TEST DRIVE MEME #5

[sailmods]

1. not subtle revealings

[you wake up.

it doesn't matter where you were before. going to bed? dying? opening the door to face a great evil? same result. you wake up in a soft bed with starched sheets in a cool, darkened room, sunlight peeking out from behind thick curtains. maybe you're alone; maybe you aren't. maybe you immediately notice the folded paper on the bedside table near your head. if you don't, you better fix that real quick: you won't be able to even open the door before you read it.

the note itself is written in a neat hand on white card stock; there is a stylized logo of a ship with the words SERENA ETERNA printed underneath. the note reads as follows:

Dear Passenger(s),

As your cruise director, it is my great honor to welcome you aboard the Serena Eterna, your destination for fun and adventure! We know you could have chosen any cruise line for your vacation, and we're very grateful you chose ours! On behalf of the Captain, I would like to assure each and every passenger that will we do whatever it takes to fulfill all your needs and desires during your journey with us.

At your earliest possible convenience, please attend the mandatory lifeboat drill by the end of the day. I'm sure everyone is very eager to get started on all the fun and sun, but safety always comes first! You can find your life jacket in your cabin's closet; carry it to your assigned muster station on deck one, where I will take you through the drill. If you can't find me in the crowd, just look for the gal with the winning smile!

See You Real Soon!

Sincerely,
Gal Friday

you walk to deck one. you have no other choice: every time you try to step in a direction some unseen being considers "not towards deck one," you find your legs no longer move, staying stock still, frozen. whether compelled quickly by curiosity, or delayed by pure stubbornness, the result is the same, and you are left milling around with other similarly curious or stubborn people.

you see someone in uniform near the front of the crowd. she seems to be a gal, but is missing the winning smile, along with most of her other features. she seems to see you, though, rushing to your side and placing a lei around your neck with great formality. a voice, cheery but artificial, sees to come from nowhere and everywhere.]

Welcome! I'm very glad to have you aboard!

[you touch the lei. rooster feathers, lotus seeds, and a carved circle of something white and hard, linked onto a silk string.

after the drill is completed, you are seemingly free to go. or, well, your legs work, now. and maybe that's as good as it's gonna get.]

2. a permanent reminder of a temporary feeling

[the reflections are missing. all of them. in mirrors. in television screens. on the backs of spoons. nothing looks back at you.

then, figures do show up. not your own, like you'd expect. thin, wispy apparitions, people with pleading eyes and hands, reaching out to place their palms against the surface, from their own end. faces familiar and not, beckoning, mouthing words you just can't quite make out. help me, it might be. get me out, perhaps. just until you're close enough, until your skin warms the surface of whatever it is you're peering into. and then, those same hands wrap, all too real, burning-cold against your flesh, and pull, trying to drag you through the surface, making up for their lack of strength with desperation. any flesh unlucky enough to enter the reflection comes back bone-white and cold, all sensation dead, though it will fade within a few hours.

in retrospect, it looks a bit more like they were saying something different. something more like, better you than me. or maybe it's not even words at all. they look a bit more like they're laughing.]

3. complex mementos

[but, hey. sometimes changes are good! like, today, in Playback, there's a brand-new game available for all the children to play! it's an old-fashioned sort of claw machine, the type that's so large, a particularly dedicated kindergartner could wriggle their way inside. the prizes vary, and sit loose: bags of candy, stuffed toys, firearms, painfully early-00s electronics, actually that one just looks like a dead iguana, tiny ship-branded knickknacks... like all the other games in the arcade, the game starts up automatically upon being touched; lack of quarters shouldn't keep you from having fun! pro tip: they are loaded, and they will go off if you suck at claw games and let it fall.]

Comments

1

[treadwater]

"Yeah, it happens to everyone the first morning they wake up here. You need to do the muster drill before you get set loose on the ship. I'll go with you, if you want. The first time can be a little...startling."

After all, reactions to the faceless lady vary widely.

The girl talking to Lucas can't be more than fifteen years old, and her blue hair shows no roots, nor her eyes any indication of being contacts. It's magic, plain and simple. She's in a blue-and-teal sundress, a beach towel draped over one arm.

