At this point Tamara had gathered all the intel she had come for, now it was time to made amends to everyone who had unwittingly contributed. And so the next party the woman threw, a keg party in the Phillips penthouse, she hosted as her real self. Also invited were Elijah Kamski, the Thorntons and the Cahills.
Caroline wasn’t shy about expressing her opinion about someone using her family:
“You lied to me and little Emma, you kept lying to us when we trusted you, using us as like tools in your own schemes!”
Elijah: *whistles*
Amadeus: “What?”
Caroline: “Sorry, Kamski, but this man is already spoken for!”
At this point Tamara had already come to the conclusion that the company Amadeus was CEO of, CyberLife, needed government aid. The other major job provider in Detroit, the Rooftop Farm, just couldn't manage the number of people looking for jobs on its own. The help came with a series of requirements: CyberLife needs to keep the Space Program running and dedicate funds to android health, even though neither would rake in the large profits Amadeus had in mind.
(That doesn't mean much for the scenario, but both are very big plot points for my overall story.)
The next to receive a little attention from the government was Urban Farms. Tamara hosted a Gala dinner at the Rooftop Farm to bring some publicity to the place.
The “Gala Dinner” was actually a sampling of cakes and pies made with fruit from the rooftop farm.
Byron: “Well, this is something! UFD has succesfully fended off large scale investors and politicians alike for two decades now. But for you they made an exception... Governor Donner.”
Tamara: “Mr. Khanna made this exception not for the Governor, but for Tammy. This is the first place where I felt welcome after coming to Detroit. I want the farm to continue make people feel good and cared for.”
Byron: “I guess so. And I’ll watch your career with interest...”
Tamara: “That... was a joke, yes?”
Byron: “Wish it was. But, see, I’m like those gnarly, dark trees, while you are the lush and full and glowy ones. They may share the same soil, but they belong to different worlds.”
Tamara: “Yet they both nourish something: The Sixam Plasma Fruit is a critical part in the vampire diet and the Growfruit are the best fertilizer there is.”
Tamara: “Since this my last night in Detroit, I might just as well parttake in a tradition of this city: Stealing the rooftop farm’s rocketship! - It has two seats, by the way...”
Dang, Byron was right! The Thorntons really need a reduction in rent. Everytime that thing launches, the apartment building’s windows need serious cleaning.
The next morning:
Byron: “I want to believe I only dreamed that we crashed the UFD’s insanely expensive rocketship in the countryside. But I can still smell the burning rubber and cables.”
Tamara: “Too bad! Then we have no choice but to stay together until we have repaired it...”
Tamara and Byron had not even fully settled in, when a friend from Detroit waltzed through the front gate: George Cahill!
Zooming a bit further in... yep, I was right. That’s Caroline in the little park.
And over there at the town square...
Peggy: “Hello, I’m Peggy Reed! We haven’t met, but Caroline is my grandma!”
I’m melting! Caro has Peggy for the weekend! This may open the door to Caroline’s and Daniel’s family branches spending Thanksgiving 2047 together - another useless fact in the light of the scenario, but so welcome for my save. I must say, this scenario is doing the Detroit save some serious good.
But how did all her friends find Tamara so quickly? Well, I guess a rocketship is hard to overlook.
Oh, what gives. Better invite the couple from yesterday's Welcome Wagon and call an impromptu party!
I only have Seasons for two days, so when “Attempt to kiss under a mistletoe” appeared in my sims’ romance menu constantly, I assumed a bug or mod issue.
Out of curiosity I clicked the option, expecting that they’d maybe try to rout somewhere and then wave failure. But then Daneel did this:
And that is the story of how I learned that sims carry mistletoes to go.
Next time we'll see Tamara and Byron, there will be fall in Finchwick, too.
Both Tamara and Byron had taken vacation days, but their getaway from civilisation wasn’t also a bubble outside time. The lovers could ignore the calendar, they couldn’t just un-see the leaves turning yellow, brown and red.
“What a cold summer we have!” Byron remarked, and: “What a rainy summer we have!”
Tamara understood her boyfriend was quoting some piece of litarature, and even though she didn’t recognize the phrases*, she knew full well what they meant. Their “summer” had long turned into fall.
*... From “Ronja, Brigand’s daughter” a children’s book by Astrid Lindgren
Their “Goodbye, Summer” party was a full success wiith the neighbors. It also took away from the sting of having to return into their old lives again soon.
Her mission was finished, but the rocketship wasn’t fixed yet, and before Tamara had not fulfilled that obligation, she couldn’t return home.
Nobody said out loud that Urban Farms could have sent over a couple of technicians and a lawryer anytime they wanted... What people were talking about about were the wonderful autumn and Tammy’s barbecue parties in the Bramblewoods.
Legend had it that the rooftop farm’s foremen, Meriadoc and Peregrin Trent, had cobbled together the original rocketship in their freetime, falling back on their android brains, improvisation skill and lots of enthusiasm. That might or might not be true, in any case a janitor and a rocketscience hobbyist couldn’t put the pieces back together on their own.
Their friends from Detroit, like Master Fabricator Lime here, helped with spare parts and advice until one day...
Byron: “There, done! We even gave it a new paint job!”
Tamara: “You did that - I only wiggled the spray can at the spot you pointed at. It looks great!"
Naturally the finished project warranted another party, the second-to-last for Tamara’s aspiration.
Meriadoc: “You’ll want to give her a test ride...”
The sight of a rocketship launching from Finchwick was certainly something!
In the weeks to come the image became available on posters, cups, mousepads and whatnot in the little town’s souvenier shop. It also made the cover of several magazines - and with that Governor Tamara Donner was back in public view.
Tamara’s carefree party life soon got replaced by conferences and charity streams again, while Byron returned to repairing apartment fixtures. Their dates became rarer, but that made them only moreso precious (and wild).
One day Tamara found herself in Port Lllamante, at some obscure Rocket Science & the environment conference. George Cahill was there, too, and even tried to flirt a little. That was the moment when it finally clicked that they were long a couple and should make it official first thing Tamara returned to Michigan!
When I had just purchased Dine Out, date invitation would always lead to Selvadorada, the cantina being my only restaurant back then. Now I have eight or ten restaurants, and guess where date invitations still lead to?
And with this last social event Tamara finished her aspiration & the scenario. I’ve lost track of time, but her stats say she slept 25 times, so taking naps into account I’d say I played her for something like three weeks? In-story it was closer to two months: two weeks in Detroit and an unspecified amount of time in Finchwick (but not into winter).
I saved Tamara and Byron to my library, then deleted them from the rotational save. They can make appearances in future story scenes, but I don’t want my sims to randomly run into the Governor and her fiance in normal gameplay.
And that concludes the second scenario I played. I also made and discarded again several plans for the Millionaire scenario, without committing to one of them. I’m not interested in any of the other EA scenarios.
Emil is a gardener sim whose plan is to make a million by growing expensive flowers and brewing kombucha.
This is definitely harder than before adding Seasons. When there isn't a heatwave, it's a thunderstorm. And vampires.
Things we cannot afford yet: a house, furnishings and basic modesty.
Gotta make concessions - when the indoor space isn't large enough to place the bed because of all the plants, then the bed needs to get placed elsewhere. But I doubt a man who sits in his swimtrunk under an umbrella will mind me sleeping here.
Day 8 - things are looking better now. Emil has nine thousand simoleons in cash and the maximum number of juice fizzers a single sim can operate (when he stocks the ninth, the first is close to being finished). The next goal is to perfect the lilys (only one more quality tier to go) and full the whole lot with them.
No story this time, but I documented my daily progress.
My scenario sim, Emil, tries to become a millionaire by gardening and brewing/juice fizzing. He starts in Newcrest with easy access to several public barbecues and Lilys (for floral kombucha). Everything that fits Emil’s theme is allowed, everything else strongly discouraged, but still allowed. Sims that move in must not bring money.
Before reaching the money goal Emil wants to have perfect specimens of every flower in the game and own at least one servo (to keep the garden running when he retires to his millionaire estate).
Day by day breakdown of the first season
Day 1 : 54 $
Logic 2, Fishing 2
Temporarily employed as gardener in the Science Lab. With access to the chemical analyzer Emil can upgrade seeds by one full tier before planting.
Day 3: 127
Added a custom holiday, the Sommerfest (a summer party with gnomes for easy access to seeds).
Gardening 4, Cooking 2, Juice Fizzing 1
Day 4: 534
Thunderstorm, vampire attack
Gardening 5, Logic 4
Day 5: 1,655
Juice Fizzing 2
Day 6: 3,879
Thunderstorm
Cooking 4, Juice Fizzing 3
Day 7: 3,658
Thunderstorm
Cooking 5, Gardening 6, Juice fizzing 4
Day 8: 9,213
Thunderstorm
Cooking 5, Gardening 7, full row of 9 juice fizzers
Day 9: 13,274
Heatwave, perfected carrots (to subsequently graft cuttings to for quick perfecting), moved in Cameron Fletcher, bought him a Robotics workbench
Day 10: 20,864
Moved in Ulrike Faust, bought computer, bookcase and bar, added an attic (with beds)
Ulrike got offered (and accepted) Criminal Career 5, also started in Vampire Lore
Day 11: 42,464
Thunderstorm
Gardening 8, Cooking 6 and Ulrike maxed out Vampire lore already
Day 12: 48,836
Soulmates aspiration completed for both Emil and Cameron (married now)
Day 13: 64,247
Ulrike promoted to Boss
Day 14: 90,249 (lowered to 82,296 after remodeling)
Last day of Summer!
Built a greenhouse
Day 15: 92,050
First vampire cure sold (profit: 7,625)
New skill day
Ulrike now Mixology 5, Cameron now Robotics 5
Emil maximized Gardening, but it didn’t count. Luckily a distillery broke down, and from repairing it he reached Handyness 3
Day 16: 102,572
Second vampire cure sold
Filled the whole greenhouse with Lilys
Day 17: 119,571
Everyone worked in the garden until 14:00, always needing food, sleep or a shower, and the distillery stood empty. I had to move a fourth sim, Ulrike’s friend (soon also girlfriend?) Lilith Pleasant. Lily turned out to still be actively enrolled in Villainy, two credits away from graduating
Looking back at those two weeks I see that I made many mistakes. I should have filled the lot with flowers first and only later started on juice fizzing. Should have foraged for more valuable flowers. Moved in helpers earlier. Bought Marketable for everyone earlier instead of letting the game intimidate me into buying the weatherproof traits (still new to Seasons).
