Test Drive Meme 016

[voidtreckermods]

Welcome to the Test Drive Meme! Here is the place to see how your character might fit the setting, grab samples and have fun!

1. Post with your character, including their name and series in the subject. We’ve written out some prompts but feel free to make up your own, you have a whole train to play with!

2. Assume they've been around long enough for threads to jump right into the action.

3. Have lots of fun. Mandatory, mod-sanctioned fun.

Happy testing!

Silence in the Library

The library is a double carriage. Downstairs is brightly-coloured, with cover posters across the walls, tables and chairs in the strong colours of the team uniforms, and a wooden model train placed as though winding its way through the carriage with carriages of shelves in tow. The walls are shelving, and beanbags litter the floor. Upstairs is quieter, rows of nonfiction shelves with private desks at the end of each row; the sound up here is muffled.

You don't know who, you don't know why, but someone or something has had a bad power day. How do you know? Well, the fact that the characters of any book you read keep coming to life as tiny versions of themselves and running riot around the carriage... that might have been a clue.

You just wish you'd picked a different book before realising it.

An Apple a Day

Medical is another double carriage, though it boasts one of the few person-sized lifts on the train as well as stairs. On the bottom floor, two of the three rooms are examination rooms, with simple beds, equipment and first-aid capacity. The third is a surgical bay, albeit a simpler one than some passengers may anticipate. All three rooms have ICPs with instructions and manuals for all equipment and a number of medical procedures.

Upstairs, there are four private recovery rooms, with a medical bed and an accessible en-suite. It's possible to check a passenger into one of these rooms, at which point they cannot leave until discharged by the person who checked them in.

Which, unfortunately, you are entirely aware of. You've been here for three days, and you're climbing the walls. But that'll teach you to get injured in such a stupid way. Or so they hope.

Sprockets and Skysong

In which a train arrives among the smokestacks of Little Underpool with some unexpected visitors.

Little Underpool is a township on Void world #30630687444. Caught up in the middle of what appears to be a series of industrial revolutions, the world is in a state of constant, chaotic innovation. Currently, that means that there is a power struggle going on between the skywhaling megacorporation Scrimshaw Inc and the Zephyr Company, an airship manufacturer, over control of the skies above Underpool, and the rapidly diminishing population of skywhales, whose bones are used in most modern airships, and whose blood is a key fuel source for a great number of new devices and engines. The voidtreckers are, this mission, to rescue the whales, rather than any humanoids.

Team One

Infiltrating Scrimshaw Inc, this team's job is to sabotage the tracking drones used to locate the whale pods, to allow the great beasts to migrate successfully away from Underpool. The offices of the corporation are in a series of spiralling brass and bone towers in the centre of the town, connected by exposed cable bridges that run to dizzying heights. Their clockwork guards are numerous, but often faulty, and highly vulnerable to tinkering.

Team Two

This team's job is to hijack some of the Zephyr Company's airships, and use them to defend the whale pods closest to Underpool. Several pods contain whale calves, and cannot evacuate as fast as the larger bachelor groups. The airships are light, and handle well, but their oddly organic design can be rather unsettling. The primary weapons are harpoons and short-range bomb slings, both as deadly against other airships as they are against their original targets.

Team Three

The final team's task is less direct - they must go among the populace of Underpool and spread unrest, redirecting the attention of the people towards the plight of their nonhuman neighbours in the sky, and the wrongdoings of their resident megacorporations. The people are not aware that the whales are an entirely sentient species, which appears to be a deliberate obfuscation by the town's council and sponsors. Your job is to change that.

Comments

[blue_ice]

[ Oh, a wide-eyed optimist of a scientist. Kaiba internally rolls his eyes, but the man isn't really doing anything wrong. He just has to...clarify. ]

One of the first things you'll learn here is that the train offers very little information. As you can see, the library is paltry. We're kept in the dark about most things. But here's what I've been able to guess through experience:

[ Deep breath. ]

This 'void' appears to be the empty space between dimensions. It makes various stops to pick up and drop off passengers, and in between that we visit planets. Most of what I've observed comes from the makeup of the passengers...

There are what I call semi-parallel dimensions---that is, worlds that are largely the same, even with the same people existing on them...but every instance is slightly different. There are four other people on this train from my world and era, and in each instance of the world we all know each other, but everyone's history is slightly different. Our orders of events are somewhat different, and sometimes our backstories or physical characteristics change...but they're similar enough for us to recognize each other. It gave me a headache more than once.

As far as other dimensions...we don't have the equipment to test atomic makeup, but the species appear to be roughly similar. Technology levels differ, and some humans are born with magic or superpowers on some worlds...and there are alleged gods, sentient hedgehog and ducks...but the air's breathable to all of us.

