Chapter 14 – IPTA
The party is over. Buddy is gone—moved out. And Roberta is alone.
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Roberta misses Buddy from the minute he leaves. She immediately rolls wishes to talk to him, to hang out with him. (She rolls similar wishes for Angel, but we don’t talk about that.) She doesn’t even know where Buddy moved to. He left most of his possessions, which makes her hope he’ll return soon, but she’s afraid to hope too much. He didn’t even say goodbye to his son.
Roberta is heartbroken. She lost her mother yesterday, and now her husband has left her too––over a misunderstanding, a false accusation.
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She hardly has any time to be sad, though. Basil needs her. He is over in the kitchen, playing quietly on the floor with the toy bunny that Roberta loved so much as a child. She goes over and scoops him up. She holds him close. He’s all she has now—at least until Buddy cools off and comes home.
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It’s late, but being wide awake, Roberta decides to stay up later and start teaching Basil how to walk. He hasn’t learned anything except potty-ing yet, and now, his toddler skills all down to her. She hardly thinks about the fact that she has work in the morning.
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Roberta finally goes to bed around 2:30 am. At 4, she is forced to wake up for an emergency at the hospital that requires her presence. Poor girl is going to be so tired later…
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She comes home, sleeps for an hour, and then has to go right back to work. It’s just like real life! Amazing! To top off the negative moodlets that are already stacking up (mourning, hunger, sleepiness, loss of friends…), she gets falsely accused while she’s at work and loses even MORE friends. I would very much like this game to let ME torture my sims and stop torturing them for me. Please and thank you.
Roberta comes home and collapses into bed. Basil, like all Middlemiss toddlers, it seems, is on a nocturnal schedule. He plays with his bunny in the kitchen all night, with only his granny for company. Oh, yeah, Odile makes her first appearance as a ghost!
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She plays computer games for a while, then breaks the computer and haunts the toddler potty instead. Soon after, she disappears. Great to see you, Odile! *rolls eyes*
Roberta's falls into a torturous routine: work, feed the baby, sleep for two hours, work again, sleep for an hour, try to teach Basil to talk, work again, sleep for three hours...it's pretty awful. She needs help. She is, at least for now, a single mom with a toddler to care for while still holding down a full time job (and one with ten-hour shifts and late nights at that). Weston, the butler, continues to be an exemplary caregiver when Roberta’s not home, but he isn’t able to do as much for Basil as an actual member of the household could do.
Roberta thinks through all the people she knows around Twinbrook. She has friends, to be sure, but they are all married and have families of their own. Several are also raising toddlers. Nobody would ever have time to help Roberta, and definitely not to move in with her.
There is someone, though. Someone Roberta met a while ago, back when she was just starting in her medical career. A visitor.
She calls him.
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He arrives just minutes later, probably scaring the mailman half to death.
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Roberta invites him inside. They catch up a bit. Before long, the two are good friends, and she asks him to move in. He agrees.
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“Thank you so much, Sezzad,” she says. “You don't know how desperate I am.”
“I do know,” he says. “It is the middle of the day and you are in underwear. Your child is screaming and you seem not to notice. And you have invited an alien into your home. These are not normal human behaviors. Something is not right.”
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Roberta is about to go take care of Basil, but Sezzad beats her to it. In that moment, she knows she made the right decision.
Sezzad Vajjevoo’s traits, by the way, are Daredevil, Savvy Sculptor, Childish, Green Thumb, and Ambitious. Unfortunately, he won’t be able to use his sculpting or gardening tendencies very much, or at all—at least not to make money. There is a far more challenging profession in store for our new alien friend.
