duplicitymemes

Entry tags:

«tdm

TDM #8

« « « TEST DRIVE MEME » » »

« « « AND IT GOES ON AND ON

It's discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit. Yet, solace is found in the lies we tell each other, comforted by the peace of knowing that we're not alone in our depravity, and once on this path, sin itself becomes the lesser of two evils masked in a cloud of normalcy.

This is how Duplicity has functioned since the beginning. The divide of power and social standing is overt in that Dominants influence the decisions made both publicly and privately while Submissives cater to the rules presented to them. It is the way of Duplicity to assign random designations at birth with no leeway in altering what has been given. Climate in the Up is far stricter than that of the Down; violating outlined personas for a Dominant or Submissive while in full view of others is punished by degree of infraction. In the Down, many tend to turn a blind eye to these sorts of offenses.

To counteract the discovery of the Deceit Gene – a natural "negative" response to all stimuli – the L.I.E.S. program was founded. The program had been designed to introduce new subjects to the current environment and test for the Deceit Gene through immersion in Duplicity's standing society. Sexual impulses and encounters increase the chances of detecting the gene within these individuals. Participants are typically released from L.I.E.S. after a year; however, results have remained unsatisfactory and testing still continues.

... and you’re here! Finally! Welcome to Duplicity.

After choosing a door and stepping through to the other side, the first thing that greets you are the enthusiastic faces of people in medical scrubs and pristine lab coats. Their enthusiasm translates to eagerness as they strip you of your clothes to perform a thorough examination—you will be healed, bathed, and given a paper gown to wear until your items can be processed and delivered to your residence later in the evening. You are also given a device that accesses the network as well as the time and location of orientation.

If you enter Duplicity into the Up, congratulations! You’re a Dominant, which means you are immediately picked up by a limo after processing and taken to your highrise. Here, it is two Dominants per floor with separate apartments. If you enter Duplicity into the Down, congratulations! You’re a Submissive, which means you are directed towards public transportation with the address of the motel you’ll be living in. Here, it is two Submissives per room with a shared common space for all rooms.

Enjoy your free time until orientation! Participation is mandatory by all new and old arrivals.

The hellish summer heat is finally starting to subside, and the cool breeze suggests autumn is approaching.

» » » TAKE A RIDE

After stepping through the door and participating in orientation, LIERS are assembled together in the Up for a tour of Duplicity in its entirety. Seats are in pairs and randomly assigned to Dominants and Submissives alike. Traveling from Fiddler's Square, the train journeys through various parts of the Up, showcasing society and examples of lifestyle. Along the way, frequent stops are made; a variety of passengers can be seen exiting and entering the doors. A Dominant with a kneeling Submissive takes a seat near the front of the train at one stop. A small group of Submissives board and sit closer to the LIERS at another, all seemingly content in their roles. As the tour continues through the Up, the train passes close to the Market and White Wall Bridge and zips by North Park before heading into the Down and bypassing Red Wall Bridge and South Park.

The train makes a "final" stop at Riddler's Square, where inhabitants of the Down are instructed to return to their temporary housing. Those who live in the Up are permitted to stay on the train and revisit the same locations while returning.

« « « A POCKET OF PENNIES

The weather’s getting cooler, and people have begun transitioning from summer clothing to the sweaters and jackets of early fall. With jackets come pockets, and with pockets come a bizarre uptick in robberies.

Then again, perhaps the correlation is flawed. In the Down, getting robbed is a constant threat. Gangs of street toughs look for lone or inattentive people who look like they’ve got valuables on hand. Uncontracted Submissives are particularly easy to rob, since authorities have little time to bother with a lowly Submissive without a Dominant to advocate for them. One particularly nasty gang of young adult men, the Bulldogs, hangs out near the train, looking to ambush unwary Submissives fresh out of Orientation. They are prone to violent muggings and will simply beat up their target and leave them in a gutter when they’re finished robbing them.

In the Up, the streets are nominally safer, but there have been reports of a group of college-aged Submissive women taking advantage of their designation to attack travelers. They, too, stand near the train and the orientation center, looking to seduce passersby into an alley where a group of them can beat and mug their victims, usually Dominants looking to capitalize on their pretty appearances.

But you’re truthfully at risk anywhere in the city. The new arrivals are easy targets, and any brazen thief might get the idea to make some quick cash. The authorities are spread too thin to help, but perhaps LIErs can look out for one another?

Or they might just get in on the thievery. Everyone’s out for themselves, after all.

« « « NEW FLESH LIKE A GLOVE

( CW: potential dubcon, drugs, BDSM/sexual torture, prostitution, public use )

Surrounding a large building near the orientation center in the Up, banners and fliers announcing the beginning of the inaugural Duplicity High Tech Sexpo, a trade show for businesses and manufacturers of adult novelties. Since this is the expo’s first year, admission is free and many excited volunteers are handing out vouchers all over the city. These vouchers can be exchanged for goods and services within the expo, but have no monetary value outside of it. Even if you refuse them, you’ll likely find two or three of them tucked into your bag or pocket.

