bumfuckidaho | TEST DRIVE MEME, FEBRUARY 2017.

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TEST DRIVE MEME, FEBRUARY 2017.

TEST DRIVE MEME

There was an accident. That's basically the only thing you know for certain. Maybe a car wreck - metal and broken glass everywhere, and the sirens and the screaming. Or maybe there was an explosion. Maybe your bike hit a rock and you careened uncontrollably off a mountain path. You can't can't quite make out the details, not who was at fault or why. Try as you might, the chaos is all you can remember.

It's also the last thing you remember from before you wake up here.

When you open your eyes, the accident is gone. Instead, you're in a hospital bed – the nursing staff greets you with a cheerful smile.

Welcome to Wayward Pines, they tell you. You'll make a full recovery here.

option one WELCOME TO WAYWARD PINES

The hospital staff had seemed very friendly, but ultimately unhelpful when it came to answering your questions, insisting you shouldn't worry about such things, and that it was smarter to just rest until you'd fully recovered.

That was some time ago. You've since managed to leave the hospital – either via escape, or simply by waiting patiently and filling out paperwork until they finally agreed to release you. Now you've found yourself in the small but hearty town of Wayward Pines, Idaho. It's a charming little place, and the people there are all friendly enough, more than willing to greet you on the street, or give you directions if you need them.

Unless you're asking for directions out of town, of course.

Some will simply smile and give you a hearty pat on the shoulder and ask why you'd ever want to do a thing like that? Others will get quiet for a moment, and direct you to the nearest sign posted near the doorway of every building.

Don't bother taking the road, either. Whether you walk or get your hands on a vehicle, you won't get anywhere. The road simply takes you away from town for a short while before looping around and bringing you right back in.

There's no use questioning things, and it seems pretty useless to try to leave. So really, why not stay a while? Everyone's convinced that you'll find something to love in Wayward Pines.

(For the purposes of this test drive, you're welcome to handwave the existence of basically any local business or activity.)

option two INTO THE WOODS

You've just heard a scream from the woods.

I mean, it could've been an animal. There's bound to be some kind of wildlife amongst the trees, right? But then again, it did sound awfully... human.

Though all of the locals nearby conceal a flinch at the sound, they'll assure you it's nothing, if you ask them. Why, you're probably just hearing things! (But with an anxious undertone of stop asking questions.) If you're curious, though, and brave enough to go see, they won't make any move to stop you from going into the wooded area surrounding the town.

The trees are tall, and their branches are thick enough to block out a significant amount of sunlight from breaking through the canopy, leaving the forest floor a little dimmer and cooler than the streets of town.

Whatever the source of the scream was, you won't be able to find it out here. An experienced hunter might notice some signs of a struggle, and a few faint boot prints, but they don't really seem to lead anywhere in particular.

What you will find, if you walk far enough, is a fence. A big one - at least 30 feet tall, made of metal and concrete. It goes on quite a ways in either direction as well; follow the wall far enough, and you'll see that it connects with the steep, sheer cliffs that surround the rest of Wayward Pines, effectively boxing the town in.

In actuality, you'll probably feel it before you see it. A full 500 yards from the wall, when it's hardly a shadowy smudge through the trees, you start to feel a little bit tired, a little bit weak. Trouble is, the closer you get, the weaker you feel - like the wall itself is sapping the strength out of you, and the closer you get, the worse it feels. Any powers you may have had grow weaker in kind as you make your way to the fence, but even ordinary humans will find their strength sapping away. By the time you're close enough to read the signs and to feel the crackle of electricity radiating from the thick wires criss-crossing the wall's metal surface, you're too weak to stand.

Do you crawl closer still and risk electrocution, or do you crawl away and assess the situation once you're far enough from the fence to be able to stand?

option three IT'S A COUPLE OF FLAKES

There's nothing particularly insidious about the inch of snow that settles over the town one night while everyone sleeps. Kids run outside to have snowball fights and make snow angels, neighbors wave across to you as they shovel their driveway, the local coffee shop runs a 2 for 1 deal on hot cocoa. Snow crunches under your feet at your walk down the street and the cold bite in the air is revitalizing.

The next morning, there's a few more inches of snow. And then a few more the day after that. By the end of the week the snow is a good three feet deep and the entire experience has lost its novelty. Wayward Pines only has a single street plow to its name, and even when the streets are clear, surprise patches of black ice make travel downright dangerous if you aren't prepared. No special sale on hot cocoa can possibly be worth trudging through knee high snow drifts (even your most consciences neighbors can't keep up on the shoveling anymore).

And the power starts to fail in some of the houses. Sure, the repairman promises to stop by as soon as he can, but you're hardly to first person to call him today and he won't be able to pencil you in until tomorrow at the earliest, and what are you going to do about the cold until then? Maybe your neighbor's heat is still on, or maybe that trek to the coffee shop is looking more appealing by the second.

