THE TEST DRIVE MEME: MARCH - APRIL

[checkingin]

THE TEST DRIVE MEME

SO YOU WANT TO JOIN THE CREEPY HOTEL BRIGADE.

Well, welcome potential apper! Here we have the handy dandy test drive meme so you can get a feel for how your character might react to the game setting. This post can also be used to cultivate some of those required sample threads for the application.

Feel free to play any scenario you so please. However please note that TDM threads cannot be used for Activity Checks (for existing players) and will not be considered game canon unless transposed comment for comment into logs in checkingout. We also recommend avoiding playing the initial arrival, so that the intro log doesn't become repetitive and boring for you. Other than that, go wild.

Here's a few additional useful links:

PREMISE | THE HOTEL
TAKEN | RESERVES | APPLICATION

BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS.

No time for losers, because we — have waffles and pancakes and crepes and delicate bowls of ripe bananas and juicy oranges. We have bacon and oatmeal and cereal and milk; we have coffee (that's really hot and will burn you quite spectacularly) and tea (that, on the other hand, is miserably cold and bland). And we have orange juice (that might just kill you)!

Basically, every component one needs to start the day off right. Which is good, because this is the only meal ever served in the hotel. So come one, come all — get it while it's hot and try to pick among seats amidst the crowded circular tables, or stand along the wall. Bemoan the lack of hashbrowns or fight over the last fork. Mix, mingle. Have "fun".

DON'T YOU LOVE MY TASTE IN MUSIC.

What starts as soft, subtle musical notes wafting out of unseen speakers?

Yeah, that quickly manifests into blaring, loud, aggressively high pitched notes — so distorted, and reverberating so magnificently in the main lobby that even those impenetrable windows rattle in their frames.

And what's more, there doesn't seem to be an off switch anywhere in sight. Good luck finding one.

GOING DOWN.

Right by the stairwell in the lobby is an old timey elevator, the sort that really ought to be manned by staff to insure that it's in decent working condition and won't kill you. But it's usually not. And usually doesn't run.

But today, your ears are treated to an oh-so pleasant ding, and the doors will slide open, offering a ride to the floor of your choosing. Finally, no more calf workouts on the stairs, right?

...well, you probably should have taken the stairs, because three seconds in the entire carriage shudders, screeches to a halt, and refuses to move.

Then the lights begin to flicker.

CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE.

Don't see a scenario that appeals to you here? Make up your own. Get crazy with it! Good luck getting outside.

Comments

[pajarita]

[bitter, then? she'd probably be bitter too, if anything happened in space with her stuck on the ground without the chance to see it. but that's going to be her life from now on, if she lives long enough.]

Space travel? [she's ticking off things on her list.]

[lottawork]

Among other things.

[This with a prim flick of his pen, skittering over the surface in its untidy notation. She has made it a simple enough endeavor to gauge her relative interest level - it may be useful to have a firmer idea of how much of a knowledge base she truly possesses.

There's nested intrigue in his expression when his eyes dart, briefly, her way.]

Familiar with that, are you?

[pajarita]

[she knows how to communicate to intense engineers, however annoying the process is.]

Space living, yeah. Travel, not so much -- unless you count crashing to Earth in an escape pod.

[lottawork]

Well, that certainly fits the definition.

[And she has successfully captured a more significant portion of his attention. He turns slightly to face her more fully with brow-notched curiosity.

In a precise twitch of motion he returns to writing, pausing shortly thereafter.]

You were rather technologically advanced, then.

[pajarita]

Not really. [and here, the bitterness shows.] A technologically advanced society would've been able to stop its population from dying of oxygen deprivation.

Or figured out other sollutions, instead of just killing people off for minor infractions, just to keep it culled.

[lottawork]

Oxygen deprivation.

[A simple, flat repetition for the sake of processing. The concentrated scribbling ceases in earnest. A surprising amount of information specific to her universe can be harvested from that alone - lacking in basic resources, most likely, intensively so, possibly at the mercy of some self-imposed, merciless hierarchy.

Rush decides that is interesting.]

Resource-poor environments do have that tendency to generate needless conflict, I've found, [he says, diplomatic and even. Impartiality is best achieved with distance.]

[pajarita]

It was meant to be a temporary environment. [caught your attention, didn't she? told you she speaks intense genius.] At least, that's what the history books told us.

But temporary became centuries, generations after generations. Inter-station wars, inter-station unity, fast decline towards a highly pronounced hyerarchy. Yeah, you know. Formerly home.

[lottawork]

Ah. [Rush cannot entirely discern at what point the conversation became so forthcoming, a minimal streak of confusion buried in his swelling interest.]

This was on Earth? [Punctuated by a tiny, equivocal rotation of one wrist.] Or some future or alternative iteration - did you have access to a time frame?

[pajarita]

Well -- by my guess, it's one possible ending. War breaks out, countries bring out the nuclear weapons, the Earth becomes uninhabitable...

You connect the dots.

[lottawork]

[Rush finds that wholly unsurprising.]

War does tend to have that effect. [He makes no effort to contain his derision, both for worldly circumstance and those that were its instigators - no doubt military, the hateful standard.] How tragically uninspired.

[pajarita]

Tragic's a word for it. My world, are a couple of other words for it.

Anyway -- what about you?

they have twin arm-crossed grumpy icons i /swear/

[lottawork]

[That seems to have taken them in the predictable full circle. Socially ordained conversational norms usually dictate a give-take exchange, a ritual of which Rush has only the barest understanding and subsequent interest. He's not in the habit of divulging a great deal of personal information, nor is he well accustomed to having interest expressed toward him in turn.]

I've generally had very little experience with war-ravaged planets, at least to my knowledge.

[Nailed it.]

it's beautiful and i'm sticking to them

[pajarita]

[aw come on, that's like. a slippery way out. that's like something she'd pull.]

To your knowledge?

[lottawork]

[His expression briefly flickers with annoyance before resolving into one of weary concentration.]

Planetary variation is to be expected. In those lacking any remnants of civilization, the fate of whatever population may have once existed can only be guessed at.

[Despicably. The inherent inaccuracies involved in intuitive guesswork will never cease to irk him and he knows so many words that begin with 'i'.]

[pajarita]

[she shakes her head,] Not my point. You said you had no experience with them to your knowledge. Meaning what, you might've experienced them without your knowledge?

[lottawork]

[He counters with a quiet, thoroughly irritated hiss.]

Given my range of interplanetary exploration, it is entirely possible. Any number of worlds could have been post-apocalyptic wastelands prior to their discovery.

[pajarita]

[now seriously was it that hard to communicate.] I'm sorry, did I bother you with that question?

[lottawork]

[There is a great deal of things bothering him, from the unbearably necessary minutiae of physical existence to the fact that he has been trapped, grounded, kept in a highly restricting, desolate, seemingly completely isolated environment that defies any conventional methods of understanding.

He grinds out his next words between a rapid burst of fluid writing, a wealth of uncomfortable energy barely contained.]

It doesn't seem especially relevant.

[pajarita]

Wow, okay. [nope. there are geniuses and there are dicks and unfortunately the misconception or accurate assumption here is that he's more of the latter. hiding behind writing -- she's smart but she's not losing her mind, right?

whatever. she's going to go and get breakfast.]

[lottawork]

[For an iron moment there's a clenching of his free hand into a fist, a strained tension tightening the line of his shoulders, until abruptly eases away in a silent flood of dissolution.

The intruder has taken her leave. Apparently.

With a slow, uneven, palliating hush of breath between his teeth, Rush forces his hand to steady, and continues writing.]