Inside the expo hall, there are dozens of booths pitching a variety of entertainments. Many offer interactive demonstrations, showing off their tech for the crowds of interested onlookers. Competition is fierce, and booths try to attract attention and customers through any means necessary. There are private rooms all around the expo for potential customers to try out the products. Booths will also happily accept volunteers for demos, or try to recruit them by bribing them with cash or free samples. There’s a nasty rumor going around that some are recruiting volunteers via more illicit means, like drugging and dressing them up, but surely that’s an exaggeration…

Some of the smaller booths sell more traditional toys and accessories: leashes and collars, specialty lubes and massage oils, fetish gear, strap-ons, dildos and vibrators in myriad shapes and sizes, and other basic items. Others advertise apps for the devices, the most notable of which is HUGGR (which LIErs may recognize as a poorly rebuilt sex-themed version of a certain other app.) The closer you get to the big-ticket sponsor booths, the more elaborate and fantastic the products become.

One of the most eye-catching demos is for the Climax VR Headset. You and a partner both wear a VR headset, which displays a collaborative virtual scenario. Both partners can alter the setting and surroundings however they like, and any sexual activity conducted in VR transmits real sensations to their bodies. You can come together without ever physically touching.

Symphony Hydraulics have a large, loud booth where crowds gather to watch perhaps the most outrageous demo: a variety of fucking machines. Volunteers get stripped, strapped in, and turned on, brought to screaming orgasms in front of the whole crowd. There is a fifteen minute break between demos on each machine, as some poor intern hurriedly washes and sanitizes them between uses. In the interim, they offer smaller, portable versions for sale or rent at the expo. (Some may note that a few of the Symphony Hydraulics staff members look a bit familiar.)

Does all this high-tech equipment have you overwhelmed? Wish you could go back to a simpler time? Sir Robert’f Bedroome Provifionf (sic) is helmed by historical reenactor Robert Plum, who has also created his own line of medieval torture device-themed sex toys. Need a chastity belt to keep your Submissive all to yourself? A rack with an attached spreader-bar? An iron maiden with soft vibrating silicone ticklers inside? All the stocks and whips and chains you could ever need? Sir Robert has you covered. Of course, everything on display is harmlessly altered for sexual novelty purposes, but one might also ask to see Sir Robert’s “special” merchandise in the back.

Perhaps the most unassuming booth at the expo belongs to Grandma Hattie’s Snacks and Sweets. Grandma Hattie, a kindly old Submissive, has partnered with a tech company to produce what appear to be completely normal vending machines, stocked full of her tasty homemade bread, snack cakes, and other baked goods. Vouchers are good for a free sample of any treat from a vending machine. They taste amazing and have no apparent odd effects-- until 10 minutes after consumption, when you suddenly gain an insatiable craving for a random kink. Your craving will dominate your thoughts for three hours, or until it is appeased.

« « « PERFECTION OF THE DIGITAL

(CW: potential dubcon, objectification)

By far the largest and shiniest booth comes from expo sponsors Sexy Metal Incorporated, who have set up a display of their incredible high-tech sexbots. These life-sized dolls are made of extremely realistic material that feels like warm human skin, and come with state-of-the-art mechanics that give them lifelike movement. Engineers show off how the bots can be plugged into a computer and programmed to act any way the buyer likes.

They come in a wide variety of customizable appearances and eerily, some of the bots on display look exactly like people you may know. Booth staff encourage customers to buy these dolls, or to rent them and give them a try onstage in front of the fascinated crowds. If that’s not kinky enough, one of the engineers has purchased a VR headset from another booth, and programmed it to interface with the bot’s controls. Care to slip inside the silicone skin of another person?

« « « MOD & OOC NOTES

Please read carefully.

On each Test Drive Meme, there will be a section noting character roles; these will vary each TDM. On an IC level, characters will still have gone through the doors but assignments OOCly are still randomized. When applying, there is a section of the application that denotes whether the character chooses "left" or "right". When participating on the TDM, there will be a third option. Players may link either a top level or a thread (five or more comments from their character) from the TDM and title the link as "Door Pass". This means that the player is choosing to take the designation that they were randomly assigned on the TDM, rather than taking the designation of a door. If the player decides to select a door rather than use the pass, then they are trying their luck; they may get the same designation they had on the TDM or the opposite. Once the application is submitted, players can't change their choice.

To assign roles to characters for this TDM, use the following guide: In celebration of our one year, pick whichever role you want for your character!

