tdm 20

[savmods]

test drive meme

Ingress travel can be disorienting. Your trip? More than most. Your body may experience several sensations at once: being pushed forward as if a hand is resting on your back, momentary and startling blindness, a gentle ringing in your head. A voice, just out of hearing, calling a name you think is yours. You may have difficulty discerning whether it is hot or cold, but where you have been prodded is noticeably warmer than the rest of you. Some may suffer from dizziness while others are perfectly fine. You catch a glimpse of a space filled with a soft cerulean light, a feeling of dankness despite the glow around you. Regardless of your current state, however, the stress of initial Ingress travel forces your body into unconsciousness.

Waking up is another story. Or is it?

Certainly, it's not where you are now.

---

sleep, perchance to...

You're dreaming.

You have to be. Certainly, you don't remember arriving in this strange, dim forest of your own accord. Gnarled trees form a solid barrier and a thin cage blocking the sky, silvery light illuminating the ground below in patchwork on all sides. The path beneath you seems to stretch out ahead and back for an eternity, though a light (an exit?) can be seen in the distance. Movement too, down the myriad array of branching side roads.

If you hurry, you can catch up.

* Take the Path:

No matter how quickly you travel, you won't ever reach that glow of light on the horizon. You may, however, encounter other walkers in the night. Friends, foes, strangers. Whoever is sharing your dreaming vigil, you might be grateful for the company. Certainly it's better than the feeling you get traveling alone: a prickle of paranoia and the sense that something just past view is watching.

* Less Traveled By:

The roads lead nowhere. The prickle at the back of your neck hasn't ceased. They're out there; they're watching you, and it's infuriating. But you can stop them. You can break free of it all.

The trees are firm and unyielding, but eventually, your efforts force them to give way. Through cut limbs and snapped branches, magic or agility or sheer, brute strength, you make a hole large enough to crawl through. And just as quickly, you realize your mistake.

The trees aren't there to keep you in.

Inky darkness roils from the gap between the paths, looking to devour you. If you run, it follows. If you hide, it seeks. It calls in voices only you can hear: your friends and your tormentors, the cries of everyone you've left behind. Find help to face your nightmares, or be consumed by them.

* All the Difference:

The light in the distance might still be out of reach, but through long searching, you've found a different sort of exit. Fog chokes off this opening between the trees, thick and obscuring. One step into the mist, and you lose all sight of anything outside it.

Two steps? Three? Ten? You're not sure how many it took before the world around you began to change. Perhaps you've found yourself in someone's worst moments. Perhaps you've landed in a fantasy. Perhaps this is your dream, with a stranger's face or voice intruding. Either way, you'll have to work together to get out.

---

OUT OF CHARACTER INFO

FAQ | LOCATIONS | RESERVES | APPLICATIONS | NAVIGATION

For mature or graphic content, please label.For questions, please direct them to the FAQ or the Feedback page.

Please Note: due to the chaotic nature of upcoming events, players who intend to preserve their threads for game use should not assume they were given the usual introduction to Thisavrou at the Ingress Complex. The above scenarios are, however, valid as game canon.

As always, be kind and have fun!

Comments

[gridfather]

His chin dropped, his eyes closed, he breathed in deep the air-that-wasn't-air, seeking his center. What he got instead, knocking on the back of his skull, was that sure sense he wasn't alone in the city full of people anymore.

The rain and the flowers and the programs just. Stopped. Just like that, a Pause on the Grid. The only other sound's the susurrus of cloth, and the softest clink of malas on his wrist.

"Your timing is just terrible, man." Silhouetted by light, a haloed saint against this weird, mystic backdrop, Flynn looked askance at Clu. "Lemme guess." He spread his hands, and smiled grimly. "My dying subconscious?"

[a_perfect_end]

It's the first they've seen each other in...

And his timing is terrible?

Maybe.

None of this is real, anyway, though the world stops in its tracks as its Maker holds his breath, as he lets it out again. Clu blinks twice and moves, conscious, deliberate, inclining his head to leave no trace of the fact that he, too, stopped moving for just an instant, just when Flynn was thinking of it.

"Dying?" Neat and wry through his teeth. "You know something I don't, old man?"

What an awful idea. Better to dismiss it. Ideas collide in dreams, unpredictable, disorganized.

"So, is this--" wave of the hand, fingers aflicker, "this is you? Isn't it a little, mmm," adjective: "pastoral?"

[gridfather]

"Plenty." Quick, but not hard; genial almost, the softest hint of an old, playful note over a fearlessness that is absent of any boast. The world continues moving, a static burst lancing through the swirl of petals. It finds its echo in an electric rill tracing his spine, and Flynn briefly drags his gaze from Clu to squint at the sky. Huh.

Programs continue to skirt User and SysAdmin alike, as if they are simply obstacles in the street.

Flynn rolls a shoulder in a shrug- what's wrong with pastoral? -but offers a shake of his head. The mist is coming on harder now, a steady rain that drips from the hem of his dark robe and that lit hood. "Not this time, man."

As if on cue, the petals happen to freeze again. They start and stop, stiff jumps with a distinct drop in their frame rate, a pixelated mess that seems to grab the very sky around it- a sudden shower of black voxels surprise him into taking a step back, and this time Flynn reaches out to pull at the code itself. All right, enough mess.