( MEMES ) TEST DRIVE >> 7

[contagio]

THE TEST DRIVE



Like it or not, you've been dragged from your world into the sanctum. It's a pretty nice city, all things considered--sci-fi, high-tech, glamourous.... Except, of course, for the giant dome encircling it, and the threat of glitching, contaminated zombies at your door. Looks like humanity's built itself a fortress that looks suspiciously like a cage, too. Toss in the odd memory blanks and the everpresent logo of Bifrons incorporated and it's enough to make someone paranoid.

The object of this meme is to get people familiar with the world of the Sanctum, and to try to see if their characters would fit in a sci-fi utopia such as this. Here are your options:

1. Intro: Waking Up. Make your intro post, folks. You wake up in a strange place, and get a strange transmission to go with it. There's a pair of glasses connected to some sort of communications network, but otherwise not much else in the room with you. What are you going to do?

2. Pet Adoption. Maybe you have the perfect genetically engineered pet in mind. Maybe you found a stray little escapee--do you keep it or turn it in? There's a reward if you let Bifrons know where the potentially dangerous little bugger is at, after all.

3. Alterations. Feel like you need an edge in the city? Find yourself injured and looking at options? Why not consider genetic alterations or, better yet, upgrading to a better, healthier you? Be warned, some of the side effects can be a little unpleasant.

4. Network Glitches. Strange garbled messages keep trying to come through in audio and text, but no way to track where they're coming from. Do you try to make contact? Compare notes with others? Surely it's nothing to be concerned about, right?

5. Dome Glitches. What was that in the window? There, again, in the bathroom mirror! Is that another you, living another life? Or maybe you spot an ominous shadow lurking around in the corner, something like a dysthrope but...worse. You're not going crazy, are you? Others see it, too, don't they? Oh, I wouldn't touch that reflective surface if I were you, or you might end up thinking you're living in that strange other world.

6. Outside the Dome. You're out and about without an armed escort, suited up against the atmosphere and dysthropes. It's supposed to be a green sector in this run down shell of what used to be a suburb, right? Nothing could possibly go wrong

7. WILDCARD. Choose your own adventure or create a cocktail from the presented options! The choice is YOURS.

Comments

[runtofthelegion]

Caine did have a fleeting worry that Kirk was going to fall off of his back from all the showing off he was doing, but if he'd kept Jupiter alive in Chicago, any accident would be easy to handle. Nobody was shooting at them, after all. He chuckles and shakes his head slightly as Kirk plays around with the people they're passing, and grins when Kirk yells at the view.

He spots one of the network towers and alights on it for a moment. "I'm surprised your people haven't developed anything like these yet," Caine indicates the boots as he lets Kirk down for a moment. He's still a little nervous running them so hard without a break-- they aren't the ones he's used to.

[universal_charm]

Reluctantly Kirk slides off Caine's back, though his legs shook a bit from the effort of having clung so hard. He didn't stumble though, which he was fairly proud of. Instead he made his way to the edge of the room and sat down, tossing his legs over the side to dangle. He wished he could say there was a breeze to ruffle his hair, but in the dome there really wasn't, at least not a natural one.

"I guess no one's seen money in them yet," he shrugged. They had anti-grav for bikes and cars, transporters, warp engines. It was a mystery that the boots hadn't come up before. "Or maybe someone has, and they realized they really didn't need people flying around with them due to health and safety reasons. And lawsuits."

[runtofthelegion]

Caine powers the boots down and walks over to Kirk, taking a seat next to him with the boots dangling over the edge. The idea that the technology hadn't been seen as profitable does resonate with him and he accepts that readily. He doesn't necessarily agree with it, but different planets had different takes on what was 'valuable'.

"I suppose if there was an... accident of some kind, the person who made the product would be held accountable. Truth be told, these were only issued to Legionnaires fighting on the front lines. There are other methods of transportation that look a little more dignified where I come from."

[universal_charm]

"Yeah. I could see them being good for sports, maybe, or even people in the delivery business. But we have the sky lanes, and as fast as you can go on those... yeah, accident waiting to happen," he shook his head. "Bet anything someone has it on a drawing board somewhere, but their lawyer friend shows them the long list of potential lawsuits and it stays on the drawing board." Sad fact, but that was how things went. He could understand the boots in a military capacity, even an exploratory one.

He looked up at him and he grinned. "They might be more dignified, but they aren't nearly as fun."

[runtofthelegion]

"Mm, you're probably on to something there," Caine flashed a wry smile. Of course, if a splice was killed in a freak boot accident, nobody would be clambering to file the necessary paperwork for a fine. What was one splice in the long run?

"I don't know if any of the Entitleds I know have ever had something that approaches 'fun'. Maybe there's a correlation there."

[universal_charm]

"Whatever they think is fun, it probably isn't," he shook his head. Kirk lived a comfortable life now, though it hadn't always been that way. "I've been around some of those types before and they're boring." He sighed and rolled his eyes, leaning back on his hands, gaze wandering over the city.

"I'd much rather hang out with you and get a ride on the hover boots," he hummed.

[runtofthelegion]

"...you have?" Caine furrows his brows and frowns. Kirk didn't seem the type to be around anyone who behaved like an Entitled, and he was getting the general gist that in most people's Verses, no one owned planets.

He absorbs this and smiles faintly. "It's not saying much, but I would rather hang out with you than an Entitled too."

[universal_charm]

"Well, back on Earth. Sometimes you could run into them in some of the clubs I went to," he shrugged. He liked to party, especially in his Academy years, and he had not been above batting his eyes to get into some of the higher glitz clubs when he could.

