TEST DRIVE MEME #1.

[therunning]

OPTIONS: WAKING UP You wake up in a studio in an apartment building that's got windows all boarded up. You remember being sick, you remember dying, and you probably can't believe this is the afterlife. If you head out into the hall you'll see that others are heading out too, looking just as confused as you are. All of you died, most of you of the same thing. If you head down to the front office, you'll meet a native resident who will explain in brief that you're in Aqora, a settlement living among the undead and that people like you show up every so often. You'll be given an informational pamphlet, a shitty cell phone, and a walkie. Then you'll be expected to figure it out. No one has time to hold your hand. EXPLORING Miscellaneous things here: shops and restaurants turned into places to live, apartments full of people living day to day, the main focus (the library) being the hub where people come to learn and children go to school. Because school never ends, even in the apocalypse. Feel free to buddy up with other newcomers to figure out what the hell is going on. OR, say you've been here a while. It's time to figure out how to get more supplies! Let's go on a supply run. You'll just be heading out past the barricades to start, and you'll have to dig through buildings to try and find things. If you're lucky, maybe you'll hit a cache. If you're unlucky, you'll find too many undead to fight. No one goes out alone though, so hopefully your partner can help. "NETWORK" Someone has set up a rudimentary network using the nearest cell towers. You can communicate with others in the area but only via voice and text. Anything further out is voice only via walkies. You can have a username or leave it blank. Have fun, campers.

Comments

[oleta]

Oleta is alone. She is alone and not being watched for the first time in so long that the foreign sense of it practically stops her breath all over again. There's so much that she doesn't remember - funny, isn't it? To remember old things and forget new ones. No, it's not funny at all. Oleta does not remember being strapped down, she does not remember being injected with things meant to fix her, she does not remember getting ill from the treatments.

She does not remember dying.

Oleta remembers Hester. Hester, whose hands on her had been loving even when doling out pain so white-hot she thought she was going to die. Hester, Hester, Hester. Oleta stands on shaking legs and closes her eyes, breathing. She feels her lungs expand and contract, listens to the sound of the oxygen keeping her alive (moist yellow cake it's not). She hears Hester's voice and does not believe it is real.

Nothing here is real.

Oleta moves slowly, carefully, jaw tight and set as she walks - she's stolen a sheet from a bed and turned it into a makeshift dress, sort of, kind of better than paper if you think about it - and picks her way around.

Hester's voice continues.

Hester's voice is real.

Hester is real.

Oleta breathes and sees with eyes focusing for the first time since she was a child. She is in the hallway. They are both in the hallway. They are here. "Hester."

[withinwires]

Oleta's here. She's here, and moving, and not bleeding out on a cave floor or staring with the not-there look that comes after carpentry, and she sees Hester and knows her. Hester's eyes are no longer focused, because they're filled with tears, and her hands tremble as she fists the fabric of the makeshift dress Oleta's wrapped herself in.

It doesn't matter where they are, or why, it doesn't matter if it's better or worse than where they were before. All that matters is that Oleta is here, and whole, and sees her. The tears spill over and her knees nearly buckle with relief and shame. "I'm so sorry! I wasn't careful enough, I wasn't fast enough... I'm so sorry, Oleta, for all of it, please believe me!" Please forgive me, she doesn't say.

[oleta]

For long moments, Oleta does not understand why Hester is begging her for forgiveness. But then it strikes her quickly, a sharp blow to the brain like the buzzing work of carpentry but this is making her eyes clear, not clouded.

"No," she says, but it is not in answer. The not-carpentry is still in her brain like angry bees. "No, it's not your fault." Oleta thinks it's strange that her voice is soft. Is it? She doesn't remember. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. It doesn't matter. "Hester, Hester, Hester." She breathes it out like a prayer, if she knew what a prayer was. "You saved me."

For a glorious few moments, they were free.

[withinwires]

The way Oleta says her name makes the sob that was lodged in her chest break free. She doesn't say that it was her fault Oleta needed saving in the first place. She doesn't say that her efforts to do so ultimately failed, that their few moments of freedom together were filled with pain and blood and terror. She releases her grip on the sheet, her glasses lifting as she rubs at her eyes to clear them, to compose herself. There's still their current situation to deal with, after all.

She takes several steadying breaths. She's had to implement many of the techniques she'd taught Oleta the past few weeks, during her own "treatments". Her shaking shoulders gradually still. "I don't know where we are now. I don't know what's happened."

[oleta]

This much Oleta knows: that they were painful and terrifying moments and they ultimately failed but they were free and that is most important. Her arms come to rest around Hester's waist, holding her close in a clumsy form of comfort that she's unused to giving.

"Hester," she murmurs as the other woman tries to compose herself, "listen to my voice." With that Oleta presses their foreheads together and murmurs soft affections, nothings, breathes. In out in out. Listen to your breathing, Hester. Can you hear your heart beating?

Can you see all you've done for the woman you love?

"I don't know what's happened either. There's no one here. No cameras, no eyes, no people."

[withinwires]

Hester leans into the comfort greedily, and the shift that is her being the one listening, the one being instructed, and Oleta's voice leading her through it, is almost too much. Those beautiful affections are almost too much.

No cameras always watching. No people hiding their watching behind sunglasses, or not being required to hide their watching at all. Another deep breath. They're safe, at least marginally. They're together, certainly. Hester matches her own breaths to Oleta's, fingers wrapping around her wrist, holding it gently, so she can feel the other woman's heartbeat. The pulse under her index finger steadies her. They're alive, they're here. "We need to figure out where we are, and what's going on. Proper clothes are in order too, I think."

[oleta]

"Proper clothes are important, yes." Hester is so beautiful like this. She is so beautiful always, but there is something magnetic about her now that Oleta feels guilty for embracing. She lets herself be handled, be used as a steadying force, be an anchor in a roiling sea.

Let the sea calm around you. Smell and taste the salt in the air. Breathe in the water and welcome it in.

"We'll explore," Oleta finally says, after a very long time of not moving and not exploring. Her lips carefully graze Hester's cheek once before she finally starts to move like she's afraid to stay still long enough to process it.

[withinwires]

Oleta's so close, and holding her, and wants to hold her, and that's very distracting, as is the hint of lips brushing against her cheek, but there is salt in the air. Literally speaking. Not thick enough to say they're on the beach, but present, enough to notice. Enough to wonder about.

And Oleta is moving now, which is something that, historically, Hester has not been well able to convince her not to do. This time, at least, it's the appropriate thing. Exploring, seeking new information. You wouldn't think every single window in such a large apartment building could be boarded up, but you'd be wrong. Every single one they pass is boarded up, and there's no one else. No clothes, either. "We need to find stairs. A ground floor."