LOL, Chee-Z. Poor Pao. Duke Sidewalker? Seems like everyone lives in this neighborhood ... now I'm waiting for Errol to show up. And Harcourt. Great story. Just why is she sick? Hope it's just the flu. She's really pretty, and I've always thought "Adam" was cute, too. None of my sims who know him have many sparks for him, yet, but maybe someday ... I'm playing a teenager in another neighborhood who had her first kiss with Orlando, the same one who just died of old age in PDL. Kind of spooky, that. I really like the boy, but he's too good for this particular girl ... she's trouble on a stick and her nicer sister likes him better anyway ... but I have different plans for her.
Chee-Z, I love it. Fear of dogs is a part of Pao's personality that I hadn't discovered yet, since I don't have many dogs in my neighborhoods. Speaking of which, it was hard taking pictures in the hospital because a dog and a cat followed everyone into the building, and were chasing and hissing at people. And then there was the guy with the big bat wings who got off the elevator right behind Pao and Dagmar. I sometimes forget about all the strange people in the Valley. About Dagmar's being sick, SBW, I think she just got a bad case of nerves, and too much coffee on an empty stomach. That's what I was thinking, anyway, while she was writing in her diary, probably because I was annoyed with the way sims are obsessed with buying coffee. She had a terrible time just ordering coffee at the hospital coffee shop--the lot was busy and most of the crowd was in that shop. Errol and Harcourt. That's a thought! After all, Dagmar, Pao and Sheldon deliver mail in sim neighborhoods all around the world. Tropico and PDL are two of their routes. I decided last night that (inspite of Duke, or with his help) the mail carriers have to solve the case of the missing robot and Andromeda. Just how I'm going to do that, or where they are, I don't know yet. As with any story I've ever written, I'm making this up as I go along. :scratchchin: It's so much more exciting that way.
Interlude Dear Diary, I took a day off from work. I called in sick even though I wasnt really feeling bad. I think I just needed a mental health day. I tried watching the TV. Boring. I tried reading. The first book I picked up was a romance story that only made me feel lonely. So I put it away and went downtown to look for Amar. He had told me that he tended bar at Lulus. Besides dancing and a bar, Lulus has a hot tub. I decided to get in the tub while I waited for Amar to show up for work. A couple of people joined me there. I had my bathing suit on but they were wearing absolutely nothing at all. One of them was a guy named Nolan. Hes a handsome guy, Diary, but his favorite topic of conversation is himself, and he never shuts up. On my spark scale, he rates a big fat zero. I left him in the hot tub and went in for a drink and to talk to Amar. We joked and flirted and I really wanted to ask him for a date, but couldnt quite get up the courage. I decided to go to Speedys and try some bowling. It was amusing for about an hour. Then I went to the gym for a shower and coffee. Thats when I realized Id been up for most of the night. It was almost breakfast time! So I went to Reds Diner for pancakes. Adam was there! We played a little pool, chatted about nothing in particular, and then I went home to get ready for work. Whats the matter with all of these men? Why dont they inspire me to great heights of passion? Theyre nice, but notwhats a good word? Awesome? Is that the word that will describe how I feel about a guy who wears glasses and smells like Old Spice? Three sparks for that? Am I crazy? But I cant change myself, can I? If I go all mushy inside about a guy who smells like Old Spice, then thats who I am, and thats all there is to it!! Hey, Diary! I just realized that for a whole 24 hours I did not even once think about my job, the ONeills, or the robots. What a great day!
Oh my goodness, Diary, I sort of have a crush on three guys. Goopy, Adam, and Amar. I invited Amar over for supper. Coral doesnt mind. She just cooked up some extra spaghetti. The night was warm and the moon was high and romantic, so while Coral cooked supper and Herb watched TV, Amar and I stood around outside, just talking. I found myself in his arms. It seemed the natural thing to do. Then we were kissing. Things might have gotten out of hand right there in the front yard if Coral hadnt called us in to supper. After supper, I sent him on home. Then I counted up my savings. Only 10,000. I need another ten before getting a place of my own.