So many “should have”s…
Thunderstorm
Marriage prompt for Ulrike, she woos Lilith in record time and bags 21,733 $
Here, look:
Isn't that the most romantic wedding you've ever seen?
On the upside, they have one more wedding guest than Emil and Cameron had, so we should count that as progress.
Emil takes a cutting of snapdragon to hybridize with his Lilys to get orchids that are six time the value of Lilys. Should have thought about at the first day of fall already. And also kept the seasons at the default seven days.
So. Many. Mistakes.
Day 19: 261,360
Five Lilys revert to dirt piles, an alarming incident! I'm not above cheating to repair the plants, but with 276 Lilys I dread having to click each single one.
This is also where I noticed that each Lily plant gives only two flowers per harvest. It used to be six, so that's a big downer. My little greenhouse now feels pathetic when I think about simmers that have completed Making Money in 30 days or less
Emil finally earns Never Weary and also finishes Fabulously Wealthy for a daily interest. Another thing to the pile of "should have thought about that and aimed for it earlier".
Day 20: 286,326
Emil travels to Finchwick. The locals don't want to buy my kombucha, there goes the idea of getting a bonus from haggling. Back home I get myself some treestumps, but the rabbits refuse to let me place them inside the greenhouse. The birds don't mind, but they are slooooow to befriend.
Maybe I should look into flower arranging (and more sims).
Wolfgang Munch got caught sabotaging the sprinkler!
But since he is such a good friend of Ulrike Faust, my household had a cake for him... a birthday cake! Freshly force-aged up to YA, Wolfgang got "invited" into the household by Ulrike. The game option sounds a lot friendlier than it actually was: my sims grabbed Wolfgang, pulled him inside and locked the door behind him.
And now that he is a household member, Wolfgang can be a dear and help out. There's a flower-related activity that I haven't played around with:
Wolfgang: "You can't be serious!!!"
Meanwhile the planter boxes at Romance Festival yielded a meager harvest only, but we take whatever we can get.
Day 22: 465,688
Cameron maxes Fabulously Wealthy, too, and earns Rarely tired (the lesser of the no sleep traits). He also builds a gardener bot.
Wolfgang runs out of low level flowers, helps in the greenhouse instead
(This is the day when I realize that two flowers are sufficient to make a sixpack of kombucha. It used to be five. I read online that this got changed to two, but that never worked for me. But now with Seasons installed only two are needed anymore.)
Day 23: 535,066
The first kombucha made with perfect orchids comes out masterwork (selling the ingredients =1,250 Vs. selling the kombucha sixpack = 6,671). Emil sends it in for a review.
The gardener bot gets activated, but it is slow and not much help. Cameron upgrades it once, because he needs the experience to eventually build a servo.
Emil buys a countertop stove and some seed packets. The only flowers that the household is still missing are Bird of Paradise and Death Flower. (I know how to get/graft them, I just cannot fit it in yet.)
Wolfgang hits flower arranging 5 (mostly from books)
Lilit graduates, though not with honors
14:55 the household hits the halfway mark! For the next day a flower bunny party gets scheduled.
I can't believe I only got a single day finished today. But things have become complex, with lots of micromanaging (that I enjoy, so no worries!).
And was it really only 2 posts and four sim days ago that I complained about not getting anywhere? My scenario household's income is snowballing now:
Day 24: 596,415 simoleons
At this pace I see myself achieving the million before the secondary goals. Part of the million will go towards prettyfying the farm anyway, because in the state it is now (efficient, but drab, even ugly), nobody will want to buy it.
So what else happened?
The Good:
- The "Halfway to the Million" party, of course. I set it up as a holiday (no time off).
This was the first time that the scenario sims actually got to drink some of their own products. Specifically they are having the dragonfruit soda made from two dragonfruit Emil picket at the Romance Festival. (Since they are not flowers, I decided against multiplying them.)
- Emil could buy a pomegranate from the "Buy gifts-> Flowers" menu, no need to gamble for cherry seeds to graft.
The Bad:
- The society Emil sent his 6,600 simoleons masterwork kombucha to paid... 1,402 simoleons That's beyond insulting and I consider sending them Wolfgang Munch to have a "talk".
And the In-character:
Earlier that day Wolfgang had gifted his mother a handmade flower bouquet that she had liked a lot. He's slowly warming up to the idea of learning a real trade and integrates more and more into my little family. So when Wolfgang caught the Flower Bunny stealing Lilys from the greenhouse, his protective urges kicked in and the young man retaliated in the only way he'd known since he was ten or so:
Wolfgang won and even earned a premature decorative Easter Egg.
Day 25: 704,786
First snow
Ulrike completes Fabulously Wealthy
Day 26: 801,347
Harvestfest – the sims check all the goals, but it’s not really a holiday celebration. Everyone is too itchy from the goal being in sight
Ca. 30 Lilys revert to dirt piles
Emil receives 37,913 simoleons interest from his completed aspiration
1:49 Ulrike sells a vampire cure and the household gets the Rosebud Achievement for having earned 1 Mio.
4:09 the sims find a trashed servo that someone has tossed over the fence into their property
7:xx All flowers except the death flower are perfect and in their own planter boxes
Removed ca. 55 Lilys to make room for orchids
12:10 Cameron starts repairing the servo (ingame: starts making a new one)
12:44 Emil grafts a pomegranate cutting to a perfect tulip, unlocking the death flower
13:26 Cameron activates “Flora” the servo.
Flora initializes with the traits Family oriented, Neat and Perfectionist. She is very eager to clean basically every object, dirty or not. I feel she’d be better suited for indoor tasks in the brewery than gardening.
14:07 Lilith completes Fabulously Wealthy
16:36 I realize the game made my sims fat from not working out. Working in the greenhouse and at the fizzing machines all day would certainly burn calories irl, but both activities were probably planned as light hobbies, and the devs didn’t anticipate an industrial approach to crafting. A quick session in CAS remedies the oversight.
19:07 Cameron upgrades Flora after she has tried her hands at various activities on the lot.
21:50 Cameron maximizes Robotics!
22:38 Everyone gathers outside, then Flora sells a bunch of flowers for the final missing 30K, bringing the household funds to…
… 1,005,181 simoleons!
And this completes my first officially scored scenario (the other two were just playalong in an un-updated game):
I said I wasn't interested in the other scenarios, but now I can think of a way to make Surviving the Holidays fun for me. There's a handful of sims that come to mind to use - look out for a poll in the General section later on!
Okay, this may be confusing, because this scenario will use the same setting and sims as Too many toddlers and Perfectly Well rounded, but it will play out in an alternate timeline (like so many of my side-saves) and ten years before Perfectly Well rounded.
I'll post three scripted prologues before delving into gameplay.
(this will serves as the anchor post for the thread's table of contents)
“Dear diary (that I don’t have, because that wouldn’t be manly)! Today is the day! I’m off work and on my way home, to be a perfectly passable dad! I just feel it! No stupid mistakes and no tears, not for the Allen household, no, Sir!”
David (internally): I mean, what could go wrong? I’m entering a kids’ room, not a lair of deviant androids. The worst about this place is how it’s near impossible to get a good picture of.
David (internally): And I did it before, the proof’s still up on the wall! When I made the stars and snowflakes garland with the twins, everything was fine.
I managed once. I’ll manage again.
Things started out promising. David put up the playtent together with his son and daughter, Archibald and Kendra Allen. With two camping enthusiasts for their parents, the twins were already able to help, and the few grips they couldn’t do on their own, they at least understood. Whenever he noticed that, David felt accomplished.
But then again, teaching the twins survival skills had never been a challenge. Connecting to them as persons was where the father failed.
Fortunately “Prince Roland” and “Prince Archibald” were perfectly able to pursue their conflict for the throne of Enroth on their own. The twins hardly noticed that David didn’t actively participate in their pretend-play. David grunting monster noises when prompted to and otherwise looking sufficiently proud seemed to be enough to earn him the “Played with dad” checkmark.
Until Archie waved his toy sword around a little too carelessly and slit part of his sister’s disguise. At this point David uttered a quick “Careful, Prince Archibald!” into the boy’s direction.
Archibald immediately broke from the make belief game. When his sister still hesitated, he said “Oh, come, it’s no use! It’s like always... he will NEVER change!”
“Now, now!” David said. “That wasn’t a ban on weapons, Archie. Just a warning to be careful for your two’s own 🐸🐸🐸🐸 sake!”
“That’s not IT!” Kendra replied. “You don’t even GET it!”
“Can’t you make sense for once?” David sighed internally. But he hadn’t forgotten his resolution for the afternoon and so out loud the man said: “Can’t you explain?!”
The children sat down. To David it felt like a jury settling down to decide the final verdict over a criminal, only he was innocent! Yet Kendra refused to take off her mask, to hide her mimic behind it. The girl wasn’t crying, not even sniffling, but there might be a silent tear or two...
David: “So what have I done that was so bad, huh? Archibald?!”
Archibald: “I’m Archibald Allen NOW. In the game I was Prince Roland. Kendra played Prince Archibald.”
Kendra: “We told you who is who, but you forgot. Like you always forget. You never pay attention!”
David: “Okay, I slipped. But that’s hardly the end of the world. ‘sides, it’s stupid. You are Archibald in real life, I don’t see why you childishly insist on playing Roland... if not with the explicit intent of confusing me!!!”
Archibald: “I... d... d... don’t wanna do that! And you PROMISED! We’ve had this row before, dad, and you promised you wouldn’t mix us up again!”
David: “I did?”
Archibald: “What would you do when a criminal promised he’d do better from now on, but then did something evil again, dad?”
David: “I’d say “Grow the 🐸🐸🐸🐸 up, Daniel!” and then punch him in the guts.”
Kendra: “That’s not fair!”
David: “Is, too, Kendra-darling! I told you all about our ex-criminal janitor, didn’t I?”
Archibald: “Yeah, and we memorized all your co-workers. And that is what is not fair!”
Kendra: “We’re supposed to learn all about your life at work, but you don’t make an effort to learn about our life here! You don’t... You probably don’t...”
David tore into the doorhandle and had left the room before his daughter had finished her sentence.