» A Pocket Full of Pennies: Feel free to come up with any free-roving gangs or petty criminals you like for your characters to tangle with.

» New Flesh Like A Glove: Characters can spend money on items at the expo, or may exchange vouchers for what they want. Each voucher has a value of about $5 within the expo and they may be acquired by finding them, having them handed to characters/stuffed in their pockets or bags by expo volunteers, or paid them in exchange for “volunteering” at booths.

Characters may indeed try before they buy, either out in the open or using one of the provided private rooms with a partner. The expo has a staff of unpaid student interns tasked with cleaning and sanitizing products if they are used but not purchased.

Grandma Hattie’s snacks can inspire characters to have any kink you may desire.

» Perfection of the Digital: Sexbots can resemble any player characters, including brand new arrivals/test drive characters. They can also resemble characters that yours knows from home. The engineers have no explanation for this, and the one who identifies himself as the designer will shrug and say he gets inspiration from many places.

The sexbots are hot-ticket expensive merchandise, so security is tight around the booth. Characters who attempt to steal or destroy a sexbot (for instance, one who looks like themselves) will be quickly set upon by guards, who are meant to eject them from the expo. However, many of the guards will take bribes from other booths to provide them model “volunteers,” drugged into complacency.

If characters want to acquire a sexbot permanently, they will have to buy it or exchange a hefty 50 vouchers for it.

Please remember to mark any necessary content, and have fun!!

» » » MAIN NAVIGATION « « «

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Phillip can't tell if Rhys is even talking to him, but he's here so he figures he might as well answer. "Nope. Somehow the people in charge here manage to control that insanely way." Seriously you would think STDs would be rampant, but apparently they planned for that and figured ways around it... who knows how.

Yes, he is planning on just standing here continuing his half-conversation with Rhys until he's more directly acknowledged.

STD's aren't the sort of thing that Rhys tends to worry about, and not because he hasn't been having much sex. They just aren't really a thing on Umayma.

"Filters," Rhys says. With that he dismisses the grasshoppers and they resume more normal patterns of movement, clustered near him still but no longer deliberately. "And probably not being at war." He glances over at Phillip and then quickly away again, like he's not willing to make eye contact. "Or is this city just far enough from the front?"

Phillip is definitely not getting the best impression of this guy's world, if these are the questions he's asking. (Ignoring, of course, that they're probably all pretty reasonable questions for winding up on an entirely unknown planet that you're been kidnapped too.)

"Probably not at war," he agrees, which considering the word 'probably' is still in there is likely not encouraging. He might be joking. Maybe. "Ok, I'll bite. What was with the grasshoppers?"

Umayma is definitely a bit shit, and Rhys would be the last person to recommend it to anyone. At the same time, he's even less impressed with what he's seen here. At least on Umayma there are those who know how to submit themselves to God. He's seen none of that here.

"Probably," Rhys repeats, making it clear exactly what he thinks of that.

Followed by a little more confusion. "The-- Oh. I was trying to feel for a filter." Whether he couldn't find signs of one because there isn't one, or the grasshoppers aren't strong enough, or he's just not good enough, it's hard to tell. "It seemed less dangerous than simply trying to walk out of the city." After all, he's been kidnapped. It's unlikely any filter is coded to let him through.

"...You can use grasshoppers to feel for a filter?" Admittedly, Phillip understands the concept of a filter without at all getting the mechanics of how such a thing would work, but. "How-- that works?"

No, seriously. Explain this to him right now. He is both bewildered and fascinated. Is it bug magic?? The rest of what's going on here can definitely wait until he figures this out.

"It's an organic filter." So of course using organic bugs helps. "I'd be a pretty shitty magician if I couldn't even do that."

Well, he's a shitty magician anyway, but he can at least do that much. And it doesn't seem like he needs to admit to not being very good in this place, to this person.

Oh my god. "Wait, it is actually bug magic? That's a thing in your world??" This is amazing. And bizarre, but hey, it's new and that's interesting. Honestly finding new kinds of magic is one of the only good things about this place. "How does it work?"

Rhys blinks, not taking the interest in stride. He's not used to anyone being interested in what he has to say about bugs. It's pleasant, but he doesn't let himself bask in it. "I can alter pheromones, to command them through my will. The bugs themselves are supposed to be specialized, although these have not been." He would have to work on that, if he was going to stay. Just until Nyx came to rescue him.

"Really?" Phillip's not great at the whole science thing, not since he figured out magic was real, but it does make an element of sense to him. The talking still doesn't, but he'll get to that, maybe. "How are they specialized?"

For all that Umayma's works are tempered in the language of magic they are, at their heart, science. Rhys isn't a great magician, but he at least understands what he's trying to do, instead of merely letting it be instinct. "Breeding, mostly, although some of it is independent evolution." That takes a particular talent.