What am I going to do, Diary? It's a disaster! No, it's much worse than that! It's a catastrophe!!! I am so miserable, and will be miserable now for the whole rest of my life. I met HIM! I saw HIM! Our eyes met and I was frozen to the spot. His incredible eyes looked through to my soul and turned me inside out. They knew me, and all of my most secret thoughts. I just stood there like a fool and stared at him, feeling the electricity between us, listening to my heart pound against my ribs. Three sparks, Diary. Three disastrous, monstrous sparks. Why did I go with Pao to see his mom in the hospital again? Why didn't I walk with them out to the curb and the waiting cab? Why didn't Pao invite me along, or ask for my help with getting his mom settled at home? He didn't, and it was late and dark, and I was tired and I wanted a coffee before calling a cab. And I walked between the buildings toward the coffee shop. I saw the man sitting by himself at the chess table, holding a pawn in his fingers but not playing the game, just turning the piece in his hand, as if waiting for something to happen. I remember feeling a little nervous because no one else was around, even though I could hear people laughing in the coffee shop. The door was just a few steps away. The other chess table in the alley was empty, and the lamp above it was bright, drawing moths to it. The lamp above the stranger was dark. He sat in shadow, his head bent over the chess piece. His clothes were black. His hair was black. It's a wig, I thought. I can tell, even in this bad light. Then he looked up, as if he heard my thought, and our eyes met. He spoke to me, slowly and quietly, in a strange and fluid accent that made me think of far away lands, "I've been waiting for you, Dagmar." Oh, Diary, I am crying on this page. He spoke to me and asked me to deliver a message, and then got up and walked away, disappearing between the buildings. How is it possible that I could fall so completely in love, after only a few words, with a man who is not a man? He has the shape and form of a man, and the eyes and voice of a man, but not the flesh of a man. He is made of a metal, and he is a robot.
Just what is it about Arkin that makes women go weak at the knees? Poor Dagmar. He doesn't really sound like a good bet.
I do recall that your heroines are made of tougher stuff, SBW. Passions may rage but they are fighters, not wimps, for sure. I think of Andromeda as single-minded, impulsive and perhaps a little too self-absorbed. She doesn't stop to think about the effect of her behavior on her fellow sims. So when she hears about Arkin she dashes off to confront this Arkin 'pretender' without a word to poor Cory. Dagmar, the mail carrier, is a romance sim (in any neighborhood I have where I've looked at her personality.) I imagine her as being one of those women who is in search of Mr. Perfect. And since no such person could possibly exist, she is forever a little disappointed in her lovers, and so there are (or will be) many of them. For Andromeda, Arkin was safe and uncomplicated. No commitments, no demands, unlike the constantly aggravating Cory. For Dagmar, hmmm. It may or may not be Arkin. There were two robots in that house. Perhaps the robot is the dream she'll never catch. Or maybe she will. I don't know yet. I've had her go everywhere, looking for 3 sparks, but nothing, until that robot. Sheesh. Pictures tomorrow. I'm limiting them, due my limit. Came back much later to add a p.s. I completely immerse myself in this game, don't I?
I love it! Very fascinating stuff. And shucks, you say the nicest things. I always try to vary my heroines, but I suppose it's true, none of them are wimps, exactly. I should have been in bed hours ago but I was immersed in my sims as well ... working on the next phase for Veronaville in my head but taking a break and playing one of my many non-story neighborhoods. Tonight I made a high school. Amazing how many things you can put in a school that make it a fun community lot as well: The chess club, the computer room, the band room, swimming pool, library, gym, cafeteria ... you get the idea. Just no classrooms, so basically every teen's dream school, LOL. But I digress. Back on topic, Dagmar's the mail carrier for my favorite household. But their lives are sunny and uncomplicated, so far, so not much to report. Knowing me, that probably won't last.
Wish I could attend school there. Such a cool idea. I remember the apartment building you created--was that PDL? Where Jack lived.
