Chapter 7.13: Answers

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From Alba's diary

Time passes, and finally we are getting used to this new routine focused on our jobs and the school schedule of the kids. 

There is always a lot to do, and we really can't waste any moment. For instance, just before breakfast, like it or not, Olivier and I often find ourselves dealing with urgent work emails.

Alba: (checking emails) What, seriously?

Olivier: What's happening?

Alba: I got promoted. I think. They say they want me to lead my team at the environmental agency.

Olivier: Oh. And are you... happy about it?

I understand his caution, becoming a team leader means taking charge of a large chunk of the paperwork behind our action plans, funding applications and everything else. In practice I would have to do a lot of office work, which is exactly one of the things I escaped from when I moved out of New Sixam.

Alba: Well... I think that someone has to do the paperwork. And then, if I'm the boss I suppose I can also decide when I've had enough and go out with the others to check the beaches.

Olivier: (Reassured) Sounds good. And I'm also sure you'll do great!

Olivier finally managed to move to the local office of the company he's working for. He is always putting a lot of effort into his work, so he knows well how much responsibility lies behind the administrative stuff.

But we didn't have time to think about it any further, it was time to go wake up the twins and prepare them for school.

Alba: Come on, Iris, hurry up with breakfast or you'll be late for school!

Alba: Do you want to eat only that? If you want, I'm preparing some...

Iris: This is too much, already.

She said, sadly pushing the plate away from her.

Iris: At school they already make fun of me enough like this, they tell me I'm fat...

Alba: What? C'mon, where did this come from?

Iris: But it's true, I'm much bigger than River and the other kids!

Alba: Iris, people aren't all the same, right? Do you know how boring life would be otherwise?

Iris: …

Iris has recently started to show a lot of concern about her weight, she seems sincerely worried and sad because of it. If this really started with her classmates mocking her, I don't struggle to imagine what could be passing through her mind, either.

She has just started primary school, it's just wrong to fill her head with such nonsense at her age already. Um, I think we'll be better to phone some of her teachers after school today...

Concerns or not, the kids had to jump on the school boat a few minutes later. At that point it was my turn to quickly prepare for work, and Olivier's to rush to his office.

Kai: You weren't kidding, the island spirit really likes the fridge!

Nacho: (interrogative) Meow?

Kai: Well, it's logical after all, spirits always like high spots.

Today my work task consisted in inspectioning the part of the tropical forest that surrounds Kai and Manu's house, so they offered to be my guide to point out the points that in her opinion most need attention from our environmental agency.

Manu: There is always a lot of trash around, but we never managed to spot who's leaving it behind.

All this is undoubtedly a great mystery. In addition to the garbage popping out from the most absurd places throughout the forest, the quality of the water is also dropping quite quickly.

Colleague: Yet, until yesterday the water here seemed normal to me, you know?

Alba: Uhm…

Colleague: The cameras didn't record anything either. Whoever the culprits are, they're smart.

We've been working on it full-time for weeks now, but no one has yet managed to find any clue. And today was even worse than usual, we ended so late that even the kids, after their school day, took the habit of coming straight here to wait for me to finish my work shift, surveilled by Olivier.

Iris: Hi uncle Olivier!

Olivier: Hi! Did you have a good school day?

River: Yes! Today we did spelling, and I wrote everything right!

Iris: Hey, I got a good grade too!

Olivier: (encouraging) Good job, you both!

Iris: But uncle, you're usually the one who remains at work forever. Why is aunt doing it today instead?

Olivier: Well, aunt Alba's team has a lot to do these weeks, it seems like there's more garbage than usual around.

River: Can we help?

Olivier: If you really want we can look for some rubbish in the sand, why not. But be careful, some of it may be sharp!

River: Okay!

Iris: C'mon, do we really have to do this?

By the time I finished my shift it was too late to go home and cook something for dinner. So I took advantage of one of the many bonfires that line the islands to cook something on the fly in the way Kai taught me.

Iris: Are you sure you want to eat that stuff, aunt?

