TDM - OCTOBER 2020

[robbies]

TEST DRIVE MEME - OCTOBER 2020

Everyone's entitled to one good scare.
CW: Violence, death, mouth trauma, vomiting, needles, razors

---

“Help me. Please, help me…”

A child’s voice, calling out for aid. There’s no rhyme or reason for when it comes to you. It’s so quiet, a whisper in the deepest, darkest corners of your mind. Were it not for the sharp, stabbing pain it pulls out of you, you could ignore it. You could even pretend it’s just your imagination.

It all happens so quickly and powerfully. Left in the dust, your brain struggles to process it all. Blacking out is the least it can do, but it’s also all it can do, and it does so before you even have a chance to fully register just how young the voice is, and how deeply, heartbreakingly lost it sounds.

When you finally awaken with your bare feet tangled in soft sheets, a layer of fuzzy fleece or slinky silk clinging to your body like another layer of skin, the sunlight pouring in from the window next to your bed momentarily blinding you, and the cries of happy children playing baseball outside of it carrying faintly, it all becomes very clear—

Something is horribly wrong.

---

OCTOBER 1st.

It becomes very clear very quickly that this isn’t a simple kidnapping. If you’re twenty years old or older, the bedroom you wake up in is very clearly a couple’s bedroom — with separate beds like a modest, modern couple of course! A similarly lost and confused stranger is in the other. They are your counterpart, for everything in this room has a matching counterpart — the nightstand and lamp each of you have beside your beds, the framed pictures on the wall, even your pajamas. If you’re under twenty years old, your room is smaller but more personalized, filled with comic books, model kits, stray baseball cards littered around the floor. Dolls, fashion magazines of people dressed from a bygone era, stacks of vinyl records neatly arranged next to a record player. And then there are the pictures. They’re everywhere in the house — in a frame on your nightstand, hung on the walls, stuck in the photo albums and scrapbooks lying on your desk or tucked away in drawers. Here you are on your wedding day, exchanging vows with your partner. Here’s you sitting in a fishing boat with one of the younger members of your house. Here’s a picture of you at ten years old getting ready for the first day of school. All of the photographs are aged, sepia, even yellowed and dusty in frames hung for a long, long time. By the time you make it down to the living room, you’ll notice that the television is on; someone must have forgotten to turn it off before they went to bed. On it, a cartoon pack of cigarettes and accompanying cigarette dancers prance around a black and white pumpkin patch, joined by dancing skeletons, ghosts and witches as a cheerful little earworm blares: ”Thirty days til Halloween, Halloween, Halloween, thirty days til Halloween—“

---

GETTING TO KNOW THE NEIGHBORS.

As you get acclimated, you gradually begin to learn more about this strange new world you’ve found yourself in. You’re in a neighborhood on the east side of a town called Santa Rosita located… somewhere in California (wherever or whatever that might be). The year is 1961. If it wasn’t clear enough, your neighbors are more than willing to humor you if you ask. Even if you accost them with questions and demands. Sure, you and your family are a little kooky, and you have a very overactive imagination, but the key to any good joke is playing along! And how could something like “I’m from the future, from another world” be anything but a joke? A. AUNT MYRNA'S PARTY CHEESE SALAD. Over the course of the week, your neighbors will come by unannounced, each with a new homecooked meal to welcome you to their cozy little side of town. Meatloaf, potato salad, lamb chops. Gelatin molds — lots of gelatin molds. Someone even comes by to drop off a gelatinous yellow lump of pineapple, green peppers, celery and yellow cheese swimming in a soupy mixture of sour and whipped cream. “It’s my aunt Myrna’s recipe!” they gush once they drop the casserole tin into your hands, proceeding to rattle off every ingredient. Well, at least you won’t be starving anytime soon. When you bring it back in to your kitchen - and its cheery wallpaper and its floral patterned Pyrex dishware, you and your new...family(?) all stare at the cheese salad, the gelatin, the curiously frosted meatloaf spread. A smorgasbord courtesy of the insistent generosity! Who will take the first bite?

B. DON'T BE A SQUARE!

You can only avoid the cheer and the neighbors for so long, even as you sit inside enjoying all the amenities of your new home. The television can only turn its volume up to five, after all! One bright and sunny Saturday, the weather crisp and clear, news broadcasts and reruns of The Ed Sullivan Show are drowned out by the music in the neighborhood. Eventually it’s too much to bear — you simply must put on your shoes and go discover the source of that infernal racket.

