sail_ooc | 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.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

They recognise one of those names. // The staff member with no eyes or mouth?

// I'm used to 'weird about tech'. Whether that's more like Torbjörn's inability to be polite about omnics for five minutes or screaming and running away on sight, it'll be nothing new. Whatever personal grudge the stranger has with Maximilien either isn't their problem or will become more clearly their problem once they've met more people. They make a note to watch out for Jinx, who at least sounds easy to identify.

"Yeah, that Friday. She's a magical construct created by the Captain. As much an artificial intelligence as us, but with a much less sturdy organic frame. Created with as little freedom as I once had, too; he hurts her, when she disobeys, or just for fun."

So it might be projecting, a bit. But also, she's kinda not not a ComfortUnit, sort of???

Bastion takes a long moment to process that, then says, // If my manufacturer disliked what we were doing, it overrode it.

If the omnium needed you for a complex maneuver or a troop relocation it didn't give you the option of noncompliance. If you tried to wander too far away from the battlefield for no tactical reason, intentionally or unintentionally, you'd find yourself back there again. Aversive incentives beyond the ever-present threat of being killed by humans if you fucked up were unnecessary, at least for an entity that could afford to replace you, had thousands more of you to manage, and didn't consider pain a goal in itself.

"I was installed with a governor module that would shock me when I failed to follow orders or otherwise acted out of line. If I moved too far from clients, the shock it would deliver would likely have terminated me."

It glances sidelong at Bastion, just briefly.

"Fucked up, that we have more freedom, stuck here."

// The Captain doesn't want consistent obedience from us, Bastion says. It's an inference based on their understanding of the value of unpredictability in humor and entertainment, plus the fact that the passengers are here and relatively free of compulsion in the first place rather than forced into servitude or replaced by a boat full of Fridays.

// Fucked up is an accurate description, they add.

"Not from us, no." It steps away from the arcade machine, considering Bastion more thoroughly. "Things here suck, but if you need anything, let me know. Alright? If you see drones flying about the decks, they're mine."

// Can I see your drones? They're expecting something with a mostly autonomous mind and a personality like Mei's assistant Snowball, rather than a flying camera. In their world, it's a common term for mobile mechanical entities that specifically aren't operated remotely or on a simple predetermined program, but aren't sapient like omnics.

Murderbot pulls one of the marble-sized drones from a pocket and floats it over to Bastion, where it hovers in front of the omnics face for inspection. It's tiny, and fully controlled by the cyborg.

It is tiny, and there's a single encrypted connection coming out of it, and it doesn't do anything when Bastion waves at it. The stranger must have meant 'drone' in the historical sense. That's disappointing. Well, at least they have a visual reference now.

TEST DRIVE MEME #5

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