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TDM #1

TEST DRIVE MEME #1

Welcome to Glencola Reef's first Test Drive Meme! This is a place where anyone interested in applying a character - or just curious to see how their characters might interact with the setting and others in the game - can mingle with one another. General prompts are provided below for inspiration.

TDM GUIDELINES

Please read the rules before posting to the TDM. These still apply here and will be enforced, up to and including deleting tags/toplevels and prebanning.
Posts from a TDM are required to apply. At least three tags across any number of threads within a TDM, posted within the last 6 months, must be provided in every application.
TDM threads can be used for AC. Note that new characters only need to check in for their first AC cycle, but established characters can use TDM tags for their AC.
TDMs are not considered game canon by default. This is mostly for logistics reasons - due to how characters travel on the map, it's unlikely that non-network threads that take place here will actually happen in-game. However, I won't stop anyone from working out how to make parts of threads game canon if they really want to.
New TDMs will be posted every three months. Keep checking back into the current TDM for new toplevels!

I. ARRIVAL

You awaken on a tropical island beach, soaking wet, powerless, and without any idea how you got here. Were you carrying something important, or wearing powerful armor? How unfortunate - it looks like only the most basic clothes, items in your pockets, and simple weapons managed to make the trip with you. Are you even physically the same as you remember? If you had superhuman abilities tied to your physiology, you might be stuck in a completely different body that lacks your usual senses. You might've been whisked away from a tense battle or a near-death experience and wake up delirious, or even injured.

Thankfully, against overwhelming odds, you're not the only one to wake up on this particular stretch of beach. You and your companion have a lot of puzzling out to do.

II. NETWORK

Even if you weren't lucky enough to wake up near someone else, at least you've arrived with a military-grade radio transceiver gripped tightly in your hand (or mouth, or other vaguely opposable appendage of choice). The clunky walkie-talkie will start buzzing and crackling for every public message that starts coming your way. Answering them back is as easy as pressing the "talk" button on the side of the device and either speaking into the receiver, or using the keypad to type into the message box that appears on the screen, then pressing the button again to send. A list of ongoing conversations with responses that are less than 24 hours old can be found by scrolling through the menu, identified by the callsigns that are participating in them. It seems that you've been assigned a callsign, too - it shows up in the top right side of the screen, format AB123C. The letters and numbers picked are...probably random.

This is your easiest avenue to communicating, or coordinating with, or complaining at the other people stuck on this island; how you decide to use this tool is up to you.

III. EXPLORING

For a place that appears, by all signs, to be an equatorial island in the middle of a tropical ocean, the local environments are surprisingly diverse. Beaches range from idyllic white sand to storm-swept pebble crags to cliffs with waterfalls cascading off the edges; the interior forests can be thinned from sandy soil or dense jungles full of prickly underbrush and with towering canopies; and the central mountain peaks, perilous enough to climb on their own, terminate in ravines and sinkholes that are hidden by thick foliage until you already have one foot over the edge.

The animals that make their homes here are equally as varied, and sometimes just as dangerous. The standard Earth fare of tropical fish swim right up to most shores, especially where reefs have grown, and a multitude of seafaring and jungle birds make their homes in ocean-facing cliffs and trees. Any one of these creatures would make for an easy snack. But you're not the only opportunistic hunters here; sharks prowl the waters, big cats stalk the jungles, and feral boars raid any camps that smell enticing. And that's just the stuff that looks like it came from modern Earth. Your improvised fishing rod might have captured a trilobite, or maybe that deer you were stalking has rounded on you with a set of alien mandibles full of sharp teeth. Or maybe, among the plants and animals completely foreign to you, you've stumbled across one that's strangely familiar to your home and no one else's.

There's a lot to figure out about this place. At least, in this instance, you aren't doing it alone.

NAVIGATION

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The man who sits up is broad and fair, so fair he seems to blend into the surrounding beach a little, at least where his skin is showing. The rest of the figure is covered in a drenched black motorcycle jacket and moves with great effort, as if his body is too heavy for him to get up any faster. He brings one hand to his face briefly, then away again as he turns his head, hearing someone call out a name. Not his, but a name.