"That is so weird." And cool. But weird. "Does it work on just grasshoppers or like... any bugs?" He wonders if it would work on bugs that didn't exist in Rhys's world too. They might have to experiment. (Really, Phillip would have been really good at science had he not gotten distracted by magic. Though he basically deals with them in somewhat of the same way.)

"It does not feel weird to me." As far as Rhys knows, it's been that way on Umayma for close to three thousand years, since the magicians started making the world habitable, since the First Families came down from the moon. "But no, it certainly is not limited to grasshoppers. I can control all bugs, to some extent."

"Well, yeah. I guess it wouldn't. I'm just... I've never heard of it before." Nice save, Phillip. Maybe now is not the time to admit that bugs are kind of gross and you should have picked something better to control. "What kind of things can you do with them?"

Bugs make Rhys' blood sing, he's tuned to them on a cellular level. It's not like he chose them, but it's also not like he would do differently if he had the option. Bugs were so much more useful than controlling - what? Cats? Bugs are woven into the very fabric of the world.

"Heal wounds, communication, undoing locks, lighting, defense, create illusions, security cameras, power vehicles, that sort of thing."

"Damn." That's a lot from just bugs. "I'm not sure 'that sort of thing' really helps since all of those are so difficult. How do you get them to do what you want? I mean, I know you said pheromones, but you were talking aloud. Do they understand you like that?"

"No, I was..." Rhys pauses, self-conscious about it now. "Talking was for my own benefit. The bugs don't benefit from that. I apologize if I fail to explain it well. I understand that it is unique to my world, but it's still something I have always considered relatively common." Even those who are not magicians understand what magicians do. "I essentially examine the air, taste it, and tell it what to do, by manipulating that air."

"No, it's fine. I don't think most of us have had to ever explain the shit we can do before, and now no one else knows it." Phillip shrugs. He understands that explaining it might be hard. He appreciates the effort. "That sounds... complicated. Did someone teach you to do it, or did you figure it out on your own?"

Phillip's comment is enough to make Rhys consider something outside of himself, something more than simply answering the questions he's been given. "I have some natural talent in it, but I've had instruction. It's difficult to do much without it. What is unusual to this place from your world?"

Phillip is, quite decidedly, not answering that question with total honesty. He might be coming more to terms with the fact that he's reincarnated from a death god, but not to the point where he would share that with strangers.

Instead, just because he can, he's going to give a demonstration ~~and for once, it's not corgis~~. The form in front of Rhys shifts in subtle and not remotely subtle ways, until the boy that was previously standing in front of him was now very much a girl. "This one comes to mind," she says dryly, watching him for his reaction. Most people have been chill about it. She does not expect this to be a trend that continues.

The instant that Phillip starts to change Rhys thinks shifter but the transition starts almost as soon as its started and doesn't come with that twisting wrench in the universe, doesn't leave anyone naked and covered in mucus.

Rhys' reaction is not subtle at all, a quick step backwards paired with the very careful looking away from her. He doesn't know what to think, having been more comfortable thinking he was talking to another man. "Illusion or change?" he asks, and his tone is neutral enough even while he still looks away.

It's probably the most negative reaction she's gotten in a while, which, well. Is still not half bad. Honestly right now he looks more like he doesn't know how to talk to girls than someone who thinks boys should not become girls or vis versa.

"Change," she says, brushing her long hair out of her face- her clothes don't fit quite right now, so she'll probably change back soon, but she can wait in case, "I can change into most anything, pretty much."

He's never known it to be so easy, and he does object to anything like this so casually done. Beyond that, men and women are meant to be different, and Rhys does think of this as a perversion. Phillip is spared his lecture mostly because he's been nice before now.

"Specific people or just general forms?" Rhys throws his hand up before she can respond. "That's not a request." But it feels important to know the answer.

"Both?" Phillip shrugs. "I mostly use one of these or a dog, though. But I can do pretty much anything I've tried- anything organic, anyway."

He'll go ahead and shift back now, mussing his hair back into place. "So yeah. I've met other people who can shift into one thing or another, but I think I'm the only person I've met who can do anything." Well. Can currently do anything, anyway. Carden's got potential.

Rhys hasn't noticed yet that Phillip has changed back, since he's still carefully not looking that way, and there's none of the rippling of reality he'd expect from a shifter.

"If you can do anything, why would you choose... to be a woman?" Rhys can see the advantages of it on his world, mostly for draft dodgers, but it also seems a hazardous sort of affair.

Well his voice is different again, so Rhys probably has the hint now. Really, this is the kind of question he's surprised he doesn't get more of here- grateful, but surprised given how people seemed to get real offended by the mere idea back home. "Is there something wrong with women?" He knows that's probably not the point. It's the one he's making anyway.

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