Prologue, Pt. 5: Blue Skies (SDVR)

Posted on January 6, 2022 Updated on January 5, 2022

I was eight years old the first time I laid eyes on my namesake. It was a Wednesday morning in early fall and my class embarked on a field trip to the city museum. The bus smelled like sweaty socks and bubblegum. Children laughed and taunted, chattered and chucked spitwads at the backs of their classmates’ heads. Outside the trees and buildings whizzed past at a dizzying speed as the school bus darted in and out of heavy city traffic. I could still taste the scrambled egg with tomatoes and bacon bits and cream-cheese-on-toast breakfast Daddy had made for me before I left, a reminder that I forgot to brush my teeth. I could feel the smoothness of my new lace socks with pink bows, a fashion fad of the time, something Daddy’s girlfriend thought I’d wear. It wasn’t my style, but I didn’t complain. I knew she was trying. None of this mattered though. I closed my eyes and remembered to count backward from ten, a self-soothing technique the therapist shared with me.

I didn’t envy the job of my teacher, Mrs. Still. She was a stern-looking woman, thin, small-boned, sharpened cheeks, severe chin, and a finger that you paid attention to if she started wagging. Her dark brown bangs nearly obscured her eyes, but they were overshadowed by her thick brown rims. I liked her better than my former educator who mistakenly heard “Jake” instead of “Jade.” I was the laughingstock of the third grade for half a semester when I tried to correct her error. Despite her intimidating looks, Mrs. Still was a fair teacher, believing fresh air stimulated the mind as much as a fractions lesson. This was the first field trip of the fall. Grayson was already acting out per usual, twisting paper into planes to shoot at his unsuspecting classmates. Mrs. Still gave him a tongue-wagging lecture and threatened to leave him behind on the bus with the driver. The man was overweight, jiggling around every turn, remnants of powdered donuts on his unshaven face, and smelled like a sewer, but he was kind. Of course, Grayson didn’t know that.

A trip to Zuzu City was a big deal for a little girl. Most of the schools couldn’t afford roundtrip bus rides to the big city, let alone to attend the most famous museum in all of the Eastern Province. Guillermo’s father had a connection with the Board of Directors, and that’s how my entire class received passes for a day trip to the exhibits. I poked my legs one after the other and wiggled my black Mary Jane’s, a nervous habit. I felt grown up now… like fourth grade would be the best year yet. Emily smugly preceded to tell me that she had already been to the museum, last spring break with her relatives. Afterward, her aunt took her for mani-pedis. Emily wiggled her exposed French-style polished toes in their bejeweled flip flops. She was the cool girl, the one everyone wanted to be. When she said something, everyone followed… except those who refused to be her blind sheep posse. It wasn’t all that exciting, Emily declared. But I didn’t listen. I was sure it would be. I would finally get to see the thing I had only read about in books.

Keeping all kids in a straight line and together is an impossibility in primary school. Actually, I’m not sure how many adults can walk in a straight line either. Of course, I was easily distracted, awed by the wonders of the city. Like the three tiny green frogs in the effervescent fountain with its yellow and blue colored lights. What a fascinating sight to observe in a bustling city! Where did they come from? Was this their home or were they stopping over for a quick bath? Could they be visiting from a nearby borough? My imagination ran wild as usual as I observed their leathery skin and vibrant colors. I wanted to stop and give them names, but wondered if it was bad luck… like naming one’s pet fish. Mrs. Still’s shrill voice rang through the air as she completed roll call and the first girl on her list was already missing. I whispered wishes of good luck to the trio of froggies, and hoped they would find a delicious meal of flies in the nearby trash can.

Mrs. Still reviewed the rules – no touching, no loud voices, no running, no hopping the velvet ropes, and no leaving the group. She served as our guide in the massive halls with black-and-white tiled floors, vaulted stained glass ceilings, and red walls displaying artwork from prior centuries, and artifacts from all over the star system. We were the only ones in the museum. Apparently, Guillermo’s dad had arranged for a private tour. He had also been in the museum before, and stood near Mrs. Still filling in some of the blanks from his own experiences and popping out factoids to impress his peers. I was distracted by the climbing heat in the building. A desk clerk at the entrance stated the museum was having trouble with their air conditioners again, and circulation may be poor. They hoped the children wouldn’t be too bothered. Kameron smiled wishfully and said he hoped the end of field trip would involve freezer bunny pops. Genevieve inquired as to whether they would see the display of the famous ballerina Madri Gale’s statue while here. Mrs. Still assured her that they would visit every floor, and reminded the students to pay close attention. The required assignment upon return was to write a paper about their favorite display and share a bit of history they learned.

