sail_ooc | TEST DRIVE MEME #5

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TEST DRIVE MEME #5

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.]

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// Yes, they say to the shoeless, agitated-looking human. It is kind of surprising that the random human they approached speaks omnicode, now that they're thinking about it, but why is she surprised? It seems improbable that the stranger would remember to put on a communication device but not shoes, or forget she had cybernetic augmentations.

// I won't hurt you, they add, following her movements with the glowing rectangle that occupies most of their face. Or at least they'll try not to, anyhow. They keep tracking her as she circles behind them, unbothered by swiveling their metal neck past 180 degrees.

Well, "human" is wrong in several ways, but close enough for now.

"If you don't hurt me, I won't hurt you." Ylva takes for granted that she's a match for the large collection of metal shapes she's having a conversation with, apparently. She looks up at their face, or what she can only assume is their face, but it doesn't look much like one.

"What are you?" she asks at last. "Some sort of construct, I assume. Did a wizard make you?"

This human (they can't tell otherwise) must have led a very isolated life up until now. They're not really sure how old she is beyond 'probably an adult', so maybe she was born after the war.

// I'm a Bastion unit. An omnic. She must know what an omnic is, right? What was that about a wizard? // I was made in a factory.

"Wizards have factories? No, that would mean you'd have to get a bunch of them to cooperate long enough for that. I guess that's not impossible," she adds, sort of grudgingly, "but I'm not sure why they would. An... omnic. Huh."

She gives them a sharp, almost suspicious look and decides to risk stepping a little closer. First Ylva sniffs at them, frowning, then reaches out to tap on their metal body with a finger.

"What did they make you for?"

// Shooting humans, Bastion says bluntly but with no deliberate menace, allowing the scruffy and poorly-informed human to poke them. Apart from the post-industrial smells that Ylva probably won't recognise like plastic and machine oil, they smell like metal for obvious reasons but also dirt and plants and a hint of bird.

// There was a war. Didn't you know?

"There's been lots of wars. People are always having wars. I guess there's probably someone out there who hates humans enough to make a thing just to kill them, though."

Ylva wrinkles her nose at Bastion's various smells, a mix of good and bad as far as she's concerned, but plants and dirt are reassuring smells for her. Machine oil, not so much. She takes a step back again, squinting up at them. "Are you a person or just a thing made to do a job? I can't tell." Constructs can be either, she knows that. This one certainly seems to be carrying on a conversation pretty well, at least.

Bastion makes an affirmative mm-hm sort of whirring noise. That's correct, if not very specific.

Congratulations, Ylva, you've found the driving question of their existence. They're not quite sure how to answer it. They raise their metal pointer finger, then lower it slightly, and look off to the side, making a frustrated whirring noise to themself. Then they look back in Ylva's direction. Eventually they come up with, // I'm uncertain. Are they mutually exclusive?

Her expression softens a little, as she becomes aware that this was maybe a sensitive subject. "I don't know," she says, consoling. "But if you were just a thing someone made, you probably wouldn't answer me like that, right? I've met talking constructs that weren't people. Well, one. It only knew about how to find books."

So Ylva gives Bastion a sympathetic pat on their metal side. Thump, thump.

"But you seem to talk like a person, at least."

Those do exist in Bastion's universe, although they've never met one themself. Waiter-bots with canned dialogue and so forth, applications where the customers want a friendly face but don't need much more behind it than a bit of speech interpretation, a tree of pregenerated responses, and enough wayfinding capacity not to get hopelessly trapped if someone leaves a plate on the floor in front of them.

// True, they say, with the same agreeing beep-boop that they used to say 'yes'. // Thanks.

// Any idea why we're on this boat? The conversation has drifted somewhat from what they originally wanted to know, and they're still on a ship they don't remember boarding, without their bird friend.

Edited (formatting tweak) 2022-07-18 19:08 (UTC)

"Oh, no idea at all," Ylva says, suddenly very serious. "I'm still trying to work that out. I have a suspicion we're on some other plane of existence? But I don't know which one, or how to find out. I don't know that type of magic, you see. That's wizard stuff."

She waves a hand dismissively.

"You can call me Ylva, by the way."

They mentally run that sentence back and replay it to make sure they heard correctly. They did, and the human seems very certain that this is a wizard-related situation; this is an established feature of her worldview, not a wild guess after exhausting all other possibilities.

