TEST DRIVE MEME #1

[space_aces]

WHERE ANGELS FEAR TO TREAD

Your journey only happened because of your benefactor, so it begets that it starts at your benefactor as well. SUPERBIA, which is as much of a location as it is an entity, is where everyone's search for Fortuna begins.

There's not much of a welcome party: shortly after their fateful encounter with SUPERBIA, in which they swore to join the quest to find Fortuna, the new Privateers will find themselves afflicted by a sudden change in perspective. See, teleportation is a tricky process, so from SUPERBIA's point of view, why not make the target destination none other than itself? One highly disconcerting moment later, and the Privateers find themselves inside the belly of the beast.

The vast mega-structure is shockingly lonely, void of anyone other than the Privateers. Those who look off the metal satellite and to The Network for intelligence (or take a skim at the Space Wikipedia article) will find out that the surrounding space is clear for lightyears; rumors have it that the place is cursed. It won't take long to understand why.

1

Overclocked

The innards of SUPERBIA are that of an impossibly scaled up computer, and the Privateers start right in the middle of it. You are the spider living in the dusty PS4. Literal rivers of coolant, transistors the size of mountains, landscapes made entirely of circuitry. The sky, bounded by a distant metal ceiling, is constantly alight with coursing electricity that cracks the sky with lightning storms. It can be assumed that the Privateers are the first living things to set foot here, because such a place is not ever meant to be traversed by delicate, organic, mortals that worry about things such as "temperature" or "voltage". SUPERBIA needs not lifeforms to continue its operations; why design for them? Traversal itself is difficult: unscalable walls and perilous drops are common to encounter. The only company the Privateers will find are oddly adorable maintenance robots, which sadly seem too occupied by their directives of maintaining the massive machine to offer any assistance (or even acknowledgement of their new guests).

It is immediately clear that the most urgent priority is to get the hell out of here. Before your adventure ends at the starting line.

2

Skeletons In The Closet

If one stays inside SUPERBIA, either by getting horribly lost or losing all common sense, one will notice a peculiar pattern emerge as one gets deeper into the bowels of the mega-structure. Passages shrink and become more level, and the incredible hostility and danger of the surroundings fade away, until one comes across areas which were definitely intended for humanoid organisms to use at one point.

The construction of these areas is cramped, unfurnished, and dreary; they are reminiscent of artificial environments meant to handle harsh external conditions like a submarine or bunker, but they are entirely livable. One can eventually find distinct rooms, but everything in them has crumbled to dust and their original purpose is nigh impossible to discern. Deeper investigation may reveal the few items that have stood the test of time. While it is more plausible for life to have existed here, that doesn't seem to be the case now. What happened here?

3

The Shipyard

In the opposite direction, when one finally reaches the outer edges of SUPERBIA, they will be rewarded with the place to pick up a spaceship and a stunningly beautiful view of outer space. The outside of SUPERBIA has no atmosphere to get between you and the stars, and they shine brightly, like a beacon calling one out into the first steps of adventure.

The shipyard is already filled with countless space ships of every size, form, and function, all autonomously constructed by SUPERBIA's factories over the countless years. What's the harm in taking one or twenty out for a spin? Even if one has no intentions of permanent ownership of the vehicle, it's not like SUPERBIA will miss it. For a Privateer with a more specific vision, however, there are kiosks around the yard which will allow one to design their very own space ship down to their exact specifications. When the process is done SUPERBIA's matter printers will have it out and space-ready right before your very eyes.

If a Privateer has a ship, vehicle, or large item that they intended to bring with them, they will also find them here, neatly parked in the Shipyard. Why didn't SUPERBIA extend this courtesy to the pilot's themselves? The answer is revealed as soon as the owner makes a closer inspection: the inner contents have been rearranged, like a whirlwind was unleashed inside and assorted loose items thrown around. Now aren't you glad your transportation was given special attention, and the same didn't happen to your innards?

4

Hot Crewmates in Your Area

But how will a single Privateer man an entire space ship? No worries: when one steps into a ship, the strangely endearing maintenance robots will suddenly take acute interest. The robots will follow inside and immediately start assuming the duties of a spacefarer, eliminating the need for extra hands on deck.

Even still, there's just no eliminating the want for a human touch, though. Thankfully even that dilemma has a contingency plotted by SUPERBIA.

Communication devices are easily available on every space ship. They come in all shapes and sizes, ranging from huge stationary consoles to portable smartphone-like screens. But whenever a Privateer attempts to access the Network, a pop-up will appear, obscuring the whole screen.

Tell me a little about yourself. Are you a LEADER or a FOLLOWER? What is your best feature?
The device will be rendered unusable until one relents to the pop-up's demands and provides answers to its questions. What will these be used for? The mystery will be solved when a social media app mysteriously installs itself on the same device, with profiles preemptively made for every Privateer. Each Privateer's profile consists of their given answers, paired with embarrassingly candid photographs. SUPERBIA has eyes in many places it seems.

Comments

[notacaptain]

[Shepard almost asks what it means by game, what game? But ultimately decides against opening the chance for long winded expositions when they're in such a position. Instead she reaches out and clasps Hermes' footlcaw in a firm shake.]