He gets nothing from his heads up display; odd, considering he can still see. Usually if the HUD is out his vision goes with it, but the portly fellow who called to whoever Jon is is right there, plain as day. He feels heavy too, his hydraulics working but he can tell they're working, something that after his upgrade in the late 80's he'd ceased to notice. He moved without pain for the first time in years after that, but now there's the general buzz of soreness already creeping at the edges of his prosthetics even just sitting here. He frowns, disconcerted, and attempts experimentally to flick his knife from his arm with the mental reflex he's always used to deploy it. Nothing happens.

Scheiße.

He grunts and looks up at the sky as if the sun could offer answers. Wrong move, and him without his sunglasses too. He gropes around for them and finds the walkie-talkie instead. It seems to be an older model, but he likes those better. Physical buttons respond to his fingers far easier than the touch-screens they've started putting out do. He doesn't need special gloves to operate them, for one. But where did it come from? And does it have GPS?

He brings it up to fiddle with, then it dawns on him that there is literally no one else around besides the man - English, by the accent - that had called for 'Jon' down the beach. So when he'd called out, it had been towards him.

"Sorry to disappoint." He offers in a wry tone, rimed in the accent of his native German but in serviceable English. He grunts again as he gets to his feet, shaking the sand from his khakis and patting it off his jacket with gloved hands. "Albert, not Jon."

Martin squints hard at Albert. "Oh. Ah... sorry." His hands search the nearby ground and he finds his glasses so he can actually see who the stranger is. Tall, light, big, but in a muscular way, not like himself. Martin blinks pale gray eyes up at the man, his hand hitting something else. A... radio? A very retro-looking radio.

"Is this y- No." No, because he seems to be holding one for himself. The radio gets a frown. Is this the Web's new version of tape recorders?

As Albert approaches, the smear of bloodstains down Martin's front will likely become apparent. Although, everything is crusted over with sand and salt as he moves to pick himself up, as well. "Okay. S-sorry. I don't know what's going on. I'm Martin. Um... d'you know how we got here?" If this is someone else from their world who was somehow pulled through, he doesn't want to say too much just yet, so he settles on confused and apologetic. Luckily, he's actually feeling those along with everything else.

"I don't, but there is one thing to address first." He tilts his head sideways, regarding the portly Englishman with a squint, though its more for the sun in his pupilless grey eyes than anything else. He motions to the red staining the other man's front as if he'd spilled grape juice, not appeared to have stepped out of a shift at a butcher's.

"Do you need medical attention?"

He doesn't think so, based on the lower level of panic than one would expect for the amount of blood on him. Either that or Martin is a stone-cold killer. You never know.

"What?" Martin looks down at himself before grimacing. "Uh... N-no! No, that's not mine. Sorry, I-I was sort of... someone got really hurt just before I woke up here." A few someones. He's not going to mention who. "I was holding them. I thought..." He trails off, looking away. As he does, he spots the glint of the knife, as well. It seems to have been scoured of all traces of Jon and Elias' blood, though, as he bends down to look at it.

"Do you need any medical attention? I took a First-Aid class." A pause. "Um... three years ago. Maybe four... or five." A longer pause. "I can do CPR?"

"I'm alright. In one piece, at any rate." The look on his face makes it clear that 'it's not mine' isn't exactly a reassuring answer to the question he'd asked, but he's going to roll with it for now considering there doesn't appear to be anyone for miles. That, and if Martin is crazy, there's very little damage he can do to Albert with a simple knife.

He rolls one shoulder, looking around and gaining no clues to their whereabouts just by sight and his HUD is still dead. That leaves old fashioned piecing together of clues. "Is that the last thing you remember before waking up here? Your friend being hurt?"

If there's some sort of battle situation he really needs to check his armaments, but in front of a civilian is right out unless their lives are in immediate danger.

In a sense...

Martin nods. "Yeah. He'd just been stabbed, and-and then I was here. He can't have got far, right? That wouldn't make sense. I was holding him." His gaze returns to the other man and he finally notices something strange. Something uncanny. The man tenses up slightly.

