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

01: welcome to wayward pines.

[ When she woke in the white room several days ago, the men there told her there had been an accident, that she had hurt her head very, very badly. They told her name was El, and that the accident had made it hard for her to speak, to remember and say the words.

That was the first lie.

El knows that it's not words she's forgotten -- it's something more. Something from before the accident. El knows she never knew those words in the first place.

When they release her, El keeps the gown they gave her. There's something familiar about it, and lately, El has taken to wearing it more and more. It might help her to remember. She doesn't know. So many things are gone.

Those walking along the street will find a slip of a child, head shaved, staring up at one of the posters. Lightly, she traces one of the words with her fingers.

Happy.

Then, she turns to look behind her, as if she knew someone was there all along. ]

04: on the network.

[ The phone rings. Should you choose to pick it up, no one speaks. Instead, after a few seconds of silence, this song plays. ]

[If Pebbles were from around here, she might be hesitant to approach the strange girl with the shaved head and the hospital gown. She isn't from around here, though, and so when she sees Eleven on the sidewalk tracing letters on a poster, all she sees is another outsider. One close to her age, even.

It's a welcome sight, to be honest. Even if it is a bit startling to see th girl turn around all of a sudden, and look directly at her.]

...aren't you cold in just that?

[ El holds her gaze and says nothing. The girl's question is stupid, and the wrong one to ask. The real question is about the sign, but it's as if these people don't know real.

El prompts the girl towards the right question. ]

Happy.

...yeah, that's what the sign says.

[Kind of a strange response, but Pebbles doesn't read too much into it.]

Kind of weird, right? I feel like, if you're going to be happy, you don't need a sign to tell you. It's just something you feel on your own.

Being told to feel that way just makes me feel unhappy.

[ The other girl is getting closer. The part about being unhappy is interesting, and El plays with the word, repeating it over and over in her mind until it makes sense.

El isn't happy, but she can't be unhappy, either. There have to be worse places than this. The hospital was worse. It reminded El of something bad.

She hopes the bad thing isn't coming. ]

Friends help.

[ With the happiness. El knows that for sure. ]

Yeah. They do.

[She cocks her head a little bit as she looks at the girl.]

Do you have friends in Wayward Pines? I don't think any of mine are here.

[That's maybe coming a little too close to 'talking about the past' for the rules, but Pebbles doesn't care.]

[ El shakes her head. She doesn't know many people here yet, and she wouldn't call any of them friends. Friends tell the truth, but El has nothing to say, truth or otherwise. She forgot it all.

El's eyes flick back to the sign. Do not talk about the past.

El tears off a scrap of fabric from the bottom of her gown and places it over the sign. Now it doesn't say anything. She looks back at Pebbles, expecting the other girl to talk. ]

[ There's a little human on the streets, so skinny a pyjack's sneeze probably would've knocked her right over. Lantar slows to a stop, watching her tracing the words on the poster, wondering what she was doing.

When she suddenly turns those dark eyes on him though, he freezes altogether, rooted to the spot. ]

... Hey, [ he says awkwardly, eventually, feeling vaguely like she could see right through him, somehow. ] Are you... alright?

[ The figure in front of her is something El doesn't recognize. It's one more thing in a sea of unfamiliarity, but in some ways, this one is less frightening. He's not like the rest of this place. El isn't supposed to know who the figure is, or what he is doing here.

She still doesn't trust him, however. But she is curious. Quietly, El slips up to the figure until she's just a few inches away, craning her neck up to get a good look at his face. ]

[ Lantar watches her approach, mandibles slanting nervously and head drawn back. He feels like he should know the procedure for being approached by strange, distrustful kids by now, but he's not entirely sure why- or what the procedure actually is.

She goes out of view under the curve of his cowl plating and he puffs. Seems like there's a bit of a flaw in his 'stand still and don't look scary' methodology, damn his oversized blind-spot.

After a brief moment of debate and staring the bare sliver of brown-furred head he could see, Lantar eases back slightly and sinks slowly down to one knee. She barely reached the tops of his shins, the human was so tiny. ]

I haven't got any cash to nab, you know.

[ El gets bemused and rather avian-like teal green eyes staring her down. This close and she can probably see the faded strips of pale lavender on his chin and mandibles, glimpses of sharp teeth behind rough mouth plates as he spoke. ]

Edited 2017-01-19 06:29 (UTC)

[ He's like nothing El has ever seen. At least, El doesn't think that she's ever seen a creature like this one, because she can't remember much from before the hospital. There might have been other monsters. There may have even been monsters that tried to hurt her friends, bad, strange things.

Friends? What friends? That's probably not right.

The creature kneels, which is good, because that means that El can get an even better look at him. Then he speaks, and the way he speaks is so strange. His mouth moves differently, and El works her own jaw, trying to imitate.

Her brow furrows at the term "cash." El hasn't heard that before, not that she can remember.

But that doesn't matter. Now that he's kneeled down, El gets a good look at the creature's face. Of course, the only way to fully understand something is by touching it.

So El reaches out one tiny palm and presses it up against his nose and mandibles. She's examining. It's all perfectly normal. ]

[ He's about to say something wry about the way she tried to mimic his jaw movements, watching her raise her hand. The words die on the tip of his tongue.

Her touch is gentle, gentle as can be, itty bitty palm and weird, nubbly fingers warm and soft against his nose. Lantar still flinches, a full-bodied, fearful jolt that he doesn't entirely know the origins of, heart rate spiking sharply in panic.

