[If I need to speak OOC, know that my notation involves brackets.]
[Prior references for this RP:
Guidelines/initial outline and
sign-up/participant list. And if you're reading but not in the RP, assuming it's still running when you read this, feel free to sign up too!]
[As per popular vote on the latter thread, we will begin at the facility and first meet there. And please, don't feel obligated to make really long posts. Just make sure to advance the story somehow.]
In the red-orange light of the evening sun, a bicycle whizzed through the remote forest, following a paved, worn road. Its rider, dressed casually, glanced back every now and again, and occasionally to his watch, concern mounting about the distance to the facility where he'd been accepted to test some sort of virtual reality device. The letter had, admittedly, been somewhat vague, but...the chance to step into the shoes of characters he'd written was just such a powerful possibility. Still...the nearest town was the better part of an hour's ride back at this point, and he had met not a sign of life nor an indication of the path since then. All he could do was trust to his map and turn back if it became much later. He sighed, muttering to himself. "Come on, Jaye...Aurora wouldn't be afraid of a dark forest, would she?"
Soon enough, light shone ahead. A white glow lit the thinning treeline. The road terminated in a parking lot beside a cuboid building. Plenty of vehicles were in the lot, with some spaces left, though Jaye did note vines and webs beginning to creep onto the vehicles there. Getting off the bike, he led it over to the building itself - and discovered that this building, supposedly headquarters of Departure Science, had neither visible doors nor visible windows. Grumbling, he looked around the grounds a bit more and found a fountain on the opposite side of the building from the parking lot, as well as a bike rack at which he left his transportation for the moment.
The fountain, on closer inspection, appeared to be made of marble, dotted with black beetles skittering across its surface, and home to a colorful variety of fish. While Jaye looked up at it, the top began rising...and what he could only call a periscope rose out of the fountain. After a brief flash of green light, it sank back, but the whole fountain began to rumble. Apparently it was stacked on top of some sort of cylinder; once a door opened in the cylinder it became readily apparent that the fountain was home to a secret elevator. From inside, a man leaning on a cane, wearing a suit and a slightly stern expression, beckoned Jaye to the elevator. He approached cautiously. "...who are you?" The man paused a moment before a coughing fit took him for a few seconds, after which he gestured to his nametag: 'Dave Smithson - CEO, Departure Science'. "You're...the leader here?"
In the midst of more coughing, Dave nodded, after which he raspily replied, "You're the first one here...I'll answer questions when everyone gets here. For now...I'm taking you to a conference room...and I'll catch the others as they get here..." Admittedly, Jaye was still rather suspicious, but he went along into the elevator. The ride down was silent aside from Dave's coughs. He guided Jaye through a series of security checkpoints (none of which were manned, but all of which required some form of verification to proceed) and finally into a room off the maze of hallways. All along the way, the walls were sterile white...and despite the soft, white glow there was no apparent source of light.
"You sure you're okay, Mr. Smithson?" The regular coughing really was beginning to concern Jaye.
"It...it comes with age and some of the tests we've done. The kind of thing..." He coughed. "...we might be able to fix after this..." Shaking his head at Jaye's apparent interest in the last statement, he exited the room to await the next participant.
So Jaye turned back to the room itself. The walls were still white, the strange ambient glow still permeated the room without being overbearingly bright. A long table of polished white wood took the central part of the room, with smaller tables of the same material set against the walls. In bowls on these tables were assorted fruits, the first sign of a color other than white he'd seen in a while. Idly he picked up a red apple from one...then replaced it, not sure when to expect someone back, and took a seat at the main table instead. These (still white) chairs, anchored to the floor, nonetheless swiveled, so he swung back and forth for a bit...but after that he settled into sitting and waiting, keeping a lookout for those who would be arriving with their host.