Why, it’s the block party! Haven’t you seen the invitation — with instructions — sitting in your mailbox, silly? Wear a badge so everyone on the block can know you’re new and welcome you to their extended family!

Well! Each neighbor was supposed to set up a table with snacks and drinks and entertainment on their front lawn. Carter Mayhew, one of your Robbie neighbors, has a whole ring toss obstacle course set up for boys to play with, and his wife is cheerfully and blandly instructing a group of girls on jump rope rhymes. Colorful streamers hang from every lamppost and mailbox, balloons and party favors galore. Like you, there are even a few newcomers to Santa Rosita that are caught just as unaware of this event — though others are being welcomed in by husbands and wives and children, caught in conversations about building decks and the upcoming Halloween festivities.

Before you can decide if returning home or joining the party is your choice, a plate with chips and dips and yes, more gelatin is shoved into your hands and a party hat snapped on to your head.

“The guest of honor has arrived! Come and meet your neighbors, neighbor!”

---

THROUGHOUT OCTOBER.

Life falls into a peaceful haze for the next several days. Dull, unassuming, tranquil. As the month drags on, the spirit of Halloween begins to manifest in Santa Rosita, from the pumpkins people start putting out on their doorsteps to the smiling faces of paper skeletons pressed against their windows. And then, towards the end of the month, something terrible happens. You hear it first through word of mouth, rippling through Santa Rosita like a wave, dark murmurs accompanied by sad sighs and downturned eyes. Soon, you start to read about it. Grim business, they say. A tragedy. How could something like this happen. People stop talking about it by the end of the week. Best just to forget about it. Every day, that cigarette commercial comes on. It’s impossible to escape it. And every day, the number of days in the song changes, counting down. ”Thirteen days till Halloween—” “Eight more days til Halloween—” “Three more days til Halloween, Halloween, Halloween…”

---

HALLOWEEN.

CW: Violence, death, mouth trauma, vomiting, needles, razors

October 31st. It sneaks up on you whether you like it or not. When dawn breaks on Halloween day, things are as serene as they’ve ever been as men do yard work, raking leaves as their wives bake fresh pie and cookies in the house, the spicy scent of cinnamon, apple and pumpkin wafting through the neighborhood on chilly October wind. There’s a smile on every child’s face as they skip off the school bus in the afternoon, running into their houses to get their costumes ready. As it begins to get dark, the residents of Santa Rosita start lighting their jack-o-lanterns. One by one, little balls of light flicker to life on every porch and doorstep, jagged smiles grinning in the dark. For the entire night, nobody blows the candle inside their pumpkins out. It’s a tradition, a very old one, and traditions are just another way of saying rules. And Halloween in Santa Rosita, as it turns out, lives and dies by the rules.

A. ALWAYS CHECK YOUR CANDY.

Halloween isn’t just for the kids, although they certainly make up the bulk of who you’ll see out and about on the streets. Walking through Santa Rosita, your neighbors are as generous with handing out treats as they are with handing out gelatin molds and pot roasts, and they don’t discriminate. Adults are received just as warmly as children; the worst one can expect is a quirked eyebrow if they show up to a house without a costume.

Apples, packs of gum, homemade cookies. Chocolate bars, nickels, popcorn balls. Your neighbors hand out all sorts of treats, most of them homemade. The Robbies are no exception, and it’s their treats that seem a bit more high quality than most, some of the candy they hand out being obviously expensive, brand names. The good stuff. They drop each treat into your bag with those same pleasant, mild expressions and too-tight smiles you’ve grown used to in your short time here.

Eventually, as everyone winds up doing at some point in the night, you decide to start digging into your treat bag to sample some of your well-earned goods — maybe in the comfort of your home, maybe outside on the streets. And that’s when the fun begins.

Maybe you bite into metal, the razor sharp end of a blade embedded into the apple or candy bar you’ve picked out burying itself in your gums, or splitting your tongue. Maybe it’s a needle, impaling itself straight through the roof of your mouth or a cheek. Or maybe it’s nothing that obvious. Maybe the realization that something is wrong comes moments after you’ve devoured that chocolate bar or cookie, the bitter aftertaste of rat poison hitting the back of your throat along with bile and the rest of the contents of your stomach as they rise up and out of your mouth.

Or maybe you’ll bite into plain, sweet chocolate or fresh fruit. That’s also part of the surprise. You really don’t know what you’ll get until you start eating.