As the group wandered further into the room, Mrs. Still shared about the astronomy exhibit. It included breathtaking photographs of the night sky captured by SIMSA, a statue of a SIMSA astronaut and the first creature to be launched into space (a rabbit named Speckles), a piece of an old rocket engine, and an original freezeray. But I wasn’t interested in those as much as the glowing green rock before my eyes.

Mother wanted to name me after something strong. I was stubborn in the womb, kicking and pushing, pulling and tugging. She described the pregnancy experience as tumultuous, and when I asked her what such a big word meant, she told me to look it up in the dictionary. So I did. That night. And the next night. And the next. Reading the dictionary certainly isn’t on the agenda of most little kids, but Daddy told me I was special. In our culture, jade represents power. It is considered a precious mineral and is a treasured commodity. Unfortunately, it is only found in few places these days. This piece in particular was the first space rock to be brought back from a mission to the Belt by a Scythian scout. It was raw, lumpy, cracked, and worn from its long voyage, an imperfect specimen, but to me it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.

I don’t remember much about my Papa Jack. He had a strong face, mostly covered with his blonde beard, but you could crack a walnut with that jawline. He was tall, or at least he seemed tall to a toddler a little over a meter high. He always seemed to be lost in faraway thought. I could sense he was sad. Little children and animals always know when a person is sad. Call it a sixth sense. I have one image impressed in my memories. I waddled along the beach like a baby duck, unsure of its land legs. The sun was setting behind the mountains to our backs, bidding the deep blue sea farewell for the night.

He stood alone at a distance, straw fedora atop his massive head of thick blonde hair like a Simlandic Viking, his suspenders and shirt rippling against the breezes. He looked so lonely against the blue, his vision caught by a pair of seagulls fluttering overhead. Or perhaps the water tower in the distance, or the docks. He was contemplating leaving. Perhaps going home. To where? I wasn’t sure. Daddy had said he once lived in Zuzu City with grandmama and mother.

She left again, the night before, but this time was different. I was sad too. I missed her scent of lavender and the softness of her bathrobe and the half-humming, half-singing she would do when she didn’t think anyone was listening. My little brain could not comprehend she wasn’t coming back, and neither was Papa Jack.

We didn’t stay either. Daddy moved us northwest to Pine-Mesa City on the western slope near the Flat River. He acquired a job teaching at the local community college. I wasn’t a healthy child, and this extended into the teenage years. Poor immunity, or something of the sort, that’s what the doctor said. I frequently caught a cold, and I had the flu bug twice every season. I often had to stay home from school, and do telehealth visits with my doctor.

Since I couldn’t go outside and play when I was feeling under the weather, I would sit and stare out my bedroom window. I had a lovely view of the forest descending from rolling green hills, and power lines that went on for miles and miles. I also had nice vantage point of the Pump & Brake gas station down the street, its big white sign with black lettering and red outlines calling to travelers on the highway, trash littered by the bins behind the building.

A billboard advertised the newly bioengineered Joja seeds, featuring a smiling farmer holding a hoe with her strange and wondrous new cowplant. It must have been for protection because I heard the stories. I think the sign knew that too because a pair of legs stuck out of the bizarre beast’s mouth. Semi-sentient genetically engineered plant beings eating their owners. I shivered, and pulled the blanket closer to my arms, realizing my fever probably hadn’t broken yet. It was eighty-five degrees outside and Daddy turned off the A/C again to save money, and I was freezing.

The mini mart stocked an assortment of things that every teenager needs – Joja colas, gummies in many artificial flavors, greasy slices of pizza for an after-school snack, freezer bunny pops, breathmints, and magazines with every subject under the sun from ridiculous makeup tips to… let’s just say something my Daddy would kick my butt for reading. Not that I really wanted to read trashy mags, but they did make excellent kindle for starting campfires in a pinch.

