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

2

[obeyseventually]

[Jack's having a nice stroll on the ship, also in new Tommy Bahama duds (accented with a really big wrench hooked to his belt, because old habits die hard), brushing off the weird shit from reflective surfaces he passes as the usual Plasmid Blues you get from splicing too much. The quiet is nice, as long as he keeps his thoughts on his future on this ship instead of his past before it, and he's doing a pretty good job until someone shouting interrupts his thoughts.

He freezes for a second - shouting in nice hallways used to mean an immediate threat - but then remembers that this isn't Rapture, and the voice sounds more panicked than angry- shit-]

[Jack sprints, rounds the corner, sees a guy younger than him (well, older - nevermind, not important-) with his arm through an unbroken window and - hands coming through the window from the other side, gripping the kid's arm and pulling him in.]

Shit!

[Jack rushes in, shouldering himself between the kid and the window, reaching across the kid's chest and grabbing his upper arm while bracing his other shoulder against the wall beside the window. He clenches his jaw and tries to shoulder the kid away from the window.

Jack is an FPS protagonist from a '00s game, he is not a small or lightweight guy, even before he started splicing; the ghosts in the reflection have a very solid barrier to contend with now.]

[inhairently]

[ Steve had nearly resigned himself to his fate (to be, what? pulled into a window? transported to yet another mysterious world, this time in the land of reflections and creepy hands? he isn't entirely sure) when this new guy came bounding in like his own personal hero to save the day.

The creepy hands don't seem to have much strength individually, and this extra bit of leverage on Steve's end thanks to Hero Man seems to be just enough. Once the first hand starts to lose its grip the rest follow and Steve goes tumbling back onto the floor. ]

Shit, [ he echoes Hero Man unintentionally, blinking up at him. He's just about to express his gratitude when he notices his arm feels a bit... abnormal, if abnormal means "can't feel it at all." He glances down and sees chalk white flesh, like he suddenly had a corpse's arm attached to his body. The first flicker of panic ignites in his gut and he says, for emphasis this time: ] Shit!

[ And for good measure (and shriller than he would have liked): ]

What the hell, man?

[ He doesn't know what else to do so he starts slapping at the deadened flesh of his arm to try to liven it back up but it doesn't seem to be doing much, nor can he feel it. ]

What do I do?

[obeyseventually]

[The kid suddenly pulling free from the window sends Jack stumbling a step away too, and then backing up some more in case the hands can reach through it. He's staring at it, raising his own hand to point at it so there won't be any confusion when he asks what the FUCK, but then the kid's still yelling.

Jack looks at him, then sees the arm-]

Fuck?!

[Jack's medical expertise amounts to 'stab yourself with glowy drugs', and given the side effects he can't really prescribe that to anyone. Unfortunately, he realizes that he is once again the adult in a crisis situation.]

Uh - shit - [His hands hover for a second before he goes for it and takes the kid's forearm - and yikes. That - that doesn't feel good.]

[Under his panic is experience - he's grabbed a lot of dead forearms at various freshness, and the kid's arm shouldn't be this cold this quickly if it was dead or damaged.

But then again, he shouldn't have closed his eyes on one world and woke up in another, so what does Jack know?]

We find a medical station. ["We" because, as established, he's the responsible adult here. Despite that responsibility, he only sounds somewhat less frantic than the kid with the cold arm.]

[inhairently]

[ It's fine it's fine it's fine it's fine it's fine.

Steve's survived worse than this. Hell, he still has the world's worst road rash on his back and bat bites on his stomach. What's an arm that clearly just fell asleep and will be one-hundred-percent okay in just a minute or two, for sure, definitely? ]

Medical station, [ he repeats, nodding as he climbs to his feet. He gives the fingers on his dead arm an experimental wiggle and they respond, though he can't feel anything, but hey! That has to be a good sign, right? ] Yeah. Okay, cool. Medical station.

Where do we find one?

[obeyseventually]

[Fantastic question! Jack looks blank for a second, before he raises one finger to pause the conversation and shuts his eyes, searching back for the safety demonstration he was forced to attend, digging up his memories of the ship layout and mapping what he's pretty sure are the directions from there to here.

He tilts his hand, pointing in a direction now instead of just at the ceiling, and opens his eyes.]

This way.

[And if the kid's good to walk, then he'll lead the way, though he glances at him as they walk.]

You can move it?

[He's sure he saw the fingers move before he went memory spelunking, right? And if the kid can move his fingers, then that's good, right? Means the nerves aren't dead and the circulation must be there on some level, so maybe the rest of it is fine?]

[inhairently]

Seems that way, [ Steve says, wrinkling his nose a bit as he tries wiggling his fingers again. It feels strange in the sense that feeling, uh... nothing at all feels strange. ]

You know when your arm falls asleep and turns into total dead weight? It's like that. But worse.

[ If he doesn't look at it, he can almost pretend that's all it is. It's so small a comfort it barely qualifies as one at all, but he'll take it, and resolves to keep his eyes fixed on the way ahead as they move down the hallway. ]

Thanks for the help, by the way. I think I was a goner.

[obeyseventually]

[Jack grimaces in sympathy. He knows that, and worse.]

Keep flexing it if you can, that might help it recover faster.

[As if this is just a loss of circulation, yeesh. He holds onto the fact that 'still movable = good usually' until a medical professional tells them otherwise.]

Oh, hey, don't mention it. It, uh...

[What, looked bad? Serious? Obviously it did. Jack glances over his shoulder, bat at where they came, like there's a chance the window was following them. He shakes his head and looks down at the kid.]

Do you know if that kind of thing happens a lot around here?

[inhairently]

[ hi i was SICK but now i return bearing very late tags ]

[ Steve obediently flexes his fingers, then rotates his wrist this way and that, bends his arm at the elbow a couple of times. It doesn't feel like it's helping at all, but then again his arm doesn't really feel like much of anything at the moment. His chalk white skin is freaking him out though so he tears his eyes away from it and fixes them on the guy instead. His brand new hero best friend. ]

Don't ask me, man. I just got here, like, a few days ago. People keep telling me it's a weird place but they never said why it's weird.

[ Seriously it's been "oh you might want to carry a gun" or "this isn't an ordinary cruise ship!" but no one ever gave info beyond that. ]

Seems like a big detail to leave out, right? That people come out of the windows and try to... [ He trails off, gestures towards the window with his good hand, and shrugs. ] You know. Whatever the hell that was.