Summary of generation 8

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From Rowan's diary

My dear diary, today is one of those rare calm days here in Sim City. It's raining, so Gaia left with her friends to go to the cinema (if I understood correctly, they went to watch the first movie inspired by that book series she's always reading). Juno and Nacho, instead, are napping on the sofa. It's not common for me to have so little to do to feel bored, but here we are. This is probably why I ended up scrolling back on my old diary entries and photo albums, did so much time pass already?

Some of those old pages and photos make me so nostalgic, the ones from Sulani in particular.

Many people look surprised when I tell them I was born in that archipelago, probably because I look quite different from the stereotypical native of the islands. Indeed, my parents (Alba and Olivier) had moved there from New Sixam just a few years earlier. 

I would define my childhood as quite sheltered, in retrospect. My parents were involved in several mysteries and deceptions, but I barely noticed anything bothering them. All I cared about were my school grades and collecting scout badges, and I remember well how proud I felt about every one of those little achievements. Nowadays, I would say that what I miss the most are the clear air, the warm weather, and all the time I used to spend outdoors swimming, playing in the sand, or climbing palm trees.

In short, back in those days, I thought to be very knowledgeable in all things that mattered. Yet, thinking again about that time, I think that my lacunes were already quite evident. 

I've never been good at interacting with others. Nor I've ever understood why people seem to love small talk so much, but, at the same time, they also keep so much implied between the lines. Willing or not, this is one of the things I had to learn the hard way, when entering the real world of grown-ups, and I wouldn't say I totally managed to master it yet. 

There were two main issues bugging me in my youth, namely the robots' revolt in New Sixam, and the attitude of the majority of the world population towards environmental concerns. 

As for the first, there wasn't much I could do. The robots constructed in New Sixam unilaterally decided to leave the planet and start their own civilization on Sixam. Yet, I still don't forgive them for the way they deceived so many of my close relatives as "side effects of their plan".

On a less personal level, the effect of the sudden loss of the main workforce in the country's factory is still visible these days, and every attempt to instaurate a dialogue with them has failed. As frustrating as it is, however, there isn't anything we can reasonably attempt to change the situation.

But I always believed that the preservation of the environment and the prevention of climate change were a totally different matter. It was our country, our planet, to be affected, who else is supposed to act and make some sacrifice, if not us?

Most people, back in those days, would have defined me as very ambitious. At this point in my life, I would now rather say I was naive, not to say over-confident. I didn't just want to do my fair share to help the planet, I wanted to be the one who made the difference. Needless to say, such an attitude couldn't bring me to anything else other than disappointment later in life.

My parents tried to warn me multiple times, reminding me not to forget the importance of some free time and of spending time with the people who mattered to me. I think I understand better what they meant now, but do you think I decided to follow their advice, my dear diary? 

Of course I didn't, and I ended up enrolling to one of the top world universities, the old Britechester University in the Sim City province, to study law. I planned to study environmental legislation, to become a judge who comdammed those who polluted the planet. Did I already mention how naive I was?

The college years were tough, way more so than I anticipated. I spent every single free minute studying to remain among the top students, and I also had to find the time to participate in the debate club and the soccer training sessions (which were a compulsory element of my scholarship). And that was the first time I realised I had miscalculated my real limits, arriving to collapse on the floor out of tiredness. 

I had to realise I couldn't do everything, and that I had to slow down, which at the time meant dropping the soccer team (and related scholarship). It was mostly Juno who helped me realise I was demanding myself way too much. 

It isn't like me to make this kind of reasoning, for most of the time, but in this case I really can't avoid it. Where would I be if we had never met? Most likely I could write a whole book about her, yet I'm still unsure of what words to use to describe all the things she is to me. 

When we met we were simply roommates, I vaguely remember I even felt a bit annoyed at how chatty she was when we first met. For sure, as a freshman, I would have never guessed how important she would have become to me. 

To everyone's surprise, we had quite a lot in common. She cares a lot about the environment, even more so than I do, and wasn't afraid to do what needed to be done to follow her principles. We both hate injustice, and I always admired her way of always wanting to help everyone around her.

But there was also a lot we learnt from each other. Juno initially struggled in college, with a problematic boyfriend, and with her unsupportive parents, but over time she gained a lot of self-confidence and faced them all. I always tried to do my best to help her, in my own way. And to do so I had to learn something from her, and her way of understanding and communicating with others.

As I already mentioned, communication has always been my weakest point. However, I didn't fully realise the extent of my limitations until I faced her, and I found myself totally lost when trying to face certain types of conversations. 

