TEST DRIVE #2 - The Holodeck/Ten Forward

[tenforward_m]

Where were you a minute ago? Well, you aren't there anymore. Instead, you're standing in a very large, dark room lined with yellow. There are doors at either end of it.

Here's where things get a little choose your own adventure-y. You could:



1: Approach a console filled with buttons, located a few feet away. Press one, and it'll let you out of the room. Travel down a long hallway and you'll be in Ten Forward, the Enterprises' entertainment lounge. Have a drink, mingle and try to figure out why you're here.

OR

2: Maybe you just muttered some vague request under your breath. Maybe you wished aloud you were somewhere else. Or for help? If you did, might be in a fire station. Muttered something about killing whoever dumped you here? Surprise - you're in a slasher movie!

Though they're confusing, these visions feel about as real as they can be. And guess what - other people can experience those fantasies with you, as if they too were really there. How ever will you escape? Or do you want to?

[OOC: Welcome to the Holodeck! If you choose this option, whatever your character chooses to say out loud will cause a virtual reality program to load and play. While your character feels as if what they're experiencing and seeing is quite real, they're purely living through the latest and best in what he Enterprise has to offer in entertainment. Make sure to detail what your character's fantasy is, so that those threading with them will know how to react.

Open til next month's test drive!]

Comments

[morphitudinous]

"I haven't heard of them, honestly. But it sounds interesting."

He continues by looking up and frowning apologetically. "I'm sorry, that putty just caught my eye. I was wondering where you found it."

[electro_kinetic]

She isn't surprised he doesn't know them; he's not a student at Xavier's, and they...well. They don't get out a whole lot. "They're classmates of mine. Phoebe, Celeste, and Mindee Cuckoo."

As for the putty, she balls it up, kneading it a few times, and holds it up for him to see. "It's for cleaning things that don't need to get wet. Essentially it's viscoelastic liquid silicone with thixotropic agents mixed in," she says. "Great for electronics." Even simple ones like her gauntlets.

"Want to see it?"

[morphitudinous]

"And they could've brought us here?" Billy asks skeptically. That's strange. But what's even stranger is this wonderful new putty he's hearing all about.

"That's a brilliant idea, actually. I'd love to figure out how to replicate it when I return home."

[electro_kinetic]

"It's probably an illusion. Telepathic illusions feel and look and smell and everything else just like they're real. It's literally someone making your mind play a trick on you," Noriko says. "And I wouldn't put it past them."

Beat.

Okay, the home part didn't make sense. "You know they sell it, right?" Cue digging around in that messenger bag full of crap to pull out the jar.

[morphitudinous]

"They can make one this powerful? It's simulating a starship with hundreds of residents...we've only seen a few dozen, but still. And it's mimicked my friend perfectly. Honestly, this situation being real isn't far out of the realm of possibility."

Billy shakes his head and smiles at the possibility. "I suppose I missed it," he laughs. "It could be that it hasn't been invented yet, or maybe I never noticed and rigged up a complicated workaround. My special magnets and air pressure took a while, actually."

[electro_kinetic]

"...I wouldn't put it past them," she says cautiously. "But I didn't go anywhere, didn't walk through any weird portals or anything. I was in a hallway, and then I was somewhere else."

She holds up a hand, the tiniest shree of metal rubbing metal accompanying her fingers moving. "Magnets would never come off if they were powerful enough to clean these things up. And I don't want to have to disassemble them every time I have to clean them."

[morphitudinous]

"I've been tinkering with frequencies. Maybe even sonic cleaning---I'm always amazed at what a little experimentation can do."

Billy smiles, hopeful that this will be an interesting talk. "What we were told is that we're on a starship stranded in space, and that our appearance here is a space-time anomaly. I don't know if that's more or less believable to you."

[electro_kinetic]

"Sonic cleaning works pretty well, but it takes time, and doesn't often work with everything in every substance," she says. "Like these, they don't react so hot to sonic cleaning."

When Billy lets drop that they're on an actual starship, and are actually stranded, Noriko just stops and blinks. "Um." Oddly, this is not the first time she's heard of such a thing happening. She's been the cause of something similar herself, though she's pretty sure she didn't do it this time.

"Well. It's...yeah," she sighs.

[morphitudinous]

Billy notes this information with a happy nod. It feels great to actually learn something for once.

He rubs his temple when she seems to be lost for words. "It's wild, isn't it? They're not telling us how they're progressing with fixing the engine, and we could be lightyears away from our home planets. There's no easy teleportation across that kind of distance either."

[electro_kinetic]

"Have they at least narrowed down what the hell the problem is?" she asks.

[morphitudinous]

"If they have, I haven't heard. I only know that the chief engineer is running himself ragged trying to find a solution," he admits. "I'd love to help, but that's a line newcomers can't cross."

[electro_kinetic]

"Seriously? Quarantine, like it's our fault we just got dropped here. Because that's going to earn them friends."

[morphitudinous]

"They don't know why we were brought here, and they know some of us have superhuman powers. I can't blame them for being slightly cautious, but it's slowly driving me out of my mind."

Billy flops back against the chair, exhaling as he stares at the ceiling.

[electro_kinetic]

"Some of us, he says," Noriko laughs. "What do you think the metal opera gloves are for?"

[morphitudinous]

Billy turns his head slightly, surprised. "Metal opera gloves?"

[electro_kinetic]

Noriko just lifts her hands; they're both covered with metal gauntlets that extend from the fingertips to her elbows, articulated for her joints. "See?" she asks.

"I'm a mutant, I absorb electricity, redirect and channel it out as I choose. These let me regulate how much I end up getting so I don't kill everything electronic in the nearest hundred feet. Or, y'know, electrocute everyone in the room."

[morphitudinous]

Billy's eyes widen at the sight. Wow, how...striking. Certainly a useful power.

"Wow. Was it difficult to learn how to control it?"

[electro_kinetic]

Oh, Billy. Compared to the rest of her, the gloves are not the most striking thing.

"Yeah, it wasn't the most intuitive to figure out. But eventually, obviously, I did."

[morphitudinous]

"It's amazing," Billy gushes again, in awe of what she's accomplished. "So I guess you mastered working with electronics?"

[electro_kinetic]

"Uh, no," she laughs. "I still end up melting circuits from time to time. I mean, as far as knowing what path things will take, yeah, I'm almost never wrong. But sometimes i still let out the magic white smoke."

[morphitudinous]

Billy enjoys that mental picture. "I see. So...how are you feeling about the ship so far?"

Because that's the question he loves to ask. It says a lot about the people he meets, he thinks.

[electro_kinetic]

"Well. It's not where I anticipated being, and I...am not particularly happy about being stuck here when my team needs me at home, but. It's not like I can just pop back."

[morphitudinous]

"I feel the same about my friends," Billy confesses with a quick glance at his hands. Not that he can say it, but they're a team that needs to stick together too.

"But I'm hoping everyone can be civil enough to each other to at least make our shared predicament bearable. I've had fairly good luck with that so far."

[electro_kinetic]

"Clearly you have far more faith in people than I do. Being civil rarely happens with more than ten of them in the same place."

[morphitudinous]

"I guess we don't want to rock the boat because we're worried," Billy wonders aloud. "We're so far outside our normal situations that there's not much to do but privately panic. But I hope we can still cooperate---it's probably our best chance of fixing this mess."

If the people in charge would let them try to fix it, of course.