I had my first kiss at that gas station. It was a sloppy wet day, the kind where puddles linger and steam long after the storm. The sewers had overflowed again and everything smelled like the wrong end of a bull crossed with a toilet. He wasn’t a particularly attractive kid – pimply with braces, abrasive against my lips. We had ordered corndogs and sat atop the dumpsters behind the station. I know, classy? We were talking about everything and nothing… shooting the breeze. He was my lab partner. I know, cliche? I had just shoved this enormous bite into my mouth because I hadn’t eaten lunch since I had felt queasy, and he just leaned in and made his move. I didn’t fight it. I didn’t like it either.

I once stole condoms from the mini mart on a dare. Not like I could use them, nor did I want to. I just wanted to prove that I could. I gave them to a friend, and he appreciated it. Probably could’ve given them to my ex-kissing partner, but didn’t want him to get the wrong idea. I formed a bit of a reputation at my school. Just because I was ill frequently didn’t mean I was sickly or that I could be messed with. If there was a hard way to do something, I did it. Failed my driver’s test twice because of it. Nearly got suspended in the eleventh grade because of it. Shoved a bully into the very same dumpster where I first puckered up because of it.

I never did anything too crazy. I didn’t sleep around, and I stayed the hell away from drugs and alcohol. They didn’t interest me. I did tag the St. Agatha’s Sunday morning worship sign. The priest had it coming though. He drove over my pet squirrel. Yes, I had a pet squirrel named Rambo. Bite me. He loved the nutter butter cookies that fell out of my jeans pocket one day. I adopted him and he lived in a tree outside my window for a month until Father Fitzsimmons backed his pickup over the poor creature.

Every kid has their rebellious phase. And every kid has that turning point where something changes. They either continue down a path of destruction or they wise up and grow out of the phase, or receive a much-needed intervention. My check and balance came in the form of the latter. Her name was Cookie. She lived downstairs and did our laundry for us. Her real name was Sally Lord, but everyone ironically called Cookie that because of the horrible baked goods she made. Hard-as-a-rock bread. Burnt bacon. Charcoal steak. Those were her specialties. I think she knew it too because she would always laugh when her latest… victim… bit into one of her latest delicacies.

I had it one summer. She was playing her stereo too loud. Imagine that! I went downstairs and brought her a plate of Daddy’s favorite black-and-white cookies. I baked when I was stressed. At first she didn’t answer my polite knock so I banged on the door a little more. She whipped open the door, pink curlers in her hair, a lime avocado face mask, and a bathrobe that looked starched. Who starches and irons a damn bathrobe? She took the plate politely, and proceeded to tell me that these cookies were the most delicious things she had ever tasted. She asked me if I would bake them for the Pinecrest weekly dinner. I figured, sure why not? I didn’t have anything better to do.

The community center was located in the Conifer Station neighborhood. The old train didn’t run much these days as people traveled more and more by car. Smog polluted our air, but it was convenient. Daddy had purchased a green 1974 Vorn Stallion from the used car salesman on Wheeler Park Ave. I rode in it on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons when he would pick me up from school and on Sundays when we drove to church. I just as soon would have traveled on my own two feet. I liked feeling the earth beneath my sneakers, knowing I was controlling my direction and speed.

After my first day working in the kitchen with a retired Navy chef named Darwin, I was inevitably “hired” to replace Cookie. Hired as in really volunteered… or volun-told. Darwin could see I knew my way around an oven, was much better than my downstairs neighbor, and he wasn’t much good at baking. I needed the service credits from my days of tagging buildings and dumpsters so I agreed to the gig. Darwin and Cookie served a hot breakfast six days a week for anyone in the community who wanted it, organized a potluck lunch after Sunday services, and served a big dinner every other Friday evening. The kitchen was equipped with outdated appliances and cabinets with peeling paint, but it was much larger than our apartment. I found my place mixing brownies and chopping pecans. In exchange for my service, Darwin allowed me to experiment in the kitchen. Anything I could imagine. Quillfruit cupcakes? Fried heirloom bamboo shoots? Chocolate peanut-butter pan de muerte? The last one was a little too thick and sugary.

Cookie would shuck peas and corn while singing old spirituals. Darwin would join in too, albeit slightly off-key. I found myself tapping my foot in time to the tunes, and before I knew it, I was singing too. “I saw the light. I saw the light. No more darkness. No more night.” Cookie told the most incredible stories of her time at Moon Base Delta. She worked as a switchboard operator on the front lines in the Belt, and lived to tell the tale after twenty-one separate Xek attacks. Her stories were always modest and no where near grandiose, mostly about shared life in barracks barely bigger than a doublewide and how the coffee always tasted like mud.

