bumfuckidaho | test drive meme, june 2017

Entry tags:

!tdm

test drive meme, june 2017

TEST DRIVE MEME

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.)

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
FOURTH OF JULY

If there's one thing to be said for Wayward Pines it's the town's resilience and staunch refusal to give up on the image of a picturesque little town, and July 4th this year has the community putting it's best foot forward in this regard with its annual 4th of July picnic and fireworks spectacular.

To hear anyone (Linda) familiar with the town talk (complain), this year is a much more sedate affair than any of the years prior, but in a lot of ways today is a very good opportunity for people to reconnect with their neighbors; chat quietly at a table, share a recipe, play some catch, or argue with Jerry over the proper way too cook a burger. Jerry never listens, of course, but thankfully the whole event is a pot luck so there are plenty of other, far more edible options for those with a more... discerning palate.

The day passes pleasantly, and the night? The night brings the fireworks. A beautiful cascade of bright colors and lights in the sky. Sparklers are handed out like party favors while everyone is strongly encouraged to play safe by a long-suffering and weary looking sheriff. After all, the town has had quite enough excitement by this point, don't you think?

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 fifth 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

1. Welcome to Wayward Pines
[Well, there goes Kansas. That place was a whole heap of shit anyway. A tornado was best case scenario.

Brock opened his eyes to find himself in a hospital, and a distinct feeling of wrongness warred with a sense of forced complacency. He couldn't recall how he came to be in the hospital or the circumstances, but it seemed somehow unlikely that he would be transferred to Idaho of all places. Didn't New York or, you know, anywhere else have good medical care? Except Kansas; tornadoes for that crap-shoot of a place. He'd seen dumpsters with more of a wide ranged gene pool.

Yet, no matter how he felt the sheer wrongness, nothing filled in that wide ocean of blanks. That alone increased his sense of alarm as he reached out to grip the raised bed rails, assuring himself that they were physical and not some drug induced illusion cooked up in his brain. Then the nurses came in chattering and seemed to feel sorry for his plight, and that was just the last straw. He wanted no pity anywhere; this was his game, and he played it how he wanted. Something was wrong, and he intended to get answers. And pants.

Rumlow smoothly lifted himself from bed and hopped the railing, landing lightly on the balls of his feet. The nurses stopped trying to coddle him, and it was perhaps a good thing for them that there were no sharp pointy objects easily in his reach, and there was no need to root through the drawers of his room searching for one. He was military trained (that much stuck right).]

Where am I? What's going on here? I should be somewhere else, somewhere important. [Idaho was for red-neck family reunions and burying a body no one cared to find. But why the hell couldn't he recall more than that? Worse, why were the memories that seemed to encroach on his mind so familiar in how insidious they were.]

Out of my way, sweetheart. I'm on a schedule. [He advanced on the nurses, driving them from the room and into the open hallway of the hospital. He followed, looking up and down, finding the exits, the orderlies and anything that could be used as a weapon. He found all three, but it made no difference to him. He was marching out of this place, ass hanging out of his gown and he'd fight anyone that tried to stop him.]

3. Fourth of July
[Ugh, town gathering pleasantries were something of a necessary usual, something to make everyone feel a sense of community, of belonging, of being fake. The truth of the matter was that Linda had it right regardless of how annoying she was and that complaining was about any good that managed to happen in this place. The fact that they were all being watched, listened to and probably tracked by some means only served to increase the sense of isolation for him. It put him in a position that felt very familiar and thus far more at ease.

Fourth of July had always been a big deal in his family, the loud and rowdy Italian patriots that only occasionally put their money where their mouths were. It was a day when his nonna had immigrated to America and God forbid anyone forget that. It was a new start on life, a chance to eat too many apples, get an ear tugged and cheeks pinched with the familiar scoldings of being far too thin. That had been when he had lived somewhere that wasn't this shit-hole, and his reason for moving here at all was about as much punishment as living here. Yeah, yeah, don't leave, always answer the phone.

Brock was doing his share of mingling with the cheapest and most despised beer that he could find, Coors Light (the Canadian version to boot). He was literally only here for the fireworks and to keep track of those of the city; people here tended to act very strangely. They either were living cardboard cut-outs or they quite frankly acted insane, like none of this was real. What was real and what wasn't still happened to be muddled up in his own brain fog, like he had been brain-panned badly by technician's kid on bring-your-child-to-work day.

Part of being a double agent was knowing when to play the part. Investigative work took time, and his reason for being here had to be among the insanity. It certainly wasn't near the fence or the forest. Nope, not at all. He certainly wouldn't be taking the opportunity that a gathering with loud noises and random bursts of colour to his advantage to investigate those areas which clearly had the smell of definitely hiding something but nothing to see here about it.

So when the fireworks started to light the night sky, he sipped his disgusting beer and then began to back out of the crowd under the guise of letting the kids and families have a better look.]

Independence Day... what a load of shit. There wasn't even apple pie.

4. What's Network Niceties?

So, what's going for child discipline these days? A stern talking to with an after thought of ass patting? I feel like there was merit to a good ol' rapping on the knuckles. Now we know why the youth have resorted to avocado on toast as some kind of legitimate breakfast choice.

Edited 2017-06-18 04:10 (UTC)

Personally, I intend to fund my college education entirely on avocado seed carving.

Unfortunately, you'll find the schools here to be generally uninterested in teaching the real-world consequences of failure.

[ Not that Pietro doesn't appreciate the education he is getting, mind you, but still. It's too easy. ]

You'd have better luck making bongs out of the seeds and sell those the way that kids these days are lighting up those reefers. And people wonder why the world has gone to shit. I'll never have enough disappointment fueling me.

I'm not some kind of druggie. I have standards.

Have you considered blaming anyone with actual political power for the state of the world? Grossly unprepared though some of us youths may be, it's hard to ruin anything you haven't got control over.

Did I say you were? I said most youth are and thus you'd make a good profit. Of course I do, but the government doesn't tell us how to raise our children. Last thing we need is the government looking over everyone's shoulder. Being active in lobbying the government and taking a stance on what you believe in is what people need to do. That's how results are made.

[And murder here and there, but let's not get too political here.]

Brock Rumlow | Marvel Cinematic Universe

4. un: p.maximoff

un: Frag

no subject

no subject

III

no subject

no subject

no subject

4. un: rjblake

un: Frag

no subject

no subject

4, UN: carlgrimes

un: Frag

no subject

no subject

4 un: kscirockstar

un: Frag

no subject

no subject

3!

no subject

no subject

no subject