Enraged, David marched over to the apartment’s little gymn, where his wife, the twins’ mother, was training, assissted by the Allens’ household android, Silke AP700.
David: “How much longer will this take, Silke?”
Silke: “About...”
But David didn’t really seem to be interested in the answer. He had just asked to enter into a conversation situation with the android.
David: “GOTO - END - RUN.”
Silke closed her eyes. All CyberLife androids, even those programmed for factory work, passed the Turing test. David could just have said “Session’s finished” or something similar. But, no, the human had chosen to remind Silke and everyone around of her machine status, and not even thoughtlessly. David had aimed to hurt.
Claudia: “Okay, I can make a break. - Feel like punching something?”
At this point David wrestled control from me and proceeded to the “Mean” menu on his own:
David: “Matter of fact, yes! My younger self! What were we thinking, making those brats of ours!”
Claudia: “Ey...?”
David: “It was all fun and games when they were in the crib, and started to toddle. But now they’ve grown into monsters that think they can command us around like we were androids! And it’ll be another twelve years ‘till they are out of the house...”
Claudia: “What’s gotten into you? No, don’t answer that. It doesn’t make a difference. You were beyond rude, and you continued down that path when I offered you a way out and a means to work through your frustration.”
David: “Oh, that’s gold! Now those snowflakes of kids of ours drive a wedge between the two of us?!”
Claudia: “More like that kindergarten of a police department that you call your workplace infected you, so you act childishly now, too.”
David: “🐸🐸🐸🐸, Claudia, at this rate I could just as well have volunteered for the holidy shift at the DPD. It pays outrageously well, but I wanted to go mountaineering with you’all!”
Claudia: “Maybe it’s not too late. You can still...”
David: Yeah, I can still patch up things with the twins.
Claudia: “...volunteer.”
David: “Say again?!”
Claudia: “I’ll just take Silke along to the trip, then your ticket won’t go to waste.”
David: “The android?!”
Claudia: “It’s got a parenting app, unlike someone I could name. See, I don’t run around catching criminals, and you don’t fly diplomats to Sixam and back. Maybe when we keep you and the kids neatly seperated from now on, we can salvage this family. It’s worth a try.”
David: “Wait, what, you can’t mean that!”
Claudia: “I’m looking forward to missing you a lot over the holidays, but for now get the 🐸🐸🐸🐸 off my lawn and let me finish my training!”
“Dear diary (that I still don’t have, because it’s still not manly), today I was the best dad ever by staying clear of my children. Yay for me!”
The next morning, at the Detroit Police Department Central Station, the officers of the morning shift trickled in one by one.
One of those was Gavin Reed, a detective of the homicide section. The man had applied for transfer to the more prestigious paranormal investigations section, (especially since that one was still lacking a Lieutenant, and Gavin felt more than qualified to fill that slot), but every time Captain Fowler had rejected the appliccation. Only the safely dead, the Captain claimed, were patient enough to endure Gavin’s inappropriate jokes.
Gavin: “‘morning, Chika!”
Chika: “Good morning, detective.”
That was a new tune the detective was playing! A human supremacist to his very core, Gavin would never have greeted an android first. But as of this fall the man did so regularly. Strangely enough there had been no change in his treatment of androids in other regards.
So there had to be an ulterior motive here. But what was it, the receptionist android wondered?
Gavin was about to pass by Officer Mack and System Administrator Miller, when the duo stopped him.
"How?” the officers prodded, “Pray tell, how can you tell Chika apart from Rika? They look identical! They ARE identical in all respects!”
Gavin: “You’d like to know that, huh, Alakay?”
Alakay, the lion who danced when should have fought! That was Gavin’s derogatory for Alexander Mack, and the nickname normally served to humiliate the man utterly. Today it gave the officer hope to maybe get an answer out of his co-worker. If Gavin alakay’ed Alex, chances were he’d follow up with a show of his own greatness.
However...
Gavin: “See, that’s why you are a beat cop, but I’m the detective. - Toodles!”
Alexander: “Danggit! Not even other androids can tell our receptionist twins apart! And neither can Antony, despite being our resident android overseer. So what’s this man’s secret?!”
Susan: “Maybe he just hit an insanely long streak of getting a 50% chance right? But, no, scratch that. Gavin isn’t guessing. I noticed him look at Chika intently before saying its name.”
Gavin quickly changed and then took a seat at his desk in the “bullpen”, the DPD’s large main office. At eight desks only, it seemed irregularly small, and wouldn’t have met the specifications twenty years ago.
But in 2038 a large chunk of the staff consisted of androids and those didn’t need desks.
Gavin can see them neatly lined up along the wall, in their tiny boxes. Directly logged into the DPD’s system, the digital officers upload their patrols’ results and receive new instructions.
Detectives like Gavin thus can access always the most current data about the goings on in Detroit.
So far the androids’ presence hadn’t bothered Gavin, in fact, in the past he had glossed over the devices’ very existence, the way you didn’t actively acknowledged the dishwasher in the cafeteria, when you didn’t need to load it (what Gavin never did, anyway). The bots being no more sophisticated than Antony’s drones, bullying them wouldn’t have brought Gavin satisfaction. On the same account they had never posed a threat to his position.
But as of last month there were more advanced detective androids, one prototype at least is currently in testing right here at the DPD, and that one’s existence had shaken Gavin Reed to his bones.
Suddenly the lesser androids staring at him makes the man feel uncomfortable...
Note: "Alakay" wasn't in my poll, because he is only on the wrong footing with Gavin, not with the other five listed sims And also it's Gavin antagonizing Alex, the other way around Alexander doesn't seek confrontation with Gavin (or with anybody). In my rotational save Alex later married Rika.
Gavin (internally): I already greeted Chika, so if this one greets me now, it must be Rika.
Gavin (out loud): “What is it, Rika?”
Rika: “I’m here to inform you that Detective Collins is off the Henry Ford Park case. Captain Fowler gave it it to you instead. You should find the files in your folder right now.”
Gavin: “Yes, I see them. Swell! - What’s with the judgemental look, tincan?!”
Rika: “I merely mimic the staff’s feelings about the re-assignment. Sorry, Sir.”
Gavin: “Oh, do you? And what is the staff feeling, ey?”
Rika: “They are well aware that it was you who pointed out Collins’ mistake in the investigation to the Captain, a calculated move to score over your senior.”
Gavin: “So you’all think I should let the murderer run around unchecked for a couple of weeks longer, just because I coincidentally got assigned to the same workplace as Ben? Is that it? Nah, I've got a phking a job to do!”
Rika: “You could have called Detective Collins’ attention to his mistake...”
Gavin: “Great, your social module is working, wish we could say that of all our toasters. Now vamoose!”
Over at the opposite wall Connor Stern and Hank Anderson were discussing poor Ben Collins’ defeat, too.
Connor: “Admittedly I’m more concerned about you than I am about Detective Collins. I know you two are good friends, so this must get to you...”
Hank: “Sure does!”
Hank: “I think I’ll bury myself in work to get over my disappointment... Like setting up everyone’s shedules for the rest of the year. It’s my duty as Lieutenant anyway.”
Connor: “Dad?! I joined last month only, but I already know that you only ever do the timetables on pain of death!”
Hank: “Oh, I feel much more motivated with you at my side now! Totally soaring and stuff! - Ah, I see Antony Deckart volunteered for the holiday shift. We need another one. You know what the neat thing about Gavin Reed is, son?”
Connor: “There is one?”
Hank: “He’s a father, but not a husband. Not even living with the kiddo’s mom, officially as single as single can get. That means Gavin is first in line for taking the shifts at all major holidays. - And into this year’s slot he goes. Merry Christmas, Gavin Curtis Reed!!!”
Hank (chuckling): “Things to do before turning sixty: Abusing your power - check. And that I tell you, Connor, I feared I’d never score that particular checkmark!”
Meanwhile Tina Chen, Gavin’s best friend (with benefits), rushed over to Gavin, but not to congratulate him on his victory over the senior detective. Never one for smalltalk, Tina outright demanded for Gavin to let her in on his secret. The secret of how he could tell the identically looking receptionist androids apart.
If there was one saving grace about Gavin Reed, then that was the man’s reluctance to lie.
Tina: “...so that means when you told Alakay you being able to tell Chika from Rika was connected to you being a detective, you really meant that. You do not see minuscle differences in their faces, it must be... something behaviour related? Some minor quirk of Chika’s that only you noticed?”
Gavin: “You got me there. Behaviour is too phking strong a word, though. And my uncanny android identification power will go away after the holidays, so I want to enjoy it while it lasts.”
Tina: “Now you confused me. 🐸🐸🐸🐸! I was sure I had worked it out.”
Gavin: “Did, too. See, Chika is lagging a bit, like the used computer it is. It’s most notably when it types.”
Tina: “Okay, I figured something along those lines. But how is your ability to see this temporary?”
Gavin: “Cuzz the ST300s will go into extended maintenance in the time between the years. Afterwards Chika will be up to spec again.”
Maintenance... a short respite from their burdens and personality problems... it was what the humans and androids both were looking forward at this time of the year.
I played through two of the three holidays today (taking care not to travel as not to trigger the auto-complete bug) and completed the scenario. Of course the DPD's timetable doesn't care for something as ephemeral as a "scenario" won. Duty is duty, you gotta see it through. So tomorrow I'm going to play the third day and then start writing the captions.
That same night a lone figure stood atop DPD central station. The man stretched and inhaled the chill winter air. A smile crossed his face when he picked up the distinct scent of a freshly unpacked electronic device. It basically tasted like electricty.
“C’mon, girl, time to spread your wings!” the man spoke into the direction of a small surveillance drone.
The man’s name was Antony Deckart, and he was DPD central station’s equipment officer. Everything from handguns through cars up to the patrol androids were his responsibility, a duty the officer enjoyed a lot.
Tonight Antony was testing the latest addition to his carpark, a basic, store bought drone. But the fact that it was the device’s virgin cruise combined with the other fact that municipal institutions rarely got anything new, made the occasion feel like early christmas.
Antony donned his Goggles and connected them to the drone. When he was satisfied with the flow of information, he started the hummingbird.
The rotors started whirling and then Antony’s newest toy took off into Detroit’s nightsky...
The drone took flight. From up high - and it didn’t even have to be exceptionally high, just rooftop level - there was nothing Antony couldn’t spy while being connected to the drone’s feed through his goggles.