Darwin talked up her accomplishments when she wasn’t around. There was the time she found an infant abandoned XT’er after her shift, and carried the child to shelter during a blackout when the moon’s control system malfunctioned. Cookie sponsored the child’s adoption and met with the family personally on Luna during shore leave to ensure the baby received the best parents. Or the time when she connected a call for a soldier thought to be missing in action for over a year to his family on Simterra on Winterfest during a solar windstorm. Or the time she personally disconnected the power relay of a downed pollination technician ship so he couldn’t escape capture. She was a war heroine, who never received any medals or official recognition for her kick-assery who chose to live in the simple mountain valley town of Pine-Mesa and serve her community through terrible cooking and lending a helping hand where she could.

Cookie was sent home right before the 22nd attack, the day the base fell, after learning she had pulmonary spatium, or what us Terrans called ‘space lung.’ I once asked Cookie why she continued to smoke after being diagnosed and she shrugged it off, “My one vice. I guess when you know it’s fatal, you figure you might as well live a little.” The truth was she started smoking as a way of coping when she was barely eighteen and stationed on Luna during the Lunar Riots, and couldn’t stop. Darwin supposed she played music loud at night because that was the only way she could sleep. When I asked how the hell that would help, he warned me to watch my language, and then proceeded to share how eerie it was to live on a moon base… the dead quiet was unnerving when you knew the enemy could come out of the sky at any moment and you wouldn’t know of the attack unless an operator pushed a big red button to sound the alarm. You’d do anything, he said, to drown out the damn silence. My problems didn’t seem so bad in comparison to say… constant threat of a alien invasion.

Timothee Keene was cockier than most. He was on the shorter side, 1.72 meters tall, but skinny frame, with dusty blonde hair, deep blue eyes, and a smile that could knock you flat. He came to the community center for… you guessed it… community service hours. He had stolen the dean’s car and put it on the roof of the school, and then left the town’s only real cow, Lissy, into the parking space. The director of the community center wanted to assign him to cleaning the pool, but he flashed his pearly whites and managed to get a ‘lesser sentence’ doing what he did best. Taking things apart and putting them back together again. For awhile now, Darwin wanted the center jukebox fixed but no one could figure out what was wrong with it. That is, until Timothee flexed his fingers, worked some magic, and forty minutes later, strains of Electric Light Orchestra’s Mr. Blue Sky flooded the hallway.

I was having a particularly bad day. A big fat midterm ‘F’ pretty much sealed my fate for me – that I was going to fail trigonometry. Plus the world’s worst case of PMS cramps. Like I always did when I faced stress, I grit my teeth, balled my fist, exhaled an exasperated puff of air, and baked up a storm in the kitchen. I would’ve passed Timothee right by in the hallway if he hadn’t been annoyingly piping, “Hey you with the pretty face / Welcome to the human race.” I snipped something of the equivalent of “Hey, I don’t have a pretty face,” which is quite a ridiculous response. Timothee stopped, opened his eyes, and sniffed the air and told me my fresh-from-the-oven ginger apple blackberry pie smelled incredible. I rolled my eyes and told him he could get a slice if he was done goofing off with old records in the main hall. As I sashayed away, he called after me, “And who says you don’t have a pretty face?”

I kept coming because I wanted to. Timothee kept coming because he had to. Stole the money from the senior class dance fund. Caught on the basketball court after hours drinking beers with his buddies. Threw the class mascot in the lake after the guy called him a ‘chicken.’ The irony. We were the Ridgemont Roosters. I didn’t get it. Everyone loved this guy. He was a jerk and a charmer, and it didn’t make any sense to me why he was popular. I mean, I knew why I wasn’t popular. I was nerdy and in and out of school so much because of someone sneezed on me wrong and I caught the death bug. I might as well have been homeschooled. No wonder I was failing my math classes.

I mostly avoided the guy, but sometimes he made it impossible. Singing into the broom while sweeping the main hallway, blocking my way with a wink and then letting me pass. Assigned to serving my chicken tetrazzini at the spring fair. Or angrily cussing out the vending machine when his soda got stuck. The continuous rump-bump-bump-bump-bang! on the side of the wall was making studying an impossibility. I uttered a frustrated “Could you not?” before gently elbowing the third button on the right. A Galactic Vita-Water popped out along with the jammed Doctor Jo popped out.

