling towards the surface of a harsh moon in a colony ship that was beginning to fall apart around them. Belljar Island, where they were used to Travelers, and sick of them, where their very presence triggered first discrimination and then riots. Hell, from one world to the next - and everyone who spoke out in rebellion vanished.

But they didn’t vanish to nowhere. Instead, they find themselves in an Escher-like maze, where each room is a riddle, a zen koan made real. A chamber where there is no sound, and the doors can only be unlocked when a bell is rung. A room with no doors whatsoever, and a carpenter’s workbench in the middle. Corridors and tunnels where you must climb or turn just so at the intersections - up two ladders, down two staircases, left and right through two zig-zags, through two doors labeled with Greek letters, and then back to the beginning to do just the same all over again. The maze is maddening, and every puzzle can be solved a dozen times, and time itself hardly seems real - it passes with no breaks for sleep or meals. But through it all, the Travelers still have one thing they can rely on - one another.

Comments

[darkhourdear]

Liminal Space is usually pretty creepy, but Phillip has decided he doesn't like this one at all. The plants are super weird and the TVs make him feel like he's spying on people, though in a green house a bug monster kind of makes se-- wait a minute.

Phillip stops as he hears the voice by the TV he'd just spotted, watching as the man moves up to try and punch it. He's been trying to be really good about not assuming people here and the people he knows back home, but... this is a harder one. Especially when put with that kind of reaction.

"...Hajime?"

[chalicejoker]

The sound of such a familiar voice calling his name gets Hajime's attention. It's enough to get him to stop trying to pound the hell out of that TV screen. "Phillip?" He turns away from the TV screen, and the bugmonster figure on it turns away as well, walking away to do something else in the scene. "What are you doing here?"

[darkhourdear]

Phillip doesn't even register the question, expression still startled and wide-eyed. After a moment like this, his face becomes a bizarre muddle of emotions- joy, concern, about to break out into tears- but that's not a thing to look at for much longer because he's lunging forward and wraps his arms around Hajime in a tight hug.

He's really missed him.

[chalicejoker]

Hajime is surprised by the sheer level of emotion on display here, and it's all he can do to return that hug. "Easy, take it easy, it's going to be okay..." Even though he still has no idea what's really going on, this is the sort of thing you have to tell a kid who...well, Hajime can't tell if Phillip is upset or happy or what.

[darkhourdear]

Phillip is all of those things. He is so happy to see one of the people he missed most from home, but considering Hajime is here instead of Phillip being home... well that has some problems of its own.

He takes a moment to just hug Hajime, collecting himself a little before looking up at him again with a far less conflicted face- it's mostly settled on 'concern.' "Has anybody told you anything yet?" he asks.

[chalicejoker]

Hajime is not quite sure what's going on to have the hugging go on for this long, but that's okay. He'll give Phillip as long as he needs. "No, not really." He resisted the urge to glare back at the TV screen, to see if it was mocking him again. "I'm not sure I like it."

[darkhourdear]

"No one likes it." Yeah, Phillip isn't going to sugar coat this. Not for Hajime. "We're in Liminal Space. These people called the Trumps kind of grabbed us all from our worlds and threw us in here, and in a bit we'll be sent on a Jaunt to another world to try and fix things. Liminal Space changes every time we come back to it."

[chalicejoker]

"Trumps?" Hajime frowns. "Sounds like playing cards..." Which makes him uneasy on principle, what with all the card crap he's gotten back and the way he remembers being called something of a trump card himself. The Joker, the one Undead who could take the place of any other..."So what sort of things are we supposed to fix? And why?" This is all very confusing and not at all what he had been expecting the kid to tell him, but he's seen a lot of weird things in his life. Time to just roll with it, especially because he doesn't want to worry Phillip.

[darkhourdear]

"Tarot," Phillip says with a nod, "They're representing the major arcana. So we've seen the Fool, the Sun, the Moon, the Lovers..." And as the representation of the Death, Phillip has the exact same concerns that Hajime is having right about now. "It's different in every world we get sent to, only they don't tell us what we're supposed to do and we kind of have to figure it out. And they haven't told us why yet."