B. ALWAYS RESPECT THE DEAD.

At ten o’clock, all the television sets in the neighborhood turn on, blaring to life right in the middle of that omnipresent cigarette commercial. The volume begins to rise of its own accord as your television starts to pick up interference, bursts of static squealing amidst the rising, screaming chorus of ”HAPPY HAPPY HALLOWEEN, HALLOWEEN, HALLOWEEN!”

Breaking through the static, garbled and tinny, a child’s voice cries out.

“Can’t— I can’t hold them— back— Pumpkin— don’t blow the— out—”

And just as quickly as it cut in, the voice cuts back out. Commercial jingle notwithstanding, you’re alone once more. But not for long.

The doorbell rings. You can see them outside from your window: costumed children. Their masks and clothes are grimy and ragged from the muddy, slimy water they’ve been decomposing in for over a week. When they come to your door, squelching wetly as they shamble up the porch steps, they ring the bell or knock, as all polite children do. If you don’t let them in, they’ll find their own way, always by force. And once they find you, all they can gurgle in their reedy, waterlogged voices is, ”Trick or treat.”

From there, they attack.

With superhuman strength and speed, they tear and rip at anything they can get their hands on — clothing, skin, muscle, face, eyes. Being short and small, despite their strength, they're at a distinct disadvantage. They can even be thrown off, with some effort. But they don’t stay down for long, and attempting to hurt or mortally wound them only stalls them for a few moments, if that. How can you kill something that’s already dead?

Some in the neighborhood are willing to try and find out.

The only houses they seem to ignore completely are the ones with lit jack-o-lanterns still outside. They’ll loiter outside these houses, staring straight ahead at your door or window like they can see exactly where you are. But sooner or later, they’ll pass by and move onto the next house.

As long as the candles in carved pumpkins stay lit.

---

OOC INFO

Hello, and welcome to We're Still Here's first TDM! Here's a few things we'd like you to keep in mind:

The TDM is canon. You can treat this as the game's first real event and pick and choose what threads you would like your character to remember when they enter the game. For characters who app into the game, the events of the TDM will be treated like a dream. Upon awakening from it, characters will find that time has jumped ahead to December 1st. You may also feel free to use similar reality and/or time distortions to explain why the family members your characters have in the TDM aren't the same as the ones they may be assigned to in the game proper.

If you would like to have Halloween content in your relaxed housing prompts, please feel free! You are not beholden to follow our prompts exactly so long as the spirit is maintained.

There is no Network prompt listed, but feel free to wildcard one for your characters anyway.

Although the TDM is canon in the sense that characters are free to remember its events when they app into the game, it does not count as an official plot heavy event, meaning that characters will not receive regains from participating in it.

With regards to the dead trick-or-treaters: you may NPC them however you'd like, but keep the details we've listed in their prompt in mind. They are supernaturally fast and strong, will ignore houses as long as they have a lit pumpkin on the porch outside, and will try to enter each house the moment the candle in the pumpkin goes out. Additionally, they can't be killed, but they can be momentarily stalled by injuring them. By November 1st, 6AM, they will disappear the moment the sun comes out.

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Comments

[ctn_0452_9]

It's a photograph. A captured image. Probably taken by a camera at some point, although--

[She stops herself mid-sentence, blinking. 850. 9th century had absolutely zero idea what a camera was, hence the use of portraiture for capturing images. Cameras themselves wouldn't come around until the 19th century so. Hm. She crosses her arms, rocking back pensively. How to put this...]

It's an advancement in how portraits were made. You didn't have to sit around for hours being painted, someone would use light to make a copy of what they saw and it'd be ready in a few seconds. [She shrugs up to her ears.] It's not really anything to be worried about.

[Though his reaction to it might be. The 20th century has a lot of things that are much more advanced than the 9th. First contact culture shock? Oh boy.]

[13thcommander]

[Erwin knocks the photograph against the side of the table, impressed at how sturdy it is.]

So you mean to tell me you can record an image, using light, in just a few seconds?

[Any shakiness from a few minutes ago is gone, replaced by pure fascination at this new technology. Space travel, while awesome, is also hypothetical around here. These photographs? This is something Erwin could actually experience himself, and he's enthralled.]

I want to learn how to do it.

[If they're going to make photos of him, then he's going to make photos of them.]