And my difficulties in interacting with her worsened in the following years, as our relationship became deeper, but also more nuanced. 

It took forever for me to realise we were becoming friends (I mean, very good friends) and even more so to understand whether what I felt could also mean I was in love with her or not.

I don't talk about this often, most people don't really believe me when I do, but I'd never experienced a crush before that point in my life, nor did I afterwards (for what it matters). For a long time, I was convinced that my schoolmates were using speech figures when chatting about the people they liked, or about their celebrity crushes. Honestly, to this day I still think that experiencing attraction as often as others report doesn't sound very practical. 

In either case, my dear diary, I really fell in love with only one person in my life, and it took me a while to realise what was going on. Up to after our graduation, to be precise.

At the time, Juno and I decided to look for a job in the great Sim City metro area, full of hopes and ambitious projects, and I like to think we've been each other's support ever since. Because life in this city is hard, way harder than in college, in Sulani, or in New Sixam (where Juno grew up). 

This place is at the centre of the economic activities of the richest country on the planet, the Sim Nation, all young people in the country and beyond dream of working here. Thus, the level of competition could only be terrible.

My first job had been a major disappointment, and also my second clear miscalculation. I soon realised that my original aspirations were unrealistic, and ended up stuck in an uninspiring job in a generic law firm, spending most of my time examining old records in the archives. 

It was boring and frustrating, and it also made me feel like I was wasting my time. How could I help the environment from such a position? Did it mean I wasn't good enough for what I aspired for? Nowadays, I would just say I used to have unrealistic expectations about how life as a lawyer is. 

Needless to say, Juno was at least as busy as I was with her new job.

She started working right after graduation for a company specialising in green transition, she was mostly responsible for drawing the period budgets and organising fundraiser events to collect new funds for their project. 

In short, we had very busy lives. However, this wasn't enough to dissuade us to make it even more intense. We were hitting our thirties, and like many people, we were seriously starting to make long-term plans. 

In our case, our plan included becoming parents, as well as finding enough money to buy a larger house in that very expensive city. 

On paper, everything seemed very clear and linear. In reality, however, it was tough. Very tough. I don't even remember how many hours per day we used to work in that period, but for sure it was way too many. A newborn Gaia refusing to sleep for more than a few hours in a row probably did the rest. 

In a couple of years, I thought we had finally succeeded. We had just bought our house, Gaia was quickly growing, and everything was going according to our plan. Yet, it was just another of my miscalculations. 

By working so many hours, and using all my social energies to deal with my clients and to show a smiley face to Gaia, I reached a level of exhaustion I'd never reached before. However, I never considered talking to anyone about any of these, not even to Juno. To be honest, I mostly sought for some alone time. And Juno didn't feel like she could trust her thoughts to me either.

And this is when the situation really risked to blow up in our hands. So that I wasn't available, she sought someone else to share her worries, complaints and so forth.

A lot of people wouldn't consider it real cheating, but to me it felt like it was. I took it for granted she could trust me enough to come to me whenever she wanted to. Yet, she preferred to talk and flirt with that Logan. Still nowadays, whenever I see him, I clearly feel a strong resentment against him, I just can't respect him as a decent person.

I and Juno really had a lot to explain to each other at that point, it took a three-day vacation and the first full night of sleep of Gaia to really move beyond what had happened in the past and find a mutual understanding. 

We couldn't keep working all those hours, it wasn't healthy for either of us nor for Gaia. And we needed to communicate more, and more honestly, this was probably the toughest lesson I ever received on this front. Juno may have learnt to understand me better and better over time, but I cannot expect her to do all the job.

That period had been an emotional rollercoaster, I can't describe well all the thoughts that passed through my head in those weeks even after all this time. Yet, above all, I can say I was extremely relieved when we finally found a mutual agreement.

So, by this point we had passed the worst phase in Gaia parenting, we had survived the worst crisis of our marriage, and we had reached a sufficient level of financial stability to slow down with our job and try to find something resembling a balance. Most people would guess that at this point everything was probably a downhill for us. However, my dear diary, I'm sure you remember this wasn't the case. This time, it was Juno's job to cause us huge headaches. 

Accidentally, we had noticed suspicious money movements in Juno's company budgets, the kind of movements that strongly suggest that some money laundering is occurring. Of course, a legal action at that point was inevitable.

