the mock mingle

[airlockedmods]

[An hour ago you woke up in a bed that wasn't yours, awakened by a chirpy, feminine voice coming from the device on your non-dominant arm. The voice cheerfully requests that you exit your sleeping quarters and to please make your way to the the main deck of the ship for a debriefing on your circumstances.

It was around this time you might have noticed the clothes you last remember wearing are gone and replaced with this little number. If you take a moment to check out the Personal Identification Program on your arm, you'll find a touch screen with a few icons that lead to a series of 21 profiles and a series of apps that lead to note-taking functions and a number of customization appearance screens. The profiles all contain a photo of each Champion, their name and title, their age, species and world of origin.

As you stumbled out of your chrome-y quarters (into an equally chrome-y hallway), with every step the floor lights up under your feet, illuminating the dark ship a little at a time. On one side of the hallway are a series of mechanical doors with screen pads embedded on the walls next to them. A quick flash of your PIP will open them for you without hassle. On the opposite side of the hallway are a long string of windows showing nothing but vast amounts of stars and the deep, dark blackness of deep space. Once you reach the end of the hallway you'll find a large central living space with 20 other people, the same people from the profiles, either there already or filing in along with you. Floating well above everyone's heads in the middle of the room is a large computer screen. Once everyone piled in, the screen blinked to life and the same voice from your PIPs greeted you in the same peppy tone from before.

The voice introduced herself as the Champion Excellence Control Environment or C.E.C.E. before welcoming you to the Deep Space Champion Excellence Program, explaining that you were selected for this program based on being the best in your particular field in your particular world, hence the title of "Champion". In this program you will be expected to live communally together here on the ship for as long as possible. The ship is fully-functional and fully-stocked for an extended stay.

Oh? You don't want to stay and participate in the program? That's alright, there's an easy fix to that! All you have to do is kill one of your fellow Champions and not get caught. That is easy enough, right? Right.

When the debriefing is complete, the screen dims but doesn't turn off completely. If need be C.E.C.E. is available to answer any more questions you have throughout the week. For now, you're free to explore the ship as you like. There's the communal dining hall, a zero gravity room, a kitchen, a holo deck, the central living area and the personal quarters everyone woke up in.

Go make some friends, dears, you may be here a while.]

Comments

[stitch_in_time]

[After the motive announcement, the Doctor can be found in the Holodeck. Today he seems to have forgone trying to hack through the room's control panel for information, and has used it as intended to turn the deck into... someplace really orange, apparently?]

[Whatever it is, he's running around the central console, furiously tapping keys and throwing levers, and occasionally hitting it with a small rubber mallet, because of course he is.]

Come on, come on- ah!

[He gives the controls a last frustrated smack, shoving away a monitor mounted on some kind of sliding track around the central column.]

Not enough processing power, not nearly enough-

[strikemonster]

You can't use it to do what I think you're trying to.

[She doesn't understand exactly what he's done, but she can sure tell it's a recreation of something he knows so obviously it's a time machine. He is the Champion of Time, after all, and while time travel is highly theoretical when she comes from, yesterday taught her that not everyone is up to the same time period - or even from the same place.]

[stitch_in_time]

Yeah? And what do you think I'm trying to do.

[Not quite making eye contact, he gives the projected console another jab, maybe a little more forcefully than necessary.]

[strikemonster]

You're trying to get it to do something other than run a simulation, but you're doing it through the simulation. [Don't you know that's like plugging an extension cord into an extension cord, Doctor?] Probably something to do with time, since it's what you're the Champion of. Everybody uses the simulator to simulate what they're most comfortable with.

[stitch_in_time]

Close. I'm trying to simulate a computer that might actually be able to help us.

[A computer which is part of a living time machine, but details, shush.]

Y'get down to it, a computer's just lines of code with an interface, same as all this. Simulate somethin' versatile enough you might be able to trick the system into giving you actual results, but this thing's too limited.

[strikemonster]

It's realistic but not real, Mr. Doctor. [She looks around the room.] Things replicated in the simulator have a fatal flaw: they're limited by the program powering the simulation. That's why my school stopped using simulated opponents in our training sessions. They don't behave like real people.

[semperperatus]

I don't think that's gonna work there.

[Shepard sounds exhausted as he leans against the doorframe of the room, nursing a sippy cup of Tang. Because of course there's Tang.

Whatever he's doing, he's too into it for the motions to be part of something pretend.]

Its all a hologram.

[stitch_in_time]

Brilliant observation, that.

[Someone's a little cranky.]

[The Doctor lets out a huff of air, leaning over the console on both hands.]

It's more than a hologram, it makes perfect simulations of almost anything. I was hopin' maybe simulating something with an actual interface might be enough to get access to something useful, but it's no good.

[semperperatus]

Would't the interface just be a...never mind.

[You get the idea, if it can't make something as simple as beer real, bla bla bla]

What is this, anyways?

[stitch_in_time]

Just a fake, yeah, but a good enough fake might include actual data, which maybe we could use to go thank the Overseers in person.

[It's bullshit, but it's the kind of bullshit that probably would've worked in his own universe.]

[He gives another sigh, turning and looking up at the cavernous space around them.]

This is my ship, the TARDIS. ...Stands for 'Time And Relative Dimension In Space', before you ask.

This is

[have_a_heart]

...You created an illusion of a computer?

[stitch_in_time]

Best computer in the universe.

[He gives the simulated console a frustrated kick, leaning on it with both hands, head down for a moment.]

This place can simulate near anything, I thought maybe I could trick it into simulatin' an actual connection to whatever system's running this place.

[have_a_heart]

That would be convenient. Does it run anything, as it is?

[stitch_in_time]

Nothin' useful. Bit of a longshot anyway, doubt our hosts would leave in a back door that easily.

[He looks up again, scrutinizing the display.]

I could maybe get it to run some Pong. Maybe Pacman, if I stretched things.

[have_a_heart]

So nothing that affects the environment. [nod] I see. ...It is interesting.