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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"That's what those here call them. Invisible presences that repair the ship and provide the humans with food. I'm not entirely convinced they're not explainable in some other fashion, but my sensors can't detect them even when I know they're there." Like the dealer at the blackjack table who would deal out cards to Max for hours, while Max tried to ascertain what the spectral entity was.

"Anything you destroy will be repaired in short order, including yourself should you die. Which is excellent since otherwise we'd reboot and be dented."

A fate worse than death.

That raises as many questions as it answers, but presumably if the other omnic had a better explanation he'd have given it to them. The thing in the mirror was concealed perfectly as an inanimate flat surface up until it grabbed them, after all.

They're not even sure what to say to that last part, whirring wordlessly in bafflement. Eventually they manage, // I prioritise avoiding death over avoiding dents.

They have a few minor dents right now, actually. Torbjörn hadn't managed to convince them that it was worth spending extra time with their armor detached in the workshop just to hammer those out.

"Yes I see that, however here you do not have to. And you could use some polishing and upkeep." That's Max speak for: Bastion looks like a hot mess. Though Max's standards are obscenely high and he would probably think the same no matter what.

"How is your arm? Any updates on diagnostics?" It would be the gun arm too, the useful shooty one, and in Max's opinion the most important one.

They got all the dirt out of their joints at their last tuneup, they're fine.

// I had maintenance recently. On any other day they'd argue that they're functioning fine and don't need it, but that's a difficult position to hold when one of your arms is dangling uselessly at your side.

// The uppermost 3mm of sensors have rebooted. It's uncomfortable and they're throwing out weird error codes, but I'm not detecting any persistent damage.

That doesn't sound anything like polishing and wax coated.

"Maintenance is not quite what I'm referring to. There's more to existence than just the base level of functionality you know." He sighs, because he's pretty sure that Bastion here doesn't know.

"Ah, delightful. It's coming back online then. Good - as with most things here it doesn't appear to be permanent. I'm starting to see that as an ongoing pattern with this place, though I can't fathom why that would be the case."

They've heard of the concept in passing, but the point of it escapes them. They agreed to get repainted, because the logic made sense that custom colouration would make them look less like they walked straight off a battlefield and into a populated area. But what purpose would it serve for their unpainted parts to be shinier? The added reflectivity might even be a hindrance. A meticulous cleaning wouldn't be entirely pointless, since it would probably take longer to get grime in their moving parts if there was no dirt stuck to their nonmoving parts, but it's a reminder of the last time they had the chance to walk around in a forest and they're not sure when they'll get another one.

Instead of saying any of this they turn their head and silently stare at the other omnic for several seconds.

// What are the other examples? What other weird changes can they expect in the weird boat dimension.

"Location, death, some rather unpleasant weather events of a magical nature." He ticks them off on his fingers as he mentions them.

"There was something with the rain that made everyone tell the truth or lie, but it will wear off after a few hours it seems."

Can he explain how that works? No. And not only does he not know, he doesn't want to. The less he has to understand about magic the happier he'll be.

"Now onto more important things, why is a Bastion unit here. And how do we keep you from being tossed overboard." As if Bastion himself has any answers to this.

// Noted. It's going in the Weird Boat Shit index for future reference along with everything Ylva said about wizards and travelling to other planes of existence.

// I don't know. I walked through a door and reactivated in a cabin bed an unknown interval later. Alone and with an unidentified force overriding their motor controllers as soon as they stepped into the hallway. // I didn't interact with any strange equipment. How did you get here?

They consider the last question, whirring in thought. // The humans were oddly unconcerned about me at the muster drill. I don't know why and it won't last if one startles me and I shoot them before I can stop myself.

They're optimistic enough to frame that as an if rather than a when, but they really have no idea how they're going to deal with it if something innocuous sets off their combat protocols here, or for that matter if they activate in response to a genuine threat but then won't disengage because every adult human in Bastion's line of sight registers as an enemy. // If that happens, would I reboot underwater?

"I woke up here after powering down for a recharge. And I was most assuredly not anywhere near any strange portals, nor in any place where such a security breach could be accomplished." He is a stickler for personal privacy and barring Sombra learning to phase through walls, he should have been fine and woken up in his private room like he always did. But instead... this.

