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From Sirio's diary
Aging isn't fun at all, I would argue that the number of people claiming to enjoy this phase of life could be counted on the fingers of one hand. However, this doesn't mean that it is impossible to find some small positive aspects as well. For me, looking back to my past is one of those.
I was born many years ago in the centre of New Sixam, the young independent Country sixamians founded about 85 years ago, in a little town everyone was used to call by its old nickname, Strangerville.
Many humans would argue that every single sixamian is a weird alien being, but almost everyone would agree to say that I am even weirder than most of us.
My mom, Cassy Miller, was a very smart astronaut who graduated with honours at the Foxbury Institute. My dad, instead, was a guy who landed on the Moon a few years before I was born and who came straight from the past of us sixamians. You could spot him from the long tendrils on his head, the same that gave him his incredible telepathic abilities, his stern expression, and his constant struggle to understand earthling customs.
I always had an incredibly close bond with my mom, while with Toq it was a challenge since the very beginning. First of all, the little me couldn't understand why I'd never seen for my first years, nor he could understand why he could always perceive fear and insecurity coming from him. Above all, however, I also noticed the way happiness suddenly started to enter the mix of his emotions starting from the moment he entered the door and saw us. The little me wasn't as good as interpreting emotions as I'm now, yet it was very clear to me how serene he felt when interacting with me, as well as how he mostly wanted to make me and mom Cassy happy, to the point to be afraid of disappointing us.
Emotions can easily become too complex to be understood in detail, or at least this is what the little me thought. Yet, I decided to trust him almost immediately, and I've never turned back afterwards.
It took a lot of time to Toq before learning what being a terrestrial family meant, and to realise that it also was what he wanted in his life. On the other hand, also I and mom needed some time to learn how to be around him. It took us several more years than what most people would consider normal, but we finally fully consider each other as our family, the kind of family you can always trust in every moment of your life.
But my family was actually way more complex than this. Since when I was born, also aunt Venus and uncle Steve lived with us, and I actually grew up alongside my little cousin, Halley, up to when she left to attend college.
Our household actually had another very uncommon member, Techna the robot. They are one of the first prototypes of domestic robots with independent A.I. built by the company uncle Steve used to work with, and I can say we have been great friends since the very day they were activated for the first time.
People often consider robots just like any other electronic appliance in their houses, and I've never been able to perceive any emotions coming from them either. However, from the way they always behaved with us, I was sure their mind had to be quite close to ours.
I mean, they were always helpful and eager to have fun with us, the fact that their CPU activity wasn't compatible with my telepathy could really make any difference? Surely not for me.
As you can see, my dear diary, I'm always been inclined towards spending time with others, I really liked the feedback I received whenever I managed to make them feel better. However, that rarely was the first feeling I was able to perceive from strangers.
People were always suspicious of me when they noticed the little tendrils on my head, I later understood they were afraid of the fact that in my eyes their emotions were as exposed as the hairstyle they had decided to exhibit that day. Nowadays realise that this also led to many episodes now I can recognize as plain bullying, like when they started to nickname us "squid-heads".
I thus ended up rarely leaving the house, and when I did it usually was to hang around with Halley friends, or with Florian, the only other guy in our school sharing my same background of half-ancient sixamian.
The self-seclusion at home also meant a lot of time to focus on my hobbies, in particular on painting.The little me approached art because he liked to spread bright colours on pieces of paper earlier, and on canvas then, but I soon realised that art could mean so much more than an aesthetically pleasant decoration on a wall. No, it could be used to summarize complex concepts, the kind of complex concepts I wasn't able to convey through words alone.
Accidentally, that was also about the time when my telepathic abilities reached their peaks, both in terms of perception and understanding. Toq taught me a lot about telepathy, and soon other people's emotions were so clear to me that I became able to even see them, in the form of colourful auras swirling around their contours. It's similar to how sixamians glow when feeling strong emotions, but much brighter and more nuanced.
Being able to see emotions made it easier than ever to understand them, to the point that I soon learnt how to interpret very complex situations. For example, a green and bright aura in the immediate surroundings of a person meant they were having fun in that very moment, but darker purple or blue shades lingering at the periphery of the same auras made me suspect that there was something bothering them that they were trying to push apart.
I could really get to know a lot about people from those colours, and then the way they swirled around everyone at any time, it was one of the most mesmerizing views I've ever seen. Was I really the only person seeing it? And was there a way to share what I could see with others, I wondered?
And this is when I started to try to convey on canvas what I could see with my telepathy, to try to reveal all the minute details and inner beauty that emotions have to those who aren't able to perceive them.