"Um... don't take this the wrong way, but-but I think there might be something wrong with your eyes."

"Major vitreous haemorrhage," Albert replies with a very mild undercurrent of private amusement that what is basically the only thing that's not wholly unnatural about him is the thing Martin decides it 'wrong' and not the rest of him that he's keeping hidden. "There was a war when I was young and gas damaged my eyes, making them appear this way."

He's not going to specify that the war was World War II considering that would certainly invite more questions. Time to change the subject to more the matter at hand.

"Do you recognize this place? Tropical, but the foliage mix doesn't entirely match anything I've seen. Man-made, perhaps?" He brings his hand to his chin, squinting out at the treeline and then the horizon, trying to figure out what might have happened. His Voice, maybe? But he'd thought that whole mess was over. Did something happen with Ivan that caused him to teleport everyone? If that's the case, then his comrades should be here somewhere... but without his HUD and the mental link that's part of it, he can't say for sure without starting to physically look. Or using the radio, but he's not sure that's safe. Maybe if he was alone, but with a civilian in tow he's not willing to risk it.

Speaking of safe... "Will you need to worry about the person who stabbed your friend, do you think? I'm sorry for your loss."

Martin's eyes widen in horror, then embarrassment. He's never heard of that before, but it... sounds medical. And he's just shamed this man for some sort of childhood trauma. His gaze drops to the sound. "S-sorry. I've never- Sorry. I don't know where we are. I was in England before I arrived here."

That's sort of true.

But his head jerks up again at the sympathy. "He is not dead." There's an earnest anxiety in his tone that's entirely genuine. "He can't be dead." The question about the stabber is... ignored for the moment. But he has bigger concerns. He can't have actually killed Jon. That wasn't how this was supposed to go.

Albert quirks an eyebrow at Martin's immediate discomfort. His sensibilities aren't nearly that delicate. Even so, he doesn't have time to coddle, not if they could be in danger. They're not being immediately attacked, but-

Martin's adamant and immediate declaration of his absent friend's condition is exactly the type of denial he doesn't have time for. That is a lot of blood down Martin's front. Still, arguing with the man isn't going to get them moving any faster. "My apologies. But that doesn't answer my question, nor solve anything we're facing right now."

He looks again at the radio. It's of middling age, digital, meaning post 1980's so consequently not a version he'd ever used considering he'd joined the army much later. Aftermarket then, maybe? Unless time travel is involved, in which case they're at least in the twentieth century at the earliest. Either way, its presence and the fact that Martin has one too implies its not a coincidence. "Either way, we were brought here by someone intentionally."

Which also begs the question... what's special about Martin?

Clipping the radio to his belt, Albert levels his eerie gaze at the man in question. "We should move inland, the beach is too exposed and we're more likely to find something there. How long have you been here?"

'I took the eldritch entities from outside our reality bus,' seems like it might not go over so well, especially when he doesn't have Jon here to help try to explain. Or even make the decision that they want to explain something like that. This man isn't acting like he was just pulled out of a fear domain. He doesn't give off avatar vibes, either... apart from those eyes, but Martin's trying to ignore those.

"I've... literally just woken up on the beach." At the suggestion, though, Martin does start trudging toward the nearby trees he can see. "And we don't need to worry about the person who stabbed him." Martin doesn't elaborate beyond that. "He's going to be okay. I'm okay walking along the trees, but we need to be able to see the shore. Jon can't be far. I need to find him."

"We're both in the devil's kitchen, then," which is... exactly what he meant to say, but his translator had never been so literal. He's not speaking English, but he'd just thought that the translator was one system that was working. Apparently, that's not the case.

Something to look into later. For now, he's a little more concerned with Martin's preoccupation with his friend. It's understandable, but very unlikely, and he stops walking again almost just as soon as he'd taking his first several steps towards the jungle. "Herr Blackwood, not to be indelicate, but based on the amount of blood on your shirt and having been unconscious for any amount of time, I doubt your friend is still alive."

