Corona [OPEN]

[piper90npcs]

Who: The New Hires and Planker
What: Fun
Where: The Gym
When: Post-plot.
Warnings/Notes: Foul language from Planker.

The first warning the New Hires have is that some of them quietly get pulled aside by various members of the staff before training even starts. Not only does this mean that some of the personnel had to wake up extra early, already a warning sign, but they don't mention why. They just take a few key people aside.

The second warning is when Planker walks in, whistling a cheerful tune and wearing a smile like a man with a three foot erection. "All right, you miserable fucking reprobates! Big Daddy Planker has heard your complaints about his training methods. Pity the Princess got transferred out, she could feel the love today." He paces in front of the assembled crew, doing his best to show off every little tooth. "And, believe you me, that's the only love that exists for you little shits! God doesn't love you, He's dead! I killed Him! He came upon me in His divine glory while I was showering and didn't duck fast enough when I turned around to face Him! And if you anorchous shit-stuffers don't want to be buried in the same fucking hole, you'll straighten those fucking backs and pay attention!"

He snaps his fingers, directing everyone's attentions to a series of chambers. Clear material forms the walls and the rest promises an obstacle course. "This is your obstacle course! And you are mine! I have permission to keep you here until I get bored! And if that means you blowzy copremetics will all get through this course." He slams his hand against one of the walls, then jabs a finger at the first person to catch his attention. "That means you, filth! Mount that wall, put some effort into it, and go! You! Join them!"

The course is an exercise in sadism, as only Planker could imagine. There are seven chambers.

• The first room seems simple enough, you simply have to run across. But the floor moves, like treadmills, and each segment is in an opposite direction. When the participant hits the floor an ear-piercing siren starts blaring, increasing in volume with every fall and not ceasing until the course is completed.
• The second room is a mud crawl under rows of concertina wire that snags and catches at the clothing, with stinging insects there to hurry people along. If the poor unfortunate is too slow, tear gas starts to fill the room.
• The third room has a set of irregular monkey bars, but they've been greased. It's set above a three foot pit filled with mouse traps straining to go off.
• The fourth room has, dangling from strings, chattering stun guns at various heights. There are sparking hurdles, as well, wrapped in barbed wire to snag at any clothing and drag people in to the electrified bars. Three double-sided cattle prods rotate like ceiling fans, threatening anyone who gets too close. To add to the stupidity, the floor is covered in tires.
• The fifth room brings them to a ball pit! But some of the balls are electroshock grenades. Some are glue bombs. And some of them are flashbangs. Both are set to go off on contact.
• The penultimate room has air rams that go off as the participant drags a dummy (or their partner. Or the previous, possibly unconscious, runner.) through, blasting powerfully enough to knock a man off of his feet. To make things worse, giant strips of fly paper stretch across the room, snaring anyone unfortunate enough to get caught.
• The seventh, and final, room has something different. Carrying a tool box, the participant has to dash up a spiraling ramp that has alternating barrels and greased ball bearings dropping down at regular intervals. At the end, they have to solve a puzzle and disarm a bomb. If they fail to do it in time, the 'bomb' goes off. Unfortunately for them, Planker isn't allowed to use a real bomb. Instead, the box underneath the bomb springs open, revealing an enraged skunk.

After about the third person starts to go through, Planker will press a button. At that point, the chambers will rise up, revealing wheels, and start to move about the gym in swift circles, controlled via his remote, designed to throw the people inside off-balance and remove any illusion of stable footing. To add salt to the wound, there are cameras in every chamber, capturing every possible humiliation for editing and presenting to whoever Planker sees fit later on.

[[Obviously you don't have to participate. Your character was taken aside for some reason. Otherwise, you can either have your characters run through, react to, or simply have them talk about being forced to undergo this new, improved obstacle course later.]]

Comments

[takenalive]

Alloran moves his borrowed shoulder in an awkward shrug. "So do we. It's only that being fed takes so much effort for you, and yet several of your cultures, at least, put little value on it - making it more difficult for those who do it."

He cracks an uneven smile. <I would bet that he'll be holed up somewhere safe. Find out where he sleeps. There would have to be a way to use that information.>

"They never let me forget how I left a doll in the therant glade when we moved on and cried about it for months... well. We did and do change our world, we made it better to roam. Even city dwellers only actually live in cities for part of the year. It takes training to adjust to that kind of crowding."

[wheyoftheadept]

"Ha. You'd hate where I grew up, then. Everyone lives on top of each other, and no one's allowed to leave. Not that I ever wanted to - stuff's greener on the other side of the Wall, but the people are worse."

"Red Town's a slum," she explains, with a quick glance his way. "Worst slum in the Western Hemisphere."