Full disclosure: I cheated a little bit with Sezzad. I actually tried to befriend a different alien a while back, but she was already an elder (like most aliens I encounter) and she died about two hours after arriving. I was worried the same thing would happen with Sezzad. (His “days to transition” stat has changed a couple of times in Master Controller, so I’m hesitant to trust it.) So my solution was to have Sezzad drink a Young Again potion as soon as he joined the household. The rules do prohibit life-extending methods for humans, but they are a little bit vague when it comes to occults––they allow using mods to extend the lives of occults, so I hope using a potion isn't too far outside that rule. I just really wanted Sezzad to join the household and not kick the bucket in the first five minutes. Hey, I’m not going for points or anything.
Sezzad takes to his new role of Substitute Parent Of Basil Middlemiss very easily. He does seem to have a natural affinity with kids. He forces Weston the butler, on several occasions, to wait his turn before attending to Basil’s many needs. He also likes to play with Basil’s toys.
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So it’s only natural, when he consults the newspaper, that he express interest in the Day Care career.
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Roberta thinks he’s absolutely crazy, but she’s not about to say no to an alien who could probably fry her to a crisp in a second if he wanted to.
So Sezzad takes on a new calling. He also takes on full responsibility for Basil’s toddler skills, as practice, and because Roberta is too exhausted and has to work in ten hours anyway.
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It's time for a Buddy update. You guys, I am spooked.
A few nights after the disastrous Leisure Day party, I finally get around to spying on Buddy. I’ve been trying to figure out through Master Controller where he lives, and he doesn’t appear to have a house of his own in town. My guess was that he moved in with another family that had space. Anyway, I lurk outside the stadium utnil he finishes work that night, and then I follow him home.
He stops his car next to the railroad tracks. He gets out and runs into the weeds.
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He runs around behind the criminal warehouse and the science building, into this building that I’ve never noticed before. It’s called the Twinbrook Industrial Train Center.
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Is this where homeless sims live in Twinbrook?? I am fascinated. I can see inside the building, sort of, and there are a few pieces of furniture, but it doesn’t look like enough to live there. There are a couple of desks, two bookshelves, and a small sofa. (And two dumpsters, which I wish I’d known about while Lincoln was alive.) That’s it. The rest is empty space.
Weeeird. Anyway, back to our usual programming.
But wait! First, another family member update: our very first gnome, Debbie, passed away recently. I didn't even know that gnomes are able to pass away. I swear, I learn something new every time I play this game. Here she is memorialized forever in our front garden.
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RIP, Debbie!
The next morning, Roberta is off to work again and Sezzad has his first day of work as a Day Care…person. I purchase some extra toys and strew them around the house. I also provide a couple of extra potties.
The parents show up promptly at 9 with two little baldies in tow. Looks like Mrs. Petersen is expecting yet another little one.
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I’ve never tried the Day Care career, so this is all pretty new for me. Savannah and Esperanza are some needy little darlings! Like, wow. Sezzad also has Basil to care for…fortunately Basil is pretty self-sufficient, for a toddler. It’s just that he still needs some talking lessons, and it’s hard to teach a little boy to talk when the other toddlers in the room are peeing and crying every five seconds.
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Weston, are you sure you’re allowed to help with this…? Actually, I don’t care. THANK YOU, KIND SIR.
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The day goes fairly well. Unfortunately, there isn’t time to finish teaching Basil how to talk. When he ages up on his own that night, I’m not able to pick his trait. Drat.
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He gets the Disciplined trait, which is utterly useless for his particular set of rolls. I mean, I guess he could practice Martial Arts as a hobby…but there’s really no reason to. We’ll have to make some changes later on.
Here’s Basil as a child. I didn’t even realize this initially, but not only did he inherit Buddy’s physical features, he inherited Buddy’s occult status. Basil is himself an Imaginary Friend! That’s bonkers. I didn’t even know that was possible. Now that I think about it, it makes sense. He can turn himself into a toy and everything. Magical!
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That’s all we have time for this time around. Next time, we’ll see more from the Interplanetary Toddler Academy (IPTA), watch Basil grow up, and find out more about Buddy’s life as a Middlemiss expat.
