test drive meme

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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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Comments

[doubleshot]

"I'd debate it's still a matter of belief. First hand belief," she added, amusement in her eyes, "But belief either way." Explaining the Drift was difficult due to the intensity, how singular an experience it was compared to any other in her life. She'd almost say it was addictive, but it lacked any element that left her craving to return to that state of shared sensation.

"By all means, I'd love to hear your projections. God knows I had all sorts of ideas before the real thing. If you don't mind a poorly worded fumble at explaining, I can toss in my two cents worth after the fact."

Her she shrugged, not negligent, but aware of her own lacks. Description of the Drift went beyond most of her powers of imagery.

[secondtry]

"I, uh."

He knew how he'd answered it before. Just thinking about it had him lifting a hand to rub at the back of his neck, almost embarrassed at his own awkwardness. His most common thought was 'I have no idea', and now, facing someone who had done it, that almost seemed like the right answer. But now he really asked himself - what did he think the Drift would be like?

Memories came quick, ones he'd pretty much forgotten about until he started really thinking. "His name was Kevin. This guy I was bunked with in school. Unlike the rest of us, he was a huge sci-fi geek. His free time was spent watching old DVDs of Star Trek and Star Wars and about a thousand other things that had 'star' in it somewhere, I'm pretty sure," he started, remembering how eager the guy was to get other people into his favourite thing, and how Mike often used him as an excuse not to go home on breaks. Kevin, unlike the rest of them, didn't really have a home to go to.

"He ended up giving me something of a crash course one Christmas break. Vulcans." Mike glanced up from his thoughts, having not even realised he'd half-bowed his head, looking into the middle distance somewhere between Andy's knee and the floor. "You know, Spock and Tuvok and all that. He talked about the mind meld and how Star Trek had inspired DARPA scientists into making the whole jet fighter thing. How people had started work on the mind-controlled wheelchair, I think it was, not long before K-Day.

"I remember watching the scene of Spock and the lump-monster thing in the cave," he went on, hand waving off his having no idea of the word "Horta." "And then when he passed his soul into McCoy. And then, in the other series, when Spock's dad had to use Captain Picard to feel his emotions so he could do his job as an ambassador. I think that's the closest thing I'd ever thought of to the Drift before jaegers were built."

Mike shifted in his chair, sitting up more straightly. "I've gotta say that part of it makes me think of schizophrenia. Or multiple personalities. Hearing voices that aren't yours. Having somebody else in your head. I'm... actually a little afraid of what it'll feel like," he admitted. "When I think of actually Drifting, I think of vertigo. The world moving around me, making me dizzy. But then I think of instinct."

That was when he finally could meet her eyes.

"Of knowing what to do because someone else had a great idea and we both have the knowhow when it comes to making it happen. And the satisfaction of managing to work with someone so seamlessly, you really are making one body work - even if it's a hugeass body that weighs more tons than I can count."

He laughed faintly, then, hand back at the back of his neck, head shaking, bowing - almost seeming to withdraw. "Sounds like magic. And it sounds like pure sap, too."

[doubleshot]

She listened, leaning forward as he kept speaking. She wanted to say it was all normal, the not knowing, being a little frightened by the idea, that the satisfaction is there too. She wondered how much point there was in saying so now, so early in the process. Between now and any end goal, so much could happen... but the technology kept progressing.

Drift Simulators were coming closer to the real thing without crossing the final boundaries between minds. If he did make it to the Academy, then survived the first cut, he'd be participating in the closest thing to a Drift. Even then, it was still worlds different.

"It's a little of both. When people talk about knowing someone, trusting them entirely, you never know exactly how deep that goes. The Drift makes it impossible to hide." Andy left a wealth of things unsaid, leaving it to Mike to ask, or to let it sit without further explanation. It'd been difficult for anyone to capture exactly what Drifting was like in any of the countless interviews Rangers had been asked to over the years.

She straightened where she sat, hands resting on her armrests. "Science fiction's been predicting the technology leaps we might make for decades. What was it, cyberspace as invented in Neuromancer, before anything like it was on the market? Sounds like Star Trek was decades ahead of its time too." Two examples out of dozens. If she'd been a bigger study in modern literature, she might have ad more examples on hand. It wasn't her field of interest.

"I can set your mind to ease on the schizophrenia concern at the least. There's no real breakdown of emotions or perception. The danger in chasing the R.A.B.I.T. has to do with latching on to a memory, not getting lost in delusion. What you feel, and what you share, doesn't take away your sense of self."

[secondtry]

"But what about the hearing other people thing? From what I figured, that's about the point of the Drift. Hearing thoughts faster than you can say anything." But if it was just the hearing, it did help, in an odd way. It settled that deep fear that he'd lose himself in somebody else.

Mike couldn't help leaning forward while he spoke, listening, looking for an answer, and even if it wasn't the exact right time, maybe it was at lest a chance to ask someone who could point him to someone he could ask when it was the right time.

[doubleshot]

"Hearing implies one sense." Andrea kept her forward lean, leaving this as a conversation she was choosing to engage in for the moment. There wasn't any reason to do otherwise. Mike's curiosity was fairly common. "It's a little more involved than that. I don't just hear Jacqueline. I know, and I feel, and I understand and see all while the parts of thought that comes across in something other than words are bringing us to an understanding. I know her, and she knows me."

She brought her hands up, lacing her fingers together slowly, until her hands were clasped in front of her. Andy looked at her conjoined fingers, then across the table, to Mike.

"You're so tightly bound up together when you're in a strong Drift, you don't have to find time to lay things out logically. You know who you are, and you know who your partner is, and you simply do."