Every suspicious lurker in a street corner...
...the smallest activity in some apartment art studio...
...and every last, however petty, traffic offense, Antony saw as if through his own eyes.
When he was satisfied with the device’s performance, Antony looked up into the sky. He felt gravity pull at him hard, unlike the free-wheeling surveillance drone. But the same power that grounded him also forcing the stars in line was a comforting thought for Antony.
How awesome would it be to leave this meat body behind? Not as in dying, but to merge with a robotic form that had inherited everything modern computer technology was able to do as its 🐸🐸🐸🐸 birthright! A bit like an android, only fully sentient.
But of course humans were humans and machines were machines. Androids only appeared lifelike and humans could only borrow machine senses for a short while, using clumsy interfaces.
This is perhaps a good time to clarify that androids in this setting are fully sentient, the humans are only in denial about it. The servos are animal-like, closer to service dogs than slaves.
The nightshift was dragging on. From the corners of his eyes Godefroy Wilson saw a fellow officer enter the main office. The other man passed him by without saying a word, then slipped into one of the android compartments.
There he - or it, rather - connected to the interactive tactical map to update it.
It had been just a patrol android all along.
Antony, now sporting a mechanical arm that enhanced his handyness, grunted.
Unlike the other patrol bots, this one had kept his outeskin online, the extra layer that made it appear more humanlike.
“Simulation lag AGAIN”, the equipment officer moaned, then barked at the android: “Skin!”
There was no need for an additional command, something like “Skin down” or similar. The bark alone was sufficient to work through the glitch and a second later the android cop stood there in his “birthday suit”.
Yelling at an appliance to make it function as intended - now if only that worked on all electronics, Antony thought to himself!
Meanwhile the patrol bot stood in line with its brother and sister models, indistinguishable from them, and also clearly not a human.
For years, and even far into 2038, taking down the outerskin when standing idle hadn’t been a requirement for DPD androids. But ever since the android riots of November it was part of the regulations, a precaution to prevent people from humanizing the bots too much.
In humans, imagining the machines as being alive, could lead to them sympathizing with glitched or outdated ones to unhealthy degrees, Antony believed. In androids, that the man had witnessed several times, it could lead to the feared android deviance.
Therefore, however much he wanted differently, the officer tried for a cold demeanour towards his patrol bots.
An android whom the “skin offline when idle” rule hardly ever bothered was Daniel, the DPD’s janitor.
For one, the officers made sure the PL600 android hardly ever was idle, and for two, Daniel in robotic form didn’t radiate the reassuring “Everything’s under control, citizen” vibe the Chief of Police aimed for. To the contrary, Robo!Daniel’s presence said “Back to your dens, little mammals!” It was looking much more amiable in an apron, so that was what Antony put the android into most of the time.
Daniel was a deviant, a term that had become so common that nobody even remembered anymore that Officer Deckart at the DPD had coined it. Deviance, according to Antony’s definition, was when an android was displaying activity that wasn’t dictated by its programming, or even went against it, despite not being bugged or damaged.
On occasion a deviant might claim to be alive, self-determined, what was probably a reflection of the many stories of robots becoming sentient.
Antony: “Connor’s desk could use some cleaning, too.”
Daniel: “Naturally. Everything that has Connor-stain on it requires deep-pore sanitation with a laboratory grade sterilizer.”
Daniel: “What exactly are you doing there, Officer Deckart?”
Antony: “Attaching a replacement arm to PM700-302.”
Daniel: “So you’re... arming up your androids!”
Almost a friendly conversation...
...if only Antony had laughed or even groaned at the pun. But glossing the deviant’s attempt at smalltalk over altogether didn’t bode well.
Antony: “Engage it in a friendly conversation, Daniel!”
Ouch. The command, although sensible in the light of testing the new arm’s motorics, felt like a hot knife between Daniel’s ribs. Both the patrol bot and the janitor were androids, whereas Antony was a human, part of a species Daniel claimed to deeply detest. By right Daniel should have preferred socializing with an android any day, even with a non-deviant, robotic one.
But as a deviant he couldn’t help it that interacting with humans came much more naturally to Daniel. Additionally the janitor knew next to nothing about policework. There was simply no common ground at all between him and PM700-302.
Daniel: “So, uh... how’s the weather outside?”
A casual reply, because every CyberLife android expected to interact with humans was capable of holding a conversation, an accompanying movement of the arm... that was all Antony had needed to see.
Daniel: “I see you also padded the sleeve to hide that fact that there is only a thin metal stick underneath. Clever.”
Antony: “Yeah. The damage is hardly noticeable now.”
Freshly repaired, PM700-302 returned to the android boxes, where it started downloading its next assignment.
Daniel: “I... I have to give it to you, I hadn’t expected you’d do that. Repairing 302, I mean. So the man who shot our ornamental fish is a decent person, after all...?”
Antony: “YOU hit the fishtank!”
Daniel: “Because I was aiming at you, but you dodged. So it was your fault!”
Daniel: “Aaaaanyway, you know my backstory, my previous owners planning to replace me, and me losing it as a result. So you’ll know what watching you just now felt like for me. Going through the trouble of cobbling together that skeletal replacement arm when no standard model was available... to keep 302 running... when other humans discard androids for far lesser damage...
Heck, Antony, I’m afraid I misjudged you! I never knew you cared!!!”
Antony: “Haha! Well, municipal funding is a thing, something you won’t have had to trouble yourself with back at fancy Park Avenue! But I admit, it wasn’t just having to do with what we have. I’d really have missed the old girl if we’d had to invalid it out. Or any of my androids.
But that’s the problem, actually. I’m the resident “android lover”, that quirk makes me an outsider among the humans. And I know that whenever I talk to an android, there is nothing listening in that plastic skull. It’s only simulated.
So in the end, when I talk to you, I only ever talk to myself... that has to change! I promise that during the upcoming holiday shift I will make an effort to bond with my partner, who’ll be a real person!”
Daniel: “Here’s a happy thought for you, officer: maybe you won’t have to make that effort, because you’ll spend Christmas in the hospital!”
Antony: "Daniel, you little sh...!!!"
Daniel: "Oh, go complain to my programmer at CyberLife! Since I'm "not real", they must have threatened you just now!"
Real person or machine, self-aware of simulated, none of that mattered when you were getting actively attacked by one of your androids. Defend... overpower... in between insult the opponent, not because you believed the machine would feel hurt, but as an automated reaction to lower your own stress.
Daniel was lightning fast and agile, but just like his human opponent he preferred ranged weapons. In a brawl the lithe PL600 wasn’t a real match for a human, especially tonight, when Antony still had his mechanical tinkering aid equipped.
Knowing that, Daniel aimed a bit lower...
Antony: “Ooof... NOW you earned your ticket to the scrapyard! Attacking a human in full sight of another officer...”
However...
Godefroy: “Will you stop with that noise already, Tony?! Some of us are trying to work here!”
Antony: “It started! Daniel, I mean! It tried to kick me in the family jewels!”
Godefroy: “Right, about that... You will immediately uninstall that mod! Using our Daniel, that cannot harm a fly, as your sparring partner is just creepy.”
Godefroy: “Look, Tony, if you need a punching ball that badly, I hear you’re partnered with Gavin Reed over the holidays. Nobody here would mind if that one acquired a couple of new scars.”
(Meanwhile Daniel: “It’s not a phase, mom, I really am a deviant!”)
Note: Godefroy Wilson is not related to Marlon Wilson.
Since the day Hank had finalized the timetable, the snow had continually melted to the point where the streets were free today. Gavin Reed took that as an opportunity to show off his cold resistance, combining patroling the neighborhood with a jog.
This is actually his work task for the day. Because the scenario is bugged, I must not ever travel with my sims. Gavin therefore works in Military, Antony in Engineering, two jobs they can do from home.
Meanwhile Antony Deckart quickly retreated into the main office, relieved not to have to interact with the detective yet. Between the “android lover” and the human supremacist stood not only their different worldviews, as of late Gavin had also started getting closer to Daniel, and with Daniel and Antony still (or once again) being as contrary as they had been when they had first met in august, Gavin was Antony’s enemy by association.
After checking on his patrol bots, the equipment officer put up a workbench and started tinkering with abandon.
Antony already knew that he had a Build your own Servo kit coming from Santa this year, in fact, he had taken it with him when he had left home this morning (still wrapped, of course). Now the man was preparing components that he’d need later.
Gavin passed by Officer Orochi Person*. The woman smiled. Of course she would, Gavin thought. Everyone who had the day off themselves would smile when they spotted a less fortunate co-worker!
Next he saw a man dressed up as Kylon Ren, who sold wooden figurines. The wooden star to the far left looked vaguely christmas-y, so Gavin bought it. After how the detective had sabotaged old Ben last week, not to mention how creative he got to avoid having to chip in for the coffee, Orochi wouldn’t have believed Gavin would ever give to charity. But truth was, having disposable cash to throw around and doing some good felt good to Gavin - in exactly that order.
When Gavin returned to the police station, the reception area was empty. Antony had lit Rika’s and Chika’s advent wreath, but the girls themselves were absent, undergoing maintenance at a CyberLife store.
The men would have to put a patrol android to reception desk duty later, or take turns doing it themselves. Both were social persons, Gavin even moreso than Antony, but despite this he’d fight teeth and claws against manning the reception. To the proud detective being relegated to “Hello, my name is Gavin, how can I help you?” would be unbearable.
Angry at the very thought, the man marched down the hallway.
Gavin hadn’t yet reached the public area’s Christmas Tree, when he heard Antony address him via the loudspeakers: “Could you stay right where you are and wait for the food delivery? I’m running a diagnosis here, can’t leave now. But I ordered spaghetti and clam chowder.”
“Weird combination, but I’ll take it”, Gavin replied into his walkie-talkie.
“Jokester”, Antony chuckled, secretly relieved that he seemed to get Gavin the office clown for his partner, when he had been anxious about getting partnerd with Gavin the office bully all the time. The detective could just as well insulted Antony for using the building’s cameras and speakers as his eyes and mouth, called him an A.I. or something. But he hadn’t done so. Maybe those three days wouldn’t turn out that bad, after all.
“Anyway, the courier should arrive any moment!”
*...Yes, that’s her surname. You’d think she’d be desperate to marry just to stop the jokes about it, but so far wasn’t interested.