Either way it's time to layer your clothes, watch your step, and hope that Spring to comes early. And try to ignore that kid double dog daring you to lick a flagpole, it just won't end well.

option four ON THE NETWORK

Though it's not as high-tech as you might be used to (or hell, maybe you're ren faire and it's centuries beyond anything you've seen), but Wayward Pines does in fact have a network to accommodate its citizens.

Go ahead, post a network post! Just note that the network, at current, is audio-only and can only be accessed from the telephones in each character's home.

( a few notes )

Welcome to our second test drive here in The Pines! Just one important thing to note this time:

Upon arrival in Wayward Pines, characters find themselves struggling to remember entirely who they were or where they came from. Memories return progressively over the next two weeks. You're welcome to play with this mechanic in any of these prompts, but it's definitely not mandatory! For more details on this temporary memory loss, see our FAQ.

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"Yeah, I heard them. Everyone else was going on like nothing was happening." So far, she's the first person he's come across that actually admits to hearing them, too.

He gestures toward the top of the tree, and then toward the wall. "Let me know if you see anything." If she can't get high enough to get a look, he's going to head toward the fence to see what it's doing there. Keeping something out, or in? And is the fence the reason he's starting to feel like shit, or is there something else out here causing that effect? Who knows. That's what he's here to figure out.

Oh, excellent. Someone with sense.

"Right." Aloy gives a nod and clambers up expertly through the tree. Unfortunately, the higher branches are not as strong as she'd like them to be, and she's forced to come down again, dropping to the earth. She shakes her head. "I can't get high enough to see much of anything," she reports. "It won't hold my weight. If there's a bigger tree around here, then maybe."

Maybe. She hasn't seen one.

"I don't know, I haven't seen any much bigger than that. Keep your eyes open, though."

He takes a few steps in the direction of the fence, feeling like his energy is being sucked right out of him as he moves forward. How is that even possible? Is there something out there, doing it? Or is there somebody skulking around, using some kind of draining power? The girl, maybe? He looks at her again, considering. "D'you feel that?"

"I do."

She shakes herself, trying to rid herself of the feeling. Unsurprisingly, it doesn't work. "It's worse, this far out. I've seen something... similar. A sort of poison. But there's none of that here."

"Poison... No." Even as she discounts it, he does, as well. If it were an injection, something they inhaled, or something that affected the body similarly, he would most likely burn through it more quickly than most people. Whatever this is, it's affecting both of them equally, he thinks.

"I knew a kid once, who could sap your power." Of course, 'power' probably means something different to a human than it does to a mutant. Leech only negated a mutant's power, and made them a normal human in his presence. That's not what he's feeling, though. This loss of strength is what he'd felt when Rogue had touched him. But nobody is touching him, and this girl is feeling it, too; so it has to be something in the environment here.

"The fence? Whatever is happening, I think the closer we get to it, the more it affects us."

She nods; she'd half made her mind up about this already.

"I think you're right. If it's not the wall itself, then it's something on the other side of it, maybe." Aloy frowns a little, looking at the wall, and she checks it with her Focus, the ring of blue light briefly appearing over her ear; at this distance, there isn't much she can tell, but it does seem to be honestly electricified.

"Only one way to find out," she says. "I'm going to try to get closer." Whether he does or not is up to him.

No way is he going to let her go on her own.

"Okay, but look. If it's something dangerous, you need to stay back. Stay behind me. I can take it." Or so he assumes. Whether there's a physical attack or a foul energy at work, Logan has never met anything that's killed him, yet.

"What's that?" he adds, as an afterthought, gesturing toward her ear. He's not perturbed by it in the slightest, just curious. He's seen much, much stranger manifestations of power.

She gives him a look. It's not exactly offended, but slightly affronted, perhaps, and she wrinkles her nose. She's faced more dangerous things than a wall, surely.

"It's my Focus," Aloy says. It's hard to know how to describe it; the only people she's really had to explain it to were inclined to see it as magical. "It... lets me see things that are hidden, among other things. I can see the electricity going through it, but I think I'll have to get closer for it to pick up anything more. If it can detect something like this." Which is entirely a possibility. "You can come with me if you want, but I don't see why we both need to risk it."

He gestures; a half-assed measure of indifference, to be sure. It wasn't supposed to be offensive. He'd have made the exact same statement to another man, honestly.

"Focus or not, I can take it. If whatever's out there hits us with something, with electricity, or anything else, let it hit me." Electricity isn't pleasant, especially to him, with the metal running through his body. But he's survived worse.

"I'm not in the habit of letting people get hurt on my behalf," Aloy says, in a low voice. She wishes she had her spear, or her bow, or something a little more substantial than the clothes on her back. "Maybe we can avoid either of us getting hurt. Lead the way."

She switches her Focus back on with a tap of her finger, and gives him a nod.

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