There was an accident. The details are hazy and obscure, but it's still the first thing you remember. Maybe a car wreck — metal and broken glass everywhere, and the sirens and the
screaming. Maybe your bike hit a rock and you careened uncontrollably off a mountain path. Maybe something less mundane, even impossible seems to have happened to you. You can't quite make out the details, not who was at fault or why. Try as you might, the chaos is all you can truly remember.
It's also the
last thing you remember from before waking up.
When you open your eyes, the accident is gone. Instead, you're in a hospital bed, and the nursing staff greet you with cheerful smiles.
Don't worry, they tell you. You'll make a full recovery here. Where is here? Why, home in Wayward Pines, of course!
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.)
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 | TRACK AND FIELD DAY |
With the current school semester coming to a close and summer vacation on the horizon, school administrators have elected to end the year on a high note with an invigorating Track and Field Day at the park, in order to better foster fitness and health in the children (outside of their government mandated physical education classes, anyway).
The event is, of course, open to the community at large, whether you have a current affiliation with the school or not. Because, well, everyone could stand to get up off their couches for an afternoon of running around in the sun. Or, in the case of residents with a particular sun allergy, under the shaded tarp canopies that dot the field here and there with healthy snacks, drinks, and some of the less expansive games available today (such as, oh, a nice sedate beanbag toss).
Wayward Pines thrives on the inclusion of all varieties of people, after all. Even those that aren't, strictly speaking, people at all.
All of the most recognizable games are available, of course: sack races, relay races, three-legged races, any sort of race you can think of, really; flag football and dodgeball with soft spongy balls to keep anyone from getting
too competitive (the school nurse is on hand just in case though); a massive tug-of-war rope that spans nearly the entire field; and water balloon and blanket tosses. If you're not too sure what the latter is you can ask Linda at the makeshift juice bar and she'll be all too glad to explain for you.
Actually, on second thought, don't ask Linda anything. Don't give her the satisfaction.
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), 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!
( a few notes )
Welcome to our fourth 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.
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bumfuckidaho2017-05-17 09:14 pm
TEST DRIVE MEME
dirk gently | dirk gently's holistic detective agency (BBCA)
Dirk's head hurts. This isn't, he thinks, anything to do with The Accident, to which he's mentally assigned capital letters, capital letters being of course one of the best ways of dealing with things to which one doesn't have an answer. They also serve to assign a neat sort of entityhood to the concept of the event, preventing him having to think too hard about the circumstances of it, a situation he vastly prefers to the alternative. It's not an awfully nice thing to have standing out in comparatively stark relief against the fog that currently comprises his memory, and he's decided that therefore his best strategy is to avoid giving it overmuch consideration at all.
Aimless wandering feels right too. That's not why his head hurts either: his head hurts because of the improbable amount of paperwork he'd been subjected to before he'd been allowed to retrieve his things and then wander in the first place -- and Dirk hates both those things, paperwork and the improbable, which far and away lacks the elegance and honesty of the simply impossible. He can't, at the moment, summon any particular examples, but he's sure this is true. He's sure, moreover, that this is not simply true but directly relevant to his current situation. It's just hard to find any one thing to pin that sensation on, as he meanders his aimless way through the scatterplot smattering of buildings, perfect little parcels of space enclosed by perfect little structures in almost-perfect little rows along equally idyllic little streets.
Home. That's what they'd said, and he certainly has little else within him to contradict that, little explicit and obvious, so why he feels that this isn't the whole truth isn't entirely clear -- aside from the fact that he clearly came from elsewhere once, as anyone who hears him speak can no doubt attest. He cuts an uncomfortably visible figure even when he doesn't speak -- a bright yellow leather jacket might be well suited to the veneer of general cheeriness that clings to every building, but it makes him slightly more visible than he thinks he might like to be until he's got a better grasp on who he is.
A peculiar tug behind Dirk's navel guides him towards the edge of the trees, pulls him inexorably onwards though his stride slows and though he can feel his heart rate increase. The scuff of the soles of his shoes on the pavement abruptly changes, and he looks down to find a torn scrap of newsprint trapped beneath one foot. Bending to pick it up, he finds what must be a portion of an advert, near-illegible with water damage and wear, except for one word, bolded and underlined: everything. Everything, presumably, must go, but unbidden his mouth forms the shapes, the words voiced slowly, with conviction but not understanding: "Everything is connected."
But well, quite frankly, what the hell is that supposed to mean? Except that it's also so clearly -- and he trusts himself on this -- undeniably true.
Still clutching the little scrap of paper in his hand, Dirk raises his head to stare into the undergrowth, shoulders slumped -- feeling, looking small.
four;
does anyone else ever get the feeling that theres something youre supposed to know only you dont know what it is youre meant to be knowing or even how youd go about knowing it in the first place????? much less what youd do with it
or maybe really the feeling is more that theres something you ought to be doing or someplace you ought to be except both of those things are manifestly untrue as all youve got on your immediate schedule is a rousing afternoon of sitting about watching telly and trying to understand the point of table tennis
does anyone else have that?????
four!
Whatever you're on, if you have more of it I'll be your new best friend. :D
no subject
i think occasionally i go a little wild and have a lager but im a little retrospectively challenged at the moment
in the sense that i am having difficulty with speccing in retro i mean i havent always been challenged i think though i confess under the circumstances its hard to know
still i try to live in hope
no subject
like all the time
I'M SHRIEKING
though if you do mean exactly that please do let me know as i suspect well have a lot to discuss in that case
no all right maybe... what do you do about it?????? :/ :/ :/
8D
usually i smoke
i should probably stop doing that before it becomes a problem
no subject
does the smoking help though i mean do you ever figure out where you need to go or what you ought to be doing????? i feel like i have a method for dealing with this usually only im having a bit of trouble remembering at the moment what exactly it is
no subject
doesn't help me figure stuff out but it helps calm me down
maybe playing table tennis would help?
hey wow my inbox ate this, cool!!! i am so sorry >C
do you think i should try it????