From Alba's diary
A few months have passed since my last entry, is now Harvestfest. I can't really say this is a traditional festivity here in Sulani, but now that we have such a large vegetable garden it seems appropriate to celebrate properly. So we spent most of the day cooking, combining vegetables from our garden with a couple of fish we caught nearby.
Alba: You see, Rowan, one tradition about Harvestfest consists in sharing the reasons we feel grateful to others. Actually, I don't even know where to start, I have so many reasons to be grateful to you two, and to so many other people too!
Olivier: Yes, actually it's not that easy...
Rowan: I have something in mind already instead.
Olivier: Oh, thanks great!
Rowan: I really want to thank the scout coordinators for promoting me, I'm so close to becoming a squad leader now!
Alba: Ah.
Now that Rowan is in high school and becoming more independent every day, it seems like he's more determined than ever to achieve his goals. And, as his Harvestfest comment suggests, right now his greatest ambition is to become the leader of his scout group, and to achieve this he must complete the collection of all the scouts' badges. He is taking this challenge with exemplary seriousness, always keeping an eye on his progress on the board he keeps in his room and engaging in the most varied activities.
So Rowan started painting, jogging, assembling furniture, and even doing charity work, to obtain badges corresponding to his improvements regarding arts and crafts, physical fitness and benevolence.
And recently he even started fishing because, according to him, he needed it to get the badge associated with the outdoor activities too.
He has always hated fishing, because he feels sorry for the poor fish at least as much as I do. Can it really be of any good for him to keep chasing those badges at all costs, even if they lead him to spend a lot of time doing activities he doesn't even like?
I'm not sure either, in many ways Rowan is so different from both me and Olivier to make it difficult for us to know when it's really time to worry. Anyway, we decided to let it pass for a while to see how his behaviour would evolve, but at this point I really think we need to have a serious talk with him.
A few days later...
Olivier: It's 10 PM already, aren't you too tired to study now?
Rowan: (holding back a yawn) Don't worry, I'm fine. And then today we had a lot of other things to do, I really didn't have time to study earlier. And I could never show up to school tomorrow without finishing my homework first!
Olivier: Because of... reasons, I used to work very hard when I was your age as well. But now I have the impression that I missed out on many experiences when I was younger. I mean, in a few years you too will have a job, maybe a family, and certainly many responsibilities, perhaps you should take advantage of the free time you have now and have some fun while you can, right?
Rowan: I have a lot of free time already, and I spend it with the scout group. I don't know why you and mom seem to be thinking otherwise, but I really don't see anything wrong with it, you know?
Alba: (returning to the house) Finally I found out the source of all that noise, Nacho was arguing with a couple of birds who were trying to defend their nest.
Alba: Hi, are you okay?
Olivier: Yes, Rowan and I were talking about...
Rowan: (uncomfortable) Do you really have to, um... do that also when I'm around?
Alba: C'mon, it was just an innocent peck on the cheek!
Rowan: If you say so...
It must be because of adolescence because, the more time passes, the more I struggle to understand our son. It's probably normal to feel a little uncomfortable seeing your parents showing a bit of affection to each other, but was it really necessary to grab his homework and run to his room just to get away from us? That's probably something else we'll need to discuss about, sooner rather than later.
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The weeks pass, and for once it was Helios to invite us to his place. Usually everyone prefers to join us in Sulani, probably for the "tropical island charm" which still hasn't waned, but every now and then it's not bad to change the scenery for us either.
Alba: Hi River, how are you?
River: We're all doing very well, thanks for asking!
Alba: Hi Kate, I'm glad to see you're here too!
Kate: And I'm glad of your visit too. However, I already have the impression that you are holding back some questions that you don't think are totally appropriate, or am I wrong?
Alba: Maybe a little bit.
Kate: (resigned) C'mon, just ask it.
Alba: Do you live here now?
Kate: No, actually not.
River: But she's here so often that even we're not so sure about it.
Helios: C'mon, that's a bit exaggerated!
We talked and joked so much tonight, about whatever came to our minds. And, as often happens in these cases, we also ended up talking about work.
Alba: … this issue of illegal waste dumping in Sulani is really escalating, you should see how the water glows at night now! Yet we have never managed to find the people responsible for this. Actually, to be honest, we weren't even able to figure out what substances is been released yet.
Helios: Are you talking about that sample you asked me to analyse?
Alba: Yes, exactly that. By the way, have you at least managed to understand what it is?
