![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
FINAL TDM.
● ● ● T D M . 10
The words ring in your ears as in the darkness of your dream, a copper glow pulses, slowly enveloping you. It is not a feeling of comfort that surrounds you, though — as a distorted voice whispers in your ear, you feel it: cold dread, and a sudden certainty that everything is about to be irrevocably changed.
It is to this daunting realization that you wake, and as your heart slows into something resembling a normal tempo, you notice something you should have noticed immediately: you are not in your bed.
1.0 White walls, clinical yet clean, sparsely-furnished rooms. You may wake in one of three rooms: a room with only one bed, a room with two beds, or a room with four beds. Those waking up in rooms with more than one bed notice that they are very much not alone. Perhaps the other occupants of the room are still sleeping, dreaming the same dream as you just did, or a regular one after returning to the station just a few days ago … or perhaps you wake to the other person in the room watching you.
What you do is entirely up to you: yell in surprise when you wake to someone staring at you? Or maybe you’ll try to sneak away before anyone notices you...
2.0 Those with life-threatening injuries find themselves awakening in the infirmary, in a regular hospital bed. Most of their injuries have been treated, and any lingering illnesses or conditions will have designated medicine bottles on the table next to the bed.
White curtains surround the bed on both sides, giving an illusion of privacy. But is that a rustling sound you hear? Some footsteps? Perhaps you’re not the only one in need of some medical attention... or you've attracted the attention of those with experience in medical aid, and they rush to your bedside, surprised about this sudden new patient.
It is not just for your injuries that you may want some company, but also for leaving the infirmary — you can’t stay there forever, after all, and will have to make your way through the hallways of the station to the living quarters, and claim a room and a bed there.
Once you’re up, you may notice there’s something in your ear: an earpiece that, when you become aware of it, quickly runs you through the instructions for how to use the network, a recorded message by a female voice that explains exactly why you’re here… and leaves you with a map of the station.
So what else is there to do but to explore? Best get to know what is now your new home.
3.0 When trying to decide where yo go, you may find your way to the armory, where you can try to work the machine there to make yourself a weapon — perhaps to replace one that didn’t come with you to the station… or maybe you want to be prepared for the future. The recently-returned team members will surely recommend having a functional weapon with you.
4.0 After you’ve exhausted yourself training, it’s time to grab a bite. For that, you should head to the kitchen, which is equipped with all the basic appliances you might need, and ingredients for most regular dishes.
5.0 A welcome reprieve to the cold, dark space that surrounds the characters can be found in the sunlight room. A skillful illusion surrounds anyone who steps inside the room: you can hear the trilling of birds, feel a light breeze caress your skin as you walk through a grass field. The illusion has been programmed to reflect the seasons — the leaves in the trees are currently bright with all the colours of autumn: orange and red and yellow; and the air is crisp and clean. If you follow the path, you'll be led to a bridge rising over a sparkling, babbling brook, a few fallen leaves floating on the water and falling around you like very bright raindrops.
With an illusion so authentic it may leave you longing for a nice glass of ice-cold lemonade, it is easy to forget you are in space at all. Perhaps that gives you comfort, or just makes you miss the real nature all the more.
6.0 If you’d rather choose tinkering over nature, the lab is guaranteed to provide you with some entertainment. Glass vials and jars of chemicals sit on shelves in a surprisingly beautiful display of colour on one side of the room, while the other side of the room contains stacks of boxes containing assorted equipment: cords, bolts, panels, buttons, gears, gadgets, gizmos, and thingamabobs. The downside is that the parts available seem to have no apparent method to their sorting. So get digging, and you may just find exactly what you need to make what you’ve always wanted to make!
7.0 As you wander back towards the common areas, you may notice a room off to the side. The room takes up a chunk of the common area, and on its unassuming door is a little plaque that reads, 'The Ximusic room'. Should you enter, you will find a sound-proofed practice room that contains — yes, you guessed it, band equipment that even the most musically inclined should be satisfied with. So pick up an instrument, saunter up to the microphone to belt out your favourite tunes, or take a seat at the side of the room and enjoy others' playing.
8.0 If it’s items you’re lacking, though, some time after your arrival, the earpiece alerts you to a new message.
As you make your way to the platform, you'll see there is nothing amiss in the neat piles of items on it. There’s clothes, shoes, dishware, skincare, books… even a couple of CDs, and a few cute stuffed animals. So sort through what there is and grab what you want, before someone else does!
Maybe you have taken the warning to be ready seriously, or maybe you’ve heard someone mention the simulation room and want to see what the fuss is all about — whatever the reason for your walking into the room, the first few moments don’t seem too exciting. It isn’t until there’s another person in the room with you that the door suddenly slides shut, and the scenery starts to change.
