bumfuckidaho | TEST DRIVE MEME, APRIL 2017.

Skip to Main Content

Entry tags:

!tdm

TEST DRIVE MEME, APRIL 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
PTA BAKE SALE

It's that time of year again. The time when everyone digs into their wallet, ignores their diet, and spends a little time supporting the local school bake fair. You know, for the good of the children. And it doesn't hurt that Linda's Blondie recipe is honestly to die for. The school PTA has pulled out all the stops this year in the hopes of encouraging a good community turn out, posters advertising the sale plastering every street corner and stuffed into every mailbox for a solid week leading up to the event, and today is finally the day.

There's at least two dozen different tables set up with all manner of delectable treats, even one or two offering vegan alternatives for those inclined, not to mention a few others catering to some of the townspeople's more... unique palates.

Maybe you've got your own table set up with your wares, or maybe you were simply lured to the park today by the appetizing scents wafting through the air. Either way it seems like the whole town has come out to show their support today and why wouldn't they? Children are our future, aren't they? Or maybe it's just Linda's Blondie recipe.

Yeah, that's probably it.

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 currently has two basic functions. The first is audio-only and can be accessed from the telephones in each character's home. If an audio-based medium doesn't suit your needs (or aesthetics), be sure to take advantage of the Wayward Pines Message Board from your brand new laptop for the chance to communicate with your fellow townspeople in a text-based format instead!

( a few notes )

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

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Dom manages to raise her head and look back at the source of the voice, in time to see him drop.

"Don't ... come any closer," she croaks. "Not unless you wanna eat a mouthful of leaves."

She digs her hands and feet into the earth and pushes, and with a great effort, manages to roll onto her back. It's not much, but it's a few inches away from the wall, at least.

"I happen to be a connoisseur of leaves."

He manages to get back to his feet, stagger a few steps, then goes down again. He gets down on his hands and knees and crawls closer, feeling the inexorable creep of exhaustion. He gets just close enough to grab her hand and starts to drag her backwards, away from the wall and whatever field it's projecting to disable them. He has to do it in short bursts.

"Hi. I'm Poe. Nice to meet you. Any injuries not pride-related?"

She does what she can to help him help her, pushing into the ground as he pulls. The further away they get from the wall, the more she can feel her strength returning.

"Nice to meet you too. Circumstances, you know. Notwithstanding." She can push herself up to her hands and knees now, and does so. "I'm Dominique. But most people call me Dom. Or DiPierro. But mostly Dom."

As soon as she seems to be moving more or less on her own, Poe lets go and sits down, hard. There's something about the creeping exhaustion that makes him feel sick to his stomach. With the goal of helping her, the feeling was easier to ignore. Now that she seems to be recovering, though--

There are shocks and tears of darkness in his mind, a modulated, taunting voice, and screaming that sounds like his own. Poe wipes the sweat off his forehead and grins at Dom, playing off his shakiness as an effect of the wall.

"Dominque DiPierro. Poe Dameron. Mostly Poe." He pauses, then says more seriously, "Were you the one who screamed?"

Edited 2017-04-17 17:44 (UTC)

"You heard it too, huh?" She pushes herself back and up, tipping backward briefly and ending up sitting cross-legged on the ground. "No, it wasn't me. But I heard it and ran to see what was wrong. Found some tracks. And then I ended up—" A sort of flap of the hand in the direction where he found her, a gesture that encompasses both the place and her state.

"Yeah. Not a gravity field, but it may as well be."

He scrubs a hand through his hair, fledgling uneasiness returning to take flight. Prison.

"So what's your guess? Here to keep us in, or something else out?"

"If they were trying to keep something out, the—the—fatigue zone would be on the other side," Dom says. It's the matter-of-fact tone of someone who has Seen Some Shit, although if asked, she would currently be somewhat uncertain of exactly what That Shit was. She's begun to get inklings, though...

"Plus, those signs. You know the ones? In town?"

"Yeah." So much for the small hope that he was being paranoid.

Paranoia is a way of life, a familiar voice teases, but the recollection is gone before he can pull a face to match the voice.

"Yeah, I know 'em."

There's a negligible chance they're not being watched, even now. His smile returns, a little sharper this time. "Sorta makes me want to rip them all down."

