Chapter 2: Thought Bubble
“Oh dear. What on earth happened here?” Perry whispers to herself as she sits down on her black swivel chair at the study table, her brows deeply furrowed in concentration as she surveys her sims game running on her computer. Perry was previously eating dinner with her family after creating her new household on the sims, and decided to leave the game running while she was eating. She would have expected a fire or a burglary, but instead, Perry can see that Valentine has somehow travelled all the way to Mick’s Master Karaoke Bar and is currently conversing with a pretty blonde fairy whose name matches Perry’s own.
Why isn’t Valentine in her home? Do sims normally roam off their home lot without permission? Perry ponders to herself, although she knows that it has happened a few times to her. But then again, Valentine has somehow roamed very far from her home. Isn’t there some sort of certain distance a sim can travel without a player’s permission, other than when they need to go to work, or need to go to their own party on a different lot?
Perry shakes the thought out of her mind and makes a few changes to her game settings, lowering her sims’ free will to it’s lowest in order to make sure Valentine doesn’t roam around everywhere without permission.
Perry checks Valentine’s needs and almost laughs a little bit out loud. All of Valentine’s needs were at their highest. Perry doesn’t remember using any special of the special cheat codes to set her household’s needs on static. She doubts that Valentine was capable of tending to her own needs so well without help from Perry. Why is this sim so weird?
Perry commands Valentine with a touch of a button to return home and notices how Valentine’s fun and social metre rapidly decrease a few notches as she walks out of the bar and onto the pixelated concrete path.
<><><>
“It was nice meeting you Valentine Summers!” Valentine could hear Perry shout to her with her magical melodic voice. You too, Valentine wanted to say back, but the mysterious foreign force completely shut her plastic voice box shut. It’s familiar iron intensity on her body, compelling her to walk outside of the bar and to a conveniently placed taxi. The foreign force pushes her to pry open the taxi door and obediently wait inside the car on her trip back home. She doesn’t want to go back home, but the foreign force has the upper hand, somehow making itself the boss of Valentine. Why do I have to comply with something that is invisible to me? What is this … thing? Valentine thinks to herself. But the biggest question she asks herself; What does it want with me of all people in this town? All Valentine wants to do is go back into that bar and talk to Perry. She seemed really nice. Very much made of ‘friend material’, or dare I say ‘best friend material’? Valentine suddenly yearns to be conversing with exciting new people, making extraordinary memories with new friends, and getting into mischief with new handsome men…
But instead, she is travelling back to her small home — back to her old parents that scorn her career choices, and back to her old brother that can barely talk to her. She can see the outline of the small home come into view as she is driven closer and closer to it. As the taxi comes to a stop, she reluctantly pries open the door and sluggishly gets out of the yellow taxi. As she makes her way to the front door, she can hear her brother and parents yelling at each other aimlessly from somewhere inside the house. Valentine tries to carefully open the creaky front door without being heard, but fails miserably when the door gives out a loud, girly shriek. She stops suddenly, listening for any sign of alteration in angry activity, and gives a sigh of relieve when her parents and brother continue to shoot aimless insults and threats at each other. Why are they angry at each other all of a sudden? Last time I checked, they were angry at me. Valentine tip-toes past the living area and kitchen to her room, carefully opening and closing her bedroom door to make no sound. When she successfully locks her door, Valentine breathes a huge sigh of relief and collapses on her bed, falling into a deep, dream-filled slumber about something to do with a pale, green-eyed boy.