Dear Diary, I spent twice as long getting everyones mail delivered today. I just couldnt focus. I was even chased down the block by old Mrs. Mulconry complaining that Id given her Jeremiah Levys mail by mistake and she was pretty sure that hed want this bill from the phone company since his daughter moved to another city, didnt I know I nodded and said I was grateful shed caught my mistake and she said I looked a little peaky and would I like a cup of tea and I said Coral would get me some as soon as I got home, and then, of course, she started asking me about Coral and her rheumatism. I finally got away from her, and on my way home through the park I was glad to run into Sheldon and Pao whod finished their rounds and were having an argument about football teams. I told them about meeting the robot outside the hospital, without telling them how much my heart ached to meet that robot again. Pao kept mumbling, Wow, while Sheldon asked me questions. What was the message? he said. What message? I said. Pao said, Wow. That the robot wanted you to deliver. You said he wanted you to deliver a message. Oh, that. He just wanted me to go tell Cory ONeill that Andromeda Rose was safe and that she would be contacting him. Wow, said Pao.
Minor interruption, Diary, What does PEAKY mean? I cant find it in my little pocket dictionary. Coral said I looked peaky, too. She brought chicken soup to me in my room and told me I should not be sitting on the floor writing whatever I was writing. Theres a cold draft coming under the door and the kitchen table was perfectly fine for doing my writing, and thats where I should sit. I told her she was very kind but I couldnt feel any drafts under the door and I would be going to bed soon anyway. By the way, I said, Mrs. Mulconry asked about your rheumatism and maybe you might want to give Mrs. Mulconry a call. So Coral went off to call her friend, leaving me alone with my writing. Sheldon wasnt content with what Id said about the robot. He wanted to know if Id given Cory ONeill the message and how he had reacted. How do you expect? Hes got amnesia. He just sort of shrugged and said he didnt know what I was talking about. Sheldon looked stern, Does he really? Are you sure? Im not a doctor. How would I know? Dont get mad. Not remembering the accident is one thing. Not remembering his wife is pretty unusual. Thats what Ive read. You should have followed the robot to see where he went. Are you crazy? I dont follow people. Who knows what he might have done to me. I could feel my hands shaking. I suppose I looked PEAKY, because Sheldon just stared at me and so did Pao. OK, Dagmar. Youre right. It must have been pretty scary for you. I just nodded. As Sheldon got up to leave, I said, I think he was pretending. Frankly, I think he was pretty shook up at what I said, and he went out to talk to the nurse while I was waiting for the elevator. I got the feeling he wanted to leave the hospital. Sheldon smiled knowingly and left, saying he had some personal errands to run. I caught Paos arm as he was about to leave, too. When I was sure that Sheldon was out of earshot I asked Pao for the address of the robots. He looked suspicious, but he gave it to me. I refused to explain why I was asking for it. How could I? I did not know myself why I had this terrible need to see where HE had lived.
Diary, it was a bad night. I dreamed about HIM all night. When I looked in the mirror this morning my face looked grey! But nobody at work noticed. I guess this is what PEAKY means. It’s a broken heart. It’s unrequited love. Melancholia is a good word, too. I saw that one in a novel. Am I going to waste away? Everyone will wonder what’s wrong with poor Dagmar. Of course, I will never ever tell anyone about HIM. I guess that means I have to remember to burn this diary before I’m too weak to get out of bed. But I probably won’t waste away. I’m still hungry at meal times. I ate all my supper. Who wouldn’t? Coral’s a good cook. I dreamed that he took me in arms and that we were dancing, looking into each other’s eyes. Then I woke up because Coral was banging breakfast dishes around in the kitchen on the other side of the wall. I saw HIS house today. I couldn’t go inside because it was locked, and Pao was freaking out that I was there at all. I showed up in front, at the mailbox, just as he did. He said there was no mail to deliver and none to pick up but he came anyway because that was his job, to check the box for mail. “It’s empty,” he said. “I think the police took it all.” I looked in a window and couldn’t see much except kitchen counters with a plate of moldy sandwiches. I saw a chair in the yard, behind a gate, so I climbed up to look in another window. Then I could see two dirty dishes on the table, one empty, the other with half of a moldy sandwich. I walked around the yard, looking up at the peculiar, modern house, and couldn’t see much else. The place was in the middle of open land with no other neighbors around it for as far as I could see. Really isolated. I pointed that out to Pao and he just rolled his eyes, since he walks it every day. This time, though, he came with me back to my car, which was WAY down the road, out of sight, parked next to a mail drop box, and I gave him a lift to his next stop, the Temple, where he leaves his own car.
