July/August Test Drive Meme

[computerized]

Alpha Complex Test Drive Meme

Alpha Complex opened Sunday, July 31st. Please feel free to take a Test Drive to see if the environment would suit your character! All potential players are welcome.

It may be your first day in Alpha Complex or your hundredth, either way, you are in serious trouble.

In a bid to win sympathy and new recruits, the Frankenstein Destroyers - a secret society within Alpha who sees all bots as enemies, has uploaded a virus that is affecting all bots within the complex.

For the next twenty four hours, every bot you see will be the enemy. Your assigned Personal Digital Companion(PDC), a personal communication device, has turned on you and is intentionally misfiring your texts, phone calls and videos. The Bouncy Bubble Beverage machine in the cafeteria is shooting out bottles at passers by at high speeds. The high tech vacuum cleaner used to vacuum your clearance level's common room is attempting to suck up everything in sight. Elevators are trying to coerce people to climb out, so they can behead them. That adorable Petbot you purchased last week is trying to tear your throat out. That Guardbot from the Armed Services Sector is attempting to take out citizens, one by one. Autocars are driving themselves, right onto sidewalks and through windows...

Will you fight for your right to exist or hole up somewhere safe until the chaos passes?

Do not fear, citizen! The Computer and it's high advisors are working to restore order.

In the meantime, be safe and beware of bots and traitors!


Please post your character name and fandom in the subject line.
Mingle Together. Explore Together. Adventure Together.
Premise | Setting Information | New Arrival Introduction

Comments

[namegenerator]

The sudden entry and subsequent slam of the door followed by the incessant metallic barking on the other side of it shocks Cisco into attention. He looks up at the bespectacled blonde and recognizes her just as she registers recognition of him.

"Felicity?" he asks, his voice talking over hers before he can stop it. Getting to his feet, Cisco huffs incredulous relief. It's good to see a familiar face, even if…is she, though? Or is she just a figment of his imagination. This glitch crap is so confusing.

"Hey! I didn't know you were here," he adds, pushing the thought away. She seems to know him, so maybe she's not just some hot tech nerd he made up as an imaginary girlfriend or something. Oh God, he's not that pathetic, is he? Please say he isn't that guy, now...

[smoak]

He barely gets to finish his sentence before she's dashes in for a hug. "It is so good to see you! Anyone really, that I recognize at all."

She pulls back, hands still on his shoulders, so she can look him in the eye. "Wait. I didn't mean it like- like I'm not glad to see you. I am glad to see you." Another robot bark from outside the door causes Felicity to wince.

She never believed this glitch theory. What she did worry about however, was the robots. Computers weren't supposed to fight back. Humans used computers to fight back, sure. But computers themselves? This was not how they're supposed to work.

[namegenerator]

"Oh, okay. All right," Cisco says reflexively, hugging her back, "that happened. Hey, it's okay, we're gonna be fine. We're two of the smartest people I know," he assures her. And yeah, that little addendum stings a little, but he smiles, shaking his head anyway when she explains after pulling out of the hug.

His head turns a little, reflexively, at the metallic bark outside the door. "It's cool, Felicity, I got you. I'm glad to see you, too." Just like she'd probably rather he be Oliver, he'd really rather she be Caitlin, but he's still happy to see her; he gets it.

"Are you new? I just got here. Or...just regenerated...or...you know, whatever happens, I'm still a little fuzzy on that whole thing," he admits.

[smoak]

She smiles at "smartest people I know," which makes her feel extra bad for how those words came out. So it makes her cling onto Cisco's shoulders a little longer than normal, her lips forming a small frown. But when he asks her about just getting here, she perks up.

"Yeah, I guess 'new' is what they'd tell us we were, isn't it? Once I realized no one was going to point a gun at me until I signed ... I may have subjected myself to a few unnecessary additional hours of ... brainwashing." She rolled her eyes at the last part. "Cisco, you don't believe them do you?"

[namegenerator]

Felicity doesn't buy it. That speaks volumes to Cisco, actually, because he trusts her opinion. She really is one of the smartest people he knows — at least he thinks she is; he's trying to reprogram himself in the midst of the conversation. Back to the way he used to think — and if she doesn't believe the orientation, then he probably shouldn't, either.

"...well, I did, but now you're here and you're clearly not a glitch, so..." he admits, his voice trailing off a little. "It doesn't make sense for a 'glitch' to show up and recognize me, so I guess not so much anymore," he finishes.

[smoak]

"I'd usually defer to Caitlin on this, but my best guess is that yes, if we're waking up in some ... futuristic dystopia, that cloning our bodies would be the easiest part of the process. But cloning all of our memories? There's no way they could have access to that much information."

She gives him a gentle squeeze.