"Yes, most of them are ... fine. Tolerable even." High praise coming from Max! "Yes that will pose a problem. Though they will come back if you kill them, so nothing to be concerned about there."

For Bastion anyway, who cares about the person he shoots.

"No. Well, assuming you sink to sufficient depths and are crushed and therefore 'die', you would be restored in your cabin. If you could somehow survive that I think you would be trapped at the bottom-most point of the barrier and I'm not sure how we would retrieve you."

// I can't rule out strange portals or security breaches, but it's unlikely that they would only affect me and not anyone else in the building. Merely unlikely; not impossible. Winston's worked with spacetime manipulation and teleportation before, who knows what he could have been building in his lab? It occurs to them that if that is the reason, maybe everyone closer to the epicentre was disintegrated or smeared across a dozen timelines at once, or the other Overwatch agents were thrown clear of the timeline like Bastion was but landed in different pocket universes entirely.

// That's why it's plausible that they're from the past, or other timelines. Humans that know what I am and act 'fine' despite it are rare, but so are humans who don't know. They whirr with grim certainty. There are adolescent and young adult humans who weren't alive when the war ended, but they were raised among humans who were.

Bastion shudders, producing a slight rattling noise. // I'm not pressure-resistant enough to survive the abyssal plain. Even if I was, eventually I'd run out of power, or develop a leak and short out.

"Specifically targeted towards you alone does seem odd. Unless you possess some specific characteristic the Captain of the ship desires. I've yet to see similarities between all of us here, but there's bound to be something. Unless Skulduggery is right and it's all completely random." A huff, it better not be that one because he is loath to admit that Skulduggery is right. Again.

"It's not simply timelines, but also differing worlds. Most are from what we would consider the past, but in different worlds who've never seen mechanical beings ever. There's only a few from places as technologically advanced. Ekko, Jinx, perhaps César though I think he's from the past and just knows a lot about theoretical physics."

Bastion glances at their gun arm. (It's still very white.) // Extra firepower, maybe. When I thought I'd been kidnapped by conventional forces I assumed that's what they wanted.

They're probably not even in the top ten passengers when it comes to capacity for causing death and destruction, but no one's told them about all the sorcerers yet.

// That's weird to contemplate. They recognise some of those names from their encounter with the cyborg construct.

"Maybe, but there's plenty of passengers with weaponry, and the Captain has even manifested some of his own for us to use before. So that would be... not out of the question, but rather strange. It's possible there's something you possess in your memory files he wants, but since we're not in our world I can't fathom how that would help him."

Honestly he's at a loss here as to why the Captain would pull in a military grade Omnic from his world.

"Do you have a name?" Please don't tell him a serial number he will be so sad.

The Captain wanted to subscribe to 1001 Bird Facts so he could make better birds, obviously. They whirr thoughtfully, thinking about the claw machine with handguns in it.

// He can't use intelligence from our world, he can produce equivalent firepower, and while he may have additional motives he's motivated by sadism. Maybe he wants me to lose control and shoot someone. Their audio takes on a dry tone as they transmit the last sentence.

// Everyone calls me Bastion or occasionally E54. Don't worry Max, they hate being addressed by their serial number. Like how if the only time you hear your full name is when your parents are yelling it at you, except if you refuse to do what they want you'll find yourself standing next to the completed task an hour later with only fragmented recollections of what happened in the intervening time, and also your parent is an autonomous factory with tens of thousands of other kids. // What's yours?

"If that's what he wanted he should be giving me significantly more guns. He's only done that once and I was only able to kill two people. Though," His tone brightens, "One of them did lead to repercussions and subsequent killings I could not have predicted."

Like Max. Twice.

"Bastion." That is so close to being a model number... But he will allow it. "My name is Maximilien."

But that first thing that Bastion said, hm, "How likely are you to begin firing without provocation?"