[chalicejoker]

"Tarot..." Hajime still doesn't sound comfortable with this idea. Mostly because he knows good and well someone could just as easily consider him a Fool even if he's technically the Joker. "So what happens if we don't do what we're 'supposed' to do?"

[darkhourdear]

(You're not allowed to be the Fool, Hajime. There are way too many Wild Cards here already and Phillip doesn't want you to be a door even though that's not actually how that works.)

"Liminal space usually tells us, though I'm not sure if anything bad happens to us?" It probably does. Phillip just doesn't know for sure yet. "But, um... there are some things that we want to succeed." Like not summoning Hastur. They sort of managed that??

[chalicejoker]

(All he knows is how this works around Undead from his other self's world, man...why is this all so complicated)

Hajime sighs and runs a hand through his hair. "Yeah, that's...let me guess, the stuff that you'd want to succeed would be even worse than getting yanked across universes for no apparent reason." He sighs. "Powerful enough to yank people around, not powerful enough to do their own damn work..."

[darkhourdear]

Phillip nods, more than a little solemn. He doesn't want to talk about Harrogate, but... with Hajime he could tell him some of it. If he asked for examples. It wouldn't take long to get across how awful that whole thing was.

"Yeah. And, um, in the Jaunts, you can either remember who you are and know you're there to fix things, or the Trumps will give you a bunch of different memories and make you think you've always been there. ...That's happened to me a lot." It sucks.

[chalicejoker]

"So how bad did it get?" But Hajime is quickly distracted by what Phillip says next. Distracted enough that he won't notice if the first question goes unanswered. "Different memories?" There is a definite note of aw, hell no in his voice there.

[darkhourdear]

He will take the opportunity to not answer that, then! "Yeah," he says, frowning, "So, there was one where we were in a computer or something? It was called the Grid, and if you infiltrated then you thought you were an actual computer program." That is actually the one Phillip has the least trouble talking about right now.

[chalicejoker]

"How could you think you were a computer program?" This is weird, Phillip. Please explain it in a manner that makes it less weird. Hajime hopes this can be made less weird. He is not terribly optimistic as far as that goes.

[darkhourdear]

Phillip honestly doesn't have any idea how to explain it. "I don't know. I just- the world we were in was in a computer, so each of us was an individual Program in the system and since I was infiltrating I thought I was one."

[chalicejoker]

"That's...really strange." Really, really strange. "When did you realize you...weren't? Like that this wasn't what you really were?"

[darkhourdear]

"When the Jaunt ended and I wound up back in Liminal Space," Phillip says, sounding more than a little put out, "I think if you die during the Jaunt, then when you come back you remember, but." He's not sure that's even an option for him.

[chalicejoker]

"...die? So you can die here?" He looks around the area. "Or...I guess I should say, what happens if you die in the Liminal Space place?"

[darkhourdear]

"Why wouldn't you be able to?" Such a weird question, Hajime. "In Jaunts, you get brought back into Liminal Space, I think. If you die here... I 'unno. I'm not sure that happens very much."

[chalicejoker]

"I...it's just...planning for the worst." Can he even die anymore? He doesn't know. He doesn't think so. Why should he worry...aside from worrying about everyone else? But the kid's not too disturbed by it, which is...good? Kind of? "I guess that's good to know, even if it looks weird as heck here..."

[darkhourdear]

Hajime, it's Phillip. Of course he's not going to be too bothered talking about death. "It really is weird," he'll agree, shuffling his feet a little, "But at least pretty much everyone's nice?"

[chalicejoker]

Hajime gives him a smile. It's pretty good to see him at his own baseline level of normal, given the circumstances. "Yeah, that's always a plus."

[darkhourdear]

Phillip nods. "...I think there are some other people from Locke here, too. Um. Mr. Lyall?" He never talked to him much, but-- "Oh, but if you see someone who likes look Toushirou here, it's not him. It's, um. The guy he gets some stuff from." You know what that means.