[secondtry]

The thought of someone getting that deep inside his head had been one of those things he honestly wasn't sure about. It scared him and got under his skin at the same time, making him want it in a way he'd never really wanted anything else. Mike bit his lips while he thought, trying to imagine what it would be like, but he wasn't really the imagining type. For him, it tended to be there, or not there. Nothing in between.

"I guess I'll actually have to feel it to know," he finally said, taking a deep breath afterward. "If I get that far, which I hope... Well."

He gave her a wry smile.

"Everybody hopes."

[doubleshot]

"Sometime's it's all we've got." Her voice goes dry, much like her humor appeared to be in the moment. Hope had been a dream behind the Jaeger program, leading from schematics to the first working versions of the Pons up to the breakthrough in the dual piloting system, and the success of the first Jaeger Ranger team against the Kaiju. Hope is what kept people cheering when the Jaegers were causing only acceptable levels of collateral damage in cities, when the Kaiju weren't stopped outside the miracle mile.

She shook her head, pushing back on her chair. "Make it through the first three months and you'll know firsthand."

It wasn't a promise, but it was a fact. Simulations ran after getting through basic training. It wasn't a true Drift, but the real deal had several tons of mechanical body linked in. Nothing was like a true Drift in a Jaeger.

"Have you worked with teenagers before?"

[secondtry]

Now that was a question. His brows raised as he started to lean back. "Depends on what you mean by 'worked with.' I mean, I was one, and I stayed over holidays at school so I ended up hanging out with some of the... uh." He paused, then motioned to himself with a wry twist of his lips. "The problem cases. And it seemed to help. That's about the most work with teenagers I've done."

He hadn't exactly been a humanitarian. He hadn't been a volunteer. He'd just been a guy. Same as everyone else. He was nice, sure. Nice enough. Tended to stand up for the little guys, which was what had gotten him in so much trouble to start out with. But he'd not really gone out of his way.

[doubleshot]

It's about what she expected, and really only relevant looking at the kind of reinvention the Valparaíso Academy was looking at making possible. She flicked her fingers outward, rolling her wrist so her hand ended up resting on her knee, palm-side up. "Charles Hansen's success with his father's opened up the volunteer ranks to teens fourteen and up. There's a good chance we'll have our fair share coming in on the ground level."

She was switching gears, talking about a different kind of logistics. "That's walking into a maelstrom of hormones and emotions they're not going to know the half of how to handle. I'm sure you remember," she said, her own expression hinting toward sardonic amusement, "What it was like at that age. Especially if you hung around some of the problem cases."

There was no hint of censure in her voice. Problem case teens were a commonplace occurrence, no matter where one was in the world. If her highschool years hadn't been littered with friends and peers spanning the whole spectrum, than her early college years certainly had been.

"Feel prepared to handle that too?"

[secondtry]

"Yeah, that's no problem." He nodded easily. "I mean, hormones, the mood swings, the thinking you know a hell of a lot more than you do - I remember all that for sure. I think I can handle it, as long as I'm not expected to adopt somebody or something." There was that caveat. He wasn't ready to be a father, or a pretend father, or even a father figure. Cool uncle, maybe. "I mean, I'm not exactly Disney material."

That was just honesty. He wasn't Nani. He wasn't Jo March. He was rough around the edges, rough in the middle, and not exactly appropriate for people under the age of seventeen, if not eighteen.

"But..."

But.

"But I remember that a lot of the other guys I went to school with... No matter how bad off they were, they were usually there because of what someone else did. The root cause, I mean. What their mother or father or some other family member did, or a teacher, or older students, or... well, pick a person. Kids don't grow up to be jerks in a vacuum."

[doubleshot]

He was talking about the basic tenant of what Andrea believed in people as a whole. No one grew up in a vacuum. People are a result of themselves and their environment. It was good to hear Mike was aware of the relationship between people's behaviors and the places they came from.

"Disney tends to put the smooth edges on some ugly truths about the human condition," she said in a mild tone of voice. "We don't need Disney. We need real people, which means the kinds of people who're flawed and understand flaws in others. Those kinds of observations," said with a vague roll of her wrist, "Are the ones to keep in mind when you're working with teams spanning generation gaps. You'll be good to have in there at the ground level."

There wasn't any way to promise end results. There was only the anticipation for those who might be geared to succeed, and those who might have greater difficulties.

"What do you say we call this interview over, and I look forward to meeting you again someplace further south?"

Andy leaned forward and got to her feet in a fluid motion, holding a hand out to Mike once again.

[secondtry]

Mike took her hand and gave it a firm shake, a smile on his face. He felt more confident, this discussion having happened. Funny how that worked out sometimes. "Sounds great to me," he said, "and I'm hoping to see you down south, too. And maybe sneak a look at that jaeger of yours. It'd be a hell of a thing to see in person instead of just on a TV screen."

That was the most he was going to say about her position. He'd recognised her, sure. Who wouldn't? But he also knew that, if he was going to someday pilot a jaeger, there was no use in being starstruck. They were all just people, and that was the important thing to remember.

[doubleshot]

Her smile then was brief, almost sardonic. "You won't need to worry about sneaking a look at her. She keeps all of us busy dusting her down and oiling joints."

There's a degree of a jest in what she said, but an underlying sentiment she acknowledged and accepted. Until Jacqueline was back, Hydra Corinthian and Andrea were both decorations. She didn't enjoy the feeling, but it was a portion of what made her ideal for working on this project as a whole.

She turned on heel, opening the door. "Until then, Mike."

[secondtry]

"Have a good day." He gave her a nod and polite wave. There were, as far as he knew, more interviews, and that meant he'd stay planted right where he was until the next person came in. But he was grateful he'd had the chance to really talk to someone who knew. It put at least part of his unease to rest.