// You don't sound very upset about it. Their whistling audio turns downright sardonic on that remark. Yeah, he just said people come back intact when they die so they can see why Maximilien isn't bothered by gratuitous killing, but if suffering is what the captain wants it'd be less effective for someone to go around killing people because they're bored or mildly annoyed or curious than if the killer doesn't want to be doing it and is tormented by the painful memories it reminds them of as soon as they realise what they've done. Unless it's a quantity-over-quality thing where if you get enough victims it adds up to the same value. They're not sure exactly what the captain's looking for.

// Nice to meet you, they say, completing the social ritual and logging that name in their memory. Hey, wait a minute, Maximilien's one of the people the cyborg construct said it didn't like. It's not hard to guess why; the two artificial beings have opposite attitudes in virtually every way they've observed.

Bastion groans electronically and flips the palm of their manipulator arm upwards. They're giving it a genuine analysis, but they wish they didn't have to.

// I think I'm unlikely to begin firing without provocation, they say, thinking of the effort they've put into desensitising themself to gunshot-like sounds nearby, bulky humanoid shapes, and broken machines. // I'm concerned that I'd react to a genuine threat, fail to disengage afterwards, and kill uninvolved people I misidentified as enemies.

"About killing people? Why should I? They come back, they're just people." A shrug because his opinion of most humans is only slightly above his opinion of infestations of slugs or that kind of slushy snow that refuses to fully melt and gets everywhere while turning brown.

"Hm. That might be problematic. Well depending on who you kill anyway, and the amount of enjoyment you get out of it."

If Bastion enjoys his PTSD fueled murder spree then Max will fully support him.

Bastion hums disapprovingly at that. They're really starting to feel like Maximilien's not taking their problem seriously; not that he doesn't understand the nature of the problem, more that he doesn't care or understand why they do, and they're not sure how to convince him to care. When they brought it up they were hoping for more of a 'I'll help you avoid murdering people' response or a 'hopefully that won't happen' rather than something more along the lines of 'murder is okay as long as you have fun and stay true to yourself'. At least he won't turn against them if it happens? // That's why I think the captain would prefer me killing people over you killing them.

// Likely zero enjoyment. They're not completely certain that no one else on the ship (other than the Captain, who'd just redirect the bullets anyhow) deserves to be randomly shot and killed, but they aren't going to enjoy it unless those conditions are met.

"No no you see he wants the enjoyment. If he feeds off emotions and you go into a mechanical drone state then he gets nothing out of you. I'm not sure he'd want that at all?"

Though Max isn't considering that Bastion would have some emotions after he overrode his programming and returned to sentience. Max has only recently learned to notice that other people exist, expecting him to care about them as a whole is far too much to ask.

"But it is probably for the best that doesn't happen."

Which could maybe be interpreted in a caring sort of way, except for the fact he means it would be a waste of ammo.

// He feeds off emotions? The cyborg just mentioned that he liked suffering. // All emotions?

// Yes, probably, they say, whirring dryly in audio as they do.

There's no such thing as a waste of ammo when you make your own bullets with nanotech! There is only the shame of knowing you've hurt someone who did nothing to provoke it besides exist in the wrong spot.

"All of them, though I've been told the negative ones are more powerful. Or to be more precise more acutely felt, so they work better than any positive emotion." Also there just haven't been a lot of situations to feel real positive emotions, so he's not sure how well they've tested that.

"Is there anything you require that would help prevent such a thing?"

Look at him almost helping.

It sounds implausible, but so does everything that's happened today. Sure, the captain's powered by emotions, why not, they'll classify that as provisionally true. // Acknowledged.

They think of Ganymede. He's become a reassuring presence just to have around, but he didn't have that significance when they first met him. Their recollection of how he pulled them out of the grip of their combat programming the first time is a disjointed mixture of flashbulb-clear moments, encrypted segments that won't unlock without those protocols running, and pieces glitched into indecipherability.

// A trustworthy, non-threatening distraction? they venture, tentatively. After a long pause, they add, // I have a friend like that at home.

Wow okay. That's an ask that Max is not prepared to answer. Trustworthy. He can think of perhaps two people. But non-threatening is even harder.

"I think you should meet Fio. She's good at distraction." Also small is usually non-threatening. Generally. He can't see her trying to rip out Bastion's wires anyway.

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TEST DRIVE MEME #5

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