Nowadays I would say I didn't really know what I was doing, at least not at first. The dynamic way the colours in auras move around can tell a lot too, and I needed a long time before learning how to represent that marvellous view on a plain and static canvas.
The first painting I agreed to exhibit at the New Sixam's museum was very simple and naive, or at least this is how I would describe it now. But it was the best result of many disappointing attempts, and back then I was really proud of it.
So I and all my large family went to the museum, to celebrate my debut as a "real artist", whatever it means. But that day was also when I realised something of very important: the museum would have been empty if it wasn't for us, no one in New Sixam seemed to care about art. I probably should have expected it, New Sixam rounded around fine technologies and electronics, most people worked as engineers, astronauts, or selling replacements for teleporting devices just like my relatives did. Everyone seemed proud of their rational productivity, and most people considered an art exhibition like that one a waste of their time.
Also, that's when I realised I was in no position to make them change their mind. If I wanted to make a living out of arts, I had to leave and show my point of view to someone who may have been interested to experience a different perspective.
And this is what brought me to decide to move to Sim City, the most cosmopolitan city in the continent and the capital of the Sim Nation. At that time Techna was passing through a similar phase as me, they needed to see new places and learn from other people, so we decided to leave together, aiming for the big city promising us so many opportunities.
But we quickly learned we may have been a bit too optimistic. It isn't easy to gain recognition as a painter, in particular if you're a sixamian "alien" with tendrils on the head talking about things no one else really understands.
Humans weren't always nice to me. Actually, I would probably be better off saying that they rarely were. The fact that I was able to spot their emotions even when they weren't saying anything out loud wasn't helpful either, that cloud of mistrust covering any room the moment I stepped in was so oppressive...
Feeling so powerless was so difficult, and it also brought me to make a few quite bad mistake. But if I hadn't taken that risk nothing of what happened later in my life could have ever occurred. Above all, I would have never met Maki, who is still by my side to these days.
Maki was, and still is, fantastic. She's an art critic, practically the only one who was able to understand the way I used paintings to represent emotions too. And she is also smart, and passionate about what she cares about, and confident, and the colours surrounding her when she was in the middle of art is one of the most stunning things I can think of.
But there were always darker shades lingering around her, caused by a very specific culprit.
Maki had been married once already, to an always-angry man named Hotaru. They also had a kid together, Lily, and most of their arguments rounded around her custody.
Anyone able to see what I could perceive in him wouldn't have any doubts about the kind of person he really is, and would have never considered giving custody of any minor to such a person. But my word was meaningless in New Sixam, and being able to hire the best lawyers in the city proved to be a way more effective way to obtain what you want.
We lived a few years of relative calm in Sim City before the storm really hit us. Lily was growing quickly, my and Maki's first kid, Alba, was just born, and I was learning more and more just by staying in the centre of that artistic scene day after day. What more could have we asked for?
But this was exactly when Hotaru decided to start a new trial after the one leading to their divorce, the one for obtaining the custody of Lily. And, technically, he managed to obtain it.
We had to turn around quite a few rules to avoid that verdict and put into action our plan B.
By then there was no way I could leave Maki and Lily, I would have done whatever it took to help them. Even if it meant putting myself between them and that unpredictable person who is Hotaru.
So I did the only thing I could think of: ask for help from my cousin Halley (who, luckily for us, became a very good lawyer), and move the whole family to New Sixam just to step out from the sphere of competence of Sim City. The laws are quite different here, and we were quite confident that those differences could have been decisive for our case.
In New Sixam we could finally try to settle down again. We had (admittedly, barely) decent enough jobs to sustain our growing family, I was close again to my relatives and friends, and we could finally feel safe and serene after having been afraid of Hotaru for so long.
However, we weren't really happy. Not as much as in Sim City, at least.
Both Maki and Lily immediately felt homesick, I could perceive it from them at every moment. Maki always did her best not to show it off, because she knew what the alternative was way too well, while Lily took years before getting used to the move. And this made her very resentful against us, and me in particular.
If it wasn't enough, I and Maki also faced another important lack, the same that convinced me to leave my birthplace the first time, actually. The art scene in New Sixam is so small, and stagnant, and made us feel so demoralised every time we set foot in the local museum.
We had to make a lot of renounces and sacrifices back then to get used to life in New Sixam, and we did it all for the wellbeing of Lily. Maybe she couldn't understand it well back then, but we were both convinced that this was the best thing we could do, and so we did.
Helios was just born when we realised that, if we really missed those aspects of life in Sim City, maybe we should have tried to bring them where we lived as we waited to be able to move back.
