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[CYOA] Sand
Clint Eastwood
My baby's in there someplaceShe crawled right inRegistered User regular
My baby's in there someplaceShe crawled right inRegistered User regular
You wake up with an unshakable feeling that you’ve brought this upon yourself. An inherent knowledge of your guilt, even when you don’t know what you’ve done wrong? Actually, no. You’ve determined this from the note, pinned to your dirty white shirt. It reads YOU KNOW WHAT YOU DID in piecemeal, blocky letters clipped from newspapers, letter headers, and cereal boxes.
You turn your eyes skyward, finding a cloudy day and thanking whatever benevolent spirit who flipped the switch from SCALDING to TOLERABLE. You feel overly hot anyway, which you decide is likely due to lying unconscious in a desert for an indeterminate amount of time. You have a tattered red bandana covering your mouth and nose, another blessing, given the sand and wind and all.
The sun pokes through the clouds occasionally; given its current location, you suppose it’s about midday. You also suppose this because you are wearing a dinged up brassy watch that reads 11:30. You stand up and look all around you.
You were lying next to the side of a road, worn down by erosion and disuse, half covered in shifting sands and the odd tumbleweed. Stray tufts of long, reedy plants unkink themselves from between cracks in the asphalt. The road seems to fork behind you, both sides stretching off into the desert and disappearing over dunes.
Off in the distance the other direction, you can see a craggy mountain, with what looks like a big scoop taken out of the side by some unfathomably large melon baller. You reach up to your face, shading your eyes as the sun peeks into full view, and notice the slight heft of a ratty, light knapsack, slung over your shoulders. The mountain seems to be unconnected to the road in front of you.
There is a withered green sign by the edge of the road in front of you. It reads LEXAN – 8. You turn around and see similar signs on both forks of the road. The left fork’s sign has been worn away almost entirely, and the only legible bit is the number 240. The right fork’s sign appears to have been hit by something; it lies in the sand. It reads, E W. NEST – 3, written with what seems to be spray paint.
You are alone. You consider what you should do.
---
This is a CYOA, or choose your own adventure. I intend to update it as regularly as I damn please assuming there's any interest in this, or as regularly as my work schedule allows. Ideally at least once a day, barring saturdays. I also intend to provide sporadic illustrations when necessary, made in the wonderful image editing program known as MS Paint.
Any and all actions will be usable (within reason, of course), but I would like to use the agree system to determine what action will be taken. Whatever posted course of action gets the most agrees will be the one we go with, again assuming it's not something totally dumb like >Kill Yourself For Posting This Dumb Thread. Please bold any recommendations for our protagonist's next action.
You turn your eyes skyward, finding a cloudy day and thanking whatever benevolent spirit who flipped the switch from SCALDING to TOLERABLE. You feel overly hot anyway, which you decide is likely due to lying unconscious in a desert for an indeterminate amount of time. You have a tattered red bandana covering your mouth and nose, another blessing, given the sand and wind and all.
The sun pokes through the clouds occasionally; given its current location, you suppose it’s about midday. You also suppose this because you are wearing a dinged up brassy watch that reads 11:30. You stand up and look all around you.
You were lying next to the side of a road, worn down by erosion and disuse, half covered in shifting sands and the odd tumbleweed. Stray tufts of long, reedy plants unkink themselves from between cracks in the asphalt. The road seems to fork behind you, both sides stretching off into the desert and disappearing over dunes.
Off in the distance the other direction, you can see a craggy mountain, with what looks like a big scoop taken out of the side by some unfathomably large melon baller. You reach up to your face, shading your eyes as the sun peeks into full view, and notice the slight heft of a ratty, light knapsack, slung over your shoulders. The mountain seems to be unconnected to the road in front of you.
There is a withered green sign by the edge of the road in front of you. It reads LEXAN – 8. You turn around and see similar signs on both forks of the road. The left fork’s sign has been worn away almost entirely, and the only legible bit is the number 240. The right fork’s sign appears to have been hit by something; it lies in the sand. It reads, E W. NEST – 3, written with what seems to be spray paint.
You are alone. You consider what you should do.
---
This is a CYOA, or choose your own adventure. I intend to update it as regularly as I damn please assuming there's any interest in this, or as regularly as my work schedule allows. Ideally at least once a day, barring saturdays. I also intend to provide sporadic illustrations when necessary, made in the wonderful image editing program known as MS Paint.
Any and all actions will be usable (within reason, of course), but I would like to use the agree system to determine what action will be taken. Whatever posted course of action gets the most agrees will be the one we go with, again assuming it's not something totally dumb like >Kill Yourself For Posting This Dumb Thread. Please bold any recommendations for our protagonist's next action.
Clint Eastwood on
+3
Posts
Steam Switch FC: 2799-7909-4852
Edit: Whoops, I'm on a super slow connection
It has aroused my.... suspicion.
Giving in to your immediate curiosity, you shrug off the knapsack and unzip it, squatting downward and laying it gently on the asphalt below.
Its contents are sparse. You dig inside and find a REVOLVER, loaded with a single bullet. Preferring not to contemplate its intended usage, you tuck it into the back of your jeans. The next thing you retrieve is a dusty COMPASS. You palm it for a moment, then note that you are currently facing southwest, meaning the forks behind you lead north and east. Of course, you reason, nothing's stopping you from going off the beaten path, so to speak. Not many beaten paths in the fucking desert, you figure.
