Sim’s Eye View

I’m currently playing the Apocalypse Challenge, and combining it with the Legacy Challenge. It’s very very hard, and I think my score is somewhere below zero right now, but I’m having lots of fun with it. Here’s Generation 1:

On her way to Sim State University, Aleris spent the night in a hotel in a small town called Greenleaf, intending to make the rest of the trip the next morning. But she woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of explosions. She hid in her room for hours, and when she finally dared to venture outside, the world had been transformed. Some said it was a nuclear war; others had heard rumors of an alien invasion. Whatever the cause, the world Aleris had known was gone.

She allowed herself no time for grief or panic. Instead she found herself a tiny shack that had only been partially destroyed. She rebuilt it, and scrounged up some basic furniture. To her surprise, the phone lines were working, but she couldn’t get in touch with her parents. She reluctantly accepted the fact that they were probably dead.

She started getting herself in shape. In high school, her friends had all been into exercising - they wanted to burn off the extra three calories they might have eaten if they grabbed an extra apple slice - but Aleris had been more interested in reading. She had always been naturally slim anyway, but even if she hadn’t, calorie burning just wasn’t her thing. Now, though, she had an incentive.

Somebody was still publishing a newspaper, but it was only full of speculations about what had happened. Nobody even knew what was going on in the rest of the world. It turned out that the reason she couldn’t reach her parents was because nobody could call anybody outside Greenleaf.

The town’s water system was also down; she was forced to give herself sponge baths at the sink instead of real showers. She counted herself lucky that she had gotten the sink to work; it hadn’t been easy.

Though there wasn’t much mail getting through, some of it was, and Aleris liked the look of the mailman. She allowed herself an extra-long look whenever he walked by.

She got his phone number, and the two spent long hours chatting on the phone. But they kept their relationship platonic. Both of them were too preoccupied with survival to have any energy left for romance.

Soon she joined the army, to do what she could to help rebuild the world. If she couldn’t have the old world back, she would at least help make something good out of the world she did have.

Aleris loved her job - she liked feeling like she was making a difference in the world. She stayed in the army for years, but didn’t understand why they were hardly able to eliminate any of the local crime. Then she found out the reason - her superior officers were in league with the criminal leaders. When she spoke out against this, she was sent home immediately and told not to bother coming back. She would have gone to the newspaper with the story, but they had also threatened her life. Her survival hinged on her keeping her knowledge of the military’s corruption to herself.

Dispirited and disillusioned, she nonetheless found herself a new job, this time as an EMT. Despite what had happened, she still wanted to help make this world better. The police force offered her a place with them, but she declined; she wouldn’t be at all surprised if they were corrupt as well.

After years of friendship, Aleris’s romance with Pao naturally evolved into something more, though both of them were reluctant to get too deeply involved. Whenever Pao left, Aleris didn’t know when, or if, she would see him again - besides which, work always left her exhausted. So they confined their relationship to occasional flirting and long phone conversations.

Aleris worked hard, but her job made her gradually more discouraged. As many people as she helped, there were always more, and she could only save a small fraction. She needed some small reminder of life to balance out the death she saw every day. So the next time she saw Pao, she grabbed him and kissed him before he had a chance to pull away.

They ended up in bed together, and for the first time since the world had been destroyed all those years ago, she felt pure joy.

But that joy was erased the next day when a burglar came to the house. She watched, hardly daring to move, as he stole her chess table and her bookcase.

Then, not long after her encounter with Pao, her belly began to swell. Suddenly, her hausea, fatigue, and constant hunger made sense; she was pregnant. She wasn’t at all happy about this circumstance. How would she ever keep a child safe in this world? She hadn’t even been able to keep a burglar out of her home. And having a child would mean quitting her job; how would she pay off the mob when she had no money coming in? But she couldn’t change her situation now, so she resolved that she would do whatever she had to do to keep her child safe.

When she called to tell Pao the news, he was even less happy about it than she was. When she asked if he would move in with her to help her take care of the baby, he refused. He was furious with himself for helping to create a child who would probably only live a short and miserable life, and he told her that she should kill herself rather than let a child be born into this world. Aleris was shocked; she hadn’t realized his despair had grown so acute. He had hidden it from her well. She hung up, and knew that their relationship was over.

She felt like an outsider in her own body. The pregnancy seemed so unreal. She couldn’t imagine having a child; even before the disaster, she had never wanted children. She looked on in amazement as her belly gradually grew bigger and bigger. She hid out in her house for the entire pregnancy, only venturing outside when it was absolutely necessary. Now more than ever, she had to keep herself safe.

She read books about babies and children, but they had been written for women in a very different world than the one she now lived in.

When she went into labor, it was much worse than the books had told her it would be. And she still had no idea what she was going to do with a child.