Comments
Caroline wasn’t shy about expressing her opinion about someone using her family:
“You lied to me and little Emma, you kept lying to us when we trusted you, using us as like tools in your own schemes!”
Elijah: *whistles*
Amadeus: “What?”
Caroline: “Sorry, Kamski, but this man is already spoken for!”
At this point Tamara had already come to the conclusion that the company Amadeus was CEO of, CyberLife, needed government aid. The other major job provider in Detroit, the Rooftop Farm, just couldn't manage the number of people looking for jobs on its own. The help came with a series of requirements: CyberLife needs to keep the Space Program running and dedicate funds to android health, even though neither would rake in the large profits Amadeus had in mind.
(That doesn't mean much for the scenario, but both are very big plot points for my overall story.)
The “Gala Dinner” was actually a sampling of cakes and pies made with fruit from the rooftop farm.
Byron: “Well, this is something! UFD has succesfully fended off large scale investors and politicians alike for two decades now. But for you they made an exception... Governor Donner.”
Tamara: “Mr. Khanna made this exception not for the Governor, but for Tammy. This is the first place where I felt welcome after coming to Detroit. I want the farm to continue make people feel good and cared for.”
Byron: “I guess so. And I’ll watch your career with interest...”
Tamara: “That... was a joke, yes?”
Byron: “Wish it was. But, see, I’m like those gnarly, dark trees, while you are the lush and full and glowy ones. They may share the same soil, but they belong to different worlds.”
Tamara: “Yet they both nourish something: The Sixam Plasma Fruit is a critical part in the vampire diet and the Growfruit are the best fertilizer there is.”
Tamara: “Since this my last night in Detroit, I might just as well parttake in a tradition of this city: Stealing the rooftop farm’s rocketship! - It has two seats, by the way...”
Dang, Byron was right! The Thorntons really need a reduction in rent. Everytime that thing launches, the apartment building’s windows need serious cleaning.
The next morning:
Byron: “I want to believe I only dreamed that we crashed the UFD’s insanely expensive rocketship in the countryside. But I can still smell the burning rubber and cables.”
Tamara: “Too bad! Then we have no choice but to stay together until we have repaired it...”
Tamara and Byron had not even fully settled in, when a friend from Detroit waltzed through the front gate: George Cahill!
Zooming a bit further in... yep, I was right. That’s Caroline in the little park.
And over there at the town square...
Peggy: “Hello, I’m Peggy Reed! We haven’t met, but Caroline is my grandma!”
I’m melting! Caro has Peggy for the weekend! This may open the door to Caroline’s and Daniel’s family branches spending Thanksgiving 2047 together - another useless fact in the light of the scenario, but so welcome for my save. I must say, this scenario is doing the Detroit save some serious good.
But how did all her friends find Tamara so quickly? Well, I guess a rocketship is hard to overlook.
Oh, what gives. Better invite the couple from yesterday's Welcome Wagon and call an impromptu party!
I only have Seasons for two days, so when “Attempt to kiss under a mistletoe” appeared in my sims’ romance menu constantly, I assumed a bug or mod issue.
Out of curiosity I clicked the option, expecting that they’d maybe try to rout somewhere and then wave failure. But then Daneel did this:
And that is the story of how I learned that sims carry mistletoes to go.
Next time we'll see Tamara and Byron, there will be fall in Finchwick, too.
Both Tamara and Byron had taken vacation days, but their getaway from civilisation wasn’t also a bubble outside time. The lovers could ignore the calendar, they couldn’t just un-see the leaves turning yellow, brown and red.
“What a cold summer we have!” Byron remarked, and: “What a rainy summer we have!”
Tamara understood her boyfriend was quoting some piece of litarature, and even though she didn’t recognize the phrases*, she knew full well what they meant. Their “summer” had long turned into fall.
*... From “Ronja, Brigand’s daughter” a children’s book by Astrid Lindgren
Their “Goodbye, Summer” party was a full success wiith the neighbors. It also took away from the sting of having to return into their old lives again soon.
Her mission was finished, but the rocketship wasn’t fixed yet, and before Tamara had not fulfilled that obligation, she couldn’t return home.
Nobody said out loud that Urban Farms could have sent over a couple of technicians and a lawryer anytime they wanted... What people were talking about about were the wonderful autumn and Tammy’s barbecue parties in the Bramblewoods.
Autumn! That sounded much softer than Fall.
Legend had it that the rooftop farm’s foremen, Meriadoc and Peregrin Trent, had cobbled together the original rocketship in their freetime, falling back on their android brains, improvisation skill and lots of enthusiasm. That might or might not be true, in any case a janitor and a rocketscience hobbyist couldn’t put the pieces back together on their own.
Their friends from Detroit, like Master Fabricator Lime here, helped with spare parts and advice until one day...
Byron: “There, done! We even gave it a new paint job!”
Tamara: “You did that - I only wiggled the spray can at the spot you pointed at. It looks great!"
Naturally the finished project warranted another party, the second-to-last for Tamara’s aspiration.
Meriadoc: “You’ll want to give her a test ride...”
The sight of a rocketship launching from Finchwick was certainly something!
In the weeks to come the image became available on posters, cups, mousepads and whatnot in the little town’s souvenier shop. It also made the cover of several magazines - and with that Governor Tamara Donner was back in public view.
One day Tamara found herself in Port Lllamante, at some obscure Rocket Science & the environment conference. George Cahill was there, too, and even tried to flirt a little. That was the moment when it finally clicked that they were long a couple and should make it official first thing Tamara returned to Michigan!
When I had just purchased Dine Out, date invitation would always lead to Selvadorada, the cantina being my only restaurant back then. Now I have eight or ten restaurants, and guess where date invitations still lead to?
And with this last social event Tamara finished her aspiration & the scenario. I’ve lost track of time, but her stats say she slept 25 times, so taking naps into account I’d say I played her for something like three weeks? In-story it was closer to two months: two weeks in Detroit and an unspecified amount of time in Finchwick (but not into winter).
I saved Tamara and Byron to my library, then deleted them from the rotational save. They can make appearances in future story scenes, but I don’t want my sims to randomly run into the Governor and her fiance in normal gameplay.
And that concludes the second scenario I played. I also made and discarded again several plans for the Millionaire scenario, without committing to one of them. I’m not interested in any of the other EA scenarios.
Emil is a gardener sim whose plan is to make a million by growing expensive flowers and brewing kombucha.
This is definitely harder than before adding Seasons. When there isn't a heatwave, it's a thunderstorm. And vampires.
Things we cannot afford yet: a house, furnishings and basic modesty.
Gotta make concessions - when the indoor space isn't large enough to place the bed because of all the plants, then the bed needs to get placed elsewhere. But I doubt a man who sits in his swimtrunk under an umbrella will mind me sleeping here.
Day 8 - things are looking better now. Emil has nine thousand simoleons in cash and the maximum number of juice fizzers a single sim can operate (when he stocks the ninth, the first is close to being finished). The next goal is to perfect the lilys (only one more quality tier to go) and full the whole lot with them.
My scenario sim, Emil, tries to become a millionaire by gardening and brewing/juice fizzing. He starts in Newcrest with easy access to several public barbecues and Lilys (for floral kombucha). Everything that fits Emil’s theme is allowed, everything else strongly discouraged, but still allowed. Sims that move in must not bring money.
Before reaching the money goal Emil wants to have perfect specimens of every flower in the game and own at least one servo (to keep the garden running when he retires to his millionaire estate).
Day by day breakdown of the first season
Day 1 : 54 $
Logic 2, Fishing 2
Temporarily employed as gardener in the Science Lab. With access to the chemical analyzer Emil can upgrade seeds by one full tier before planting.
Day 2: 2,360
Heatwave, Mischief-Festival
Logic 3, Gardening 1, Mischief 4
Day 3: 127
Added a custom holiday, the Sommerfest (a summer party with gnomes for easy access to seeds).
Gardening 4, Cooking 2, Juice Fizzing 1
Day 4: 534
Thunderstorm, vampire attack
Gardening 5, Logic 4
Day 5: 1,655
Juice Fizzing 2
Day 6: 3,879
Thunderstorm
Cooking 4, Juice Fizzing 3
Day 7: 3,658
Thunderstorm
Cooking 5, Gardening 6, Juice fizzing 4
Day 8: 9,213
Thunderstorm
Cooking 5, Gardening 7, full row of 9 juice fizzers
Day 9: 13,274
Heatwave, perfected carrots (to subsequently graft cuttings to for quick perfecting), moved in Cameron Fletcher, bought him a Robotics workbench
Day 10: 20,864
Moved in Ulrike Faust, bought computer, bookcase and bar, added an attic (with beds)
Ulrike got offered (and accepted) Criminal Career 5, also started in Vampire Lore
Day 11: 42,464
Thunderstorm
Gardening 8, Cooking 6 and Ulrike maxed out Vampire lore already
Day 12: 48,836
Soulmates aspiration completed for both Emil and Cameron (married now)
Day 13: 64,247
Ulrike promoted to Boss
Day 14: 90,249 (lowered to 82,296 after remodeling)
Last day of Summer!
Built a greenhouse
Day 15: 92,050
First vampire cure sold (profit: 7,625)
New skill day
Ulrike now Mixology 5, Cameron now Robotics 5
Emil maximized Gardening, but it didn’t count. Luckily a distillery broke down, and from repairing it he reached Handyness 3
Day 16: 102,572
Second vampire cure sold
Filled the whole greenhouse with Lilys
Day 17: 119,571
Everyone worked in the garden until 14:00, always needing food, sleep or a shower, and the distillery stood empty. I had to move a fourth sim, Ulrike’s friend (soon also girlfriend?) Lilith Pleasant. Lily turned out to still be actively enrolled in Villainy, two credits away from graduating
Looking back at those two weeks I see that I made many mistakes. I should have filled the lot with flowers first and only later started on juice fizzing. Should have foraged for more valuable flowers. Moved in helpers earlier. Bought Marketable for everyone earlier instead of letting the game intimidate me into buying the weatherproof traits (still new to Seasons).
So many “should have”s…
Bonus traits:
Emil: Steel Bladder, Marketable, Early riser, Waterproof, Stormchaser
Cameron: Frugal, Marketable, Steel Bladder
Ulrike: Steel Bladder
Lilith: -
The combined office/workshop/showers because I'm reluctant to invest some of my money.
