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test drive meme

Test Drive Meme The Pan Pacific Defense Corps was usually offered any of a variety of local buildings to set up their testing centers. For reasons of access and availability, most testing clinics were set up in central areas for any given community. Those of the PPDC staff on hand vary in their personal intensity. Some of the men and women wearing Strike Group insignia seemed overly serious, to the point of frowning with intensity at some of the youngest checking in for this testing round. Those from the K-Science division are tight with nervous energy as they direct prospective cadets through various activities. Everything was meant to measure potential, looking for that spark that meant they had somebody who was Drift Compatible. The majority of people were turned away after the first series of seemingly random tests, officials looking in eyes, placing odd looking contraptions over heads, asking for people to play a series of short games, one even in a virtual reality set-up.

	( SCENARIO ONE ) If you are still here now, you've made it past the first cut. You'll be sat down in a room with the rest who have made it this far, then systematically led into smaller interview rooms as pairs. If you came with a partner, they're your first interview candidate. If you came on your own, all your interviews are random assignment. All who have been asked to stay are required to sit through and conduct a series of short peer to peer interviews. The questions are straightforward. What is your least favorite color? Which tool in a standard toolbox is most useful to you? What time of day do you accomplish the most? Do you have children? What do you believe the Drift is like? Peer to peer interviews last for half an hour to an hour, and each person is asked to participate in at least three peer-to-peer interviews. There is no punishment for going off script. There is a one-way mirror looking into each interview area, and one door leading into the room with a small panel of glass located on the door. There is a clock on the wall in each room. The time they report is odd, when examined. These are not digital clocks, but timers, counting up time since the last Kaiju attack.

	( SCENARIO TWO ) Congratulations! You have been judged Drift Compatible, and sent home to pack after giving a definite yes to the Pan Pacific Defense Corps. The next thing you face down is the flight into Santiago, Chile, and the subsequent drive in to Valparaíso's Shatterdome. You and the rest of the crowd of soon to be PPDC Ranger Cadets have been gathered together to wait for the old bus scheduled to take you to the Shatterdome. While waiting in the open air, those from any Northern Hemisphere countries may find the summer weather strange. Today's high is going to be in the upper 80's, and there's not a cloud to be seen that's not clinging to the distant mountains. Welcome to Chile. When the bus arrives, it's another hour ride out toward the coastline to get to the Shatterdome. Even better? The bus Air Conditioner is broken. Safe travels, Cadets!

Please set up your own scenarios as you like. The above two scenarios are suggestions. Anything goes!

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Kate's thoughts have always been private and hers alone. Sharing all of them isn't an experience she's looking forward to. But that's far in the future, maybe she'll meet somebody she's that comfortable with. She doesn't expect it soon, but she has the time.

"Not really, but I don't like green much." That's a much lighter question, and Kate can appreciate it. "What's yours?"

"Yes, green can be a bit much," she agrees, again out of habit. With green eyes and a name that can carry connotations of spring, it's an amusing statement. "Though I find yellow to be even more displeasing."

She hides her grimace well, limiting it to a slight narrowing of her eyes. Being able to assess people with these sorts of questions is a fascinating process. She's not sure she's appreciating it all that much.

"Have you been through many of these interviews today?"

"Too bright?" She doesn't have an issue with yellow in general. But too much of it can be blinding. Purple's a much nicer color, and a lot less loud.

"No, this is my first one. How man of these have you been through?"

"It's very vivid." Easier than parsing out the extent of why yellow, among all colors, could lend itself to this sort of questionnaire.

"Ah, this is my third one. I'd thought the questions might be random for each interview, but the list stays the same. They're setting up basic standards. Psychological profiling is a difficult business."

As if that explains the questions chosen. "For example, why ask if someone has children? What about answering that question yes or no say about us? They make interesting choices. I'm still surprised no one is asking for us to count backward from one hundred in sevens."

Her smile gains an amused tilt. She wouldn't have minded the mathematical interlude.

Kate has to laugh at that. "Probably because that's not really answering a question. Though I'm sure it'll tells them something." There's a reason they're doing these interviews with the fairly strange questions.

She wouldn't really mind that question. But she can see why it wouldn't pop up in this interview.

"Something like how handy we are? Or how much thought we put behind answers? Asking for a favorite tool to use in a standard tool box may have many meanings." Including ones of cultural differences. She wondered how those were accounted for, and to what extent they mattered. Was understanding past those cultural lines going to be important?

Yes, she knew it would be. She had to resolve herself to understand as much as she could from all these different perspectives. No matter how alien, or seemingly stupid.

Neither of which she felt at present. It's a nice respite.

Kate just listens to Sakura talk. "You seem interested in this stuff." The theory of why they're doing these interviews, doesn't really matter to Kate. Considering things like this so carefully isn't what she does.

She looks embarrassed, realizing she's talking too much, and too off topic. "A little," she says, waving a hand in front of her face to dismiss the idea along with her interest. "When I'm nervous, I start to talk too much." Her eyes fall back down on the list of questions. "Nails."

She shrugs off the explanation. "It's fine, I have a friend who does that all the time."

Kate rereads the toolbox question. She's not sure she's even seen the inside of a toolbox before. "Do you do a lot of building?"

"No, not very much. Only what is necessary," she says, as if the clarification actual offers any clarity. "What my father cannot handle, I try." Something she'd complained of heavily over the years, but a younger Sakura had a different sense of duty and obligation and desires out of life than she did anymore.

Her fingers find the short ends of her hair, thumb and forefinger twisting the strands together in idle motions.