Dear Diary, Their names are Arkin and Orion. Pao says they’re scientists and that their mail often included a lot of heavy catalogs for scientific stuff. They also got big fat official type envelopes from the government. And boxes of books. Once, Pao said, one of the boxes was broken and he saw the title of the book on top: A Mathematical Model for the Early Stages of a Simian Extinction Event. But he might not have remembered the title correctly. It was a big one. Hearing all of that made my mouth go dry. Such a very smart, scientific person, whether he was a robot or not, would get bored with me. How could I even hold a conversation with him? (I decided not to refer to him all in capital letters anymore, since I know his name now.) I’m sure it was Orion that I met. Pao said that Arkin was arrogant when he asked about Andromeda. Snobby. He talked to Pao in a slow and patronizing way, as if Pao were a child. And he had a thinner face then the other one, whom Pao saw once in a while but had never talked to. Orion did not patronize me. He didn’t look at me the way you look at a child. He looked at me the way a man looks at a woman. I may not know about mathematical models and scientific hypotho--whatevers, but I sure understand how a man and a woman look at each other. And his face was round, not thin. It was Orion who spoke to me. I wonder if he will come to me in my dreams again.
I decided to look more closely at Dagmar's personality. It varies more than I thought between neighborhoods where she shows up. In the two neighborhoods where I looked at her personality, Pleasantview and The Valley, she is definitely a Romance Sim and a Taurus. Beyond that, the details vary. In Pleasantview, her turn-ons are cologne and glasses. In The Valley, her turn-ons are fitness and facepaint. In Pleasantview she has 7 points in the Grouchy-Nice category. In The Valley she has 0 points, about as grouchy as you can get. I haven't looked at her personality in any other neighborhoods but I presume she'll always be a Romance Taurus sim with a variety of different personality and interest points. I did this because I was curious why the Dagmar I moved into the Oldie's household could never get more than 2 sparks for anyone she met in Pleasantview or Downtown, while the Dagmar in The Valley suddenly has 3 sparks for one of my controllable sims, the metal-skinned Orion. Orion is a Romance sim, and an Aries. I also leave him running the treadmill a lot. Guess all that explains the 3 sparks. Dagmar is still a 'free agent' in The Valley. I haven't moved her in with anyone. But I have a hack that allows me to control her and look at her personality when I want to. I made the mistake of calling her on the phone to invite her over just at that time of day when she should have been delivering mail. Now Sheldon's got her Valley route. Oops. Well, at least I can still invite her on outings. Minor point: Since she's a free agent in The Valley, her hairdo while dancing with Orion is what she changed into when I got her to change to formal wear. So it's different than the one I gave her in Pleasantview.
Dear Diary, No dreams of Orion last night. No dreams about anything. I was so tired that I was asleep the very second I lay down. I met Detective Sidewalker today, and he acts really friendly, but I think he just does that so you’ll relax and tell him everything he wants to know. He’s not so friendly as he pretends. So I was on my guard and didn’t tell him ANYTHING about Orion. I was sitting at the counter in Red’s Diner after my rounds, drinking a soda and waiting for my hamburger, and at first I didn’t know who he was. I thought he was just some guy hoping to get friendly with a girl who happened to be alone in the place. I was all set to tell him to get lost when he showed me his badge. At least he was quiet about that, holding it close to his jacket so as not to make a spectacle of us in front of everyone. But I got tense, and I know that my face started to turn red. “Hot out there, isn’t it?” he said. “It’s a long, hot walk delivering the mail around here.” “I don’t envy you. And I suspect nobody appreciates that it’s a tough job.” “You’re right about that. All I ever get are complaints. No one ever says thanks.” “That’s how it goes. Mind if I sit here?” “I’m sure Red’s doesn’t care who sits there, as long as you buy something.” Mr. Detective smiled at that, and sat down next to me. “Do you get many complaints, Ms. Bertino?” “Nothing official filed at headquarters. But some people are impossible to please. Is that what this is about? Is someone complaining about me?” “Nope. I’m just wondering what you were doing out at the robots’ house yesterday. I want you to tell me about it.”