The greenhouse and distillery at the end of summer. The ladder leads up to two sleeping chambers.
Day 18: 200,806
Thunderstorm
Marriage prompt for Ulrike, she woos Lilith in record time and bags 21,733 $
Here, look:
Isn't that the most romantic wedding you've ever seen?
On the upside, they have one more wedding guest than Emil and Cameron had, so we should count that as progress.
Emil takes a cutting of snapdragon to hybridize with his Lilys to get orchids that are six time the value of Lilys. Should have thought about at the first day of fall already. And also kept the seasons at the default seven days.
So. Many. Mistakes.
Day 19: 261,360
Five Lilys revert to dirt piles, an alarming incident! I'm not above cheating to repair the plants, but with 276 Lilys I dread having to click each single one.
This is also where I noticed that each Lily plant gives only two flowers per harvest. It used to be six, so that's a big downer. My little greenhouse now feels pathetic when I think about simmers that have completed Making Money in 30 days or less
Emil finally earns Never Weary and also finishes Fabulously Wealthy for a daily interest. Another thing to the pile of "should have thought about that and aimed for it earlier".
Day 20: 286,326
Emil travels to Finchwick. The locals don't want to buy my kombucha, there goes the idea of getting a bonus from haggling. Back home I get myself some treestumps, but the rabbits refuse to let me place them inside the greenhouse. The birds don't mind, but they are slooooow to befriend.
Maybe I should look into flower arranging (and more sims).
Wolfgang Munch got caught sabotaging the sprinkler!
But since he is such a good friend of Ulrike Faust, my household had a cake for him... a birthday cake! Freshly force-aged up to YA, Wolfgang got "invited" into the household by Ulrike. The game option sounds a lot friendlier than it actually was: my sims grabbed Wolfgang, pulled him inside and locked the door behind him.
And now that he is a household member, Wolfgang can be a dear and help out. There's a flower-related activity that I haven't played around with:
Wolfgang: "You can't be serious!!!"
Meanwhile the planter boxes at Romance Festival yielded a meager harvest only, but we take whatever we can get.
Day 22: 465,688
Cameron maxes Fabulously Wealthy, too, and earns Rarely tired (the lesser of the no sleep traits). He also builds a gardener bot.
Wolfgang runs out of low level flowers, helps in the greenhouse instead
(This is the day when I realize that two flowers are sufficient to make a sixpack of kombucha. It used to be five. I read online that this got changed to two, but that never worked for me. But now with Seasons installed only two are needed anymore.)
Day 23: 535,066
The first kombucha made with perfect orchids comes out masterwork (selling the ingredients =1,250 Vs. selling the kombucha sixpack = 6,671). Emil sends it in for a review.
The gardener bot gets activated, but it is slow and not much help. Cameron upgrades it once, because he needs the experience to eventually build a servo.
Emil buys a countertop stove and some seed packets. The only flowers that the household is still missing are Bird of Paradise and Death Flower. (I know how to get/graft them, I just cannot fit it in yet.)
Wolfgang hits flower arranging 5 (mostly from books)
Lilit graduates, though not with honors
14:55 the household hits the halfway mark! For the next day a flower bunny party gets scheduled.
And was it really only 2 posts and four sim days ago that I complained about not getting anywhere? My scenario household's income is snowballing now:
Day 24: 596,415 simoleons
At this pace I see myself achieving the million before the secondary goals. Part of the million will go towards prettyfying the farm anyway, because in the state it is now (efficient, but drab, even ugly), nobody will want to buy it.
So what else happened?
The Good:
- The "Halfway to the Million" party, of course. I set it up as a holiday (no time off).
This was the first time that the scenario sims actually got to drink some of their own products. Specifically they are having the dragonfruit soda made from two dragonfruit Emil picket at the Romance Festival. (Since they are not flowers, I decided against multiplying them.)
- Emil could buy a pomegranate from the "Buy gifts-> Flowers" menu, no need to gamble for cherry seeds to graft.
The Bad:
- The society Emil sent his 6,600 simoleons masterwork kombucha to paid... 1,402 simoleons
And the In-character:
Earlier that day Wolfgang had gifted his mother a handmade flower bouquet that she had liked a lot. He's slowly warming up to the idea of learning a real trade and integrates more and more into my little family. So when Wolfgang caught the Flower Bunny stealing Lilys from the greenhouse, his protective urges kicked in and the young man retaliated in the only way he'd known since he was ten or so:
Wolfgang won and even earned a premature decorative Easter Egg.
First snow
Ulrike completes Fabulously Wealthy
Day 26: 801,347
Harvestfest – the sims check all the goals, but it’s not really a holiday celebration. Everyone is too itchy from the goal being in sight
Ca. 30 Lilys revert to dirt piles
Emil receives 37,913 simoleons interest from his completed aspiration
Day 27: 896,907
Last day of fall
1:49 Ulrike sells a vampire cure and the household gets the Rosebud Achievement for having earned 1 Mio.
4:09 the sims find a trashed servo that someone has tossed over the fence into their property
7:xx All flowers except the death flower are perfect and in their own planter boxes
Removed ca. 55 Lilys to make room for orchids
12:10 Cameron starts repairing the servo (ingame: starts making a new one)
12:44 Emil grafts a pomegranate cutting to a perfect tulip, unlocking the death flower
13:26 Cameron activates “Flora” the servo.
Flora initializes with the traits Family oriented, Neat and Perfectionist. She is very eager to clean basically every object, dirty or not. I feel she’d be better suited for indoor tasks in the brewery than gardening.
14:07 Lilith completes Fabulously Wealthy
16:36 I realize the game made my sims fat from not working out. Working in the greenhouse and at the fizzing machines all day would certainly burn calories irl, but both activities were probably planned as light hobbies, and the devs didn’t anticipate an industrial approach to crafting. A quick session in CAS remedies the oversight.
19:07 Cameron upgrades Flora after she has tried her hands at various activities on the lot.
21:50 Cameron maximizes Robotics!
22:38 Everyone gathers outside, then Flora sells a bunch of flowers for the final missing 30K, bringing the household funds to…
… 1,005,181 simoleons!
And this completes my first officially scored scenario (the other two were just playalong in an un-updated game):
I said I wasn't interested in the other scenarios, but now I can think of a way to make Surviving the Holidays fun for me. There's a handful of sims that come to mind to use - look out for a poll in the General section later on!
Okay, this may be confusing, because this scenario will use the same setting and sims as Too many toddlers and Perfectly Well rounded, but it will play out in an alternate timeline (like so many of my side-saves) and ten years before Perfectly Well rounded.
I'll post three scripted prologues before delving into gameplay.
(this will serves as the anchor post for the thread's table of contents)
Detroit. December 2038.
“Dear diary (that I don’t have, because that wouldn’t be manly)! Today is the day! I’m off work and on my way home, to be a perfectly passable dad! I just feel it! No stupid mistakes and no tears, not for the Allen household, no, Sir!”
David (internally): I mean, what could go wrong? I’m entering a kids’ room, not a lair of deviant androids. The worst about this place is how it’s near impossible to get a good picture of.
David (internally): And I did it before, the proof’s still up on the wall! When I made the stars and snowflakes garland with the twins, everything was fine.
I managed once. I’ll manage again.
Things started out promising. David put up the playtent together with his son and daughter, Archibald and Kendra Allen. With two camping enthusiasts for their parents, the twins were already able to help, and the few grips they couldn’t do on their own, they at least understood. Whenever he noticed that, David felt accomplished.
But then again, teaching the twins survival skills had never been a challenge. Connecting to them as persons was where the father failed.
Fortunately “Prince Roland” and “Prince Archibald” were perfectly able to pursue their conflict for the throne of Enroth on their own. The twins hardly noticed that David didn’t actively participate in their pretend-play. David grunting monster noises when prompted to and otherwise looking sufficiently proud seemed to be enough to earn him the “Played with dad” checkmark.
Until Archie waved his toy sword around a little too carelessly and slit part of his sister’s disguise. At this point David uttered a quick “Careful, Prince Archibald!” into the boy’s direction.
Archibald immediately broke from the make belief game. When his sister still hesitated, he said “Oh, come, it’s no use! It’s like always... he will NEVER change!”
“Now, now!” David said. “That wasn’t a ban on weapons, Archie. Just a warning to be careful for your two’s own 🐸🐸🐸🐸 sake!”
“That’s not IT!” Kendra replied. “You don’t even GET it!”
“Can’t you make sense for once?” David sighed internally. But he hadn’t forgotten his resolution for the afternoon and so out loud the man said: “Can’t you explain?!”
The children sat down. To David it felt like a jury settling down to decide the final verdict over a criminal, only he was innocent! Yet Kendra refused to take off her mask, to hide her mimic behind it. The girl wasn’t crying, not even sniffling, but there might be a silent tear or two...
David: “So what have I done that was so bad, huh? Archibald?!”
Archibald: “I’m Archibald Allen NOW. In the game I was Prince Roland. Kendra played Prince Archibald.”
Kendra: “We told you who is who, but you forgot. Like you always forget. You never pay attention!”
David: “Okay, I slipped. But that’s hardly the end of the world. ‘sides, it’s stupid. You are Archibald in real life, I don’t see why you childishly insist on playing Roland... if not with the explicit intent of confusing me!!!”
Archibald: “I... d... d... don’t wanna do that! And you PROMISED! We’ve had this row before, dad, and you promised you wouldn’t mix us up again!”
David: “I did?”
Archibald: “What would you do when a criminal promised he’d do better from now on, but then did something evil again, dad?”
David: “I’d say “Grow the 🐸🐸🐸🐸 up, Daniel!” and then punch him in the guts.”
Kendra: “That’s not fair!”
David: “Is, too, Kendra-darling! I told you all about our ex-criminal janitor, didn’t I?”
Archibald: “Yeah, and we memorized all your co-workers. And that is what is not fair!”
Kendra: “We’re supposed to learn all about your life at work, but you don’t make an effort to learn about our life here! You don’t... You probably don’t...”
David tore into the doorhandle and had left the room before his daughter had finished her sentence.
Kendra: “...love us.”
Enraged, David marched over to the apartment’s little gymn, where his wife, the twins’ mother, was training, assissted by the Allens’ household android, Silke AP700.
David: “How much longer will this take, Silke?”
