From Alba's diary
My dear diary, this may have been the first time in ages I actually decided to read through all the pages I wrote. It's funny to think about it, even if I never really had the time to read my old entries, and (of course) I never let anyone else read you, I've always tried to find some time to keep track of the main events in my days. I don't really know why I spent so much time and energies in filling so many pages with words, but now I'm quite glad I did. This could be an old lady perspective, but now scrolling through these pages has become a nice and cosy way to spend a rainy afternoon.
First of all, my dear diary, you always make me feel so nostalgic when I read my old entries, those of when I lived very far away from here. I mean, I don't consider myself a traveller, yet all the times I ended up moving somewhere else I set a new important milestone in my life. But, considering how my family is, I don't think it could have been otherwise.
I was born in Sim City. My dad, Sirio, was a sixamian who had moved to that city a few years earlier to become a famous painter, while my mom, Maki, was a very talented art critic who grew up around the local art gallery.
To be honest, I don't remember much about that place, as we had to move back to New Sixam when I wasn't even two years old.
So, for me, my childhood home will always remain that big house facing the central canyon in New Sixam.
And it has always been a quite crowded house. I have an older sister, Lily, and a younger brother, Helios, who is just a few years younger than me. And then, of course, there was Techna, the robot who had been living with my family since when my dad was a child, and who happened to be one of his best friends as well.
Needless to say, we were quite a chaotic family, and I would say we couldn't afford much more than what was essential to live. But none of these things ever really bothered me, looking back to my childhood I remember having a quite serene and funny time, just like most other kids. Yes, I was pretty normal, apart from a small detail.
I've always liked singing and playing the guitar, and I've always liked to spend time outdoors and take care of the garden. But it was also very clear to me that New Sixam wasn't the right place where to pursue such inclinations.
My parents struggled a lot to create a small parenthesis of art in the country, but I just wasn't determined enough to do the same.
So, when people asked me: "What do you want to be when you grow up?", I would answer that I didn't know. No one ever sounded honestly happy for me when I said I'd like to be a musician, or that I wanted to work with plants, and on the other hand they sounded so sincere when telling me to think about some normal careers, such as being a secretary, an astronaut or a telepathist.
It was my first travel to Sulani to give me a little glimpse into the rest of the world. Mom was always telling me about Sim City, but travelling abroad myself was all another experience. Very different climate, food, scenery, but also the attitude of the people was nothing like what I used to take for granted back then.
The following years, have been very frustrating and tough for me.
I was in that transition phase in between adolescence and adulthood, my relationship with Olivier seemed to turn more and more serious every day, but I also was unable to make a definitive choice about my future.
I tried to fit into the standard that the New Sixam society tried to set on us, I really did. But I just couldn't stand it any longer. Even with Olivier, although I really loved him already, I felt like the only moment when I really felt like myself was when we were playing music and singing together.
However, in the end, I really couldn't stand it any longer. And I just snapped.
The fancy clothes that are trendy now in New Sixam, a life stuck indoors and chained at a secretary's desk, pointlessly seeking the perfect family ideal that in reality was unreachable, I couldn't imagine living that way all my life.
I was lost for a while, for then ending up following my parents' suggestion. Travelling can really open one's horizons, both my parents knew it very well. And, if New Sixam wasn't right for me, I had no reason to insist on remaining there at all costs. After realising this easy concept, it wasn't so hard for me to choose a destination. The outdoorsy lifestyle of Sulani had stuck with me, it really seemed like the right place where to make up my mind.
Returning to the archipelago for a second time, trying to learn more about the local people and its environment, really blew up my mind. And, long story short, this time I decided not to leave ever again.
I soon managed to make a life in there. I bought a house, I started to work at the local environmental agency, and I soon found the company of a mysterious cat called Nacho and a chatty scarecrow-robot. As for my siblings instead, Lily moved back to Sim City, where she lived all the rest of her life together with her companion Mirko, while Helios moved to the new technological neighbourhood of Tech Sixam together with Techna. We were taking very different paths, but we all seemed satisfied with our respective choices.
Changing place can really make a difference in many aspects. I wasn't really aware of it yet, but moving to Sulani changed me a lot. I was a bit more lonely maybe, but definitively more serene and confident. And my relationship with Olivier changed deeply as well.
I wasn't afraid of speaking out my opinions any longer, and he took his time to reflect on himself and what he really wanted for his life. The New Sixam life wasn't really fitting him either, and after removing all the superfluous expectations that influenced us so much when we were younger, we were back to our music and honest talking. In short, exactly what had drawn us closer when we met.
It may seem like everything had resolved for the better. However, that's exactly when very weird stuff started to happen to us, weird things we managed to explain only many years later. Sometimes, looking back to this pages, I still think that I should have noticed sooner, and this makes me feel frustrated. Rationally, however, all that happened to us was probably too weird to be predicted by anyone.
At first, it was Helios.
We were all so proud of my little brother, he was studying in a very prestigious medical lab at the Tech Sixam University experimenting on some weird stuff I've never even tried to ask him about, because it was too hard for me to understand anyway. We found out much later that what he used to work with was in reality an old pollination machine, and that during one of his experiments an accident occurred, resulting in a twin pregnancy for my brother and with the birth of Iris and River.
As if this wasn't fishy enough, whoever was supervising his lab was clearly trying to hide something even worse, as they erased my brother's memories about the accident, and also Techna's hard disk.
For a few years then, while the authorities tried to retrieve their memories and to evaluate whether my brother was a culprit or a victim of that plan, I was responsible for the twins. It has been tough to learn how to take care of twins out of the blue, but over the years both I and Olivier grew more and more accustomed to this family-like dynamics. We knew we weren't their real parents and that we would have never been, but at the same time we were already aware that we would have eventually missed the kids and the time we were spending with them.
