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

[hasabugtoo]

Elliot is used to beating the computer, see. He will figure this out.

He will.

To that comment, though, he smiles, just a little.

He likes the idea of being a black hole. So, he writes back, fingers flying,

>screw you.

[avemachina]

> sorry, you're not my type :)

It should be easy for Elliott to see that a new piece of programming is trying to worm its way onto his PDC-- something that doesn't match the usual look of code in the Complex, but is more similar to what he'd have been used to seeing back home in the early 2000's.

It's a lightweight module that upon further inspection prior to installation should point him to one last piece of tracking left. The remnant of an old virus that matches the style of the code he just received. If he wants to disappear, Root's happy to risk her place in Nameless to gain even a modicum of his trust by pointing out what's recognizably her module on his device.

> go ahead. keep being a black hole.
> but just remember, nothing is still trackable in a sea of everything.

[hasabugtoo]

Ah.

Really, Elliot feels like an idiot not realizing that before.

Of course.

He tries a few coding changes, seeing if they'll take, not trying, as he had before, to remove all sign of him, but to point to a different someone. No longer a black hole but a mirror reflecting back at a different face.

So, he'll test that coding by replying

> who are you?

Maybe the source of his message looks different now, maybe it doesn't.

[avemachina]

There are far too few people in Alpha who have the kinds of talents Elliott has. His new heading is good-- any flags that had been in the process of popping up on his trail will pass right over him, now.

"Call me Root."

Her voice is quiet, on the higher register of alto in the near-whisper. Root stands, leaning against the cold metal of the wall in a RED's uniform, hip jutting out with confidence but lacking her usual sing-song tone. There's a small bit drill in one hand and a janky looking almost-PDC in the other. Maybe it's stupid to be this bold, but lately she feels like she's running out of time to complete her fool's errand.

"The cameras in this block will be down for another minute."

[hasabugtoo]

"Jesus fuck," he mutters. Someone suddenly showing up in his room? That never ends well in his experience.

He stands, then, his back to the wall, facing her. "How did you get in here?" he asks, taking her in, all of her, but most especially the tool.

What kind of name is Root? Almost immediately, Elliot doesn't trust her. Why should he? Hackers are notoriously secretive and independent. He is no exception and if she is a hacker and she's here? She wants something.

His first thought with the cameras being down is to run.

[avemachina]

Scratch at it, Elliott. Root access.

/

She shrugs. "Everything's communal at this level. Your roommates are just out trying to look normal."

She pockets her device, and folds her arms to let the drill dangle at her elbow. But she doesn't move, and spends more time looking at the pieces of tech Elliott went to town on than watching him. He'd done a precise job, where most people simply went for as much destruction as they could.

He reminds her of a couple of the other Specials. Already paranoid, extremely sullen; she wonders if this was a mistake. Maybe he would do better completely off the grid.

"Your memories are real. Don't listen to that glitch crap."

[hasabugtoo]

If she's a ... what ... a personification of the system? ... then she's not real.

Too many people - things - Elliot has interacted with aren't real.

But then, he's crazy.

He watches Root with wide-eyes; it feels like his heart is beating too fast and too hard. He doesn't like it here.

She looks like she knows what he's been doing, and worse yet, like she knows how he did it. He could do better off the grid, or in the dark corners of it, anyway.

"What do you normally look like?" he asks, zeroing in on what he can best understand, or at least deal with at the moment.

[avemachina]

Her eyebrows furrow for a moment in reaction to the question. She assumes he's referring to her comment about his roommates, and shrugs again. Root does a lot of shrugging.

"I'm ORANGE clearance, but it clashes with my complexion. Back-- wherever I come from, I was more fond of black." Everything's always a little bit of a joke-- makes it easier to swallow how vastly wrong everything about the world is, now. Root gestures to her coveralls, to the black tank top underneath them. She then nods back at Elliott; happy for now to have the conversation he'd like to have.

"What about you?"

[hasabugtoo]

"I'm - " he gestures to the clothing he's been given. Whatever level that is.

Elliot prefers black too. He misses his hoody like he misses a body part.

"Where are you from?"

Normally, he's not good at small talk. Here, though, trapped as they all are, he isn't sure he has a choice.

[avemachina]

"New York, 2016." With how panicked he looks, it's probably best not to answer as glibly as she might otherwise. 'From the data on a server I can't find' is a little much for a newbie. She knows, she's made the mistake of talking about the clones too fast before.

Root forgets that not everyone is OK with the idea that down to their DNA, people are just code. Poorly-written, half-compounded, glitching out all over each other. But it gives her a sense of clarity and calm. Maybe she's crazy too.

"We're all from the past. Some further than others, but-- we're not glitches. Not the way the natives here want everyone to believe, anyway."

[hasabugtoo]

It probably wouldn't surprise Elliot to find out that he's all code. It would be reassuring, really. Of course, he knows about DNA and all that.

"New York," he says, honing in on that. 2015 for him, though. He coughs up info, simply because that's what polite people do and he's not sure that it matters either way. "I'm from there, too."