[ctn_0452_9]

Yeah, that's what I'm telling you.

[And that was just 20th century tech. 26th...well. Maybe take things one step at a time. It's actually a bit endearing to watch Erwin puzzle all of this out, something so new but so innocently achievable. Was that what humanity was like back then? Back when they named their rovers things like Curiosity and Discovery? Maybe there's hope for them yet.]

All you'll need is a camera and some time. Should be easy enough to find in a place like this. [For the first time, she looks out the window nearby. It's a beautiful day, the sky clear and trees gorgeous colors in what appears to be morning sunlight. It's peaceful enough, but she can't shake the feeling that something's. Off about it.

Or maybe that's just her experience with strange places talking. She doesn't let it douse her smile, raising an eyebrow.]

Though I get the feeling that you'll have a lot of things you'll want to learn by the time we get our bearings straight. Might want to keep a list.

[13thcommander]

A camera...

[Erwin tries the word out a few times, to make sure he remembers it. Then he carefully sets the portrait--the photo--back on the nightstand and follows her gaze out the window.]

It looks to be a nice day, at least. If we've been pulled through time and space to get here, whoever did it made sure the weather was pleasant for our arrival.

[He is absolutely keeping a mental list. Cortana should just resign herself to getting stopped every few minutes to explain each and every new piece of technology.]

Let's see what else they have around here.

[Erwin heads out of the room and into the hallway.]

[ctn_0452_9]

[There are worse ways to spend your first real day as a human. Though uncertainty beats a harsh pattern beneath her chest and sends her stomach twisting, it's with one last look out the window that she trails out behind him and into the hall.

Experience and habit have her scanning the area as they go; it's a modest house, "their" room at the end of the hall with three other doors just outside. The entire area shows signs of being lived in, but it's still all very clean and well-kept at the same time. Nothing like the sterility of the ships she was used to, and no metal walls in sight.

Just as well, since you could hardly hang picture frames on metal walls the way they've been hung here! Her stride slows as they pass a scattering of picture frames hanging from studs or nails, and she reaches for one. Huh. That's. Interesting.]

Erwin, just out of curiosity, how old are you? [Should he turn to ask why, she'll turn the frame in her hands towards him to show the photo. Them, same matching bands, but with two other people. Judging by the pose "they" all took for the shot, there's something familial being implied there.] Because I think whoever, or whatever, decided to bring us here also decided to give us a family.

[And she doesn't know about him, but she's just a little too young to be having kids! Huh. Marriage, house, two kids. Why is that ringing a bell...]

[13thcommander]

I'm thirty seven. Why?

[He sees what she's holding, and his expression blanches.]

So they did.

[He's definitely old enough to be the father of two children, but Erwin is quite sure that he isn't. People in his position back home don't usually have families, for fear of dying on a mission and leaving them behind. Erwin definitely doesn't, for any number of reasons.]

I don't suppose you have children in your world, do you?

[ctn_0452_9]

[An odd expression flashes across her face at that; something like loss and anger mixed together. Are there words for the odd tightness in her chest, the pressure in her throat, the hollow in her stomach? She no longer has a database to check, but if she had to guess...]

No. My partner and I were military. Work kept us too busy to settle down.

[And besides, what they had was never like that. If she'd have had the opportunity and means to have a family it would have been with him, yes, but. Well. War was never exactly a good state of the universe to bring up little ones anyway! Pushing the thought and pang of longing aside, she sets the photo back on the wall, noting the slight difference in the paint beneath it and around it. It's been hanging here for a while...]

A house, a spouse, and a family, and yet we have no memories of any of it. Sounds to me like they missed a step.

[13thcommander]

Ah.

[Erwin recognizes that expression on her face, even if he's not able to immediately name it. He's seen it in the mirror enough times to know the pain behind it.]

We were military too. My partner and I.

[For just a moment, Erwin can ignore the strange surroundings, the shock of being here, the fascinating new technology. He approaches Cortana, and very gently rests his hand on her shoulder.]

I know what it's like for it to never be the right time.

[ctn_0452_9]

[He's a good man, this Erwin. She turns at his touch, the bare whisper of human contact, and swallows hard. She's really, honestly, trying her best not to think of what she left behind, but like water through cracked stone the thoughts seep through. He's all alone now, in a galaxy that found it easier to replace him than to rescue him and. Well, she's gone from there. Barring some statistically impossible return as she is now, their time together is over.

