bumfuckidaho | TEST DRIVE MEME, JANUARY 2017.

Skip to Main Content

Entry tags:

!tdm

TEST DRIVE MEME, JANUARY 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 YOU DONE HECKED UP

It's hard to say what it was, exactly, that crossed the line.

It might have been all those questions you've been asking about the town and the people within it. It might be all that talking you've been doing, about your life outside and the family you miss. It might have been the number of times you've not-so-subtly referenced the fence in the woods.

In any case, the Sheriff has taken notice of it, and you've been charged with disturbing the peace. It's his hope that a few days in a jail cell will teach you that such things aren't appreciated in Wayward Pines.

Until such a time that he deems to let you out, you and your cellmate have some time to kill.

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 first test drive here in The Pines! Just a couple of things to note:

( 1 ) 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.

( 2 ) ~~The above link to the FAQ won't actually load for the first few hours this is up - we're sorry about that, we just have to port the FAQ into HTML.~~ The FAQ is now live! We'll also be tossing up a few more vital pages over the next 24 hours, then opening reserves at 12:01 AM EST on the 17th. Keep an eye on thepines for updates.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

welcome to wayward pines.

[waking up in a hospital with injuries? fine, yeah, okay, seems normal enough, or at least, clint's manages to work through the necessary paperwork to get himself discharged with a speed and accuracy that frankly astounded some of the nurses on staff.

....... is what he gathers from their exaggerated expressions, anyway, because clint can't hear a goddamn word they say. which leads to more than a few complications before the hospital figures out the issue and manages to scrounge up an interpreter for him. clint's not sure why this whole thing feels like such a shock to him, because he can understand the clerk's signs just fine so it's probably not exactly a new situation for him but something in him sits down stubbornly at the first flickering of fingers and refuses to budge.

he's angry, and he doesn't know why.

walking down the side of the main street in town, clint studiously ignores the friendly townsfolk waving to him from their yards or storefronts. he doesn't know where he's headed but he's feet apparently do, because he eventually comes to a stop in front of a small, neat looking house with his name on a mailbox out front.

pressing a hand to the swathe of bandages wrapped around his head (and most importantly, his ears) clint can't think of any sort of place that would suit him less, really.] I'm a mess. [he says lowly, and even if he's not directing the comment at anyone in particular it wouldn't be accurate to say he's talking to himself either.

after all, he can't even hear himself, can he?]

you done hecked up.

[clint doesn't even know why he's here, and that's the worst part of it. hadn't even heard the sheriff pull up in his little podunk town cruiser, just felt a heavy hand fall on his shoulder out of nowhere and reacted accordingly. And suddenly they were throwing him up against the cruiser and cuffing him, taking him for a little ride down to the station to "cool down" (or maybe something to do with a clown? reading lips in a car rearview mirror was complicated).

apparently punching the sheriff in the face was frowned upon around here, who knew?

he drapes himself against the bars of the call, presses his pounding head against the cool metal and heaves out a tired sigh. this feels familiar too, and clint really wants to know, between jail and a hospital, what that says about him, but self introspection does not appear to be one of his hobbies because he willfully drops the issue and settles for yelling down the hall:] Hey, this is discrimination! I'm gonna sue all of you!

[or at least he hopes he's yelling. there's no way to tell, really.]

Sue? What's that?

[Pebbles comes from a time a bit before such things as a legal system were really established. Or maybe they were established, and her life just hadn't interacted with that part of things yet - the whole 'civilization' thing is kind of new to humanity, so sometimes it's a little difficult to keep track of it all.

The police of wayward pines were, to their credit, unwilling to put a 13 year old girl in the same cell as an adult man overnight. Which is why Pebbles is in the cell directly adjacent to his - visible through a few iron bars.]

Did you ask too many questions too?

[clint doesn't catch the first part of pebble's questions, with his attention directed at the officers milling and quite rudely ignoring him, but he catches enough movement in his periphery vision that he turns his head back around to focus on her soon enough to catch most of the second half.]

Questions? Huh? [he does a pretty expressive double take once he has the chance to do more than hyper focus on her moving mouth.] Shit, you're just a kid! Hey, what they hell is wrong with you guys, what are you doing arresting children!

[shouting down at the cops again, clint bangs one bandaged hand on the bars in front of him before immediately regretting the decision, falling back from the bars with a curse and clutching his hand to his chest.

sorry for all the swearing, pebbles, clint wasn't exactly the best influence around.]

[Well this guy seems pretty rude. He only barely acknowledged her, or the things she asked, before returning his attention to the deputies who thew him in there. That's no way to treat a fellow inmate, Clint - at least, not in her opinion.

She's about to say something about it, too, until he goes and hits his hand on the bars of their cage.]