You reach back inside the knapsack and grab a CANTEEN. Its contents slosh around invitingly. Probably water, but possibly tequila. You put it back in the knapsack. The final item inside is a crumpled-up BASEBALL HAT that simply says Beer on it.
Zipping the knapsack back up, you put it back on and rise to your feet again. You are facing southwest. The sun has disappeared again. The time is 11:34 AM.
Put the hat on backwards.
but they're listening to every word I say
You remove the hat from the knapsack once more, turning it over in your hands and staring intently at the four letters adorning it. The second E is slightly ragged, flaking away in small chunks. If you picked at it for a minute, the hat would say Becr. You adjust the snaps on the back, leaving two unused.
As you slowly pull the snug but comfortable hat onto your head, over your shaggy hair, you feel somewhat at ease. You instantly feel lucky, or at least luckier than you were beforehand. The bill of the cap is low, keeping the back of your neck cool. Almost as cool as you look, with your backwards hat.
Looking up at the sky again, you wonder why you haven't seen any other signs of life. No birds, no snakes, not a solitary cricket. Despite the uneasy sensation of being utterly alone, you shrug it off and survey your surroundings again.
To the southwest, the direction you currently face, a road stretches out into the distance. A sign reads Lexan - 8. You notice a faint sound, repetitive but indistinct, coming from the southwest.
To the north, the left fork of the same road. Its sign reads 240. The road appears particularly well worn, in comparison to the southwest and east routes.
To the east, the right fork. Its sign reads E W. Nest - 3. The sign has been toppled, and two lengthy skid marks cut off at the joint of the fork.
To the southeast, you see the mountain with the giant hole in its side. You notice mist surrounding its peak, possibly the only watery thing in this arid place.
In every other direction, you see nothing but sand. The time is 11: 38 AM. You are starting to feel hungry.
Steam Switch FC: 2799-7909-4852
You plunge your hand back into the knapsack again, plucking out the canteen and unscrewing its tight lid, and sniff at its contents. You are rewarded with the smell of rubbing alcohol. A sizable gulp confirms your suspicions - it's VODKA. Warm vodka, at that. A fate worse than death. You clutch your gut in disgust, but manage to get it down without retching. After putting the canteen back in your bag, you decide to head towards the mountain, in hopes of finding...anything.
As you trudge through the desert, you contemplate what you could have done to wind up here. The note is all you have to go on, but YOU KNOW WHAT YOU DID isn't helpful when you can't remember anything before about ten minutes ago. Are you a murderer? A junkie? A thief? Too sassy for your own good? Yeah, it's probably that one, you think.
You walk for what you assume is about a mile, without any notable event, then stop dead in your tracks. At the bottom of a sloping hill lies some sort of oversized dune buggy, with a covered roof, screened windows, and room for two. A thick layer of dust coats its exterior, and sand reaches up to the halfway point of its wheels. You peer around, but do not see a driver, or the remains of one. You are concerned it may be a trap.
The mountain appears to be at least an hour away on foot. The clouds are beginning to clear out. You are moderately hungry and heavily thirsty. You feel buzzed. You are beginning to feel hot. The time is 12:18 PM.
VROOOOOMMMMMM!!!
Ignore your paranoia and walk up to the Dune Buggy, see if it works. Better a "trap" that dying in the desert of heat stroke.
but they're listening to every word I say
Steam Switch FC: 2799-7909-4852
No way that's a trap. No sir.
This but Start chucking doughnuts to raise a dust cloud as a signal
Damnit, it's not little and blue...
Switch Friend Code: SW-1406-1275-7906
Switch Friend Code: SW-1406-1275-7906
You tentatively approach the dune buggy. Wiping some grit away from the windshield, you peer inside.
Nobody waiting for you, alive or dead. You sigh with relief, then open the driver's side door and plop down.
The buggy's key hangs loosely from a hook on the dashboard, along with a keychain that reads ALEXANDER in hastily scrawled blue letters. In the passenger seat lies a half-full WATER BOTTLE (assuming it hasn't been switched out for vodka) and another REVOLVER like yours, complete with one bullet. You take both objects and deposit them in your backpack, then snatch the key.
The buggy turns on, but does not start. The battery and fluid gauges appear normal. You are out of fuel.
With a sigh, you slouch back into the seat, taking a moment to mull over your options. You feel moderately hungry and heavily thirsty. You feel buzzed. The time is 12:24 pm.
If there is a trunk and/or back seat, check them.
Start up the party machine
Steam | Twitter
water in radiators is a thing, right
to uh, check the contents, yeah
Drinking coolant will make you very sick, yes.
You can, yes. It's not just the glycol in antifreeze that will make you sick though. If you just use water, the heat from the engine operating will cause the heavy minerals and chemicals in the water to come out of solution and bake onto the walls of the water jacket, which releases oxides back into the water. This is what that crumbly white shit is in the coolant passages of an engine that has been run on water for a long time is. There will also be rust in the form of iron oxides contaminating the water if the engine uses an iron block and/or cylinder head.