Silke: “About...”
But David didn’t really seem to be interested in the answer. He had just asked to enter into a conversation situation with the android.
David: “GOTO - END - RUN.”
Silke closed her eyes. All CyberLife androids, even those programmed for factory work, passed the Turing test. David could just have said “Session’s finished” or something similar. But, no, the human had chosen to remind Silke and everyone around of her machine status, and not even thoughtlessly. David had aimed to hurt.
Claudia: “Okay, I can make a break. - Feel like punching something?”
At this point David wrestled control from me and proceeded to the “Mean” menu on his own:
David: “Matter of fact, yes! My younger self! What were we thinking, making those brats of ours!”
Claudia: “Ey...?”
David: “It was all fun and games when they were in the crib, and started to toddle. But now they’ve grown into monsters that think they can command us around like we were androids! And it’ll be another twelve years ‘till they are out of the house...”
Claudia: “What’s gotten into you? No, don’t answer that. It doesn’t make a difference. You were beyond rude, and you continued down that path when I offered you a way out and a means to work through your frustration.”
David: “Oh, that’s gold! Now those snowflakes of kids of ours drive a wedge between the two of us?!”
Claudia: “More like that kindergarten of a police department that you call your workplace infected you, so you act childishly now, too.”
David: “🐸🐸🐸🐸, Claudia, at this rate I could just as well have volunteered for the holidy shift at the DPD. It pays outrageously well, but I wanted to go mountaineering with you’all!”
Claudia: “Maybe it’s not too late. You can still...”
David: Yeah, I can still patch up things with the twins.
Claudia: “...volunteer.”
David: “Say again?!”
Claudia: “I’ll just take Silke along to the trip, then your ticket won’t go to waste.”
David: “The android?!”
Claudia: “It’s got a parenting app, unlike someone I could name. See, I don’t run around catching criminals, and you don’t fly diplomats to Sixam and back. Maybe when we keep you and the kids neatly seperated from now on, we can salvage this family. It’s worth a try.”
David: “Wait, what, you can’t mean that!”
Claudia: “I’m looking forward to missing you a lot over the holidays, but for now get the 🐸🐸🐸🐸 off my lawn and let me finish my training!”
“Dear diary (that I still don’t have, because it’s still not manly), today I was the best dad ever by staying clear of my children. Yay for me!”
The next morning, at the Detroit Police Department Central Station, the officers of the morning shift trickled in one by one.
One of those was Gavin Reed, a detective of the homicide section. The man had applied for transfer to the more prestigious paranormal investigations section, (especially since that one was still lacking a Lieutenant, and Gavin felt more than qualified to fill that slot), but every time Captain Fowler had rejected the appliccation. Only the safely dead, the Captain claimed, were patient enough to endure Gavin’s inappropriate jokes.
Gavin: “‘morning, Chika!”
Chika: “Good morning, detective.”
That was a new tune the detective was playing! A human supremacist to his very core, Gavin would never have greeted an android first. But as of this fall the man did so regularly. Strangely enough there had been no change in his treatment of androids in other regards.
So there had to be an ulterior motive here. But what was it, the receptionist android wondered?
Gavin was about to pass by Officer Mack and System Administrator Miller, when the duo stopped him.
"How?” the officers prodded, “Pray tell, how can you tell Chika apart from Rika? They look identical! They ARE identical in all respects!”
Gavin: “You’d like to know that, huh, Alakay?”
Alakay, the lion who danced when should have fought! That was Gavin’s derogatory for Alexander Mack, and the nickname normally served to humiliate the man utterly. Today it gave the officer hope to maybe get an answer out of his co-worker. If Gavin alakay’ed Alex, chances were he’d follow up with a show of his own greatness.
However...
Gavin: “See, that’s why you are a beat cop, but I’m the detective. - Toodles!”
Alexander: “Danggit! Not even other androids can tell our receptionist twins apart! And neither can Antony, despite being our resident android overseer. So what’s this man’s secret?!”
Susan: “Maybe he just hit an insanely long streak of getting a 50% chance right? But, no, scratch that. Gavin isn’t guessing. I noticed him look at Chika intently before saying its name.”
Gavin quickly changed and then took a seat at his desk in the “bullpen”, the DPD’s large main office. At eight desks only, it seemed irregularly small, and wouldn’t have met the specifications twenty years ago.
But in 2038 a large chunk of the staff consisted of androids and those didn’t need desks.
Gavin can see them neatly lined up along the wall, in their tiny boxes. Directly logged into the DPD’s system, the digital officers upload their patrols’ results and receive new instructions.
Detectives like Gavin thus can access always the most current data about the goings on in Detroit.
So far the androids’ presence hadn’t bothered Gavin, in fact, in the past he had glossed over the devices’ very existence, the way you didn’t actively acknowledged the dishwasher in the cafeteria, when you didn’t need to load it (what Gavin never did, anyway). The bots being no more sophisticated than Antony’s drones, bullying them wouldn’t have brought Gavin satisfaction. On the same account they had never posed a threat to his position.
But as of last month there were more advanced detective androids, one prototype at least is currently in testing right here at the DPD, and that one’s existence had shaken Gavin Reed to his bones.
Suddenly the lesser androids staring at him makes the man feel uncomfortable...
Note: "Alakay" wasn't in my poll, because he is only on the wrong footing with Gavin, not with the other five listed sims And also it's Gavin antagonizing Alex, the other way around Alexander doesn't seek confrontation with Gavin (or with anybody). In my rotational save Alex later married Rika.
Rika: “Good morning, detective Reed.”
Gavin (internally): I already greeted Chika, so if this one greets me now, it must be Rika.
Gavin (out loud): “What is it, Rika?”
Rika: “I’m here to inform you that Detective Collins is off the Henry Ford Park case. Captain Fowler gave it it to you instead. You should find the files in your folder right now.”
Gavin: “Yes, I see them. Swell! - What’s with the judgemental look, tincan?!”
Rika: “I merely mimic the staff’s feelings about the re-assignment. Sorry, Sir.”
Gavin: “Oh, do you? And what is the staff feeling, ey?”
Rika: “They are well aware that it was you who pointed out Collins’ mistake in the investigation to the Captain, a calculated move to score over your senior.”
Gavin: “So you’all think I should let the murderer run around unchecked for a couple of weeks longer, just because I coincidentally got assigned to the same workplace as Ben? Is that it? Nah, I've got a phking a job to do!”
Rika: “You could have called Detective Collins’ attention to his mistake...”
Gavin: “Great, your social module is working, wish we could say that of all our toasters. Now vamoose!”
Over at the opposite wall Connor Stern and Hank Anderson were discussing poor Ben Collins’ defeat, too.
Connor: “Admittedly I’m more concerned about you than I am about Detective Collins. I know you two are good friends, so this must get to you...”
Hank: “Sure does!”
Hank: “I think I’ll bury myself in work to get over my disappointment... Like setting up everyone’s shedules for the rest of the year. It’s my duty as Lieutenant anyway.”
Connor: “Dad?! I joined last month only, but I already know that you only ever do the timetables on pain of death!”
Hank: “Oh, I feel much more motivated with you at my side now! Totally soaring and stuff! - Ah, I see Antony Deckart volunteered for the holiday shift. We need another one. You know what the neat thing about Gavin Reed is, son?”
Connor: “There is one?”
Hank: “He’s a father, but not a husband. Not even living with the kiddo’s mom, officially as single as single can get. That means Gavin is first in line for taking the shifts at all major holidays. - And into this year’s slot he goes. Merry Christmas, Gavin Curtis Reed!!!”
Hank (chuckling): “Things to do before turning sixty: Abusing your power - check. And that I tell you, Connor, I feared I’d never score that particular checkmark!”
Meanwhile Tina Chen, Gavin’s best friend (with benefits), rushed over to Gavin, but not to congratulate him on his victory over the senior detective. Never one for smalltalk, Tina outright demanded for Gavin to let her in on his secret. The secret of how he could tell the identically looking receptionist androids apart.
If there was one saving grace about Gavin Reed, then that was the man’s reluctance to lie.
Tina: “...so that means when you told Alakay you being able to tell Chika from Rika was connected to you being a detective, you really meant that. You do not see minuscle differences in their faces, it must be... something behaviour related? Some minor quirk of Chika’s that only you noticed?”
Gavin: “You got me there. Behaviour is too phking strong a word, though. And my uncanny android identification power will go away after the holidays, so I want to enjoy it while it lasts.”
Tina: “Now you confused me. 🐸🐸🐸🐸! I was sure I had worked it out.”
Gavin: “Did, too. See, Chika is lagging a bit, like the used computer it is. It’s most notably when it types.”
Tina: “Okay, I figured something along those lines. But how is your ability to see this temporary?”
Gavin: “Cuzz the ST300s will go into extended maintenance in the time between the years. Afterwards Chika will be up to spec again.”
Maintenance... a short respite from their burdens and personality problems... it was what the humans and androids both were looking forward at this time of the year.
I played through two of the three holidays today (taking care not to travel as not to trigger the auto-complete bug) and completed the scenario. Of course the DPD's timetable doesn't care for something as ephemeral as a "scenario" won. Duty is duty, you gotta see it through. So tomorrow I'm going to play the third day and then start writing the captions.
That same night a lone figure stood atop DPD central station. The man stretched and inhaled the chill winter air. A smile crossed his face when he picked up the distinct scent of a freshly unpacked electronic device. It basically tasted like electricty.
“C’mon, girl, time to spread your wings!” the man spoke into the direction of a small surveillance drone.
The man’s name was Antony Deckart, and he was DPD central station’s equipment officer. Everything from handguns through cars up to the patrol androids were his responsibility, a duty the officer enjoyed a lot.
Tonight Antony was testing the latest addition to his carpark, a basic, store bought drone. But the fact that it was the device’s virgin cruise combined with the other fact that municipal institutions rarely got anything new, made the occasion feel like early christmas.
Antony donned his Goggles and connected them to the drone. When he was satisfied with the flow of information, he started the hummingbird.
The rotors started whirling and then Antony’s newest toy took off into Detroit’s nightsky...
The drone took flight. From up high - and it didn’t even have to be exceptionally high, just rooftop level - there was nothing Antony couldn’t spy while being connected to the drone’s feed through his goggles.
Every suspicious lurker in a street corner...