"And it's not as if I have one or two misplaced memories and an otherwise blank slate. I remember so much Cisco, and not just about people. About computers and how to use them. If I can get my hands on her servers, oh you just wait."

sorry about the delay!

[namegenerator]

She remembers Caitlin, too; Caitlin who, until right then with Felicity's mention, Cisco assumes that he'd invented as a way to have some sort of strong bond with a sibling to replace the one he didn't have with his brother. He did have a brother. Caitlin was real. Felicity is real. This is real...and messed up.

"Man, having Barry here right now would be really convenient…" he mutters, half to himself and half as a test to see if Barry — if the Flash — is a memory or a glitch. Which parts are real and which are manufactured? Now he's got to sort through everything and pick his entire brain apart before he can put it back together. Crap, he should've just followed his initial instincts and pretended he believed. Now he's allowed himself to be subjected to so much brainwashing that, even though his gut tells him Felicity is right and it's all memories, part of him still thinks there could be pieces that really don't belong to him, and it'll be better to isolate and then forget them than to mix them up with the real memories.

"All right, well...we don't need Caitlin and Barry to be Team Genius, right? So, temporarily setting Teams Arrow and Flash on the backburner, let's do our own thing and find you those servers, then," he says, pulling back from her and starting toward the door, reaching a hand to the knob.

Another metallic bark, this time coupled with the awkward thumping of the freaking thing jumping at the door to be let in, stops him in his tracks. Cisco reaches that same hand up to scratch the back of his head and turns back to her with a sheepish smile. "Later. We should, you know, plan first. Right? Right. We should create a plan before we execute a non-existent one," he excuses his forgetfulness and fear of the Petbot casually.

[smoak]

There's a moment, when Cisco mentions Barry, that Felicity's eyes light up, but she doesn't say anything. Instead, she just listens, and nods, until Cisco seems to have a sudden surge of courage and wants to open the door. "Wait-."

And then the dog barks, throws itself against the door, and Cisco's hand is suddenly back behind his head.

"Right. Absolutely. We should totally create a plan. Especially before trying to leave this room."

Once the door is locked, she pulls Cisco away from it, towards one of the desks. Then, she takes out her PDC. "Whatever is going on, I'm sure that both Barry and Oliver are already looking for us. Right now, step one is making this stupid thing work again. Maybe I can hack it to send a message to the outside. Do you have any idea why it suddenly started glitching in the first place?"

[namegenerator]

At least she's willing to let that slide without picking on him. Score one for Felicity.

"Right," he agrees again, leaning against the desk and looking back at her as she takes out the PDC. He's still really mad at his and the frustration instantly shows on his face.

Shaking his head, Cisco frowns. "It was like that when I got here, I have no idea. What if it's a trap to test you and you get caught hacking the Computer?" he asks. "Not that I'm saying no or we shouldn't, just saying we should work that possibility into our plan so that we have a contingency, right?"

[smoak]

"If I get caught, we'll..." She's searching for an actually passable answer. "We'll...just say it was a glitch?" It's the first moment since she saw Cisco that she looks to him for advice. "Too...reckless?"

If hacking the PDCs were off-limits, Felicity didn't have a better plan. In fact, she didn't have any other plan.

[namegenerator]

Cisco's eyebrows lift as Felicity stalls, trying to come up with an answer. He looks doubtful when he gets one. "I...yeah, that's probably really risky..."

He doesn't think that they have to give up on that plan, they just have to rework it.

"You know how to cover your tracks, though, right? I mean, when you're hacking into things you're not supposed to be getting access to, you can cover your tracks with proxies, right? Or whatever? God, it's been a long time since I've done any of that sort of stuff..." He can't even remember if that's the right terminology; he's been building things too long and he's lost his touch with the slang in the world of hackers.

[smoak]

She looks at him blankly for a moment, before she chuckles. God it was good to have him here with her.

"Against another hacker, I have no doubt that I can cover my tracks." Felicity glances back at her PDC. "I've just never gone against the computer itself. If it has the ability to constantly monitor activity from these devices, then I don't know how I could get far without getting shut down..."

Another series of barks comes from outside the door. When Felicity hears them, her eyes suddenly lock onto Cisco's.

"Oh my god. I have an idea." But neither of them was going to like the first part. "We need to use the robodog."

Okay Felicity, start from the beginning. Explain your whole idea.

"We need to distract the Computer. If multiple devices all over the Complex are being hacked, the Computer will eventually shut them all down. BUT, it might seem like a second system-wide malfunction, instead of a particular hack on a particular device." Namely, their PDCs. "If we capture that dog, and if you disassemble it and get me its microprocessor, I can re-program it to run around the complex and broadcast a virus to every bot it runs past."