Alba: Very sure!

Olivier: While we wait for the meat to cook, would you like to sing something?

As often seems to happen here in Sulani, passersby stopped to eat with us. They said they were the “diving club,” and they looked hungry after a full day underwater.

Iris and River went to sleep shortly after, but Olivier and I took the opportunity to stay on the beach a little longer. They had lit another nice bonfire, there are quite a few of them these days because they are just what you need when the nights start to cool down a bit like in this season.

Olivier: River and Iris are growing up really fast, would you believe they already know how to read and write?

Alba: Yes, even if it feels like they arrived just last week, a lot of time passed already.

Olivier: Did you hear anything from Iris's teacher?

Alba: Yes, I phoned him. He says he has already spotted a few kids who could have said those things to Iris, and that he's planning to take action. I really hope it will be effective, because the last thing Iris needs is to be bullied at the very beginning of school already...

Olivier: Yeah...

Usually we always talk to each other a lot about the highs and lows of our day, but this time we just couldn't say anything more than that. We were just too tired. Too tired to talk about more serious topics, to be precise.

I would really like to tell Olivier that I have become very fond of the twins. And also that, in my opinion, he is a very good uncle to them. Or, again, that I will miss them like crazy when my brother recovers his memory and they will return to live with him. Because that would be the right ending for this story, Helios and his kids just deserve to return being a happy family.

And I would also like to tell him that I'm really starting to enjoy this lifestyle, this "playing at being a normal family". The daily life together, and the closeness we have, that happiness for the little things I haven't felt since I was still a child myself. But we can't help but feel a touch of sadness, knowing that in an unspecified but close moment all this will end.

And probably I should also address the fact that I can read it on his face as well, I know he'll miss this just as much as I do. And I'm also afraid that this situation is brutally reminding him of what the doctors told him, when he was told that he's can't have kids of his own.

But what could I do, other than hug him a little tighter when I see that sad look peeking out from under his glasses?

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Meanwhile, Helios continues to come to us to spend time with the twins, my impression is that he is coming more and more often.

Helios: Oh, so you've learnt how to play the keyboard? Cool!

Iris: Yes, and I'm very good at it too!

Alba: (to herself) I don't think that smoke coming out from the keyboard is normal though...

Another thing happening more and more frequently was also hearing him talking with a hopeful tone of voice, telling us that he and Kate were making a lot of progress with the memory recovery process. According to him, once they found the first hold it was enough to pull it like a thread to make a good part of his memories unravelled like a skein.

But they didn't want to anticipate anything until they had managed to obtain the most complete picture possible of the situation, and only then we received an invitation to his house.

Alba: (excited) You remember what happened now, isn't it?

Helios: (cryptic) Yes, I think Kate has recovered everything that can be recovered. Let's go in, Lily is already eager to hear the whole story.

Lily: (impatiently) So, what are you waiting for to tell us everything?

Helios: ... iI's not a pleasant story to tell, to begin with...

Helios seemed to really be struggling at the mere idea of ​​telling us what happened, but in some ways he seemed more at peace with himself than before. At least now he was certain of what had happened, and he could stop hypothesizing the worst possible scenarios.

Helios: The estimations we made at the beginning were right, it all started when I began working on my thesis project. I was very happy to have been chosen to work on an innovative project, the idea was to start from the pollination machinery developed by the old Sixamians to learn more about their medical practices. I mean, that machine was capable of reprogramming an organism to the point of causing pregnancy even in males, in comparison the recovery of the metabolic functions following an illness or an injury should be trivial, isn't it?

Kate: I don't think that those medical details are really needed, you're the only one understanding them anyway.

Helios: Right, sorry. The point is that it was also a very secret project, I had to sign I don't know how many documents in which I promised not to share anything about it with anyone outside the laboratory. The old pollination machines are still quite a taboo topic because of how they used to be employed, you know. That's why I never told you much about what I was doing.

Lily: Do you at least remember who's behind it, or who erased your memory?

