saveyourbrain | TEST DRIVE MEME

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test drive meme

TEST DRIVE MEME

TEST DRIVE MEME

> The Park. Man, what a nice day out. Why not enjoy it? I'm sure -- shit, yep, there's some echo monsters.
> The Mall. Exactly what it says on the tin! Dodge the hordes of teenage mallrats or take part, whichever suits your tastes.
> Rainy Day. Agh, it's fucking awful out. And is it raining those vermilion things?? Now you've got an Echo to contend with on top of everything else. Find some shelter, quick!
> PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION, HOW FUN
> The most horribly kitschy Arts and Crafts Fair you can imagine.
> NEW YEARS. What better way to start out the new year than to learn that everything you know is a lie? Or if you are already acquainted with the network pass out some resolutions.
> A food fight has just broken out in the cafeteria. Join? Flee? The choice is yours alone.
> Wild Card! Make up your own.

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[EITHER: A red-tailed hawk is in the park, stoically ignoring you as she wolfs a dead squirrel. Amongst the tufts of pulled-off fur it might be visible that her feet are constructed quite like knobbly, scaled hands with long curved hawk talons.]

OR: Network post, video. A red-tailed hawk with handlike feet stands on a white plain under a white sky, with no horizon between. There's a girl's voice that seems to belong to her, though her beak doesn't move with the words.]

Meaning? MEANING? Numbers. Freaks!

[Also in the park is a brightly-colored parrot who has had his attention caught by the hawk eating the squirrel. He has never seen another bird eating a squirrel like that, so forgive him as he sort of creeps from the branches of the tree where he's hoping he won't be seen. He's looking down at his own feet and looking over at the hawk's; he's also noticed the obvious differences.]

[The hawk is attuned to movement. She turns her sharp head and fixes the parrot with a brown eye that seems to have a permanent glare due to the shape of her face, and then quite deliberately resumes eating, holding the little body down with those feet.

She's not seen a parrot out in the open before and there's something about that, but food is important. One never knows when one will get another chance at it.]

[It's cool, other bird, it's cool, the parrot wants no part of that squirrel. It's well outside what he prefers to eat anyway...and he just had lunch of his own not too long ago. Got lucky when some kindergartener spilled grapes everywhere at the playground.

But he's still watching, for he's still somewhat curious. The glare doesn't seem to faze him, though he remains hanging back.]

[The organs and fat are consumed, that's the most important part. Watching back, the hawk removes one of the squirrel's back legs and holds it in one foot to better remove strips of muscle.

...this is not a thing most birds do. Parrots, yes, but virtually nothing else. Her feet really are built like hands.]

[The zoo did not keep the parrots with the birds of prey, and so this parrot has failed to realize that this is anything particularly unusual. Granted, he's seen finches and things, but none of them ate in what he would call a sensible manner. And he would call this a sensible manner, were it not for the dead squirrel involved.]

[If the hawk eats too much she won't be able to fly as well, and that's very important. Still carrying the leg, she takes wing for long enough to reach the crotch of a tree at around the parrot's level, at which point she alternates looking at him with the left eye, the right eye, and both at once. What to make of him?]

[Him? He's harmless. He'll just sort of preen and try to look as harmless as possible. He's a small parrot, and while he's perfectly capable of getting impossibly loud or taking a chunk out of a zookeeper's finger with that beak of his, he is in no way interested in picking a fight with a hawk.

Still, he's been acting odder and odder by the day, and something occurs to him. Something he should perhaps do...or rather, say.]

Hello.

[The hawk pulls her head back and tilts it quite a bit, like a curious juvenile. Opens her beak-]

Croak.

[...even once she's echoed back her full part-human mutant bird form, it's not a talking mutant bird form.]

Oh. Sorry. I thought maybe you had the numbers, too.

[He kind of does not know what else to say, really, except to add some apologetic parrot noises.]

[She blinks fierce large eyes. Numbers?]

Croak.

[And the hawk pecks at her own leg. There's a numbered band around it.]

[Maybe she can't talk. He couldn't talk, not right away...]

Numbers! Like that! Only when you scratch them into things...

[He quickly scratches a few marks into the trunk of the tree, bringing up the network.]

Can you see that?

[Her head tilts to the point where it's basically upside down and she blinks.

Even as a partly human bird monster she won't be able to speak out loud, but there is such a thing as radio telepathy. Thinking a name hard enough is likened to dialing a number - so here, her harsh, unpracticed human voice is only audible over the network.]

Numbers. Numbers! Yes. Reason?

[He made a parroty noise of excitement. This had worked! They could communicate!]

I don't know why this is happening, but I don't think anyone does.

[He considers it a moment.]

There are bad things out there. It's probably because of that.

[And somehow, it felt natural to be saying that there were bad things out there, to possibly be finding an ally with whom to fight the bad things...]

Experiments. Man.

[wait, wait. there's a better way of putting thoughts together. The hawk's pupils shrink or pin in concentration.]

A man. There was. His eyes bright. -Smiled. Not the reason of this. The reason of me.

[The parrot tilts his head to one side.]

Someone did this? You did not feel all strange and hollow inside and could then speak?

[He sounds disturbed by the idea.]

[She starts to eat the squirrel leg again.]

He was there. Many winters before. He put this. [click, the band] Then changes, yes. Emptiness.

[The parrot looks sad...at least, about as sad as a parrot can look.]

He does not sound like a nice human.

Not nice. Friend... not friend. Pretends. Pretended.

[basically her first echo was being banded by someone who looked like a mad scientist her preincarnation knew.]

I don't think all the humans are like that...but we have to watch out for the ones who are.

[The parrot sounds very sad at this.]

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TEST DRIVE MEME

Miranda Fallow | Dr. Franklin's Island

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