7.0 Simulation on the Fritz: However, what it changes to is not one of the simulated missions. Instead, the room draws on its occupants. A little flash of memory here, a familiar scene there — the room molds itself after what one (or both) of the people in it know, perhaps a place they’re familiar with: the university library you used to spend hours and hours in studying, or the castle you’ve been trying all your life to conquer.
Or perhaps the room is torn between which person’s memories to draw on, and it ends up producing a strange mix of both: a busy street surrounded by lush forest instead of buildings, or a spaceship sailing on open sea.
As there is no simulated mission, there is no completing it to get out… so look for the little things that are not quite right in the simulation: a shimmer in the air, a grey brick in a red wall — a token of sorts. Finding it will make the simulation die down around you as the room goes dark again.
8.0 Mission — An Open Door: As the simulation starts, the scene that unfolds around you is a gilded hallway. It stretches on and on behind you and in front of you; along its sides, there are countless doors. Some are lavishly decorated, some made of pure gold, some of wood; some are decayed, looking like they might fall apart by mere touch; after a heavily reinforced door comes a door made of frosted glass… and so on.
But the longer you stand in place, the more you start to feel a sense of urgency: you must keep moving… you must find it. The orb. It’s there, behind one of the doors. All you have to do is choose which one to open.
Oh, you can open as many as you want, but be careful: you never know what is lurking behind them. It may be that you open one and step into a room that is nothing but air; it may be you unleash a horde of hungry monsters. Or perhaps you luck out and get a room that is just a room, with lavish couches and plush pillows, and maybe some grapes and apples set in a bowl in the middle of a gold-decorated table.
It’s not just the orb that you need to find, though... because just like in real missions, you receive a message that tells you your task — one that you have to complete, if you want the orb to help you in your quest to undo your regret.
● ● ●
N O T E: Additionally, there are three personal tasks provided to each character as they enter the simulation. In-game, each character will be given one task. For the purposes of the test drive, we’re leaving it to players to pick a task for their character and run with it.
A Tell someone what you are most ashamed of.
B Let a teammate get injured during the mission.
C Steal something from one of the rooms.
F Y I
• TDM threads can be used as samples for apps. In fact, we encourage it!
• Reserves are now open!
• Apps open September 26.
• For any questions regarding TDM, please direct them here. For questions about the game, please refer to the FAQ.
Have a clue about the upcoming mission—
when you only see the typos too late. sorry!
May I?
[She juts her chin toward the weapons, polite enough not to grab any without asking, but still curious. She recognizes some of the designs from the fabrication machine, but not all of them.]
you're fine!
[Murderbot even takes a further step back, well aware that its presence can be slightly intimidating, even to a person who is apparently earning a high response from its threat assessment module.]
Three are projectile weapons. Standard. Armor piercing. Non-lethal. [Murderbot points to each weapon as it mentions them. The non-lethal one might not be necessary, since the energy weapons function the same depending on the setting, but sometimes it can't access those.
Which is what the fourth weapon is also for.] The last one is an energy weapon, the strength can be modified.
[It should potentially consider something with longer range, but SecUnits are designed for up close combat, and its long range weapons modules are out of date.]
no subject
That would mean showing a weakness.
She nods along with the explanation, picking up the non-lethal option. Despite the fact it's meant to be a safer alternative, she holds it carefully, respectful of the amount of damage something like that can still do, especially at close range. She goes through the motions with it, seeing how it fits in her hand, how much it weighs, checks the chamber.]
Do you have a name, or do people just call you SecUnit?
[Conversationally.]
I'm Natasha. Natasha Romanoff.
no subject
You can call me SecUnit.
[Natasha is smart; Murderbot really only answered half that question, because it finds that telling humans my name is private only leads to them wanting to know what the name is.]
I could send you my feed address, but you wouldn't understand it.
[This is a joke.]
no subject
[The fact the whole question wasn't answer does not go unnoticed, but as someone who's half more questions than she can remember, she can take the hint.
The joke goes over her head, mostly. Not entirely. She can tell it's meant to be a joke, so that's something, and she can gather it's at her expense.
But the punchline, she's pretty sure she would need more context for, so she shrugs it off.]
You're probably right about that, anyway. Is it a construct thing?
no subject
Fortunately it only takes a second, since its processing power is so high.]
Constructs and bots. Like DNA and an IP address.
[Far more complex than an IP address, but it conveys similar information.]
no subject
[Both concepts she's very familiar with, even if she knows significantly more about one than the other.
She puts the weapon she was examining down, stepping back from the collection to let Murderbot get back to its work.]
Reasonable assumption I wouldn't be able to pronounce that.
no subject
This is just information. The same as explaining the plot of Sanctuary Moon to ART.]
Don't feel bad, even augmented humans can't.
[This is also kind of a joke, in that Murderbot doesn't think Natasha actually feels bad about it.]
Have you been on this station long?