Wow, Diary, he hit me broadside with that. That house is out in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by flat land. Theres a tree here and there, way off in the distance. Pao and I were totally alone there. I thought about denying it, then realized it would only make matters worse, and make me sound like I was guilty of something, which Im not. I just sat there like an idiot as the waitress put the hamburger in front of me. She asked Mr. Detective what he wanted. He got a soda. Finally I said, as innocent as I could manage, Pao told me about meeting the police there, and the missing robots. I always read the crime news in the paper. Im really curious about stuff like that. I wanted to see the house. We didnt try to go inside. I just looked in the windows. Is that wrong? Trespassing is against the law, Miss. You were on the property. You were trespassing. Oh, NO! Will I lose my job? I didnt know about that. We didnt touch anything or take anything. Dont worry about it, he said, smiling. Its not worth the courts time, nor mine. Id just like you to tell me the truth. What were you looking for? Nothing! I swear it. I was just curious to see wherethey lived. I didnt say HE. I came so close, almost said where HE lived but I didnt say HE. I said THEY. Mr. Detective raised his bushy eyebrows, So it had nothing to do with your visit with Cory ONeill at the hospital?
What? I said. I think my voice actually squeaked. Id only gotten one bite of my hamburger and now I felt sick. I couldnt eat it. My stomach was turning over. My hands were shaking. I bet I looked guilty of all kinds of terrible things, but hed never find out about Orion. Not from me. Why did you go to see ONeill? Are you guys following me? Am I under surveillance for some reason? Why? I didnt do anything. I just deliver the mail. Thats all. No one is following you, Ms. Bertino. Its much simpler than that. Mr. ONeill checked himself out of the hospital, against his doctors orders. It was right after you talked to him, according to the nurse. The next thing I hear is that you were out at the house. What am I to think? What are you to think? What am I to think? Why are you after all these people? Are they murderers? Or spies? Or bank robbers? All I know is delivering the mail. Thats all I know. Why did you go to see ONeill? What did you say to him? Hes on my route. I deliver mail to him. I was just being friendly to a customer who was in the hospital, asking him if hed like me to hold his mail at the post office. And Val Guebers? You know him, too? Thats right. Hes across the road from the ONeills. He mentioned seeing you talking to Mrs. ONeill just before she took off in her car, the last anyone saw her. Then you spoke to Mr. ONeill who also drove off and then got into a bad accident. All I said to them, and I swear, is that someone named Arkin was looking for Mrs. ONeill. Thats what Pao told me, and I thought they might want to know about it. I like them. Theyre nice people. Mr. Detective Sidewalker smiled, Yes, they are, and wed sure hate to see anything bad happen to them. You look a little peaky. I know all about it. Ill give you a lift home, Ms. Bertino. Im not driving a cruiser today, so we wont be upsetting your neighbors.
So, Diary, He dropped me off at home and I went right to my room. I don't feel like talking to Coral or to Herb. I just need to think about things without anyone bothering me. Coral tried to ask about the man who dropped me off but I said it was just someone I delivered mail to, and he happened to be coming this way, on his way to the store. Another lie, Diary. I'm telling so many lies to everyone now. It's because of Orion. Something happened to me when I met him. I'm so confused. These lies are going to get all mixed up in my head. I'm going to make a mistake and get in trouble. I've got to think about this.
So, the crazy gray people have come to the suburbs! Can't wait to read what happens next! Sheldon Handby also had 0 nice points, the one time I played him. I thought he might be nice, but noooo ... I guess the lesson is, don't marry a mail carrier. Though Bianca Monty, in Veronaville, had a baby with one. The mail carriers there are cute.