“What did you do?” he asked, his eyes widened in astonishment.

“Sometimes a gentle touch…” I shared, and illustrated by poking the third button again. “…is all you need.”

“You’re my hero!” he exclaimed. “I’ve been fighting with that thing for an hour.”

“I know,” I sighed and rolled my eyes, snapping open the metallic seal with a satisfied ‘ahh.’ “By the way, the Vita-Water is better for you, Mr. Blue Sky.”

“Blue Sky?” he quirked a singular brow.

The Pinecrest Community Center wasn’t in the safest neighborhood. It was just below a rapid transit stop which was notorious hangout for gangs. A grotesquely thin woman in pink zebra print, torn tights, and flip flops lit up a cigarette about once every hour while hanging out under the bridge. A tattooed buff dude in a tank and ripped jeans side-eyed me when I stepped off the metro. A former classmate, now dropout, in her midriff top and ‘bootylicious’ leggings hung around under street lamps. It was rumored she had turned to the night scene to make her wage. A fat cat may be killed for sport by some bored kid. We heard of an occasional mugging, a drug dealer peddling dope to the idiot populations, and a teenager who was pushed onto the tracks and left for dead. The city didn’t have the time or resources to cut back on crime in the eastern ghetto now that it was focused on cleaning up the westside harbor and petitioning Joja to be a choice for a new waterside factory.

I could tell Dad wasn’t happy that I continued to volunteer at the shelter every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and every other Sunday. He tried to encourage me to pick another place to volunteer – maybe the water clean-up project or the local hospital. But I felt I was needed at Pinecrest. A homeless man told me that my smile made his entire month. A young pregnant mother-to-be appreciated that we offered discreet healthcare screenings every Wednesday. A immigrant Selvadoradan told me how much it was nice to see a familiar face stocking books in her native tongue on our shelves. I figured Dad had to know why the work was important to me. After all, it was a community center that brought him and mom together once.

I assured him that I was fine. I wasn’t afraid. It’s funny how fearless you are as a kid. Even when the quarry closed down and the workers rioted for ten days, sending poor man’s grenades through factory windows and when the police used tear gas to suppress the disturbance. It was their right. I didn’t blame the workers. They needed job. Due to the recent hike in taxes, no one could afford to move to the wealthier riverside neighborhoods, even with legitimate work. Even when they finally closed down the Conifer Station stop and rerouted the trains to the new tracks. Even when that meant walking a few more blocks through drug-infested streets and hookers who, for sure, ain’t the Sim-National Sweetheart.

I don’t know quite how it happened. Timothee started walking me home. He forewent calling for the family car (he had lost his license) and instead bought a pass and hopped the Metro with me. I didn’t ask for it, but he wanted to “tag” along. I figured it was some sort of “slumming it” experience for him and I was, in no way, going to fall for it so I permitted it for a time. But I grew to like his company.

We would observe the people… and sometimes animals on the train, and make up stories for them. A curious dog hopping on at 16th Street and wandering off at 22nd where I assumed he would “check in” at Whitebark Park for a soft grassy bed beneath the Ponderosa trees. A little girl clinging to her dad’s shoulder and begging him for an Appaloosa pony, because all little girls want to ride a horse. A doctor at the end of a long day, taking her long wavy hair out of a bun and taking a moment to breath after an eighteen hours shift, knowing a cup’o’noodles, a comfortable blanket, and a good book awaited her at the apartment.

For Timothee, all his stories were about love. A mother teaching her son how to dance for the boy-next-door he was planning to ask to the prom. A businesswoman venturing into an online chat room on her laptop during her evening commute hoping to find someone worthwhile to talk with and keep her company tonight. A cellist in a bowler hat and brown vest traveling the globe in search for his other half and he would know when he played ‘their’ song.

“The globe? With a cello?” I crinkled my nose. “That’s a heavy instrument. Maybe just stopping over on their way to Zuzu City for a performance at the Metropolis Theater.”

“No, absolutely not,” he grinned. “He is most definitely searching for his one true love and he isn’t gonna stay in one place too long. They’re still out there…” he looked up wistfully at the night sky.

“So you believe in true love?”

We would walk all around the abandoned quarry, on rusted bridges that if we had thought it through, we might have fallen through, and sometimes swung over the edge and climbed down the braces. If our parents knew, well, my dad would have a heart attack. If the city knew, we’d probably get fined for trespassing. We didn’t care. We were young and reckless, and I never felt more alive. For a delicate girl living in a lonely world, this was my safe haven. Being with Timothee.

