Test Drive Meme!

[hey35andholding]

HOW TO PLAY:

* Tag into this post with a pup you're thinking of apping to the bar with a brief EP set within Milliways and/or its universe. You can be new to the game, or simply want to test out a fresh pup.

* If you already play at Milliways, feel free to tag in with your own characters and interact with the new pups. You can also post your own EPs for these new characters to thread with.

* Mingle, post, and have fun!

Comments

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"It's voice activated," the grey-haired young woman in the dark green fatigues says mildly. "I'm not sure why they don't put a sign up about it, but it's voice activated and it has a recipe database the size of an encyclopedia."

[peacethroughpower]

"Is it? Well, it seems this joint's full of surprises."

He looks the woman over for a moment. Her fatigues are clearly military surplus, and her skin is more weathered and scarred than a woman of her age and build should be. Clearly she's spent a lot of time outdoors in a hostile environment. A Yellow Zone, perhaps?

No. If she were from his world, she'd have recognized his face. Who on Earth would not know the face of the Messiah? All the more evidence that he's been transported off-world.

This place cries out for further investigation. He puts on a friendly smile.

"So where is this place anyway? Certainly isn't my office."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"It's not anybody's office, so far as I know," she says. He's not from her world, she knows that straight off. Nobody in her world dresses like that, not even the people who've come down from the Commonwealth. "It's a different dimension from wherever it is you come from- I'm not sure how it works. Just that it's a pocket of space and time outside the regular flow of space and time, and people get transported here sometimes, or bring themselves here on purpose once they learn how."

[peacethroughpower]

"Interesting," he says guardedly. This confirms his original suspicions, but also raises additional questions. "Any idea who built it? Or who operates it?"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"I've heard people talk about some kind of landlord," she says dubiously, "but the same people who mention the landlord say in pretty much the next breath that no one's ever seen him or has proof that he exists. I know Mrs. Reynolds and Mikey run the place's day to day operations and that there's a security staff to keep things in line, but that's as far up the chain as it seems to go."

[peacethroughpower]

"And I don't suppose either of them are experts in transdimensional engineering."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Afraid not. There's some people here who've got advanced physics knowledge dealing with multiple dimensions, but they're just as boggled by this place as everyone else," Ellen says.

[peacethroughpower]

"Fascinating," he says. "I happen to be something of a scientist myself, though needless to say I've never seen encountered like this before."

Oddly enough, Kane is telling the truth here. It's difficult to be surprised by anything when you've seen as many millennia as he has.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Really? What's your field of study?" Ellen says. "My father was- well, biochemistry mostly, although he worked for several years as a medical doctor before he went back to field research. I honestly don't know anybody back home who'd have a clue about this kind of place, except for the people who wrote the old Captain Cosmos movies and comic books."

That last is said with a bit of a wry look. When you haven't got the scientists to understand the situation, it becomes a bit pathetic what you do have to fall back to.

[peacethroughpower]

"Mineralogy, mostly," he says. "Though I have done work in genetics, biochemistry, and xenobiology. I've also dabbled in optics. Rather disparate fields, I know."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Ellen has to think about that for a bit. "I can kind of get the mineralogy and optics to make sense together, if there are lasers involved," she finally says. "The genetics and biochem make sense, too. I'm.... not really clear on the other one, though. Xenobiology?"

[peacethroughpower]

"The study of alien life," he says. "It's a little speculative at this point, but we do have some samples to go on." Raw data from the Tacitus, actually, but she doesn't need to know that.

"But most of my studies - even my forays into other fields - center around mineralogy. Have you ever heard of a mineral called tiberium?"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Oh," says Ellen, and grimaces. "Yes. We've- we've encountered them, on my side of the door. They're... not pleasant at all."

It's been noted before that Ellen has something of a talent for understatement.

"I'm sorry, I can't say that I have. Most of the mineralogy I deal with tends to be either radiology or metallurgy, in the end..."

[peacethroughpower]

"Yes, our research indicates that many extraterrestrials harbor...less-than-peaceful tendencies," he says. He's counting on it, in fact.

"Tiberium came to us from space nearly fifty years ago. Since then it's changed the world in ways you can't even begin to imagine. Its presence has altered the landscape, ignited world wars, and eradicated the nation-state as we once knew it. But it has also brought untold prosperity and technological progress that hasn't even come close to being fully tapped.

"As for what it is, it's a green crystalline substance that leeches metals and heavy elements from the soil and converts them into a form that's easier to get at. But more than that, it grows and multiplies. It even evolves. In some ways, it's more like an inorganic lifeform than a mineral. And in it lies the key to the future of mankind, if only the world's leaders would recognize it."