Commander Shepard, Systems Alliance. Good to meet you, Hermes.

[Yeah, his programming is definitely a little strange, but who is she to judge?]

Hard to say, but there's only one way to find out. I need to see if I can track down the Normandy so I'm heading that way myself.

[somuchshipping]

[Normandy? That nearly trips him up. Nearly. Hermes has no frame of reference for most things in the real world, so he assumes the Normandy is some ship. He refrains from asking if a Normandy Unit was bought along as his ship is... kiiiiinda not named "The Hermes", but a Speedster.]

Lead the way, commander!

[Hermes will then follow the human, going where she goes. Sure, he can speed through, but he sort of needs a captain for his ship.]

Sooooo, what's it like in the real world? I never really asked any of the players. Space travel's normal here?

[notacaptain]

Let's just hope I'm pointing us in the right direction. This place didn't exactly come with a map.

[She'll go at a... slightly less hectic pace, just to make sure it's something that's more manageable to travel for beings that can't just manipulate the world to fling themselves long distances in the blink of an eye. If he proves able to keep up, she'll probably speed up to a faster pace again.]

Well, I don't know if I can really say. The real world where you're from is probably very different from mine.

[She looks around them for a moment, the dash to exist paused for a bit. She's been in places that were pretty computer friendly over organic friendly, but this is still a first for her.]

It seems to be normal for here, and it's normal for where I'm from too. I grew up in space.

[somuchshipping]

[Come now, Shepard. Asking a Hermes unit you've never even seen or heard about or even having the slightest idea what he's capable of if he can keep up? Please. No, the question should be if Shepard can keep up with Hermes. (She can't.)

Nonetheless, Hermes does easily manage to keep up.]

The real world is... different? What do you mean? I've never actually been in the real world before. You've never heard of Fortuna? The computer game, not the sun SUPERBIA's after. You know, the roguelike space sim with basically the same goal we're doing right now, except it's a planet and not a sun. Rated M?

I mean, from the sounds of others, it doesn't sound like it's a very popular game... The devs put a lot of effort into it...

[notacaptain]

[Look the only examples she's had of anything even remotely similar to Hermes were very... limited by their physical frame. She doesn't really have a good frame of reference here. At least not yet. Though it's nice, not having to worry about whether someone can keep up with her. Usually she has to walk or run places, because of the non-biotics on her crew. Very novel. Nice to just... kinda teleport throw herself around the place without worry she'll leave someone behind.]

Hard to say, I don't really know what things are like where you're from. But different Universes seem to have different rules for how things work and have different species living there.

[Shepard thinks about the question for a moment before shaking her head.]

Sorry, I'm not really much of a gamer, haven't had time, but I've definitely never heard of anything like that.

[Aw, don't be so hard on your game Hermes.]

Odds are you haven't met anyone from the Universe where your game exists. That's all.

[somuchshipping]

[Slowpoke.]

[Hermes can't exactly purse his lips while thinking about this, so you';; just have to settle for a :[ face. And this is a bit mind-blowing to Hermes. He's an NPC. He knew there was an outside world. He knew that humans were in the outside world. Probably spread across the entire universe. But to think that there's more than ONE real-world universe? That's... wow. That's huge.

Though, a universe without the computer game Fortuna doesn't exist is still kind of sad. Sorry, commander, but Hermes has spent his entire existence inside a computer game as an NPC and he's literally the tutorial, the very first person a player sees. It's ingrained, practically hardcoded for him to want to care about as many people playing the game as possible.]

...If I could get a copy of the game, I could, I dunno... maybe download it and copy it for everyone here...? But wouldn't that be pirating? I don't know of it has any copy protection. I'm not a knowledge god.

[notacaptain]

[Rude.]

[Finding out about the multi-verse and all that is... well, after finding out about billion year old sentient spaceships it's honestly not even that much of a shock. Her shock-o-meter might be broken if anything.]

I'm not sure how copyright law works between universes.

[Apologetic, because he's clearly a little flummoxed by the whole situation. It's probably a hard thing for a program to come to terms with, because it's just too far removed from their way of thinking about the world. Well, probably not hard for EDI, but not everyone can be as fast as she is. Slowpoke.]

I'm not sure how many people would be willing to set aside time to play a game right now, what with the race to find Fortuna.

[Which feels bad to say, but even if Hermes could find a way to get copies to everyone, there's no guarantee everyone would actually be willing to play it.]

...We should go.

[And she's off teleporting along with reckless abandon, because oooh, this conversation is getting awkward.]

[somuchshipping]

[Funnily enough, even at high speeds, Hermes is capable of holding a conversation. So even though he bolts it after Shepard, he continues on as if the conversation never even happened.

Hooray for AIs!]

Yeah, but you can play Fortuna while heading to Fortuna. I think I'm the only NPC here, but you can't just work all the time. Gotta have a little entertainment every once in a while.

Buuuut I guess you're right about there being different copyright laws. Still, seems super rude to be pirated. I gave permission to SUPERBIA, so I don't count.