We would sit in the tall grasses and watch the fireflies dance, and look up at the night sky, trying to identify constellations. Neither one of us was very good at it. He didn’t mind my long silences when I had the worst day. He stood by my side as we watched fish splash around in the murky river. He didn’t mind my excited ramblings like when I got a copy of the new Lucas Dark book series or when I got a ‘C’ on my last trigonometry test. It was a serious improvement from failing. Cookie worked with me every day after school. She had an aptitude for numbers and she didn’t want me to ‘catastrophically’ flunk the 11th grade. My words, not hers.

“She believes in me,” I exclaimed. “And for the first time… I feel like I believe in myself too.”

“What do you mean you haven’t read Shelly Silvermen?” Timothee gasped.

“Uh…” I was taken aback by his enthusiasm, and let out an awkward little laugh.

“Trust me. You’ve got to read her poems,” he stressed.

“Wait… since when do you like poetry, Mister I-get-detention-every-other-day?” I eyed him suspiciously.

“What do you think there is to do in detention?” he shrugged. “I read.”

“Oh really?” she smirked.

“You mock, but I do,” he asserted. “I make notes in the margins of library books too.”

“Why you bad, bad boy!” I giggled.

“That’s it,” he laughed, and then grew more serious. “I’m loaning me my anthology of Silverman poems… and yes, I know a big word like ‘anthology.’ I’m gonna start you on Where the Boardwalk Ends, especially if you love the beach.”

“Wait, when did I say I loved the beach?”

By summer, we were inseparable. Even when I was sick, he would bring me a pot of Darwin’s chicken noodle soup. He would come over and stand outside my window and read to me my favorite excerpts from fairy tales. He would do all the voices too. When I was really ill and couldn’t leave my bed, he would sit outside my bedroom door and play my favorite Beatles tunes on his guitar, a new hobby he decided to take up to pass the time when I was stuck indoors. It was damn near romantic, but I wasn’t ready to admit I felt ‘love’ for him. I enjoyed our friendship, even if my heart beat wildly when I heard his voice. I didn’t want the magic to end. Hard as it seemed, wealthy, popular, reformed bad-boy Timothee and Jade-from-the-wrong-side-of-the-tracks girl became best friends.

On a dusky evening we sat on the edge of the defunct Metro bridge. Our sneakers dangled over the side above a concrete jungle below. We each held a Joja soda in hand. I can’t remember the flavor. Something disgusting. We stared up where the tree line met the mouth of the mountains and mountains met the jaws of the night sky where a single star hadn’t appeared yet. Our senior year started the next day, and we weren’t quite ready to let summer escape yet. He strummed on a guitar, singing ‘Here Comes the Sun,’ not very well mind you, but to me, it was sexy. Dare I even use that word? I had never felt this way before. It was exhilarating and terrifying at the same time.

“Why haven’t you kissed me yet?” I blurted out when we walked home.

It was the stupidest question I could’ve asked. If I was worried about losing our friendship, I should’ve kept my mouth shut. If he didn’t feel the same way about me, I could ruin what we had together. I didn’t need things to change, did I? But I wanted more. I wanted love like in the fairy tales. For the first time in my life I let myself dream… and opened my heart up to vulnerability. And I regretted it the instant Timothee responded.

“I can’t… I’m gay.”

I think I could’ve handled ‘This has been fun, but I’m ready to go back to my old life – the high life’ better than a declaration of his sexual orientation which precluded he was not into me.

In the middle of August, Cookie made a pot of hot chocolate and listened to my sad sobs. Miraculously, it tasted half decent. I had been up all night, pacing in my bedroom, crying my seventeen-year-old heart out. I was wondering what I did wrong. Once again, she talked some sense into me.

“I’m not going to tell you any ‘it’s better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all’ bullshit,” she said, bluntly. “It’s okay to cry and to feel the way you do, but there’s nothing wrong with you, dear. You thought you were pouring your heart out to someone who would share it with you, and instead, he’s… well… he didn’t do anything wrong. Neither did you. It sucks, but as hard as it is to hear this, you’ll move on.”

It was the exact sort of blunt pep-talk I needed. She didn’t spare me from the truth, that I couldn’t change him and I couldn’t and shouldn’t change me. I had envisioned a totally different plan in my head only to have it crash and burn, but it wouldn’t be my only love… or heartbreak. I had to say goodbye to my Mr. Blue Skies.

