saveournumbers | Third Permanent Test Drive Meme

Third Permanent Test Drive Meme

Welcome to the SoE TDM!

Due to the premise of the game, everyone on this testdrive must be the modern day reincarnation of the characters we all know and love. Please take a quick look at our navigation to familiarize yourself with the concept and setting of the game before you jump in.

If you have a relationship plotting post comment for your character (which is NOT mandatory to play in this tdm), please link to it when putting up a toplevel on the TDM. That way, other players can easily get an idea of what kind of character they will be tagging.

Other than that, you know the tdm drill - when commenting, please put your character's name and canon in the subject line, and write one or more threadstarters so others can tag you easily. Below, you'll find some prompts that you can use or discard at will to write those threadstarters.

1. The mighty cat spawn

One of your fellow Numbered echoed the ability to spawn cats. They don't know how or why, and they have very little control over it. The problem is that all those cats are a little magic, and all of them like to escape directly after they spawned. So all Numbered have been recruited to find the cats and bring them back to their home.

Find a cat and bring it home really sounds a lot easier than it is... At least they are easily recognisable by the little gemstones set into their foreheads.

2. Winter Wonderland

This far to the south, in the very maritime climate of England, there rarely is snow. And if, it isn't much, and it doesn't stick for long. Not so this Christmas. Snow as thick as on Christmas postcards covers Mossgate Council. Public transport has shut down, the roads are impossible to drive on, stores have closed down, and electricity is down in many places.

In Folkton and Moss Manor, the church halls are heated and offer mingling spaces. In Mossgate, people go sledding on the Greens. And in Tarwich, whole roads are covered in giant snowmen. All corners of the council area are in a special state of existence, and to be missing it, you'd have to be in deep hibernation.

3. Halloween is a bit extra this year

As in, very extra. Not only does every household wake up to a bucket of water on their doorsteps in which scary apples are floating, complete with a sign attacked to the bucket that reads: Have fun bobbing!

No, the whole of the council area is also covered in cobwebs, and the graveyards are covered with the skeletons of those that should normally lie buried under their soil.

4. Summer summer SUMMER!

There is a summer fête and a Pride to enjoy during the summer months. But one can also just lie at the beach, wade through the rock pools at the bottom of the cliffs to catch starfish, tiny shrimp, tiny fish, shellfish, and anemones. Or you can take a ride on one of the attractions on the Pleasure Pier. Or enjoy a concert on the greens. ...Or return from a trip to Spain and suddenly have all echoes come back to one at once. That's also an option, but probably less pleasurable.

5. Past tdm prompts

Feel free to use a prompt from an earlier tdm!

6. Wildcard

And, of course, the obligatory do-what-you-want option.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The awkwardness in Tachibana's posture eased, first on finding the correct office, then on seeing the state of it. This was familiar territory...

Pocketing his printout, he knocked politely on the door frame. "Professor Byrd?" he called, folding his hands in front of him to try and cover the nervous, eager energy that had him almost bouncing on his toes in the doorway.

Torin jerked at the sound of his name, only to glance at the (dinosaur-shaped) desk cock, look up at Tachibana and smile. "Ah, so you must be my new assistant! I completely lost track of time; come in, come in!" He was already getting up from behind the desk and going to shake Tachibana's hand.

Tachibana stepped forward, smile warm as he firmly took the professor's hand. "I am, yeah. Sakuya Tachibana," he introduced, giving a small bow of his head on reflex.

"Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Tachibana!" Ah, yes, a nice, firm handshake, Torin approves. "Here, won't you sit down?" He swept a pile of books and a model of a feathered velociraptor off of a chair, moved it so the chair was more of a chair and less of a shelving unit, and went to sit back down in his own chair.

Tachibana nodded once more, politely waiting until Torin had finished his adjustment before sitting, hands resting on his knees in a bit of a conscious effort to keep them from bouncing. He didn't want to look too over eager for this project, after all!