It's just a kid, the Turian tries to reason with himself. It's just a kid. She's just curious. Why are you so scared?

He doesn't know. He keeps very still, not wanting to scare her. There are fingers on his mandibles now.

El will notice that they are a little different. The left one is the same, uniform roughness throughout- but the right one has strange smooth spots, hard, deep notches and keloid bumps. It sits a little oddly under the arc of his cheek. ]

... You hungry? [ Lantar asks shakily after a long moment, carefully, carefully exhaling a breath he didn't realize he'd been holding. ] There's a grocer's nearby. I can grab you something.

[ El lets her hand rest evenly on the mandibles before shifting ever so slightly to the right one -- the interesting one. She lets her fingers dip into the notches, noticing the contrast between bumpy and smooth. She likes that it's different. Perhaps the creature feels as strange here as she does.

Once she knows that the creature isn't angered by her touch, El smiles, her mouth not moving very much but her expression warm all the same.

El doesn't know about grocers, but she understands hunger very, very well. And one of the few things she remembers is what cures hunger. She nods. ]

Eggos?

[ This kid is definitely up there in the strange department, walking up to a complete rando and touching their faces. Didn't seem like a street kid, although she had that look in her eyes that many of them did. That hollowness.

But he... doesn't remember ever seeing a street kid before.

Lantar scowls at the thought. Or at least he did until he realizes she's smiling at him and then the expression fades into something a bit more carefully neutral. Probably not too much of a change on El's end though, considering how comparatively inflexible Turian faces were to human ones.

She didn't seem the sort to smile a lot. ]

Eggos, huh? [ he echoes softly, quirking his free mandible in amusement before shifting to stand up, careful of her hand. ] You're going to have to point those out to me, kiddo.

[ This town was weird, Noah had quickly come to that conclusion only a few short minutes after leaving the hospital -- due to his own Accident... or, that's what the doctors and nurses there had told him, he still isn't sure he believes it. -- but for the most part all of the people seemed normal.

In a sort of cookie-cutter way that makes Noah think they had been pulled out of a magazine spread, or some kind of catalog for home goods.

Maybe that's why he notices the small girl standing on the street -- aside from the fact that she's wearing nothing more than a hospital gown, is a clearly completely alone and clearly a child who probably shouldn't be just wandering around by themselves. Even in a town as cookie-cutter looking as the one they were in.

So, the teenager carefully approaches her (because even he knows it's a little strange to just walk up on someone you don't know, even more so when it's a kid.), both of his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his jeans as he watches the small girl trace over the letters that spell out the word 'happy for a few moments before she turns around and Noah's caught looking like a deer in the headlights. ]

Weird, right?

[ Noah laughs somewhat nervously, both of his shoulders lifting in an offhanded shrug. ]

[ Eleven doesn't laugh, but she nods, ever so slightly. Weird. The boy gets it, which is good, because El isn't the type to explain things. There is so much to be learned from watching, and even more to be learned from listening. The paper flutters slightly, but there's no breeze. El approaches the boy.

She looks him in the eye intently, holding eye contact longer than what most people consider normal. She looks at his face. She doesn't see any happy. ]

Lie.

[ That's what the sign in, because El isn't happy either. Not like she's supposed to be. ]

[ Noah isn't sure what he's expecting. Maybe a chatty and cheery little girl who's playing some sort of odd game of dress-up, maybe a skittish child that immediately runs away the moment that he starts speaking, maybe someone's lost daughter who is scared and wanting to know where their parents are.

What he gets, however, is none of that. The girl simply stares directly into his eyes -- and somewhere in the back of his mind there's a thought of some horror movie he's seen somewhere, another memory that he can't seem to place. -- and then speaks only one word. ]

Lie?

[ He repeats curiously, his head tilting to the side and it takes him a few seconds to realize exactly what the lie is that she's talking about. But once it does, realization flashes across his features. ]

Oh! Well, I mean the people here seem pretty happy, I guess. [ Which is said with the obvious undertone of happy meaning 'creepily happy'. He pauses only for a beat, his head on a swivel as he looks down the street in one direction and then the other.

Had someone really just left a child by themselves? ]

Are you... Lost or something? You came from the hospital too, right?

[ The boy is slower than El had hoped, but he gets the point in the end. And then he says another word that sounds similar to lie. lost. Both those words start with the sound of her own name, or at least, the name the men told her was hers. "El" doesn't seem like quite enough, but she can't place what's missing. El holds her tongue close to the front of her mouth, like she's about to say lost, or lie, or simply El, but she doesn't speak.

El once knew someone who was lost, but she can't remember who. The thought upsets her, and her expression darkens. She shakes her head. Lost is different.

But he's right about the hospital, so she tugs at her gown to show that the answer is obvious. ]

[ There's something about a silent child staring up at him that makes Noah just a little unsettled, his hands starting to fidget, tugging at the bottom of his shirt or tucking in and out of the pockets of his jeans in a way that probably looks just as awkward as he feels. Usually kids talk, right? (Well, babies, were the exception, but the girl in front of him was clearly not a baby. She wasn't even a toddler. Maybe an elementary schooler, by the looks of it.)

Then again, he was just some strange person approaching her on the street without warning. Most kids were usually taught not to talk to strangers -- at least, he could remember that much. ]

Okay, okay. [ He gives a firm nod and crouches down until he's at eye level with her. Oh well, talking or not, he can't just leave this little girl alone even if she claims that she isn't lost. ] So, you're waiting for someone, then? Do you have a name? [ His palm lands flat against his chest, as he talks about himself. ] Mine's Noah.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only