The non-answer is just fine by her. She didn't even attempt to answer the question. Younger Kate spent most of her time learning hand to hand and archery. Building things had never been in her wheelhouse.

"I've never really used a toolbox," she shrugs. It's jut a fact about herself. Her dad would always call people in to fix things if they broke.

"It wouldn't be like the ones used by the Jaeger Mechanics. I wonder if we'll learn about those, if we enter the program?" Part of her was fascinated with the construction of humanoid robots, though her interest lay more heavily in the field of biological processes.

"How about children?" What a direct and invasive question!

"No." Quick, simple and to the point. It's one of the ones on the sheet, so she can't be mad at Sakura for asking.

"I'd guess we'd have to learn about the Jaeger Mechanic toolboxes. If we're using machines like that, we better know how they work." Especially if something goes wrong out in the middle of the mission. It's not likely to happen, but it's a possibility. Though it's not one that Kate likes to think about. "I doubt all of us are going to become pilots."

She nods, accepting the answer and the move beyond it with equal unanimity of what subject bore more interest or importance.

"It isn't possible, even if each and every one of us proved Drift Compatible with more than one partner. The cost of Jaeger manufacturing and maintenance is very high. From what I understand, there are currently no more in production. Only one of the Mach V's has been finished."

They were entering the picture as reserve troops. Sakura wouldn't deny there is appeal in the possibility, but just as she sees that appeal, she also sees the practical realities that joining the program allowed her. Access to higher education and career paths the PPDC would help fund, in return for continuing service.

It's one way to get to medical school while still supporting her family, for all the disapproval they felt for her particular decision. For them, nothing less than piloting would be excuse enough for what she's done.

"We must be of assistance in whichever way we can. Completion of the program could still mean years of waiting for another piloting pair to retire, or for the next wave of Mach V's to be completed." If they ever would be.

Kate is here for one simple reason, helping people. Her dad isn't glad she left, trying to convince her that there were so many other people who could do the job in attempt to get her to stay in New York. But Kate was far too stubborn to just allow him to decide her life for her. So here she is at the Shatterdome, and she's finally at the age where her dad doesn't get to dictate her life decisions. Her family doesn't need support from her, so she's free to do whatever she'd like.

"The handful of us who stay will be." She hopes. There's something to be said for piloting a Jaeger, and stopping a kaiju in direct combat. But there are entire crews devoted to making the machines run. If she can't be a pilot, she'd settle for making sure the machines don't malfunction. (But she'd much rather be in the pilot seat.)

"Why'd you apply?"

She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. The honest truth is a little too raw for her, though there are little tells that why she's here is beyond what she'll say. The shortness of her hair, cut recently. The fact her dye job went down to the roots for now. Her nervousness, but a lack of doting yearning after the end objective.

It'd be nice, but it wasn't everything.

"Duty," she says in the end. "I had to try. I wanted to, also. I don't want to sound like I'm here for anything other than what I want! It's a chance to make a difference, no matter what happens from here."

All of those tells really don't tip Kate off to anything. She's a bit too straightforward to really notice Sakura hiding anything. She just nods in understanding.

"I get that." She doesn't have a reason to be here besides her own desire to help. Even if she is incredibly apprehensive over sharing her mind with somebody else. But who wouldn't be?

All the better. Sakura finds herself smiling, more relieved that she's not saying anything that seems problematic. It does let her relax, to the point where angling off the questionnaire doesn't bring up the same degree of unease as it would have earlier.

"Have you ever been to South America before?" Chile sounds so far off from anything Sakura knew, it's difficult to imagine.

"Once when I was really young. After the kaiju attacked dad didn't want us going anywhere near the Pacific." But here she is, very obviously defying his wishes. His wishes were pretty awful in Kate's book anyway. As long as she believed that, everything was fine. Besides, her sister and her step-mother are still up there giving him company.

She can understand the impulse to want to keep family safe. She also understands that frustration. Good intentions can grate, especially if they run against what it is you feel you must do for yourself and your own ideals.

"The Kaiju have been a Pacific danger," she says, hands folding neatly in her lap. "They haven't been interested in crossing into the other seas."

Kate nods as Sakura talks. "Doesn't seem like it. Not yet, anyway." It's not all that odd when she considers that the kaiju's point of origin has always been in the Pacific. "Maybe it's just easier for them to emerge from the Pacific." She has no idea how kaiju think or do their decision making. The only thing she's interested in is stopping them.

"Yes, that must be the case. Still, if they can spend so much energy in swimming to Canada, or to Russia, or to Australia, why don't they swim around the end of South America? Or past New Zealand, into the Indian Ocean?"

Sakura shakes her head, knowing it's irrelevant. Talking about oddities in Kaiju attack patterns isn't part of this interview, or anything more than junior speculation.

"Canada, Russia and Australia are closer. If I was trying to take over the world I'd start with what's closest to me. Not that I'd ever want to do that." She's not really the leader type. Or the dictator type for that matter.

"Anyway, maybe we'll get a class on kaiju attack patterns." That's something that sounded useful. And there have been enough that there's probably a decent amount of data to look over.

"Tactical courses are usually part of any martial training," she says, offering another shier smile. "They'll have us looking at the older attacks too. If we're lucky, one day we'll get to run scenarios in a full pons rig. Much better than something in the arcade!"

Kate can't help the smile on her face at the thought of that. "Man, I'd love that!" A chance to feel what it's like to pilot a Jaeger? Count her in. On the other hand, having to let somebody into her memories? Still kind of terrifying, but there's probably at least one person here she could trust.

"We're going to have to work up to it." And it'll probably be at least three months before they get anywhere near combat simulations like that.

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