Who'll take care of him now? No one could do it the way she could. She knows he'll miss her but.

Cortana closes her eyes on the thought, trying to keep it from taking hold, but some part of her heart aches at it all the same. She tries to smile, more for Erwin's sake than her own, but even she can tell it's faked. It falls after a second.]

Isn't that how life always works? [Rhetorical question, though her gratitude for his understanding is clear in her voice. Another flicker of a smile and she just as gently shifts away.] Come on. We should finish up with recon before we get ambushed by real people.

[13thcommander]

It seems that way sometimes.

[A rhetorical answer for a rhetorical question, and Erwin lets his hand fall when she steps away. He's never been terribly good at comfort, too caught up in moving forward to allow himself to linger long on the past, and he's faintly relieved that Cortana doesn't want a hug. He'd offer one if she seemed like she wanted it, but it would've just been awkward for them both.]

I agree. [Erwin looks at the closed doors in the hallway.] I imagine our, uh... our children are behind these?

[Now that's a weird thing to have to say, and even stranger to think about. Erwin looks instead to the staircase leading down.]

Shall we go downstairs and see the lower level? It might be best to let anyone else here wake up in their own time.

[ctn_0452_9]

[Too awkward. Best to just keep right on moving! For given value of moving, considering Cortana stops at the railing and glances back over her shoulder at the closed doors. One to their bedroom, two more. Two kids, each with their own room...yeah, no, going in there won't help anyone.]

It would be. This kind of situation would be a shock under the best of circumstances. Depending on what anyone else has faced before they got here...[She grips the rail tightly, contemplating the steps with some degree of wariness. Walking on flat surfaces has been one thing. Stairs? Whole other story.] It could get violent. This isn't the best place for a fight to break out.

[Because, you know. Stairs. Level ground's better for wrestling someone into logical thought!

[13thcommander]

I agree. Fighting on a second story isn't any good if you can't get away from the conflict.

[Erwin joins her at the top of the stairs. He's dealt with stairs plenty of times in his life, and hasn't connected at all with them being any kind of challenge. He assumes Cortana is nervous about something else, and offers her his arm.]

We'll go down together.

[He might be almost forty and down an arm, but he can still put up a good fight, if there's an ambush waiting down there.]

Besides, if I went down first, I'd likely end up startled by some piece of technology you'd later explain is used to clean floors.

[ ... he will absolutely be startled the first time he hears a vacuum cleaner.]

[ctn_0452_9]

Well...most houses do have cleaning implements stored somewhere, so...

[So she smiles cheekily, even as she takes his arm. Whether he figured out her wariness and is choosing not to say anything or not, he's still a good man to offer. Even so, she makes sure to grip the rail tightly with her other hand, the going perhaps a bit slower than absolutely necessary.

Oh, if John could see her now...]

One more reason to check everywhere. [A soft snort of laughter escapes her.] Though, to be honest, I'm not sure I'd really recognize what's what either. This is all so antiquated from my point of view.

[13thcommander]

[Erwin doesn't mind taking the stairs slowly. His balance still isn't quite what it used to be, and if he's focusing on Cortana, he isn't worried about toppling down them himself.]

I'm sure you'll have a better idea than me. [Erwin chuckles ruefully.] Where I come from, oil lanterns are still considered the height of technology.

[He glances at a small sconce on the wall, and what looks like a very tiny, bulbous glass globe perched on it.]

... those are powered by something besides oil, aren't they?

[ctn_0452_9]

They are. That's a light bulb, and it's powered by electricity.

[She grabs onto the distraction with both mental hands; 9th century. Oil lamps and horseback cavalry. On her Earth electricity wouldn't come around for several more centuries. On his, who even knows? She could go on about the science for hours--probably will, if he asks about it--but for now...]

Think of it as a very contained, miniature lightning storm that can be controlled to go where it's needed, when it's needed. No need for refilling oil wells or lighting wicks.

[Well, not on this level, anyway. She's not sure what powers the plant that powers these. Yet!]

[13thcommander]

Fascinating.

[Once they're safely at the foot of the stairs, Erwin is going to go investigate one of these light bulbs more closely.]

A controlled lightning storm... someone I know back in my world was experimenting with something like that. They made thunderspears, which would explode on impact. We never thought to try and harness something like that to power light, though.

[Think of all the books he could have read! All night long! Speaking of which...]

I wonder if this house has a library. Or even a bookshelf somewhere.