You aren't going to be able to break out like that. The rock those bars are made of is really hard and weird - you should be more careful.

[Guess who's got two thumbs and no concept of metal? This girl.]

No shit. [clint shoots back unthinking, then realizes that he's swearing in front of a kid and scrubs his unbandaged hand over his face and muttering a low:] Aw crap.

[because clint's singular biggest talent will always be in compounding disaster.]

Kid, that's not rock, it's iron. And I wasn't trying to break it, I was just being an idiot, like usual. [he wrinkles his nose, cocks his head to one side and considers before adding:] At least I think it's like usual. A lot of stuff still rattling around loose up there right now, to be honest.

[Pebbles is less intrigued by the swearing and more curious about the word he just used to describe the bars of the cage.]

Iron? [She taps the bar with one knuckle, her eyebrows raged.] Never heard of it. Is it new?

[That would make sense to her - way more sense than anything else in her town. Her memories are pretty hazy too, but she feels... used to new things, if that makes any sense? Like new things are being invented all the time.]

Is it.......... is it new? [clint does a double take at the question, shakes his head and squints in pebble's direction dubiously.]

Sorry kid, I'm having to read your lips right now and it's kind of hit or miss. Did you just ask if iron was new?

Yeah. Like, I've never heard of iron before. Is it new?

[Her face is completely deadpan. She could not be more serious in this question.]

And you have to read my lips? You're deaf, then?

Edited 2017-01-20 01:55 (UTC)

Nnnnnnnnnoooooooo? [clint says, not sounding too sure of himself despite the fact that he honestly is.] I can't exactly give you a date or something for when iron became a thing but trust me it really really has. For awhile now.

[yeah pebbles, trust the sketchy adult you met in jail.]

And yeah, looks that way. [he adds, gesturing uselessly at the bandages wrapped around his head (and ears) for emphasis.] So do an old guy a favor and enunciate, would ya?

Oh. [She raises an eyebrow at him. She's honestly got more questions about iron.] Well it must be pretty rare, because we don't have any of it back at home.

[Literal stone age kid, here.]

Have I been doing okay so far? I don't really know how to enunciate better than this.

[clint shoots pebbles a set of double thumbs up with a lop-sided smile.] Better than most kids, honestly.

[he angles his head back down the hallway toward the milling officers and makes an honest effort to raise his voice pointedly in their direction, though his volume barely winds up being a tick louder than it was speaking to pebbles.] And better than the police around here for sure.

Anyway. [somehow this word winds up being louder than anything else he said so far as he tips his head back to look at her again.] Iron's definitely not rare. Most places. But you might just be from an alternate reality, don't worry about it.

[ El spent her time in the hospital inexplicably uneasy, as if she'd been in a place like that before, a cold, hard place where people get hurt. But she doesn't remember any place like that. She doesn't remember a whole lot, and she didn't listen to the men in the hospital because they frightened her, so even though there's someone else's name on the mailbox of this house, she doesn't realize that the house itself belongs to someone else.

But she does remember that there was something called eggos in a place like this, and the eggos were really, really good. So El decides to search the house for the eggos, which is why she's rifling through all the kitchen cupboards when Clint walks in. She still hasn't bothered changing out of the hospital gown. ]

[there's a goddamn kid in his house, and clint doesn't care how sketchy his memory is, he knows she doesn't belong here. no one would ever trust him with a kid, no one should ever trust him with a kid, katie was...

katie? katie who?

clint shakes his head to clear the lingering dregs of whatever for the more immediate issue standing in his kitchen right now. standing in the kitchen and still wearing a hospital gown for christsakes, what is even happening in his life right now.]

Uh. Kid. Are you lost?

[ El doesn't turn to look at the man she can hear behind her. He's not the most important thing right now. She can't give up her search. She needs to know what the eggos are, and why they were so good. She needs to remember, and hopefully the eggos can help make her do that.

The eggos are lost. Someone else was lost too -- a friend. Whoever, whatever, that may be. But El isn't lost. She's here, and that's obvious.

El moves onto the big white box, still ignoring the man. This one is harder to pull open, but once she does, there's a sudden blast of cold air. El's eyes grow wide, and she shivers with surprise. ]

Kiiiiiid? [clint says slowly, taking a step forward and noticing that she's apparently still dressed in hospital clothes. he... he really did not sign up for this job. honestly.

and with her back to him he can't even figure out if she's saying anything and he just can't hear her.]

Look, kid, if you're saying anything I'm really gonna need you to turn around and say it again because I can't hear, alright? And if you're not saying anything can we please change that because honestly I feel like I'm deserving of at least a few answers. They don't even have to be to the questions I've been asking, I'll take any answers at this point.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only