Despite what she just said, there's pride in her voice when she describes it that way. It's her patch, after all. Everyone she loves lives there.

[takenalive]

"I'm sure I would, but it's a difference in species. At different points in our history Andalites have had towns and cities with permanent residents, but people have never stood for it for long. Humans have more tolerance for living close together in numbers. So, you lived in a city and not country or suburbia?"

He hasn't seen human slums himself, but Aria had been a wildlife photographer and in the course of that had traveled, and had passed some images to him. It doesn't seem like a tolerable existence, even allowing for species. Yeerks impose yet more intensive crowding, but make efforts to keep their hosts fed and clean, and euthanize those that they don't find useful. That's not better.

[wheyoftheadept]

"Yeah, more or less. Huh, how to put it..." She bends over and starts drawing on the ground, not that it does much good without anything to draw with, but it is possible to get a sense for the geography of the Puget Sound region in 2070.

"The Seattle metroplex is all one city, right? An' technically that includes Red Town, Puyallup, everything. But, really, when people talk about 'Seattle,' they mean downtown. That's where the corps are headquartered, where the SINners live. See, there's this thing called a SIN, it's basically a global ID, and if you don't have a SIN respectable people don't do business with you. You can't get hired, can't rent a house, can't get healthcare, nothin'. The people with SINs get to live in nice places. People without SINs don't get to live in nice places. An' gettin' a SIN if you weren't born with one costs, like, serious money."

She shrugs. "That's oversimplifying a bit, people with SINs get pushed into the slums if they get poor or whatever, but I grew up SINless, living in Red Town. Which means," and she draws a line in the air, over her invisible map, hard and sure, "I don't get to go outside Red Town. Ever. There's a wall set up specifically to make sure people like me don't go where the respectable people live and ruin their view."

[takenalive]

He leans over to watch Saturday's hand move, borrowed face frowning.

"I had the impression 'sin' was a word with negative connotations. Also, forgive me for saying so, but that's barbaric. Is it a surplus population issue?"

The instincts that come with wearing a human body aren't as overwhelming as those of other animals. The human brain his mind is filtered through in morph wants to connect to people and grasp things with its hands.

[wheyoftheadept]

"No apology needed, chummer. Thanks for noticing, it is fuckin' barbaric." Saturday says this with concerning good cheer, her mouth moving in a way that is technically a smile but mostly just baring her teeth. "SIN stands for System Identification Number, an' yeah, the name is a bit of a lot but I didn't pick it. Not sure who did, or why."

She sits back. Thinking about home makes her run cold inside, cold and angry; angry that she's stuck here, angry that here is like there, angry that the same shit seems to be everywhere, whatever world you find yourself in.

"It's not a population thing. 'S resource distribution. There's this notion, see, that like... hmm. How to put it. Well, there's complexities and justifications, but the simplest way is this. Most people believe that people who are poor and hungry are that way because they deserve it. Like, everything costs money, right? Food, shelter, education, medical care. So obviously, if you aren't earning enough money for those things, it's your own fault. A decent, healthy life with some simple joy in it isn't a right, it's a privilege and if you don't contribute to the wealth of those higher above you in the hierarchy, you don't deserve even that much."

[takenalive]

Humans expose their teeth a lot. Alloran looks more at eyes for expressions - it's not quite the same as in Andalites, but it's similar in some ways - and so he doesn't read this as a technical smile at all.

"Oh. Capitalism. Humans seem to live like that a lot. Most of you can't just walk away and live off the land and build housing in it, you are required to be more collective and for some reason that always means exclusion and neglect for some." Alloran imitates the human gesture, shaking his head. He doesn't think of what the Andalites have to be ashamed of, not in the moment.

"In Santa Barbara it isn't as stratified, perhaps, but the underclass was still dissatisfied. By promising them help and a society where wealth and sex and every other little thing didn't matter, the Yeerks had an inroad they wouldn't have in a more egalitarian society."

[wheyoftheadept]

"Yeah, well, we're real fucking slow learners." Saturday glances away. "Some people are trying to make it better, though. They always are, always have been. Gotta remember that."

Her father could have done anything once Dunkhelzahn had released him from service. Become anything. Instead he went home, and tried to make it better. Raised his children to believe that things should be better. A generation of Red Town's youth had grown up at the center, believing in things being better, and now that things were finally getting somewhere she had to get stuck in something like her fourth alternate reality instead of being home, where the work is.

But that's an old complaint by now, and she acknowledges it wearily before putting it back in its box. She looks back over at Alloran.

"What's a Yeerk?" Saturday asks.

[takenalive]

Alloran's more ready for this kind of thing than back at the sheet cake meetup. He takes a moment, and in a tighter voice says, "Different aliens. They resemble worms or slugs and live in water. They... covet having hands and eyes, they enjoy contact with other minds, and are able to crawl into the brains of other species to enslave them and use their minds and bodies as they will."