And this is also when we decided to put a conscious effort into bringing colours back into our lives, starting from our new home.
Maybe old age makes me focus only on happy memories, but I consider those as serene years. All the kids were growing so quickly, and the more time passed the more I could perceive how their personalities were growing into such different people, as well as how close we were becoming, day after day. Yes, I mean also Lily, even if I doubt she would have admitted it so easily.
Years had passed again, before we really couldn't avoid passing through yet another trial for Lily's custody, this time here in New Sixam. By that point she had grown enough to understand better the implications of what happened between her parents, and to realise how bad it would have been for her to move to her father's place.
This is just another of the countless examples of what I can't understand how Hotaru never noticed by himself, I really don't think that the perception of emotions was necessary to understand what family Lily felt to belong to. Looking at her expression was probably more than sufficient, don't you agree my dear diary?
Luckily for us, Hotaru really undervalued our tribunals. Here my perception of other's emotions is as valuable as any other testimony, and also the judge didn't have any doubt when declaring him not suited to be granted the custody of a minor.
We had won and there wasn't any other reason to be worried, isn't it, my dear diary? Well, almost. The trial passed by flawlessly, if it wasn't for a small mistake re-emerging from my past that cost me the total interdiction to leave the Country ever again. Never use a disguise in Sim City, my dear diary, not even if it is just to visit an art exhibition without people staring at you as if you were an alien. I would say I definitively learnt the lesson, no doubts about it.
Not being allowed to leave the Country could not seem like a big deal, but to me it was. We were planning to return back to Sim City, to Maki's and Lily's old friends and loved places, and to that vibrant artistic scene. But we would not have been able to, and it was all my fault.
I was sure that Maki would have gotten mad at me, I messed up with all our plans. Instead, her disappointment was insignificant in respect to what she had gained. After years spent living with the weight of Hotaru's presence on our backs, something we became so accustomed to not even noticing anymore, we were finally free to live our lives, and to look forwards. And Maki seemed to have very clear ideas about what she wanted.
She asked me to marry her, can you believe it, my dear diary? At first, I really couldn't. But she told me this many times, told me about how I focus so much on not disappointing others to forget how much I am actually worth, that she couldn't hope for anything better. Yet, to me that day still felt so incredible and unforgettable, I'm really thankful to her, for everything.
All those ups and downs were a vortex of emotions for me, and so also a great source of inspiration for my paintings. Positive or negative, strong emotions are also good material for stunning or terrific representations of an invisible reality.
Needless to say, I was spending every free moment I got painting. I didn't want to miss any of those moments, because that was my only way to share my worldview with others.
And Maki seemed to have decided to bring my message to all another level, organising the first art exhibition in New Sixam in ages, showing off my paintings and those made by other sixamians following my same artistic current.
In her introductory speech, to explain to a wide audience what we were showing, she surprised me once again by suddenly filling the room, and those who were in it, with a lot of bright and unforgettable colours.
Everyone was suddenly able to see the colours that have been there for me for so long, and explaining how those related to emotions had never been easier. Finally, the "synesthetic art" Maki theorized about when we met didn't seem like an abstruse term only good for art books, but it became something people could understand, something they might have been willing to see and learn about.
Maki really knows me well, I can't think of anyone else who could understand me so well to be able to explain my art to others so much better than ever I could.
The news travelled very far through the internet, surpassing the boundaries of this Country, and starting from the following week many human tourists started to pop out at our local museum, to observe and evaluate in person the new artistical current born among the sixamian and that was suddenly gaining so much momentum.
For more and more people, we weren't (just) the weird "aliens" who came from space about one century and a half ago, distrust wasn't the first emotion I could perceive from them anymore. They seemed curious to know more about that new art instead, and about our relation with emotions that made it possible in the first place.
The improvement in the relationships between sixamians and humans has been very slow but quite constant since the founding of New Sixam, may this have accelerated the process a bit, I wonder?
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Time has passed, and my life is getting more and more comfortable and predictable as time passes. I don't remember exactly when I started to write this diary, but I suspect that it is becoming a more and more boring read every other day.
I don't even know why I'm writing this, for sure no one is reading my secret diary, that's the reason why it's called secret, right? Yet, if some possible readers were curious to know what happened next, I would suggest them to switch to Alba's diary, I noticed she's writing one as well. I don't know exactly what she's writing about, for sure I won't peek, but I would bet it's way more interesting than mine. Many people consider her to be too shy and she's always worried to be perceived as too boring, but I know her well enough to be sure that those pages will be full of interesting notes in no time!