Author Notes: Well, that didn’t go as planned. If you’ve followed any of my written works before, you know I like to write collaboratively with the game. I had a strict outline to follow for this heavily plot-driven story, and for the most part, my Sims have cooperated… that is… until Farmer. Figures. She’s a bit stubborn, and the Sim Jade tried to go in a completely different direction than I anticipated. I had this beautiful love story mapped out for her, the one of high school sweethearts. Time and time again I tried to get the characters to “romance” each other. The romance option never came up despite a high friendship. I couldn’t understand it. I figured it was a mod conflict or something as I am a major mod addict. I tried removing a few mods, tweaking my settings, cheating the “flirty” mood onto the Sims, resetting the Sims, restarting the game a few times. Nothing. I eventually discovered that the reason “romance” was unavailable was because Timothee was a downloaded (and heavily modified) Sim from the Gallery, and he had been aged down to a teen. Teens and adults don’t romance in the base game. I figured I could force the situation and age Jade up to an adult just to get the scenes I wanted. But that just wouldn’t be true to these two incredibly good but destined to be platonic friends. And sure enough, once I reset everything with a brand new teen Sim Timothee without the issue, he came out as gay. So there you have it, folks. The game has spoken.

Nevertheless, this was a fun chapter to capture and write. I think it was easier to write in some respects since Jade is closest to my age… well, if I was raised in the 2390’s on an alien world. Fun fact: I actually had a teacher named Mrs. Still in elementary school. I think inserting bits and pieces of my own history enhanced her character, but in all honesty, Jade wrote herself. Her personality shone through in everything – her facial expressions, her walk, her style choices, her actions and reactions, speech choices, personality moodlets, and whims. Like she swiped a cc magazine and condoms from the convenience store during the “sharing is caring” N.A.P. And she frequently shouted forbidden words, had her first kiss near a dumpster, struggled in school, and graffitied the church lot. I can’t wait to write her character as an adult.

Ignore the exceptionally wide bus aisles. I got lazy and it took forever to find the best bus download I could find. I didn’t feel like editing or cheating to add more children to the lot to make for a more realistic bus ride. I’m tempted to take all the scene “extras” and plop them into another game just for fun so their purpose is more than just serving this plot. I downloaded and heavily modified many Sims for this chapter and some of the previous chapters. I would like to give all the original creators credit but I can’t find everyone’s IDs. That’s what happens when I get excited to stage and write. 🙂

A few notes:

• SIMSA and Simlandic are leftover from my early Sims writing days when everything was ‘sim’ified. However, I think it fits. SimNation Space Agency. United Simlandic States. (Learn more: Simterra Geography)
• “The Belt” is what the Sims call the asteroid belt located in the middle of the star system, separating the first five planets from the outer five planets. During the Second Xeno War, Sims were stationed on two asteroid bases (erroneously named moons). Moon Base Charlie and Delta are worlds created by the very talented modder, Rflong7 for the Sims 3. (Learn more: Simterra Asteroid Belt)
• New Scythia is a country in the Sim Union in my Simworld, a country heavily populated by vampyres. During the Xeno Wars, Scythian scouts were especially useful in long-range missions as they could survive on plasma packs alone and did not mind the long cold and dark of space.
• Zuzu City and Pine-Mesa City credited to ConcernedApe, creator of Stardew Valley. Pine-Mesa has hints of Sims 4 Evergreen Harbor, but with many of my own names/vibes.
• Joja seeds are a mod created for Stardew Valley by CopperSun.
• Pulmonary spatium is entirely fictional, and probably a dumb name. Haha. But I decided to come up with a strange alien disease since these Sims live in another star system with a surprisingly just-like-Earth vibe. Though it’s not too strange to assume humanity might develop similarly on another Earth-like world.
• Also, I assert that Earth/Old Eorthe music occasionally makes it through on long-range space communications, but no further attempts to leave Earth have happened. Call it a handwave, but I really want certain music/books/movies, etc. to be here on Simterra.
• The Lunar Riots refer to two separate occurrences when the people of Luna tried to declare independence from Simterra and were brutally shut down. (Learn more: Luna)
• Doctor Jo… is an addition to the Joja cola in the Joja Cola Restock mod by Lycanglass.

Thank you for reading.