She smiles, just a little, and glances around quickly, in the manner of someone accustomed to getting the sitrep in a strange place and not looking like a gawker as she does so.

"Me too," she says. "The whole place, it's like this book I read, when I was a little kid. There was this planet that was a total Stepford, white-bread American suburb like this one, where everyone did everything all creepily in sync. All the kids bounced balls with the same rhythm, that kind of thing. This place—it's not as obviously that creepy—I mean, apart from the friggin' wall—but it reminds me of that."

"Stepford?" He shakes his head, not familiar with the species. He can get the gist of it, though. "Reminds me of..."

Of, of, of what. He closes his eyes for a second, trying to pull something out of the fog.

Poe grimaces and opens his eyes again. "Not sure, but nothing good. You're new here? They tell me I'm not new here, but I think I probably am."

"I am. There was a car accident. I think?" She looks at him, exasperated at her own memory gaps. "Isn't that ridiculous, that I can't even remember if I was in an accident? Or what I was doing before it?" Pause. "Or even what I ... used to do, exactly. I think I was a reporter. Or maybe a cop."

"I definitely remember an accident."

His, though, wasn't a car. It takes him a moment to even remember what a car is. His was a SF TIE Fighter, struck down by its former owners. A loss of beautiful engineering. He closes his eyes for a moment, remembering the press of inertia as he shot out of that hangar.

He wants to get back in the air.

"Pilot," he says, coming back from his reverie. "If it's got wings and an engine, I can fly it."

Dom looks up at the sky, shading her eyes a little bit.

"Think they have the airspace as tightly locked down as the land? Probably. Not that I've seen so much as a helicopter here."

Poe picks up and starts idly shredding a leaf, quietly amused at the fact that they're both still sitting in the dirt.

"Probably. If this field goes all the way up? No telling what it would do to someone in the air."

"Ugh." She shudders a little. "Speaking of which. Something tells me we might not want to be found poking around out here. Just a hunch." She pushes herself to her feet easily—the weakness seems to have finally worn off—and offers Poe a hand to help him stand.

"You mean the 'death awaits' signs don't fill you with confidence? They fill me with confidence."

He takes the offered hand and hauls himself to his feet, studying the wall through the trees. "How far you think it goes in either direction? Gates? There has to be a weak point somewhere."

She chuckles at the comment about the signs. "At least they're direct?" She tries to sight through the trees, suddenly very acutely aware of the depth of the foliage. "You'd think there was something. I mean, stuff from the outside has to get in somehow ... right?"

"Yeah. And if it's not coming in through the air, then it has to be past the wall."

Or through some hidden pathway in the cliffs, there's another possibility. Might be worth brushing up on his climbing skills.

Damn, what he wouldn't give for a pair of wings. "Wanna take a walk? We might find some sign of what happened out here, too."

"Sure. There were other tracks that way—" she points a track parallel to the wall, going north, "so it might be worth checking in that direction first."

She glances down at his shoes, noting that they don't match the prints. So she can rule him out, she thinks.

He notices the look, but doesn't take it amiss. Instead he just raises one positive grip boot and waggles it, since wriggling his toes won't really get the point across.

"We all clear?"

Dom has the grace to look at least a little embarrassed. "Clear," she says. "Sorry. Seems like a habit or something. Noticing things. It's like a switch I can't turn off."

"No worries." Honestly, he doesn't care. Better safe than with a knife in your back. "Good habit to have, especially in a place like this."

He lifts a hand, moving his pointing finger in a sort of tick-tock motion. "Any preference?"

"Let's try that way," she says, pointing north. As they set off, she pauses to pick up a sizable stick from the ground, breaking off the side twigs to turn it into a respectable walking stick. And, in a pinch, a weapon.

He touches the spot at his hip where there should, he realizes, be a holster. Then he mimics Dom's choice, picking up a branch of his own and stripping it as he keeps pace with her.

"So. What do you remember?"

Dom frowns. The answer to that question is ... tricky.

"Bits. Like, I had some kind of job that involved getting into people's business, like I was a cop or a reporter or something. I had a friend named Alexa. And I—"

A memory of gunfire, her ears ringing, glass breaking, blood and worse splattered across the wall of a restaurant—

She breathes in deeply, then out, slow. "I've seen some shit," she says finally.

(no subject)

volitaunt - 2017-04-25 03:54 (UTC) - Expand

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only