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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.]
no subject
For the time being though he kept his face stoic. If she hadn't recognized him, then perhaps it was best not to say anything to the affirmative yet either. "New is relative. Depends on your definition. What gave it away?" he asked peering at her from over the edge of his now defunct sonic sunglasses.
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"The lei," she answers, taking off her robe and sitting down on the edge of the pool, dangling her legs in the water. "I got one just like it when I showed up here."
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Clara may not have been here to help him with her social nicety cue cards, but he'd like to think that he had grown since then. A part of him would much rather lie here and brood but speaking to people - especially someone from his past - would help him along with figuring out the how and the why of being trapped on a large cruise ship. "You seem settled in. How long have you been here?"
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She definitely looks pretty chill about it. But then she hasn't really encountered anything particularly horrific here yet, even though it's been mentioned to her that it's not always fun cruise relaxation. (That said, she was pretty annoyed when she got here too.)
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There's nothing he's ashamed of when it comes to telling people who he is, but it does tend to get a little more complicated when the person has a bit of a complex history with him.
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"This is my third universe," she answers. "At least I think this is a different universe, though it's kind of hard to tell, since we're just on a boat in the middle of nowhere."
Plot twist, she actually likes the Doctor. Mostly.no subject
The intricacies of their relationship were something that he had never personally dived into, nor did he necessarily want to either. It wasn't his business and it was just another thread that he knew he'd feel some level of guilt for not being able to step in sooner. "Most people don't get past one. How'd you go about visiting two others?"
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She shrugs. A lot of the time she was barely in a mental state to even register everything going on, so she's learned to just roll with it.