[woocas]

"Huh," is the only reply Lucas can muster at first. The blue hair and eyes combo has him wondering about the dream angle again. Maybe she's a fae...?

"Well, I'm not going to say no to some company, that's for sure." He grins, sheepish but earnest before jutting his hand out for a handshake. "Still trying to get my bearing, you know? Lucas, by the way."

[treadwater]

"Undine. Nice to meet you. I've been here for a few months, so I know how rough it is." Her handshake is very businesslike, practiced. "If you'll come this way, you'll be able to move again, going to the muster drill."

She starts to lead in the correct direction, smiling brightly.

[woocas]

"Rough? Aw come on, how bad can a cruise be?" Please don't answer that. Lucas gives her hand a brief, but firm shake before turning fully around to follow.

"I did notice that something definitely wants me to go in a certain direction only, if that's what you mean by that?" He'll just operate on the supposed dream logic for now, until any scrap of evidence gives him a solid lead on what the hell is actually going on.

[treadwater]

"There's times when we don't really have a choice in matters here. This is one of the most overt examples, but there's times when we're told what to do, or else. It's...bad. This isn't really just a cruise for fun. And like I said, I've been here for months. Without being able to go back home."

She lets out a bit of a sigh. "Um, when we get to the muster drill, try not to freak out. The cruise director looks a little...um. Unique?"

[woocas]

Frowning, Lucas absorbs all of this and rolls it around in his brain. So far it's a stark contrast to the chipper note left in the room, but lines up perfectly with the unseen force directing him towards the top deck whether or not he wanted to go there.

"Wait. What do you mean we can't contact anyone off this boat? Like, no wifi or sat phone?" How is he supposed to get in touch with IOPSA. Now this could be bad. Very bad.

Belatedly, he adds, "Unique? Like cryptid unique or just funny lookin'?"

[treadwater]

"No wifi, no sat phone. The ship phones will call or message other ship phones, but only if you have someone's room number and name. As for Friday...uh. She has no face? Like. No face. But you can read her body language pretty easy a lot of the time. She's sort of...the captain's. You'll see."

Yeah, she knows this is a Lot to take in, but he keeps asking questions, and she's not just going to not answer!

[woocas]

The trick is to get Lucas to stop asking questions, honestly.

"Shit," He curses under his breath, brows furrowing for a heartbeat. No contact with anyone off ship. This isn't a dream, this is a slowly unraveling nightmare.

"No face?" Lucas squints skeptically at Undine. "I'll take your word for it...Guess we'll see soon enough. It's this way, right?" Finally, instead of just yakking, he'll start heading in the direction she had pointed out.

"So before you woke up here where were you from?"

[treadwater]

"The Founder's City. I'm guessing you're actually probably not from the same world as me; no one has been, so far." She walks alongside him with a sheepish little smile. Because her talking about her world has ended poorly repeatedly.

...and gotten her adopted a couple times, too.

"How about you? Where are you from?"

[woocas]

"Now hold up, a different world?" Lucas sounds skeptical but not accusatory. He always tries to meet people where they are, first. The truth always comes to the surface after that. "So this boat is in a different plane or do you mean, like...this Founder's City place is?"

His head hurts. Too bad Miles isn't here to make sense of some of this!

"I'm from Virginia, actually." He pauses, one eyebrow crooking up. "If you've got a Virginia where you're from? Or...hey, does IOPSA sound familiar at all?"

[treadwater]

"Never heard of IOPSA." She's ignoring the question about Virginia entirely for the moment, because it's easier than telling him that she's from the last city on Earth, as far as anyone knows. That Virginia did exist, but probably doesn't anymore.

"Anyway, the running theory is that this is sort of like...a mini-plane, created and sustained by the Captain. That's why there's nothing living in the ocean, and no bottom anyone's been able to reach. He didn't think to put any animals or seaweed or plankton or anything down there. Or seagulls in the sky. Or things like that."

[woocas]

"Hmmm." No IOPSA, at least as far as Undine knows. Lucas doesn't suspect she's lying, especially after the next bit of information. Who would think to make something like that up? It's weird she doesn't say a word about where he's from. Maybe she's not from Earth at all?