// How do you know? they ask with a nervous whistle. If she's even partially right, that means they're in a situation most closely comparable to the teleportation accident that separated Tracer from conventional spacetime. Without Ganymede.

// I go by Bastion, or E54, they add when Ylva introduces herself.

"Well," Ylva says, counting out the points on her fingers, "one, this place is very weird. There's definitely nothing like this giant metal boat full of weird things where I'm from. Two, I don't know how I got here. I wasn't anywhere near the sea, and now I am, and you can't do that without some sort of portal, but like I said, I don't think this is just distance. Three, I've been pulled into other planes before, and even gone on purpose a few times. It's always worked out okay, but sometimes things get little weird. There's always a way home, though."

She gives Bastion a smile that's all teeth. "So I'm not too worried. We find the wizard responsible, and then I'll bite them until they send us home. Easy."

// I was near the sea. My location has lots of large metal boats but no wizards, Bastion informs her. If she has experience with going to other planes of existence that explains a lot about this conversation. The fact that their geolocation system has been giving them a no-signal error for the last twenty-eight minutes is further evidence for her theory, though maybe it's just being jammed.

That sounds less sanitary than punching the wizard but she does appear to be in excellent dental health. Unsure how else to respond, they give Ylva's plan a thumbs-up with their manipulator arm.

"See, that's the other thing. You don't have wizards, I don't have big metal ships, there's both here. Obviously some other plane where people have been brought."

Ylva mimics his thumbs-up, though, still grinning. "We'll figure it out, don't you worry. You can shoot him, if you want. If the biting doesn't convince him."

Impeccable logic, within the starting premises.

// How do we find a wizard?

She considers this for a moment, head tilted to one side.

"In my experience," she says, "they usually have some sort of lair. A walking tower. An extra-dimensional room in an inn. An estate surrounded by illusory fences. Something weird like that. So if we have a wizard here, we need to find that. Actually," Ylva continues, frowning a little, "I don't know that I've ever had to hunt to find a wizard. They're usually pretty obvious."

This... might be a problem.

// Search the ship for anomalies?

Bastion's not entirely sure what's anomalous on a cruise ship, having never been on one before, but they know more about modern architecture and vehicles than Ylva does at least, and she can contribute her knowledge of wizards.

"Exactly, yes!"

She's pleased, because it's always good to be understood. Obviously she and Bastion are going to get along just fine. It's also nice to have a plan! This is about as firm a plan as she ever makes, really. "Anything that doesn't make sense should be investigated to see if it's where he's hiding."

// There might be maps available, Bastion remarks, heading back to the indoor portion of the ship. Maybe one will be posted on the wall or dispensed in pamphlet form. It probably won't have a label pointing to 'wizard lair', but it would make it easier to avoid hitting dead ends or going in circles if they find one.

"A map would be useful."

Ylva follows them inside, hands folded behind her back. "I haven't really seen one yet, but there's been so much to see. I might have missed it. Honestly, this place would be pretty exciting if it wasn't for, you know. Everything."

They emerge near the sundries shop and the gift shop. There sure is a lot of stuff in there.

// I didn't see one on my route but I haven't explored anywhere else. There's several entire decks they haven't even set foot on yet.

Ylva peers into the shops curiously. A lot of what's in there is entirely unfamiliar to her, and she really only ever had the barest understanding of money in the first place -- just enough to get by, never ask her to barter.

But the stuff in there looks so neat.

"The ship can't be infinitely big," she says. "Even if we can't find a map it shouldn't be hard to map it out ourselves."

Bastion theoretically understands money, but they don't have any of it; firstly, the only way they've accumulated any that specifically belongs to them is a few banknotes from favours, bets and dares between their colleagues on the watchpoint and making any purchases involves either using a communal pool of funds for online shopping or asking someone to go into town and buy it on their behalf, and secondly, they don't have any pockets so it didn't come aboard with them anyway.

Also there's neither a person at the counter nor any visible self-checkout machines, so maybe the store's closed?

They nod. // I have a mapping function.

"That's... different than just making a map the regular way?"

She tilts her head, trying to work this out. "I mean, give me some paper and I could probably draw a map myself. So does that count as a mapping function?"

Bastion points at a rack of ship-branded journals. There's lots of paper in those blank books over there!

They think about the comparison, humming mechanically. // Sure. Both processes result in a map. I would also have to draw it to produce a paper copy, so it's closer to making a map in your mind.

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actuallyawolf - 2022-07-26 18:52 (UTC) - Expand

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