This time he snorted, turning his head to look at Caine, his cheek resting on his shoulder. "Well, I kind of hope so, otherwise I'm going to have a very long walk down this building."

[runtofthelegion]

"Oh..." Well, that made sense. Humans were known for not sharing, for selecting certain people to be more valuable than others. It probably didn't stop outside of his Verse. Maybe the thing he's trying to wrap his head around is the mingling of the lowly with the Entitled. Apparently Kirk could do it-- most splices who weren't in government or service never even saw an Entitled.

Caine smiles and claps Kirk on the shoulder. "You'd have a long fall, you mean."

[universal_charm]

Well, Kirk wasn't a splice, but alien species mixed in his Verse. Ever since First Contact. And it had always been that way for humans - a sort of divide, but people clawing their way up, or in Kirk's case sneaking in, or somethings people coming down. A mobile society.

He mock wobbled like he was about to fall. "Don't make it actually happen! I can't really fly with these things you know!"

[runtofthelegion]

'Mobile society' was a foreign word, if not a taboo word for Caine's world. But that isn't on his mind. When Kirk fakes falling, Caine actually reaches out and takes Kirk's far shoulder, creating a kind of barrier with his arm so Kirk couldn't fall without Caine catching him.

"Believe me, I didn't think you could," Caine sighs and backs off once Kirk is steady. "They look pretty puny."

[universal_charm]

"I did once. It was kind of cool," he smirked, pushing off Caine's arm, patting it in gentle reassurance. "I don't know if I could deal with them being huge though. They're kind of a pain as it is when it comes to my clothes. I have to cut holes in everything." Seriously, nothing came with pre-cut holes like they had in Luceti. It was quite frustrating.

[runtofthelegion]

"They'd be more useful, I'll tell you that," Caine folds his hands and looks up at the dome's ceiling, pondering the stars. "I used to have them. Fifteen foot wingspan, I could hit the stratosphere of most planets in under a minute if I had to."

He looks at Kirk's back and ponders. "Have you asked around the network? Maybe there's someone who'd be willing to help with that."

[universal_charm]

A whistle escaped him, both from jealousy and being impressed. He tried to imagine them on Caine, almost did. It would be a hell of a sight, that was for sure. He couldn't imagine going that fast under your own power, couldn't imagine the way it felt to pump your wings, strain them, touch the sky. Yeah, he was a little jealous.

"I could, but I don't think it's a good idea to mess with them," he shook his head. "They're... I didn't exactly come by them normally, remember?"

[runtofthelegion]

Caine frowns slightly, looks back at Kirk. "I meant with your clothes," he chuckles. "I wouldn't go trying to find a doctor over the network. You're liable to wake up staring at seventeen clones of yourself."

[universal_charm]

Oh. Well, that made much more sense didn't it. He had the good grace to laugh at his own mistake, rubbing the back of his neck.

"A part of me wants to say nothing can possibly go wrong with seventeen clones of me, but after having met someone with my own face, I have to say I don't want to share it with more people." Frank was a good friend, but it was still hard some days realizing your face wasn't as unique as you thought it was in the universe.

"How did you find clothes to fit your wings? It must have taken some kind of gymnastics to get your shirt on every day with them."

[runtofthelegion]

"You mean with FDR," Caine had noticed the resemblance, then had to line up pictures of them side by side before he realized Kirk was most likely FDR's Recurrence. It made sense, to a degree, though Caine had wondered how the universe hadn't collapsed yet from the existence of, essentially, the same person in the same place at the same time. Whatever Bifrons was doing, it involved intense science that Caine isn't sure he could understand.

"No, it's easy. I put on the shirt, then the wings. Takes a minute for the biometric feedback to kick in, but I can be up and flying in two minutes if I have to be."

[universal_charm]

Well, because they weren't the same person. Not at all. They looked the same, and shared some personality traits, but once you got to know them they were incredibly different, and certainly their experiences were quite different. But even Kirk could admit sometimes he wondered what shenanigans they could have gotten up to if he hadn't had his wings.

His brows scrunched at that, lips pursing as he parsed that new tidbit of information. "Wait - you could take them off?"

[runtofthelegion]

"Mmhm," Caine nodded, hands folded again. "Was a good thing, too-- none of the Legion's Zero Flyers were outfitted to handle a winged Legionnaire. And if all of us had our wings on at once," he snorts and shrugs. "Would've been chaos during our larger deployments."

[universal_charm]

"I guess that makes sense," he said slowly, turning over that particular image in his head, swinging his legs a little over the side of the building. "So, which do you prefer - your wings or the boots?" he pointed at Caine's feet. He knew which ones he'd choose, but then he had the bias of only ever having had tiny wings and the frustration of how useless they were.

[runtofthelegion]

"Wings," Caine smiles faintly. "Easier to control. They were a part of me, and a status symbol. The day I earned them was..." he shakes his head. "I thought that was the end of a long journey. I thought nothing could take me down from that high place."

[universal_charm]

The small yellow wings on Kirk's back flapped gently, as if just listening to the other made him want to leap from the building and soar. They stretched, the pinions flaring, the captain turning his head to Caine. He leaned to the side, knocking their shoulders together in a light tap, kicking at his boots with his shoe.

"In case you haven't noticed, we're pretty high up right now," he pointed out, trying to lighten the mood, looking down where the city glowed below them, people and vehicles flowing like a relentless line of marching ants.