Test Flight!

[lucetimods]

the luceti test flight meme

Reserves have just opened and apps are right around the corner. But are you still on the fence about any of your would-be characters? Well -- here is your chance to take them out for a spin!

▣ TAG IN or reply to others with characters you would like to test flight for Luceti.
▣ ONLY add top-level comments for characters who are not yet in the game. You're free to reply to others with Luceti characters (because that's half the fun) but remember that the whole point of this meme is for potential characters.
▣ PLEASE do not post duplicates of characters already in Luceti.
▣ GO AHEAD and give us a brief description of your character in the top-level comment, along with one or two possible ways to run into your test-driven character around town.
▣ YOU MAY use these threads for your first person samples on your app -- just make sure that you link threads of a goodly length (i.e., threads with at least ten comments from your character).

Need a little help getting started? Remember, you needn't post here as though your character is still brand-spankin' new. It'll probably be more fun for all involved if this isn't a simple dress rehearsal for showing up. Here are a few scenario ideas:

o1. The grocery store is out of food. What do you do?
o2. Wing injury! Call for help or stagger your way to one of our fine clinics.
o3. It's a busy evening at Good Spirits, one of Luceti's local bars. Do you dare try the drink specials?
o4. Have a talent for playing music? Try Cloud Nine's open mic night!
o5. Beach party? Snow party? Leaf-raking party? Gardening party? YOU DECIDE.

Okay. So my examples are pretty non-exciting. But they're really just suggestions. I'm POSITIVE you kids can come up with more creative things.

Above all? HAVE FUN. Oh. And don't forget to RESERVE your characters.

Comments

[ablankpage]

[He watches the waltz step and reminds himself that sometime, when he can find a record player or this world's equivalent, he'll teach her a proper waltz. And maybe a partner dance or two more.

It's easier to think about the things he should teach her -- the things he should do for her -- than about what she just said.

This October, he realized some time ago, would have made it twenty years since he stepped through the interim space. Twenty years since he entered Columbia and became one of the Lutece twins instead of just the Lutece. Since his singularity became a partnership. He makes himself keep his smile, though his gaze turns to the keys of the piano.]

It's a little strange, but I manage.

[tearmeanewone]

[Elizabeth nods, continuing to sway to the music though her expression is more somber and thoughtful.]

I've been here for nearly two months, and I still sometimes wake up and don't know where I am. I'm expecting one thing and it's another. Is that what it feels like for you? For anyone who's missing someone they've always seen?

[Obviously, she wouldn't know.]

[ablankpage]

It's like dying.

[The music fades as he says it. Too happy a song for these thoughts, so one has to stop, and his mind has never been good at turning off.]

Dying but not. [The death he'd known.]

There are so many things that one is just used to. Eating, sleeping, changing one's clothes. Even after it is no longer necessary, one... does it. For a time. Then, it becomes habit not to. So remembering to do so again... takes time.

[Which doesn't go into the emotional aspect. To be one half of a whole. To have known that completion and now lack it. Instead, he makes a soft chuckle.]

At least I remember to finish my own sentences now.

[tearmeanewone]

[Dying... So it's more intense than the occasional sense of strangitude Elizabeth feels when she walks into town for groceries. She doesn't completely understand how dying and remembering how to function again are directly linked, but Robert and Rosalind always were a little odd. And she could understand that losing someone you cared about would be hard. It was hard enough when she spent months without Booker in Comstock House, the one person she'd spoken to on a regular basis and who had been the only other constant besides Songbird. But dying? It hadn't felt like dying. There were other things that had felt worse. Things that didn't end.]

[Given time, though, maybe it could have felt like she was dying. Maybe she would have forgotten how to smile, or feel. Looking back, it had been a very, very close call.]

If losing someone so important is so devastating, why do people decide to care so much? [It's a rhetorical question, though Elizabeth has slowly realized that between Robert and Booker, Robert was the one less likely to shrug his shoulders or roll his eyes at the harder questions Elizabeth asked.]

I'm guilty of it too, I suppose. I just can't remember what I was thinking the moment I decided to care.

[ablankpage]

We don't decide.

[It's a soft admission. He sighs a little as he considers it, his fingers finding a softer melody. Something almost melancholy.]

Humans care. We care about each other so very much. And sometimes... there are individuals. People we've never seen or known but we meet them and it just... is there.

[He plays a chord and lets it linger.]

Like the first time I saw Rosalind. Really saw her. [His voice has become quite a bit softer. This is, after all, something he doesn't talk about, not usually.] When the window between the worlds opened and we saw one another. I knew the moment I saw her... that my life would never be complete until I was with her.

Until we could work together.

[tearmeanewone]

[That sounded poetic and heartfelt and right. No wonder Robert couldn't remember to eat until Elizabeth was knocking on his door with leftovers. Elizabeth imagines that if she ever met anyone like that, her life wouldn't be the same either.]