So, when my brother's memories were restored and his children returned back to live with him, we weren't able to really cheer for that victory. Instead, we entered a very delicate phase in our lives.
Olivier can't have kids the normal way, the doctors have always been very clear (and, honestly, a bit too brutal) about this. So we knew from the very beginning that our options to become parents were way more limited and complicated than those available to most couples, and we were really afraid of never managing to have a kid at all, too.
We were clearly in a very vulnerable state, and this apparently attracted the attention of mali malicious people who have kept their eyes on our family for I don't know how much time.
Before they approached Helios and erased his memories when he wasn't deemed useful to their plans any longer, then they came to us proposing to use the pollination machine in their "secret and not very legal lab", exposing their plan as a win-win proposal: they could have continued their experiment with that machine, while we could have had the kid we wanted so badly. And, as if this wasn't bad enough, that was just an excuse to make us participate in an even more evil plan.
But, as I said, we were passing through a very vulnerable period of our lives. And we ended up accepting to participate in that experiment.
The birth of Rowan and parenting him are the only positive parts of those years, the only ones that, in retrospect, weren't tainted by all the lies and deceptions we've been victims of during those years.
He's always been a very smart and active kid, and we've always given it all to be the best possible parents for him.
But the circumstances really made it hard to live the serene and carefree life we had in mind.
It took years before we found out what was the real plan of the organization that had deceived us. I mean, Rowan was already 7 when that absurd story finally ended!
The pollination machine never was their focus, that was just a decoy to convince us. No, what they really needed were guinea pigs to experiment with their new electronic devices able to perform telepathy. They filled our home with prototypes without us noticing, and used them to try to read our thoughts and emotions, to try to influence our actions and choices, and also to alter our memories.
It was Kate, the same telepathy expert who retrieved my brother's memories, to eventually solve the mystery and allow the arrest of Drew, the member of that organization who experimented on us for so long.
The end of that period has been very freeing for us, but also left us with a lot of questions about what had really happened during the previous few years. Those devices have never really managed to affect my mind, but only caused me frequent and very annoying headaches, but with Olivier the effect had been way more evident.
Above all, that organization had managed to mess up enough with Olivier's mind to use him to obtain some very sensitive documents from the export company he used to work for, causing him to be fired.
And if they had managed to mess up so badly with his mind when he was at work, how should we interpret all the choices we took during those long years? It was really us deciding, or was someone else trying to influence us? Even after long telepathic therapy sessions, we never found a definitive answer to these questions. And we just reached a mutual agreement on trying to ignore that disturbing thought as much as possible.
Also because the experiments we have been victims of were just a small part of a much larger plan, and somehow we ended up being involved in the collateral damage once again.
Out of nowhere, someone had decided to spill their phosphorescent wastes in the Sulani's sea. And, as the manager of the local environmental agency, it was my duty to find a solution to that huge issue, that risked causing an ecological catastrophe in a very short time.
We worked overtime for years, pointlessly looking for an unattainable solution. I worked on it with the other field agents, Olivier started to help us by working at the administrative office, and, for all the Jupiter's Moons sake, even Rowan helped us by picking up all the garbage accumulating on the beaches, together with the rest of the boy scouts.
But nothing we could do was really of any use. Once again, we didn't even realise we were fighting against something so much bigger and more organised than us, to them probably we were just like annoying ants. And we found out what we were really dealing with just a few months ago.
They barely bothered to explain us what was going on, and then the 99.99% of them left. Yes, even Techna, the robot who lived with me when I was a kid, left without a real explanation, leaving the whole family heartbroken.
I'm not a young girl anymore, all the opposite, and I can't imagine keep fighting as I did up to now. What would be the point, anyway? Can't I just focus on myself, Olivier and Rowan for the time to come? Someone could think that we've surrendered, but I don't see it this way.
Olivier agrees with me, we deserve to enjoy the years to come, and we want to focus on our music. And I won't listen to those who will try to convince me to do otherwise.
Ah, the youth... It's not a wonder he prefers to look forward. Sometimes we think he should slow down a bit and take it a bit easier, but I don't want to obstacle him either, I remember all too well all the hopes for the future I had when I was his age.
Looking back to those years makes me feel frustrated to no end. I've always worked so hard in my life, and did my best every day, yet I feel like I've never really been in control of what was happening to us for most of that time. What would have we done if we had known earlier that it was all the robots' fault? Would it have made any difference?
At this point, I just feel like I'm too tired of it all, I just don't want to think or talk about it anymore.
I'm not a young girl anymore, all the opposite, and I can't imagine keep fighting as I did up to now. What would be the point, anyway? Can't I just focus on myself, Olivier and Rowan for the time to come? Someone could think that we've surrendered, but I don't see it this way.
Olivier agrees with me, we deserve to enjoy the years to come, and we want to focus on our music. And I won't listen to those who will try to convince me to do otherwise.
I don't even know why I'm writing so much, it's not like anyone is supposed to read this, right? And, in any case, I don't expect I'll have much to write in the years to come.
The one who instead really doesn't seem able to stand still is Rowan. He's always been a very stubborn and ambitious kid, but now he seems more determined than ever to find a solution to all all these issues. I'm pretty sure he's keeping a diary too, for sure those pages are way more interesting than these at this point.
Ah, the youth... It's not a wonder he prefers to look forward. Sometimes we think he should slow down a bit and take it a bit easier, but I don't want to obstacle him either, I remember all too well all the hopes for the future I had when I was his age.
And then, who knows, maybe he could really manage to change this world. As long as he's happy, I'll be happy for him too. Don't you agree, my dear diary?