He inspects his hands, which have balled up into fists without his intention in some weird human reaction, and consciously opens them, makes his shoulders relax, smooths his brow. "You know, sometimes I think all of this is a fantasy. It seems real, and as if I've been here for months, but that can be part of it."

[wheyoftheadept]

Saturday blinks.

"That - wow. Sound familiar, actually. Ours aren't slugs, though - "

Then his next sentence, and the way he says it, sinks in.

"...were you? Oh, fuck, man. That's - I'm sorry."

[takenalive]

He lolls his head back on his weirdly flexible human neck - this really seems like it should hurt - and makes a dry sound that might be a laugh. "If nothing here is upsetting to me, skunks included, imagine having spent a third of your life as a voice in your own head. I don't recommend it."

Alloran pauses, and reluctantly adds, "It should probably be said that Yeerks are people and only some are unreasoning sadists out for nothing but their own gratification. Those just rose to the top and cultivated similar attitudes."

[wheyoftheadept]

Saturday waves a hand, somewhat dismissively. "Well, sure, there's always a baby somewhere in the bathwater. Just means you gotta sieve it out before you toss.

She shakes her head. "I - there's a kind of monster where I'm from that can do that to people. Like an astral bug, bites you about here," she touches the back of her neck, "takes control. Never happened to me, but I've helped free people it's happened to. Awful damn things."

[takenalive]

"That is a strange idiom," he complains, savvy enough to know it is a saying and not literal but entirely unable to parse just what it means.

"Hm." His eyes narrow. "Accessing the nervous system, then? Do they stay attached externally?"

[wheyoftheadept]

"Kinda? They stick on in the astral, the spirit realm, not the material. They don't grab your body, they grab your, like, essence or soul."

The "soul" is not a spiritual concept for her, it's a very material one; in her world's magic, a person's essential self has is containable and manipulable to some extent, which leads to some problems. This is one of them.

"So you need magic to counter or uproot them. People can walk around under control of those things for ages, if they don't run into anyone who knows what to look for or how to see it. An' since they get their claws into your essence, it's real tricky gettin' 'em out again."

[takenalive]

He raises his eyebrows. "All right, so that part is different. Regardless, I'm sorry you've had to deal with that sort of thing."

Alloran's been considering. <Is there any likelyhood that I could touch the skunk? As myself, and safely. Their spray reacts to my fur by becoming yet more unpleasant, but it could be a useful morph at some point.>

He has one morph with an odor-based offensive ability but it's not subtle or directed. It's like dragging around a huge putrefying corpse on a hot, humid day.

[wheyoftheadept]

"Maybe on your next run though? If you don't mind the spray."

Saturday stretches, raising her arms and bending side-to-side from her seated position.

"Hey, I been wondering. How many morphs can you have, anyway? Like is there an upper limit?"

[takenalive]

"I mind the spray. It's worse against Andalites. Besides, I'm not sure I can actually get that far." In thought speak he adds, <I could do it without morphing, I think, but it's better to be underestimated.>

He dealt with the crawling room by picking over things and just galloped across the moustraps under the bars. And having a twelve-foot prehensile tail and hooves that have some insulating aspect is very helpful for avoiding dangling obstacles. It was the air ram that got a leg broken; he's sturdier than a horse and his leg bones are more durable, but there's a lot of weight on them.

Alloran tries to make a gesture, but human fingers don't bend quite right. Just one digit opposes all the others! Human hands are so simple. <Careful not to say too much about that. They don't know how many I have or that I can get more. The impression is that I need technology I don't have to acquire something new.> "I'm nearly twenty-eight years out of date on the research, but one of the women working on that had one hundred and ninety six different forms."

He doesn't perceive fives and tens as round numbers, being from a species that works off of base fourteen.

[wheyoftheadept]

"Huh." Saturday starts trying to think of the names of one hundred ninety six animals, and then gives up. "Well, I'm not really up for going back through that thing. Don't think anyone is."

It hurts, admitting that. But the damn thing was designed to torture, not teach; it's not a fair challenge or a fair fight, and there's no dishonor in recognizing that. Survival, escape, sabotage. In that order.

[takenalive]

Quite a few of those were different members of the same species, Alloran believes. It's more a factoid he picked up than something he saw or heard more about.

"It is a lot. One wonders if this will all be disassembled or is going to continue." Humans sigh, so Alloran sighs. It's oddly pleasing to do. "I am not optimistic."

[wheyoftheadept]

"Me, neither." Saturday draws her knees up, resting her arms on them. "Fucking Planker, fucking rig - but I guess perspective is everything, as you pointed out."

At least she can say her thoughts out loud with her own mouth.