[Talking to humans is hard, but Murderbot is...... trying.]
no subject
She'd worry about the governor module if she knew about it, but for the time being she'll deal with what's in front of her and what she knows about.]
Over a year. Not as long as some people. There are still a few of us around who've been here for over two years—but long enough to answer most questions, if there's something you can't dig up in the records.
no subject
Things Murderbot is not good at: modulating its expression.
So Natasha gets to see a look of mild distress cross Muderbot's face at the mention of two years; it even glances around at the walls, as if to say two years stuck in this??? It knows there are missions, but still.]
What do you do when you aren't on a mission?
[Please god let there be TV.]
no subject
Her brows draw together in concern, but eases somewhat when the next question is about free time. She can admit there's a lot of it....
Personally? Workout a lot, drink more than is probably advisable and people watch. Recently I've started learning how to knit.
[Which is to say, it's largely unstructured.]
There's usually a movie night between missions, and there's some books floating around... If you ever wanted to pick up a hobby, now is a good time.
no subject
SecUnits don't have hobbies.
[This is stated as a simple fact, because aside from Murderbot (and now Three, it supposes) no SecUnits have the freedom to have hobbies. It wouldn't even know where to start. This is like Mensah telling it to learn something all over again.]
Is the media available to download? My internal storage was... temporarily corrupted recently.
[That's a funny way of saying 'my entire system was nearly overrun by an alien computer virus'.]
no subject
If it's something SecUnits can have and are inclined to, boredom will probably make the same point soon enough.]
Some of it might be? I've seen more physical media here than I have in about a decade. I haven't really tried.
[And here she thought she could be helpful.]
You could ask Viveca. She's pretty good at hooking people up with things if they really want it—movies, shows... what have you.
[She leaves anime porn unsaid, because she really wishes she didn't know about that one and sort of feels bad for Viv that Dean even asked.]
no subject
Are you referring to print books? I've never seen one.
[Can a Murderbot sound a tiny bit excited? Yes. There are a lot of new things to experience in the universe, and it turns out a lot of them kind of suck? But sometimes there are good ones, like reading a physical book! Made out of paper! It would take forever compared to downloading text, but apparently there's plenty of time here.]
Viveca is the station's control system?
[Sorry Viv, Murderbot is bringing its own biases into this situation.]
no subject
[At least in Natasha's very human opinion.]
Also some DVDs and a few VHS tapes, but I don't know that those add to the experience the same way.
[A tape player eating your VHS is decidedly less charming than handling a physical book.]
Viv is... complicated. But yeah, that's the short version.
no subject
[If anything, being able to watch media on a screen is a fun treat for Murderbot, since mostly it just watches things internally.
And while books is books, unfortunately 'DVD' and 'VHS' are lost to time, and it doesn't care enough to look it up, just rolling with the assumption that Nat is talking about some kind of media.]
My recent experiences with control systems has not been positive.
[Not saying it doesn't trust Viv but..... it doesn't trust Viv.]
no subject
It's a fair question.]
Not exactly. I have a soft spot in my heart for physical copies, at least in some circumstances.
[Not unrelated to physical files and data since it can't be hacked and it's easier to destroy completely. You also don't need any power or network access to make use of it.
None of that applies to entertainment media, though.]
Maybe a little old-fashioned of me.
no subject
Print books have been uncommon for centuries. [Murderbot had to do some math on that, but fortunately it can do math in nanoseconds.] You're very old-fashioned.
[Local construct attempts to make another joke.]
no subject
I'd be interested in hearing what you think of them, once you've had the chance to check out a few.
[She sort of suspects they'll be less than completely enchanting, but the important part is the invitation to chat again.]
no subject
It isn't entirely sure what to make of the invitation, but at least it knows that it's there.]
Alright.
[Succinct, but not short. It's just awkwardness more than anything.]
I could send some of the media I have to you. If you'd like.
[Baby steps.]
no subject
[Natasha, for her part, seems determined not to make this weird. She knows exactly 0 about SecUnits, but this one has made a good first impression.
She does intend to do the same.]
As previously established, we have a lot of downtime. What kind of media do you have?
[Is it wrong to hope it's highly unrealistic?]
no subject
Mostly serials. Episodic media. [The term 'television' likely fell out of use a long time ago.] I like adventure serials, and dramas. My — friend likes the ones about space exploration, so I have those.
[Oh. Something occurs to Murderbot.]
They are not an accurate representation of reality.
[In case Natasha is thinking it'll show what life is like in the future.]
no subject
[Smiling, then shrugging and glancing around the room pointedly. She means it to indicate the whole of the station, not just the armory.]
If it's too realistic, it starts to feel a little too much like work.
[And work makes it less fun. She can't help but find calling them serial kind of interesting. Apparently if things get enough out of date, they come all the way back around.]
I wouldn't mind some adventure serials. That sounds fun.