Helios: Actually... no. In that laboratory there were only us graduate students, and the information came to us from emails signed with names which we later discovered to be fake.

Alba: Okay... But how were Iris and River born, then?

Maybe it's because I was the guardian of those children for such a long time, but I can't help but fear the answer to this question. Since there was a laboratory carrying out experiments which turned out to be quite illegal, couldn't they have been part of an experiment too? Also, considering the involvement of pollination machines...

Helios: (uncomfortable) Well... That was actually by accident. It happened when we were still trying to understand how that device worked. And then, essentially, the pollination machine did, um... exactly what it was originally designed to do, let's say.

Alba: Do you mean that…

Helios: (sarcastically) It means that I ended up experiencing the thrills of a twin pregnancy too, exactly.

Maybe it was just my impression, but I think Helios felt a shiver down his spine just rethinking about it.

Helios: And that's when our bosses started to behave more and more weirdly, threatening me that horrible things would happen to me, to you, or to the children if anyone found out what had happened. So I basically hid here for months, only Techna knew.

Lily: (confused) But why did they erase your memory in the end? This way, they also made you forget about the blackmail and secrecy agreements you had signed, so it was obvious that you would immediately go to tell everything to the police!

Techna: If we look at the timing, we had our memories erased just 2.6 days after the police found out about the prohibited experiments with the pollination machine. So our initial guess still stands, it seems that someone has decided to expose Helios as a scapegoat in order to have time to hide all the evidence pointing towards the true culprits and gain some time. The information we were able to share with the police just after our memory was wiped out was just too limited to be of any real use, while the memories retrieved by Kate arrived too late to really help the ongoing investigation.

Alba: (relieved) But if this is what really happened, then it means you're out of all this mess, right? You're clearly innocent, isn't it?

Lily: Also, I guess that the police now will ensure that you don't get involved in such crazy plans ever again. Don't you even think about doing any other secret experiment, okay?

Helios: Well, yes, I suppose it could have been worse...

He had a sad look when he said it. Indeed, the last few years have been a real struggle for him, and coming to the conclusion that "it could have been worse" was probably a quite small consolation. Also, he probably needs some time for letting all the memories he got back, and the awareness that came with them, settle down a bit.

Thinking back about it, maybe there was also another conclusion to make, that became very clear in the following days. Maybe the past few years have been a complete mess that Helios would rather forget about, but finally he seems to have a serene and happy future to look forward to.

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Alba: I will miss you very much, you know?

River: We will too, aunt Alba!

Alba: You can come back to Sulani as many times as you want, and your dad too of course, okay?

Iris: Bwa, you don't need to hug me again, aunt!

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And so Olivier and I found ourselves returning to our home, we had never spent so much time alone there. The silence in the house in those first few weeks felt surreal, we just couldn't get used to it.

Alba: …I'm sure they'll come back to visit us very often, Helios promised me.

Olivier: Uhm…

Olivier: You have been a great mom for them, you know?

I was amazed for a few moments, I didn't think he could think this of me, yet he was clearly sincere when talking. And I didn't think he was ready to talk about it, either.

But, sometimes, facts speak louder than words. We missed being parents, only a fool wouldn't admit it.

Alba: And you did great too, really.

Olivier: …

Alba: Olivier, not everyone achieves certain goals in the same way, don't you agree?

Olivier: Uhm…

Alba: Somehow, we will find a solution that works for us too. You will see.

Olivier: thank you, Alba.

I don't know exactly what we will do now, we have many possibilities in front of us but none are particularly easy to take. But I really meant what I said, I firmly believe that sooner or later we will find our way too.

Next Chapter -->

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§HermioneSims§ corner

Was all the mess around Helios just a weird cover-up for an unforeseen alien abduction with consequent twins alien pregnancy during a part of the story in which alien abductions weren't a thing anymore?

Exactly, and it was super difficult to decide how to handle this situation in the background to everything else that happened in this first part of Gen 7.

To conclude, here are Helios's pictures I kept hidden up to now.