[namethattune]

[For a brief moment, something in Siebren's gaze sharpens at the phrase "kept in the dark." That in and of itself is worth questioning, but not worth an interruption. Not yet.]

[He listens, and he considers. Data seems to be limited - observational but not measured - but limited data can provide a baseline and is better than none at all. The presented data is mostly taken from observation of colleagues - perhaps they would consent to a widespread survey? It's a bit more sociological than he prefers, but it is data collection nonetheless. Small items of note: breathable air is a constant; magic and superpowers are presented as fact, yet gods remain "alleged". Curious. What he wouldn't give for a whiteboard right now-]

[But he has other options if he wishes to be illustrative.]

I see. There has been some study of multiverse theory in my dimension - though no measurable breakthroughs - and with the data presented, I believe our situation may align with one of two theories. The first-

[The books on the desk move seemingly of their own accord, floating in the air and aligning themselves as though neatly shelved on an invisible ledge - cover to cover, spines out.]

- posits that dimensions are essentially stacked upon one another, end to end, with small changes carrying from one dimension to another. This may explain your semi-parallel dimensions, as they would be grouped together in one area - [Several of the books on the far end rise in unison for a few moments, then fall back in line.] - but would also explain how, eventually, one would find a dimension with naturally occurring sentient ducks. [A book on the opposite end of the line rises, then lowers.] The changes would seem small relative to one another, but would become much more stark across larger distances, not unlike a child's game of telephone - if you're familiar.

[Telephone is not on the list of things Siebren was expecting to explain today, but it is an admittedly flexible list.]

[A flick of the wrist, and the books then split apart, forming into different clusters - three here, two there, four a bit further away - all still floating easily in midair.]

The second theory posits clusters of dimensions, related to each other by only very thin connections. Your home dimension and its semi-parallel dimensions would be their own cluster, while the dimension of sentient ducks would be in another cluster, almost entirely unrelated to yours.

[Visual component no longer needed, the books float back to the desk and neatly stack themselves on its surface.]

Both theories well worth keeping in mind, unless you've gathered specific data supporting one or the other - or perhaps a third yet unknown theory is in play.

[No sense in closing off an avenue until it is actively disproven.]

[He pauses - he may as well ask now - and lowers his voice slightly.]

What you mentioned earlier - do we simply lack information on the train, or are we being actively discouraged from seeking it out?

[His earlier excitement isn't gone so much as it is redirected, waiting behind a wall of caution. He has been actively discouraged in his pursuits before; knowing whether that's the case here will certainly shape his methods.]

[blue_ice]

Both plausible enough for now.

{ His brow furrows a little at the magic display, but he dutifully takes notes in his book. Like a normal person. It makes enough sense, he supposes. ]

It's a little of both active discouragement and lacking. We can purchase books, but we can't find anything unless we somehow produce an exact title. It's been hinted to us that our memories may have been tampered with before arrival. And don't look out the windows for too long, that induces voidsickness and makes the memory problems worse.

I write everything for a reason.

[namethattune]

[Unhelpful in terms of theories, but this isn't the first time Siebren has hit a dead end, and it won't be the last. He's not averse to running his own experiments; the issue is designing one - but that is a problem for the future.]

[He listens, and does his best not to start at the mention of memory tampering. His eyes widen, just a bit, and then narrow - not a large tell, but visible enough to anyone looking. He'll need to obtain a notebook himself, it seems - one that never leaves his person.]

Tampered with how?

[blue_ice]

As I'm sure you realize by now, none of us remember leaving our worlds, changing into uniform, or traveling to the platform. The ministry claims we chose to be here and were trained...but that's missing, if it's true at all.

[ He sighs again. ]

And voidsickness is a mysterious disease that allegedly comes from void exposure. It gets worse if you don't wear your little watch, or if you stare at the void through the window too long. You get irritable, lose balance, start losing memories...we haven't seen any confirmed cases yet, but we've been warned about it.

[namethattune]

[Admittedly, Siebren had been willing to chalk that particular lapse in memory up to his...unique set of circumstances. To hear that others have the same gap in their memories is sobering, to say the least.]

[Voidsickness is another issue that starts sounding more like a challenge the more he hears about it. Mysterious and allegedly aren't barriers so much as they are gaps, the irritating sort of poorly-rationalized common knowledge that give rise to practices like applying butter to burns and believing wet hair can lead to catching a cold. There are questions to be answered here, but blind faith is not the way to do it.]

At the risk of sounding... [There is no good way to phrase this.] ...unethical, has anyone tested that theory? Measured levels of void exposure and documented the results?