Helios: (vague) It took a while, in theory we shouldn't be analyzing samples that don't belong to the official research topic of the university. But, in the end, we managed to reconstruct the structure of the molecule in question, yes.
Alba: Really? What is it, then?
Helios: Well... the point is that we have no idea either, we haven't found any correspondence with known molecules either on Earth or on Sixam. In other words, it's a new compound we don't know anything about.
Alba: Oh...
Techna: This sounds like a quite big deal to me, are you sure that your agency is capable of dealing with a problem of this magnitude, Alba?
Alba: ...
Techna isn't entirely wrong, as usual they just need a few sentences to get straight to the point. We've known about this waste dump in Sulani for years now, and ever since the water started to glow with that strange blue light everyone is on alert and is putting pressure on us to ensure that our team resolves the situation as soon as possible. However...
Alba: … We're doing our best, really. We are also getting more grants than usual recently, but it's still not enough. To really solve something we should be able to pay for the analysis of many more samples of that strange waste dumped on the islands, and maybe even hire a couple of new people, or...
Olivier: Or to pay a few lawyers, and file a complaint against unknown persons. This would probably also push the Sulani police to increase their efforts on this investigation, wouldn't it?
Alba: I hadn't thought about this, but it could be an idea, you know?
Techna: I see…
Techna always seems to think about problems with every single transistor in their processor, but today they seem even more thoughtful than usual. Or at least that was my impression, it's not always easy to interpret their expressions.
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The situation at my workplace remained the same as what I had described during dinner at my brother's place also in the following weeks, until when we received a certain phone call:
Alba: Hi Amy, are you okay? I thought you were already back home! Wha… wait, slow down, what do you mean by: "We just received a donation"?
My colleague, Amy, had called me shortly after the end of our work day, clearly excited about something. She said that someone had just made a large donation to our cooperative, and she seemed just as surprised as I was by that news. So all I could do was run to the computer to immediately check it by myself.
Usually to get grants we have to go out of our way to write a project, submit it, and hope that it is chosen among dozens of other similar projects. In this case instead…
For all the Jupiter's satellites' sake, so many zeros! And it is money coming from an anonymous donation, the reason field for this bank transfer simply stated:
“To ensure that the truth can emerge. MT”
I couldn't help but immediately call Olivier and share the news with him too. On the one hand, I really needed to talk about this to someone. On the other hand, however, now that he works as the accountant for our agency this news definitively involves him closely too. So who knows, maybe he might be able to understand something more about this cryptic donation.
Olivier: MT ... Do you thinks it could be the initials of some name? Do you know anyone with those initials?
Alba: Mrs Tara perhaps? Uhm, no, that can't be, her last name is Benton, and then I don't think she has that much money. Um… I really don't know, that MT could also not be initials at all, for all I know.
Olivier: Yes, that's possible...
Olivier: In any case, it would seem that the sum is immediately available, so we have a lot of things to do! With this, we could afford to sign a contract with a serious analysis laboratory, hire a couple of people for the toxicity studies, and maybe even open that lawsuit against unknown persons! And…
And we kept coming up with ideas all evening, that was truly a godsend for us. Finally, I could hope again that I could finally catch the culprit red-handed. And all this thanks to our anonymous benefactor, I would so much like to thank this person right now!
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§HermioneSims§ corner
Hi everyone! Once again I want to close with a small comment, this time about this picture
Rowan's reaction in here wasn't just a random one, nor it was some normal teen-sim reaction that you would commonly see in-game.
Actually, this happened because, upon aging up in the last chapter, he received the "unflirty" trait, and one collateral aspect of this trait is to give a "discomfort moodlet" upon witnessing flirty behaviours. Usually, I don't say much about my sims traits, but this is quite a visible one and will affect a lot his behaviour in the following chapters.
More details on this will be provided later on, when they will become relevant to the events disclosed in the corresponding chapters.
Another great chapter! I laughed at the look Rowan gave his parents when they kissed. It’s such an innocent kiss too. Just a peck. It’s interesting to see how Rowan’s personality is developing. He seems very similar to Olivier, with his seriousness about getting things done, and yet very different at the same time.
ReplyDeleteSo, he’s unflirty. That’ll be interesting. My unflirty Sims always behave in unpredictable/ironic ways. I’ve had very few autonomous proposals in my game, but unflirty Sims seem to have no problem doing that while my romantic Sims just do nothing … =/
I’m curious to see how the pollution situation will evolve. It seems like we’re getting closer to a solution.