It's a weird thing to say, but Martin thinks he... gets it. What he gets less is the man pressing on the point about Jon. Martin can hear that he's stopped walking, and pauses, himself, hand gripping the walkie-talkie tightening for a moment. "Yeah, well, you can doubt all you want. I know he's alive." The alternative... is a world where Martin does not want to be alive or existing. "He's survived worse than being stabbed.

"Are you coming or not? I can look for him by myself if you'd rather head inland."

Albert frowns. Denial is a hell of a thing, but he understands. No one wants to believe someone they care for has died, especially in a violent or traumatic manner. Martin will have to face that truth in time, Albert just hopes it doesn't get in the way of his survival.

Which... he could probably do something about, honestly. Even if his cybernetics aren't all functioning properly, he's still probably a lot hardier than a nearsighted civilian. If he's a civilian. Being stabbed is uncommon enough for your average person, encountering worse is suspicious.

"I am. It makes sense to follow the trees for a time, see if there's a river we can follow in." Fresh water will be important if they're left to their own devices for too long. "I apologize if I offended you. We should work together if we're going to find out who brought us here and why."

"It's fine." His tone is prickly, and Martin knows he needs to not. He purses his lips. "We definitely need to work together. Yeah." He doesn't want to work with someone who isn't Jon right now, but that's not practical. "If you see a backpack, it might be mine. There should be some useful things for us in there."

"I will keep an eye out. I didn't have anything useful on me that would have been transported with me, unfortunately." Except his sunglasses, but those wouldn't be globally useful right now, just personally.

He's quiet for a moment as they walk, mulling over their predicament, the radios, and the lack of knowing how they arrived and considers the likelihood of this being some part of the whole His Voice fiasco that hadn't been resolved or some other issue. Underground experiment perhaps? It feels a lot more like some kind of experiment. In fact, it feels a lot like when Black Ghost used to run drills on his and his family's cybernetics, only his systems are all not working as they should... But if it is some kind of experiment, then what does that make Martin? Randomly kidnapped control group? Who did he piss off? The list Albert has for himself and the other zero zero series cyborgs is too long to name, but if Martin shares a name on that list then maybe they can narrow it down some.

"Can I ask... Do you know of anyone you'd made an enemy of?"

Martin knows he needs to do a little more investigation into this stranger, figure out more about him. But after his misstep with the eyes, he feels awkward. The desire not to be around strangers when he doesn't know if Jon is alive--when he doesn't know if he actually murdered the most important person in his life--is also coming on particularly strong.

He's lost in his own thoughts, scanning the shoreline for a familiar form, until Albert asks a rather annoying question. Not an unreasonable one, but the specific phrasing is inconvenient. Martin knows he could outright lie, but he does try to avoid that. Easier to keep track of what you've said when it's half-truths rather than outright falsehoods.

"Um..." He glances up, thinking... about how to phrase this, but he'll let the other man assume whatever he wants about that. "W-well, I got... I reported some illegal things by boss was doing, and it got him arrested. I'm an administrative assistant for an academic institution. Or I-I was. I was sort of... Jon and I had quit and were taking a holiday for ourselves." There's so much context missing from that, it's painful, but he thinks he's covered his bases. Admin should lend itself to the assumption of white collar crimes rather than murder that would need to be explained in more detail.

Assuming Martin is telling the truth, there are a couple academic institutions that he knows are fronts for more nefarious dealings, though most of those are in the United States or Japan and fairly toothless now as far as the Gilmore Foundation is able to tell, so it really could just be an isolated incident of embezzlement or other innocuous everyday crime that doesn't involve paramilitary organizations or weird science.

If Martin is telling the truth. He keeps avoiding eye contact. That in and of itself could mean anything, but considering this all sprouted from someone having gotten stabbed... well, he has suspicions.

"What institution? Or did you simply get mugged on holiday?" He keeps an eye on Martin's reaction, knowing full well he's feeding the man a cover story. If he takes it, then that says something too.

Moment of truth or lies. He doesn't think most people will have heard of it outside of other avatars, so... "The Magnus Institute. It's, um... W-we study... supernatural phenomenon. I know that sounds silly, but, like... Our research department's had some stuff published! Not just in- Like in reputable publications. About folklore and mythology. That sort of thing?"