A beat, and a gulp.

"But we have to catch that dog first. Before it bites either one of us."

[namegenerator]

Cisco cocks his eyebrows and gives a little shrug as if to silently say "okay yeah, that's a good point," but he doesn't actually say that, instead opting for something slightly more optimistic.

"I mean...the Computer is really nothing more than a glorified hacker without the typical limitations of a human hacker, right? If you can—"

His words falter at the sound of the dog outside, but before he can get back on track, Felicity's saying she's got an idea and the last thing he wants to do is derail it by continuing his own thought. His expression goes from excited to completely put out in about 0.5 seconds.

She wants to use the dog? Oh man...

Though, that idea...that's...

"That's genius. Stop it, that's genius!" he exclaims, the grin returning. Look, how hard can it be to catch a robot dog that's already outside their door trying to get in?

"Okay, all right. That's easy. It wants to get in, right? So we let it in the room. We just...uh. Okay..."

He looks around the room as if in search of something to knock the damn thing off its feet because, look, it's a freaking robot. It's probably going to need a little help getting back upright; he doubts it'll be able to do it on its own right away.

Cisco grabs the little metal folding chair propped up against the wall. He's not sure what these people think one chair is going to be good for in a room that typically is meant to house five people, but he's not asking questions. "Get up on the bed. The top bunk," he tells her.

[smoak]

As soon as she sees him grin, she does so too. It also helps that he just said her idea was genius. Twice.

When he goes to grab the chair and tells her to climb to the top bunk, she nods and starts for the ladder. For the first time since she got here, Felicity's actually thankful that she was wearing a red jumpsuit with tennis shoes, instead of her usual designer dress and heels.

It takes her maybe 15 seconds to get to the bunk. "Okay Cisco. You got this." She's guessing that the plan here is to have the little robot try to go for her, and Cisco is going to valiantly whack it with the chair.

[namegenerator]

Cisco waits for Felicity to get situated so that she's out of the line of fire and he takes a second to register just how ridiculous and stupid they would sound and look right now to someone who didn't know what was going on.

And he laughs.

"Okay, here we go..." he says, reaching for the doorknob again and startling a little when it's almost like the goddamned thing knows, because it thumps itself against the door again. "All right, come at me, bro!"

The door flings open and Cisco steps aside to let the robot dog angrily rush into the room. Cisco kicks the door shut with one foot and by the time he manages it, the dog turns in place and starts rushing toward him.

"Not today, Robomutt," he grunts, and Cisco swings the folded metal chair with all of his might, slamming it into the robot with a loud metal clang, and hoping like hell that there was enough momentum behind the swing to knock the damn thing over. When it wobbles a little, he's not sure it's actually going to fall over, but it tips and drops onto its side, legs flailing uselessly. Cisco drops the chair and raises his arms over his head victoriously, looking over at Felicity. "He shoots, he scores!"

[smoak]

"Oh my god Cisco, you're amazing!" She's already on her way down as the little dog uselessly continues to flail its legs. "Was that your plan all along? To tip it to the side? Because it was brilliant."

The barks, while insistent, seem significantly less threatening now.

[namegenerator]

Cisco grins, puffing his chest out dramatically. "I do what I can, Felicity," he says in a comically low, smooth voice that is hardly his own, "I do what I can."

He looks down at the dog and shakes his head, rolling his eyes, and his voice returns to his own when he looks back up at Felicity. "Yeah, I used to have RC cars when I was a kid and the most obnoxious thing ever was when they'd hit something and tip over because they couldn't get back up no matter what you did with the controls. I was kinda hoping this guy would be the same way. Do your thang, girl," he says, smiling and gesturing down at the fallen beast with one arm.

[smoak]

She slides down onto the floor, wrapping her legs underneath her, and peering down at the control panel. Carefully, she pushes down on a small button towards the right hand side.

"I'm guessing that this will ..." The dog stops moving, with a little beep, boop, boop power-off sound. "...turn it off." She smiles. "YES. Now I just need a screwdriver or coin or something to get these little screws out. Though, I will say that you've earned every right to do the honors."

[namegenerator]

As Felicity moves, Cisco joins her, choosing to position himself in a crouch with one hand pressed against the floor between his feet to keep his balance. The problem that comes next is one he didn't actually consider. "Crap...uhhh..." he stalls, pushing himself back to his feet to look around the room. There's got to be something in here that she can use, because he doesn't have coins or a screwdriver.

Flat and strong, flat and strong...

"Crap, crap...do you see anything on your side of the room?" he asks, moving slowly, eyes darting around as he takes each step, looking for something that will work to unscrew the screws. Hell, he'll break something if he has to, he just has to find something that he thinks he can break that'll also work.