[However--]

The first time I saw Booker I screamed. And threw things at him. [She sighs heavily.] I guess that's why I'm asking such odd questions.

[ablankpage]

[Robert has to chuckle a little.]

Mister DeWitt does tend to have that impression on people, I find. [But that's not what she needs. She doesn't need dismissive.]

They were very different circumstances. I... built my life around the field and tear. Your introduction to Mister DeWitt was rather another matter.

[Another matter entirely. With another set of embedded knowledge, expectations, and... everything.]

Besides, he proved himself. Even at his worst, he... didn't ever mean you harm.

[tearmeanewone]

No kidding. He came through my ceiling. [The corner of Elizabeth's mouth pulls up in a wry smirk.]

I know he never meant to hurt me. I know that now, at least. There were a few times where I wasn't so sure. [She furrows her eyebrows, remembering something embarrassing.]

I hit him with a wrench too. Maybe it's a miracle he didn't pretend to not know me when he arrived here.

[ablankpage]

Admittedly, he deserved to be hit with the wrench. [Robert offers a little smile, as if to reassure her. Because... well... That had been a low move to make on DeWitt's part. And he hadn't even tried to lie his way out of it. Robert would never understand that.]

He... certainly had his own methods. But he was a good man to get it done. To get you out of Columbia.

[tearmeanewone]

[Elizabeth fixes Robert with a very surprised, very dubious look. Well... perhaps Booker deserved to get left in an airship, but really. The wrench could have killed him, right? But if there's one thing she's learned since Robert and Booker started sharing air, it's that the two of them tended to disagree just for the sake of disagreeing sometimes.]

[Secretly, Elizabeth thought it was kind of fun. More lively than her life in Monument Island.]

Why didn't you do it? [Not that she's accusing him of anything. She's just curious.]

[ablankpage]

[Why didn't you do it?

It would have been better if it was an accusation. Robert's hands lift off the keys, and he sits at the piano, considering it.

He could explain that DeWitt had things to atone for, that he had a debt to repay, even if it wasn't the memory he'd created for himself. But that might hurt her. That would mean telling her the things she doesn't know yet, the things that will change everything.]

I didn't think I could. [He could leave it at that, but he won't.]

Songbird wasn't of my creation -- I didn't know how to stop him. I also wasn't very good at violence, not... on a large scale, and I knew the fight it would be to get you even out of that tower. I needed someone far more capable and far more accustomed to it.

I think... at the time... I was afraid, too. To try. To leave Columbia myself. Because I couldn't have just sent you off. I couldn't have just left you alone.

[He smiles faintly and makes a very soft admission:] And Rosalind never would have gone with me.

[tearmeanewone]

Booker is definitely good at violence, I'll give him that. And I'd think you'd be glad to run from Columbia and never look back. There are so many other places in the world to see that aren't a floating island.

[Elizabeth tilts her head in curiosity.] I would think Rosalind would have loved to go somewhere besides Columbia. To someplace where her knowledge wouldn't be brushed off as-- [She gives a short, wry laugh.] --'a woman's intuition'?

[ablankpage]

Two atheists in a theocracy. We were... certainly outsiders. But--

[He sighs a little. She knows enough, at least, to know he crossed the barrier between worlds to go to Columbia.]

To really get you away from Comstock, we would have had to go to my world. A world which would never have accepted a woman as a serious physicist. A world in which Columbia -- Rosalind's greatest contribution -- never existed.

She... wouldn't have just been the female Lutece twin the way I became the male Lutece twin. She... would have lost everything. Better "woman's intuition" and the credit of a marvel like Columbia than a woman who would be barred from most scientific assemblies.

[tearmeanewone]

That doesn't make any sense. [Elizabeth, bless her, is still in a state of idealism. The world, in her opinion, should function as it does in her books. Logic. Facts. Conclusions drawn from evidence. Romance and fiction when the moment called for it.]

If she could make Columbia fly, she could do it again. And then who would claim she wasn't a physicist? Blind people, probably. People who are annoyed they didn't do it first.

[ablankpage]

The world... doesn't work like that. [It's a hard, bitter truth.] As much as Comstock and I failed to see eye-to-eye...

He would admit when a woman was brilliant. He would give her due credit. Anyone else... Anyone from my world would have attributed everything she did to me. No matter what I said, no matter what I did.

She would have been nothing in my world, and I couldn't do that to her. So, I stayed.

[tearmeanewone]

[How absolutely ridiculous. Elizabeth couldn't believe that there was no alternative, Columbia or being nothing. Rosalind did seem like the sort of person who would choose Columbia though.]

[It was a depressing thought, though. That someone would choose to stay in Columbia, knowing what it was. Elizabeth hoped that there was something on the other side of her escape. Something worth everything she and Booker went through to get her out. But what if there wasn't?]

Knowing what I know about Columbia... that was very generous of you. [She nods and smiles, leaning back onto the piano.] But I guess it all depends on what matters most to you.