contagio | ( MEMES ) TEST DRIVE >> 8

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. Bifrons Annual Gala. All the creme de la creme--and the Immune--are invited to the Bifrons annual gala, filled with food (real meat!) and drink (sunshine in a glass!) and expensive clothing you could want. Do you have anything to wear? Are you going to use this opportunity to schmooze, to sneak around to find some answers while everyone is distracted, or be an awkward wallflower? Or scoff at home about how everyone is so concerned with these silly events instead of cures?

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. Down with the Sickness. Something's going around. Is it a cold? The flu? Something worse? Are you immune to it, or just lucky? Are you sitting in a hospital waiting room, hoping to get seen, or just holed up in bed with the sniffles? Someone should bring you some soup and keep you company! Or complain with you.

5. Sewer Run. There's something (or somethings) lurking beneath the streets of Proles. You and other lucky people have been picked out, given a gun and a flashlight, and told good luck. What do you find down there? What finds you? Was that a cot and some discarded tablets in that alcove?

6. Outside the Dome. You're out and about without an armed escort, suited up against the atmosphere and dysthropes. Nothing could possibly go wrong...until it does. Was that a dysthrope moving...or a person?

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

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

River thinks for a moment. There were lots of useful things in that room. Break the glass on the video, take a shard, dig it into the soft spot behind the ear, watch the blood drain away, away. But she didn't take that with her. Doesn't trust the man inside the screen.

"My tongue," she says at last, sticking it out. Still has that.

He scoffs out a laugh. "Well, that's one thing. Thank god you have that. Looks to me that they left you the rest of your body as well." Which would be a little funnier if some people had apparently woken up with bodies they hadn't before or somewhat modified in some way, beyond the ports, but most people who came here seemed to be, generally, human. "Maybe we should work to keep your blood on the inside, though."

River removes her hands from her face and does a quick survey of the rest of her body. Ports in the spine, ports in the spine, heads, shoulders, knees and toes. She can still dance, at least. If they let her. Sometimes she's not allowed. It's a rule. No touching guns, no dancing with knives unless your partner will hurt you. The man from the far-away sky is not going to hurt her.

River nods. The plan makes sense. Keep the blood where it belongs. She pulls her gown tight against her back and winces. It stings. Rings of fire around the metal. Like a welder.

He wants to suggest a hospital, but given her reaction to where she just came from, that might not be best. "Somewhere calm, then, and quiet. I can get a friend to look you over and make sure you're not going to get any scars." A friend who is a doctor, but still a friend.

Still, if they're going to go anywhere, this is hardly appropriate attire, even if the weather's warming up. Malcolm steps away, carefully, as if she might dart off like a rabbit into traffic, and moves back to a little cafe nearby. And pulls a tablecloth right off. So bill him, whatever, he can pay for a bloody tablecloth. He drapes it over her back, and there now, now she won't be inadvertently flashing anyone or being too self-conscious about any injuries or her ports or any skin hanging out. "I don't suppose you know where they assigned you living quarters."

The tablecloth is scratchy, but it's nice. Reminds her of her clothes on the ship. Some of them were Kaylee's, but she gave them to River. That was a change, too. A nice one. River has to remind herself that change can be good. She wonders if cells get scared before they divide. Probably. She can't feel it, though.

River shakes her head. "The man in the screen knew but he knows to much, too much there's something they're not telling us, it's twenty questions but no one can hear you ask." That's why she had to run. Secrets kill.

"There's a lot they don't tell us," he agrees. "Or a lot they try to gloss over." It's all about control with these people. A magic trick. Misdirection and smoke and mirrors to keep everyone docile. She hasn't got any shoes. A cab, then. He can call a cab for them.

"What's your name?" Start with the basics.

River shakes her head. "Can't tell." They'll come for her if she tells. They can hear from far, far away. Fox ears. They'll come. They'll bring the blue hands they'll bring the doctors she can't go back she can't.

River bites her lip. He wants a name. He gave her a tablecloth so he should get a name. They used to call her little mouse, before. That'll do. Won't use her brother's nickname. That's only for him. "I used to be Little Mouse."

"All right." Whether she's unstable or paranoid or both, he can work with it. "I'm Malcolm." He's since broken himself of introducing himself in a militaristic style. Although occasionally reflex makes him want to.

"Is it all right if I bring you to my place so you're somewhere inside? I'll lend you...something. All men at the house, I'm afraid, and the other two are larger than I am." Unless North kept anything of Theta's. "Cup of tea and some food while we wait for Whiskey to come look at your back, does that sound good?"

Both. She is most definitely both. Paranoid because she's unstable. They're looking for her. Can't let the test subject get away. She's truant now, bad girl, bad girl, if they find her they'll put her in the chair, take moving away from her. They can do that. They can take it all. She's learned this. She's very smart.

Men are okay. This one is okay, she thinks. Can't smile right, but neither can she. "No masks?" She has to check. Can't go back to the doctor's masks and the lab coats and the rubber gloves. Same stuff as balloons, except they don't fly away.

"No masks." Maybe gloves for sterility's sake, but that's up to the doctor. They're a bit more advanced here, anyway.

So it's probably a very good thing he wasn't out with his holographic face today, to blend in and disappear with the crowd. "You'll get to make everyone out. No hiding."

No hiding. Good. They wanted to hide the program, what they were doing, from her. From themselves. If you have a different face then you're not the one doing the cutting, it's someone else. They were all someone else there, in that too-bright room with the light that buzzed in time with the machines. Truth light. A very personal interrogation.

River stands, still holding the tablecloth close. Underneath the cacophony of sounds and stimulus and emotion that she can't ignore there's a rational part that tells her this is all she's got now. Gotta go along, at least for now. She can run if she finds out he's lying.

"Who's Whiskey?" Has to check. Strange-smile man--Malcom--might be putting his trust in the wrong people. She did that, once, probably. It's harder to pick apart the older memories.

( MEMES ) TEST DRIVE >> 8

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