The trial took several months, it was the largest case I've ever worked for. I was Juno and her colleagues' defence lawyer, and telling apart those who actually participated in the laundering from the unlucky bystanders required to analyse a huge amount of files and folders. 

Eventually, Juno and her closest colleagues were declared to be innocent. The main culprits, however, were the founders and CEOs of the company that, consequently, was immediately closed. 

Our first reaction was relief. Even if I was sure of her innocence, it was impossible not to feel any fear before the emission of a definitive verdict. 

The second reaction, instead, was of concern. After all, the closure of that company meant that Juno had remained jobless.

We discussed how to handle this new challenge a lot, for weeks it has been the main topic in our conversations. The available jobs in Sim City were not thrilling, but at least they were quite a safe option. On the other hand, however, she couldn't avoid thinking about a way more ambitious project bugging her mind for a long time.

She never really dared to say it out loud, but down deep she had always wanted to make a real difference for our environment too. What if this was a chance of doing so? She had an old idea, she's been thinking about it since college. A big percentage of the local emissions are given by the transport sector, still largely based on fossil fuels and combustion engines. Wouldn't it be all solved by switching to what now in New Sixam is standard technology, i.e. teleportation? No car traffic, no emissions, and super quick travel, I actually never understood why this region resisted for so long before showing any interest in this technology.

And who was better for such a project than Juno, who had several contacts back in New Sixam? It was risky, but down deep we both thought that it was the right attempt to make. 

And so this became her new job, managing a new company focused on selling teleportation devices and other New Sixam technologies in Sim City. She had to work very hard for many years to obtain enough money through fundraising and advertising their products in a way that could make them more approachable to the Sim City market. Eventually, she even raised enough money to build a stellar core plant to provide enough green energy to fuel all the teleportation devices in the region and even more, how could we be any more proud of her and the way she was moving forward to achieve her dreams?

What was I doing instead? 

I was still stuck with that boring and trivial job, with no perspective of switching to a position more pertinent to my interests. I was keeping the position to ensure the financial stability of our family, which is per se quite an achievement, but that was all I could say about it. I felt frustrated, and a bit envious of Juno's success too. 

If it was up to me, probably this would still be my situation up to now, but Juno didn't agree at all. Thus, it was her who suggested me to that seminar at our old university, to push me back to what I liked doing as a student. 

And it was still her to insist I accepted the offer when, unexpectedly, the chance of a new job as an adjunct professor was presented to me. She didn't care about the lower wages nor about the worse security of that job, she just wanted to see me happy. As if I needed any other demonstration of how lucky I was to be next to her...

And so this is when I started to be called Professor Miller. 

I'm teaching an introductory course, and an advanced one about environmental legislation. I'm very fond of the years spent as a professor in that college and of my students, in particular the ones I followed in their thesis project. 

I may even say I'll miss them when I retire, but it's inevitable. I think many of them really learnt a lot about how also law could influence the climatic policies of a Country, and I think many of them have a great future ahead.

I only had a student who constantly left me puzzled, Matt. Will he ever graduate, I wonder? I strongly doubt it, at this point. And I'm also old enough to not really care that much anymore, the person taking my teaching position will surely take care of him.

By now, both Juno and I are really looking forward to a relaxing retirement, possibly in Sulani. 

Did we achieve everything we planned when we were young? No, we weren't even close. Yet, we now realise this world is much more complex than we used to expect, and we worked so hard, for so long... No, even if it still tastes a bit bitter, I don't think we could have done significantly better than this. We're just two normal people, after all.

It's the new generation's turn to do their share, and I really hope Gaia will be among them. Yet, I don't really know what to expect from her.

What I know for sure is that she likes: the snow,

reading fiction,

climbing,

and messing around with the matter recomposer.

I really want her to be happy in her life. I and Juno are also considering leaving her the house once we move out, so that she won't have to work as hard as we had to for buying one. Yet, I still hope she can find a stable job she may feel satisfied with. She's studying teleportation and matter recomposers at a New Sixam technical school, I really hope this could open some doors for her. Yet, she's so unpredictable, and honestly also a bit reckless sometimes, I can't avoid worrying about her sometimes... 

By the way, I noticed she's writing a diary too. I don't really want to know what she's writing in it, so often I just can't understand what passes through her head and I'm a bit afraid of what I could find in it. Yet, I'm reasonably sure that, at this point, that diary is a way more interesting read than this one is. No offence, my dear diary, you did an admirable job over all these years, it's just that I'm aiming for a much more relaxing and predictable life in the foreseen future. I think we deserved it, after all.

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