...the smallest activity in some apartment art studio...
...and every last, however petty, traffic offense, Antony saw as if through his own eyes.
When he was satisfied with the device’s performance, Antony looked up into the sky. He felt gravity pull at him hard, unlike the free-wheeling surveillance drone. But the same power that grounded him also forcing the stars in line was a comforting thought for Antony.
How awesome would it be to leave this meat body behind? Not as in dying, but to merge with a robotic form that had inherited everything modern computer technology was able to do as its 🐸🐸🐸🐸 birthright! A bit like an android, only fully sentient.
But of course humans were humans and machines were machines. Androids only appeared lifelike and humans could only borrow machine senses for a short while, using clumsy interfaces.
This is perhaps a good time to clarify that androids in this setting are fully sentient, the humans are only in denial about it. The servos are animal-like, closer to service dogs than slaves.
The nightshift was dragging on. From the corners of his eyes Godefroy Wilson saw a fellow officer enter the main office. The other man passed him by without saying a word, then slipped into one of the android compartments.
There he - or it, rather - connected to the interactive tactical map to update it.
It had been just a patrol android all along.
Antony, now sporting a mechanical arm that enhanced his handyness, grunted.
Unlike the other patrol bots, this one had kept his outeskin online, the extra layer that made it appear more humanlike.
“Simulation lag AGAIN”, the equipment officer moaned, then barked at the android: “Skin!”
There was no need for an additional command, something like “Skin down” or similar. The bark alone was sufficient to work through the glitch and a second later the android cop stood there in his “birthday suit”.
Yelling at an appliance to make it function as intended - now if only that worked on all electronics, Antony thought to himself!
Meanwhile the patrol bot stood in line with its brother and sister models, indistinguishable from them, and also clearly not a human.
For years, and even far into 2038, taking down the outerskin when standing idle hadn’t been a requirement for DPD androids. But ever since the android riots of November it was part of the regulations, a precaution to prevent people from humanizing the bots too much.
In humans, imagining the machines as being alive, could lead to them sympathizing with glitched or outdated ones to unhealthy degrees, Antony believed. In androids, that the man had witnessed several times, it could lead to the feared android deviance.
Therefore, however much he wanted differently, the officer tried for a cold demeanour towards his patrol bots.
An android whom the “skin offline when idle” rule hardly ever bothered was Daniel, the DPD’s janitor.
For one, the officers made sure the PL600 android hardly ever was idle, and for two, Daniel in robotic form didn’t radiate the reassuring “Everything’s under control, citizen” vibe the Chief of Police aimed for. To the contrary, Robo!Daniel’s presence said “Back to your dens, little mammals!” It was looking much more amiable in an apron, so that was what Antony put the android into most of the time.
Daniel was a deviant, a term that had become so common that nobody even remembered anymore that Officer Deckart at the DPD had coined it. Deviance, according to Antony’s definition, was when an android was displaying activity that wasn’t dictated by its programming, or even went against it, despite not being bugged or damaged.
On occasion a deviant might claim to be alive, self-determined, what was probably a reflection of the many stories of robots becoming sentient.
Antony: “Connor’s desk could use some cleaning, too.”
Daniel: “Naturally. Everything that has Connor-stain on it requires deep-pore sanitation with a laboratory grade sterilizer.”
Daniel: “What exactly are you doing there, Officer Deckart?”
Antony: “Attaching a replacement arm to PM700-302.”
Daniel: “So you’re... arming up your androids!”
Almost a friendly conversation...
...if only Antony had laughed or even groaned at the pun. But glossing the deviant’s attempt at smalltalk over altogether didn’t bode well.
Antony: “Engage it in a friendly conversation, Daniel!”
Ouch. The command, although sensible in the light of testing the new arm’s motorics, felt like a hot knife between Daniel’s ribs. Both the patrol bot and the janitor were androids, whereas Antony was a human, part of a species Daniel claimed to deeply detest. By right Daniel should have preferred socializing with an android any day, even with a non-deviant, robotic one.
But as a deviant he couldn’t help it that interacting with humans came much more naturally to Daniel. Additionally the janitor knew next to nothing about policework. There was simply no common ground at all between him and PM700-302.
Daniel: “So, uh... how’s the weather outside?”
A casual reply, because every CyberLife android expected to interact with humans was capable of holding a conversation, an accompanying movement of the arm... that was all Antony had needed to see.
Daniel: “I see you also padded the sleeve to hide that fact that there is only a thin metal stick underneath. Clever.”
Antony: “Yeah. The damage is hardly noticeable now.”
Freshly repaired, PM700-302 returned to the android boxes, where it started downloading its next assignment.
Everything seemed in order again.
Daniel: “I... I have to give it to you, I hadn’t expected you’d do that. Repairing 302, I mean. So the man who shot our ornamental fish is a decent person, after all...?”
Antony: “YOU hit the fishtank!”
Daniel: “Because I was aiming at you, but you dodged. So it was your fault!”
Daniel: “Aaaaanyway, you know my backstory, my previous owners planning to replace me, and me losing it as a result. So you’ll know what watching you just now felt like for me. Going through the trouble of cobbling together that skeletal replacement arm when no standard model was available... to keep 302 running... when other humans discard androids for far lesser damage...
Heck, Antony, I’m afraid I misjudged you! I never knew you cared!!!”
Antony: “Haha! Well, municipal funding is a thing, something you won’t have had to trouble yourself with back at fancy Park Avenue! But I admit, it wasn’t just having to do with what we have. I’d really have missed the old girl if we’d had to invalid it out. Or any of my androids.
But that’s the problem, actually. I’m the resident “android lover”, that quirk makes me an outsider among the humans. And I know that whenever I talk to an android, there is nothing listening in that plastic skull. It’s only simulated.
So in the end, when I talk to you, I only ever talk to myself... that has to change! I promise that during the upcoming holiday shift I will make an effort to bond with my partner, who’ll be a real person!”
Daniel: “Here’s a happy thought for you, officer: maybe you won’t have to make that effort, because you’ll spend Christmas in the hospital!”
Antony: "Daniel, you little sh...!!!"
Daniel: "Oh, go complain to my programmer at CyberLife! Since I'm "not real", they must have threatened you just now!"
Real person or machine, self-aware of simulated, none of that mattered when you were getting actively attacked by one of your androids. Defend... overpower... in between insult the opponent, not because you believed the machine would feel hurt, but as an automated reaction to lower your own stress.
Daniel was lightning fast and agile, but just like his human opponent he preferred ranged weapons. In a brawl the lithe PL600 wasn’t a real match for a human, especially tonight, when Antony still had his mechanical tinkering aid equipped.
Knowing that, Daniel aimed a bit lower...
Antony: “Ooof... NOW you earned your ticket to the scrapyard! Attacking a human in full sight of another officer...”
However...
Godefroy: “Will you stop with that noise already, Tony?! Some of us are trying to work here!”
Antony: “It started! Daniel, I mean! It tried to kick me in the family jewels!”
Godefroy: “Right, about that... You will immediately uninstall that mod! Using our Daniel, that cannot harm a fly, as your sparring partner is just creepy.”
Godefroy: “Look, Tony, if you need a punching ball that badly, I hear you’re partnered with Gavin Reed over the holidays. Nobody here would mind if that one acquired a couple of new scars.”
(Meanwhile Daniel: “It’s not a phase, mom, I really am a deviant!”)
Note: Godefroy Wilson is not related to Marlon Wilson.
December 24. The morning of Christmas Eve.
Since the day Hank had finalized the timetable, the snow had continually melted to the point where the streets were free today. Gavin Reed took that as an opportunity to show off his cold resistance, combining patroling the neighborhood with a jog.
This is actually his work task for the day. Because the scenario is bugged, I must not ever travel with my sims. Gavin therefore works in Military, Antony in Engineering, two jobs they can do from home.
Meanwhile Antony Deckart quickly retreated into the main office, relieved not to have to interact with the detective yet. Between the “android lover” and the human supremacist stood not only their different worldviews, as of late Gavin had also started getting closer to Daniel, and with Daniel and Antony still (or once again) being as contrary as they had been when they had first met in august, Gavin was Antony’s enemy by association.
After checking on his patrol bots, the equipment officer put up a workbench and started tinkering with abandon.
Antony already knew that he had a Build your own Servo kit coming from Santa this year, in fact, he had taken it with him when he had left home this morning (still wrapped, of course). Now the man was preparing components that he’d need later.
Gavin passed by Officer Orochi Person*. The woman smiled. Of course she would, Gavin thought. Everyone who had the day off themselves would smile when they spotted a less fortunate co-worker!
Next he saw a man dressed up as Kylon Ren, who sold wooden figurines. The wooden star to the far left looked vaguely christmas-y, so Gavin bought it. After how the detective had sabotaged old Ben last week, not to mention how creative he got to avoid having to chip in for the coffee, Orochi wouldn’t have believed Gavin would ever give to charity. But truth was, having disposable cash to throw around and doing some good felt good to Gavin - in exactly that order.
When Gavin returned to the police station, the reception area was empty. Antony had lit Rika’s and Chika’s advent wreath, but the girls themselves were absent, undergoing maintenance at a CyberLife store.
The men would have to put a patrol android to reception desk duty later, or take turns doing it themselves. Both were social persons, Gavin even moreso than Antony, but despite this he’d fight teeth and claws against manning the reception. To the proud detective being relegated to “Hello, my name is Gavin, how can I help you?” would be unbearable.
Angry at the very thought, the man marched down the hallway.
Gavin hadn’t yet reached the public area’s Christmas Tree, when he heard Antony address him via the loudspeakers: “Could you stay right where you are and wait for the food delivery? I’m running a diagnosis here, can’t leave now. But I ordered spaghetti and clam chowder.”
“Weird combination, but I’ll take it”, Gavin replied into his walkie-talkie.
“Jokester”, Antony chuckled, secretly relieved that he seemed to get Gavin the office clown for his partner, when he had been anxious about getting partnerd with Gavin the office bully all the time. The detective could just as well insulted Antony for using the building’s cameras and speakers as his eyes and mouth, called him an A.I. or something. But he hadn’t done so. Maybe those three days wouldn’t turn out that bad, after all.
“Anyway, the courier should arrive any moment!”
*...Yes, that’s her surname. You’d think she’d be desperate to marry just to stop the jokes about it, but so far wasn’t interested.