"My advisor mentioned that you were working on sequencing DNA from fossil fragments, attempting to reconstruct the genetic model for long extinct species."

If this professor was anything like the ones he had worked with back at Todai, that sort of prompt would be enough to jump the conversation right into the heart of things, skipping over the awkward interview small talk that he (and most professors he had known) was so horrible at.

Tachibana absolutely called it with that guess. "Enthusiastic" was an understatement when it came to Torin and his work. "That is absolutely what we're trying to do. Not for any sort of monster movie disaster, but for science!" He always had that memory--logically he knew it was the sudden vivid daydream of a child but it was so persistent, so real--of standing there among the dinosaurs, that he knew there had to be a way to bring them back.

He just left out that part when he was talking to anyone else. "Right now, we're approaching things by looking at the evolutionary links between birds and dinosaurs--it's a far more solid avenue of research than thinking of them only as scaly reptiles." The Tyrannosaurus had feathers. He knew this. "Sequencing the DNA of birds and then comparing that to what we've been able to learn from fossils is the key." He was already pulling out bits of paper from here and there, papers covered in some research notes of another. If left unchecked, Tachibana would get a definite earful of an info dump.

Tachibana nodded, listening intently. He honestly didn't know much about dinosaurs, his research had been far more in living tissue that fossilized records, but hearing about the project had sparked his interest enough that he was sure he could simply research the parts he lacked background on. The important part was the DNA, after all. And if the impossible could be done...

"May I...?" he asked, nodding at the papers as he held out a hand.

"Oh by all means!" Torin hands him the papers and starts pulling more out from odd places. The office is a wreck, but he knows where everything is. He's well aware of Tachibana's research bent, but having some specialty in dealing with living tissue would come in very handy with the bird research. "We'll be moving into doing some fascinating things with chicken DNA soon, it's a little more alive than the bulk of my research has been, but I'm sure the payoff will be well worth it."

"Looking for any overlapping sequences to trace a possible lineage?" Tachibana asked as he accepted the papers.

"Would it be alright if I made photocopies?" he asked, lifting the paper stack slightly to indicate what he meant. "It'd help me get up to speed more swiftly with your current progress without depriving you of your notes."

And the faster he could get up to speed, the faster he could start diving into the meat of the work. Skimming what he could see from even just this already...

"Something like that. We're also looking at activating certain genes in the chickens in order to see if they develop dinosaurlike traits." Chickens are small and easy to handle, it'll be fine.

"Feel free! I'm working on typing them up, so that will be another resource." As well as a task he's already thinking about dumping on some hapless assistant or another, but he'll see how well Tachibana can decipher his handwriting first.

Tachibana blinked, an eyebrow raising. "Activating..." he repeated. "As if trying to transform a modern species into something more like an ancient one?"

Could it be... from that vision?

"Something like that, yes." Torin nodded. "Though it's more to see how the dinosaurs got from point A to point B, so to speak. Chickens didn't just happen overnight--but even today, they still retain some genes that would connect them to those ancestors and other early species of birds." There was a definite sense of feathers in that memory he had; he had to be on the right track.

Tachibana nodded, expression thoughtful, if a touch distant. "Regression through genetic manipulation, then, as if in an attempt to reverse evolution."

"Well, I suppose when you put it that way..." Torin smiled. "Precisely."

So nothing at all to do with that vision he had had, but still fascinating, nonetheless.

Tachibana nodded once more, expression relaxing into a genuine smile. "A novel approach to tackling this sort of subject. Should be interesting to see the results we can accomplish."

"Oh, absolutely, I wouldn't be so immersed in this if I didn't believe in its chances of finding something truly amazing." Torin's excitement for his work was palpable. "You've settled in alright, then, to be this ready to get right to work?"

"Yeah," Tachibana nodded. "Just give me tonight to study the notes and I'll be ready to get started whenever you'll have me."

"Excellent, glad to hear it!" Torin smiled. "Let's say sometime tomorrow? That should give you enough time to get the basics."

Third Permanent Test Drive Meme

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