"So...it's just water out there? No land at all? We're just stuck in this boat?" Lucas sounds more curious than panicked, feeling out the situation as he goes.

[treadwater]

"There's land when the captain makes places for shore excursions, but those can be almost more obviously artificial than the ship is. He's not good with forests, I'm afraid." There's other issues with the excursions, but since they're just reaching the muster drill, she's going to shut up and watch him witness Gal Friday for the first time.

[woocas]

"I gotta be honest little dude, this is all making my head hurt." And Lucas would have gone a tangent but they're both saved by their arrival on deck.

At first all seems normal enough, Lucas settles in to whatever spot he's directed to. He glances around just as the cheery Gal Friday steps up to run through her spiel and that's the exact moment Lucas's brain shuts down. No face. No identifiable features at all. A blank slate. When Undine said she had no face, she meant it.

It takes longer than normal to realize he's staring. Flustered and embarrassed his gaze darts around Gal as if afraid to look anywhere, heat rises in his cheeks. Eventually he steals a glance in Undine's direction while Gal never misses a beat. Help!

[treadwater]

She did. She did try to warn him. Really.

"She's actually pretty nice. But like. The captain sucks at forests, and kinda at faces too, maybe, I think. At least, that's the best theory I have. He made her. She's his creation. But...she was made to care about us, and he doesn't."

[woocas]

It's fine, he'll adjust. Eventually.

"Maybe?" He whispers and resists the urge to glance at Gal in that moment. The Captain, whoever the hell he is, needs some serious educating.

"Okay, shelf this idea until this is done because I got like a bajillion questions right now." He follows that with an awkward chuckle. "I don't want to stick my foot in my mouth right away, you know?"

[treadwater]

"If Friday gets to you, some of the other passengers might also weird you out. I'm not saying you need a better poker face, but...you might need a better poker face."

After all, Skulduggery is a skeleton, and there's robots and Mizuki is a jellyfishboy...

[woocas]

"Listen, I work with spooks for a living but that doesn't ever mean it's not a little weird. Cut me some slack!"

Although Undine totally has Lucas dead to rights. He'll never win a poker tournament, that much is for certain.

Thankfully he does know how to reel it in. For the most part. Eventually he decides it's best to look where Friday's eyes should be and roll with it as best as he can. Friday doesn't seem to mind, after all!

Once the drill winds down, Lucas twirls his life vest around with a much more easy going grin than earlier. "So, that was sure somethin', huh? You like hanging around for drills or did I really look like that much of a fish out of water?"

[treadwater]

"Look, we've all been there. It's just a nice thing to do, to help out people who are scared and upset and lost. Right? You seem like the sort of guy who might do that for someone else someday, to me."

But she wants to see the best in most people.

[woocas]

"Once I get my bearings, yeah, you got me." Lucas says with a bright laugh. "We could be the welcoming committee or somethin'!"

And now that his legs work again, he picks a random direction on deck and starts meandering. "Right now, you're the expert though. Anything fun to do on this floating tin can?"

[treadwater]

"Well, there's an arcade and a library. And an ice cream shop. A couple of pools and a hot tub. There's places to shop. And some of the people are pretty alright. Not everyone, but some."

She falls into step with him. "Everyone's all from different worlds, too, so there's a lot to get to know about them, not just who they are, but what circumstances they come from. Though...no one I've met so far comes from a world that seems, uh. Good. Like, a good place to be from."

[woocas]

"Sounds like some good things to pass the time," But the whole concept of other worlds? Now there's a doozy of a thought.

"I mean, where I come from ain't perfect by any means, but..." He trails off, shrugging. "Does that mean where you come isn't a good place?"

[treadwater]

Undine doesn't answer immediately, internally kicking herself.

"I thought it was okay, until I got here and started talking to people. Apparently teenage girls aren't expected to fight monsters in most worlds?"

[woocas]

"I mean...Not exactly where I'm from, no." He shrugs, hands splaying out while he talks.

"Is it normal where you come from? Like that kind of thing would be some magical girl cartoon show back home." Which sounds cooler than it probably is. That much he knows all too well.

[treadwater]

"Ah, yes, a cartoon." She lets out a nervous little laugh. "I'm a magical girl. Alchemical Water, when I'm transformed."