He looks down at his shirt. "But... it wasn't really a mugging. We got into a really bad situation, but we put ourselves there." Martin frowns. "That's why I need to find him. I need to make sure he's okay. O-or help him if he isn't."

"I don't think it sounds silly. 'There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.'" Shakespeare, but it's the best and most poetic way he can think of to express that he's not a complete skeptic without explaining that he's met aliens and ghosts, traveled through time, and been to an ancient city of lizard people deep beneath the crust of the earth, among other things.

Martin not immediately agreeing with his story is a point against the lying theory, but he's not really sure where that leaves them. Other than stranded together on an island. "Well, if this is an island and he was transported with you, we're bound to find him sooner or later."

Find his body, anyway.

The use of Shakespeare gets a surprised raise of Martin's brows. Also the fact the man isn't immediately dismissing things. "R-right."

He's quiet as they walk for a little longer before he can't entirely help his curiosity. "So... you like Shakespeare? That's neat."

"I do. I like his history plays best, and the sonnets." Though The Tempest comes to mind currently for the strangers in a strange land aspect being so close to home. Or far from home, rather. "I tend to prefer Goethe and Schiller - especially for the symphonies based on their works - but any words that reach to the heart of the human condition are art in their own right, to my mind, and Shakespeare's contributions, while they can and have been consistently overstated, are well regarded for a reason."

He lets the quiet fall between them for a long moment, accompanied only by the sound of their steps on the sand and low brush at the tree line they've finally reached, before regarding Martin curiously. "Do you like Shakespeare?"

He talks and he analyzes and- Oh, god, he's a proper intellectual. And he's built like a tank. Brawn and brains really isn't fair. "Uh... y-yeah. Yeah! I think, um... A Midsummer Night's Dream is my favorite. I-I-I like m-more light-hearted stuff."

Oh, god, he needs to throw in some sensible-sounding commentary. "I mean the tragedies are great, too! Who doesn't love Hamlet? Or King Lear?" Say something smart. Come on. "His father made gloves for a living, you know?" Martin winces at himself. It's the only thing his mind seems to be able to pull from the one school visit he'd done to the Globe when they'd moved down to London. "Which... was important to his work what with a lot of people wearing... gloves in his plays?"

Albert quirks an eyebrow at this information. The conclusion about gloves in the plays is idiotic, but he'd never really studied Shakespeare the man so much as his works, rendering the information about his father as news. "I didn't know that. Interesting."

Might as well throw the poor man a bone.

"I have a good friend who's an actor. He prefers tragedies, but mostly so he can play a good death scene. He'd go around the house expounding 'Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow' from Macb-" GB's haranguing comes readily to mind and Albert corrects himself, grinning ruefully. "From the Scottish play. He's quite good, but a better Bottom I think."

GB would have such mixed feelings about Albert's opinion of his performances. He lives for drama but he's very talented at comedy, which is high praise from Albert who isn't the most mirthful of people unless you enjoy your humor black and dry as a desert. "I get the feeling you have other writers you're more fond of, though?"

Edited 2023-06-25 19:52 (UTC)

"L-loads!" Loads and loads of writers. Who are not Shakespeare. Martin has read books. He knows names. The fact that every single one of them seems to have fled from his mind in this moment is immaterial. They exist.

There's a drawn out silence.

"Maybe we should-we should look in the jungle just a little. I don't think Jon would have gone far from the beach, but just... for wat- Keats! I like Keats!" There! A single author!

"Uh-huh." Albert looks aside again at Martin, nonplused. "You don't have to try and impress me, you know. It's fine if you don't really read much, not everyone does."

Because that has to be what this is, right? It's too fumbling to be anything but.

"When we find a river we'll head upstream. There has to be at least one to support all of this plant growth. That or we're going to get caught in a torrential downpour at any moment."

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lonelynotforsaken - 2023-07-04 21:53 (UTC) - Expand

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TDM #1

TEST DRIVE MEME #1

TDM GUIDELINES

I. ARRIVAL

II. NETWORK

III. EXPLORING

Arrival

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The 'K' in Martin K Blackwood actually stands for 'Knife'

Perfect

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I'm sorry for him...

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