Trapped in the Sims (complete)

Part 20

"It's funny. It's almost like it felt you were like my best friend."

Hannah's not exactly sure as to quite why she's speaking aloud to her computer screen. On it is a frozen image of Rachel, the sim she had made in Create A Sim a while back. Although most Sim expressions are fairly - well, expressionless, Rachel's brow is furrowed into what looks like a worried frown, although Hannah knows it's probably just one of the automated poses that Sims carry out when they're standing doing nothing.

Probably.

Hannah can imagine having someone like Rachel for a best friend. That's probably pretty sad, for a teenage girl, having an imaginary Sim friend, who really is just programming and pixels on a screen, but there again she's pretty sad and friendless at the moment. Hence why she spends her afternoons alone in her room, playing Sims. Sure, she has friends at school, but no-one who likes computer games, at least not to her knowledge, and no-one of real best friend material. She has a vague feeling that there used to be someone who really got her, who really understood her... but that must have been back in pre-school, which no-one can really remember any more.

Oddly enough, when Hannah thinks about Rachel, there's something deep down that says there's something more about this particular sim, but she can't quite reach it when she probes deeper into what appears to linger as memories. And for some reason, she can almost imagine what Rachel might look like - as a human.

Maybe it's because she's quite a pretty sim, though most characters Hannah tends to make are pretty to a certain standard. She feels kind of bad for putting her in such a hellish outfit now - why did she do that, anyway? Rachel still wears the mustard-yellow dress and clashing black-streaked blonde hair that she had put her in a couple of days ago.

Why wouldn't she be wearing it, anyway? Hannah laughs at herself, shaking her head and quelling her overactive imagination. She's surprised at how much effort it takes  to push the image of the sim Rachel out of her head as she moves into 'Live Mode' on Sims, allowing the static characters to relax and move more naturally as she settles into the game.

"But that's stupid. You're just another sim. My favourite sim, but a sim nonetheless," she still feels she has to justify to herself aloud.

The image of the human Rachel starts to fade from her head.

And Hannah slowly forgets.