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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scenario one.

[overeducated]

"Do we have to skip to that one? What about getting to know each other first? Come on, more like... something like... ah! Do you have any pets?" Now wait a minute, that hadn't been on the list.

-- As if he'd care - the attentive, expectant look shot toward the other certainly didn't seem to.

Before his response, however, his eyes trained first and foremost to the clock on the wall, the rest of the room dismissed in much the same casualness as she had dismissed it; likewise, he took his seat with the briefest (read: one owlish blink and a nod back) acknowledgement, remaining thereafter - well, until the question - completely distracted from his interview partner. At least talking seemed to rein his focus in a bit.

[headtilts]

Just as his eyes focused on the clock so did hers stray to the window, a tell she's not practiced enough to be able to conceal. It's not that this whole caution-bordering-on-paranoia is new to her. She's had months to train herself in distrust. It's that this situation (they are being watched, she knows they're being watched, her partner probably also knows they're being watched, their observers know that they know that they're being watched but they have to put on a show of only watching each other) is mentally exhausting her as she tries to anticipate the questions and answers and the evaluation of their questions and answers.

The opaque window reflects nothing except her face, schooled into her best approximation of neutrality but for the eyes. She turns back to her interview partner instead, another thing she thinks might prove to be just as exhausting as this exercise.

"Do I have any pets? None. What's my mother's maiden name? She was never a maiden. What city was I born in? I don't remember."

She's not resisting out of sheer contrariness (although there is a small element of that motivating her) but she snapped out her question so quickly for a reason. When she first came in to the testing center, they pointed her to a room and gave her one piece of advice.

There's no point in hiding anything but Hitagi still means to try.

"What's my childhood nickname? Senshougahara. What's the name of my high school? Only someone preying on that age group would want to know." She's rattling off the answers as if she's reciting something in class and not as if she's just accused him of- "Ah that's wrong. Rather than that kind of predator your questions seem more like the kind of things you'd ask for the purposes of identity theft."

Of course, she doesn't actually think that's his aim. She's just not about to give up control of the pace of this interview and doesn't it just say so much about her that she's turning this into a battle.

[overeducated]

Mouth opens, breath draws in - she continues, races past - mouth snaps closed, hand raises, pointer finger held up toward the ceiling as a professor about to lecture - she continues, what's my childhood nickname? - his hand wavers, aborts, reappears, eyes beginning to flit from clock to girl, from precise, clever time management to precise, clever body management.

Well. An exaggeration, that.

That's a rude way to talk about your mother.

"I've no debt simply because I've no connections; an intellectual tramp, a snob might say, despite looking remarkably terrible with a beard. Favorite color? Blue, set not too dark nor too light. Never did fancy turtles. I once ate nothing but celery for three days, a habit broken only because my daughter convinced me my feet would turn purple."

The earlier, more flustered expressions began and ended in silence.

Rattled quick as a can sent spinning down a street-- but, really, it didn't say much about him at all that he rose to the challenge of a biting girl, eyes at last focusing front and center, attention piqued in a keen, if not fragile, way. Not quite question-for-question, titling only one question, and had the mention of a daughter been an intentional retort (otherwise unexpressed) to the preying implication?

With the way he didn't seem to remember his words once they were out of his mouth, no. It couldn't have been.

"That is to say: I'm excessively stubborn, much like you, and I think drift would be positively awful, though not as awful as going it alone, which is... half like you."

-- Except, there, he grasped what he spoke, what should have been a barb turned only-a-teensy-tinsy-bit-questioning statement.