Between the 20th and the 29th, I'll be out on vacation to the exotic, foreign land of Portland, Oregon, though with my laptop. While I hope to get something out in my spare time, my updates will likely slow down.
Oh, my heart melted at the picture of Heph there with Tegan at the peg box! So sweet! And she's a gorgeous child!
Wait, another Trip dynasty! Where!? *follows scent*
She was seriously a gorgeous sim. Just wait until she grows up!
The scent will lead you nowhere right now, but yes, I have another dynasty up my sleeves. I hope to shake up my writing style a little bit with it too.
Hehe...it's almsot like Tegan and Heph are made for one another. 
Both intellectual geeky types in their own way (even if Heph's intellectual crosses the border to insanity).
A lot of their traits complimented each other very well. I loved the relationship between them, especially all of these strictly platonic bits.
What great screenshots! And, your storytelling keeps me entertained. Sorry I don't comment much but I surely am reading.
Thank you! And don't worry, I trust that you're still reading. I'm a bad commentor too.
Hephaestus is so awesome! And Tegan is such an adorable child. Ooh, a domination dynasty? Now looking forward to hearing more about that!
Soon you will! (Probably some time after my aforementioned vacation).
Chapter 69: Destroyer of Worlds
Bronson signed Tegan up for a before-school activity, so he could be the one to drive her to school and hug her good-bye for the day before designing better engines for rockets until Twinbrook was dark again. Plus, he kept mumbling about how he better make sure to talk about making Tegan his intern when she grew up. If a career in the military was in her future, she had to get used to the early mornings.
Now, her morning class was Junior Choir, and it was only twice a week. Her electives and after-school activities varied more. Junior Shop Class on Mondays, Junior Programming after school on Tuesdays and Thursdays, half a class of Junior Painting for one Friday until Franco intervened and removed her from the class and took her out for ice cream instead, and so on. She was booked. However, after a few hours playing with her blocks and dolls at home for Tegan, Bronson greeted her at the door in his navy-blue military uniform and badges and asked her if she did her homework, which she usually had yet to start.
“We’re not putting you in the program for nothing, peapod,” he told her.
“Yeah, but I kind of need your help.”
The two of them spent an hour on Pre-Algebra and on her Junior Programming extra credit assignment. After his refresher on conditional statements stuck with Tegan, he tucked her into bed and read her to sleep with his new developments in the space project. Bronson could go on all night fascinating her with the process of making the lightest, most powerful engine that could also get them into space.
“Have you learned about the Lunar Lakes colony in your history class yet?” he asked. Tegan shook her head no.
“Well, we’ve been out on contact with them for a while. The country used to have a space program, but it fell apart not too long after some of us got to Lunar Lakes. We can go back there if we succeed.”
“What’s it like there? Does anyone know?”
“It’s a land of computers and wires underneath your feet. Like a big computer.”
For a little bit, Tegan fell asleep to her father’s tales from the military, and she dreamt of Boolean operators and Visual Basic. He said that every project needs a programmer, and for the tiniest speck of time, that was Tegan’s biggest dream. Her, sitting in front of the white glow of an LCD screen lined with code.
For a little, tiny bit, Tegan thought that technology was good, until she rode home from school one day with a straight face, and broke down into tears upon arriving home. “Uncle Julian,” fresh from the newspaper office in his beige trenchcoat, did his best to comfort his…whatever Tegan was to him. He asked what was wrong.
Sniffling, she said something about Bryant, the new kid in Junior Programming, who boasted of exploiting security loopholes and ruining the lives of a few bloggers by leaking passwords. Bryant was Tegan’s age and likely just parroting what some teenager he passed by on the second floor of the school said, as opposed to being a hacking mastermind at seven years of age, but Tegan believed him.
“I don’t want to program anymore. Not to be like that,” she sobbed.
“You’re not a bad person. You don’t need to do that to program-“
“The teacher thanked him for it.”
“That’s just because your aunt Nellie isn’t a good person either. She can code very well, but I don’t think all programmers are like her.”
“Can you tell mum and dad to take me out of the class?” she said.
Spineless Julian promised that, as long as Tegan dried her eyes, dressed in her best, and posed for more sculptures. He wasn’t getting a good appraisal on the value of any of the other attempts. She took a coy stance and posed for eight more sculptures.
Julian also promised her a hot dog for her services, and she got that too. After eating a hot dog with Dijon mustard, it seemed like Tegan wasn’t as distraught over Bryant’s antics as she was when she arrived home from school, but Bronson tucked her in again that night and she had the same thing to say to him. She couldn’t be on a bad side, not in the slightest.
He went to the principal for a talk the next day. Poor Bronson was growing soft in his old age.
For Tegan, the use of technology in the house started to bite at her. The video game soundtracks grated at her ears, and the smooth glass of Hephaestus’ tablet felt more like rough sandpaper when he handed her the tablet for a game of Fruit Ninja. The code and processors and RAM sticks soon became her foreign enemy.
She even pretended to ride her rocking horse for the pursuit of justice against the new opposition, against the circuits and LCD screens. Tegan pointed menacingly at the wall-sized television for the whole time.
Without Junior Programming taking up her Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, Tegan biked home at 3 in erratic weather patterns, snow sometimes and 50 degree weather the next day, and got there half an hour later to play with her blocks more, and pester Hephaestus for always using his tablet. Still, she put up with him studying the physics of Angry Birds in his spare time, and sat by him and his blasted technology for a bit of wholesome reading. Bronson had plenty of comic books that he wrote and partially illustrated, born from holing himself up in the upstairs study after a long day of work, and worse, being around other people.
One day, Tegan already read through all of
Enigma, her father’s graphic novelization of Alan Turing’s life, so she needed a new comic series.
Apples and Oranges was too tech-based, but
Feynman Smash! seemed silly and perfect for an afternoon of reading.
The first panel? A flash forward to an illustration of the first atomic bomb, and how it turned the White Sands of New Mexico to glass. Even if the magnitude of its power could not be captured in a full-page illustration of its white and orange glow.
“What?!” she squealed, throwing the book down on the dark blue carpet. Sure, the bomb was a product of those strange Earthlings, but of their military. She thought about it all night. What made Bronson’s job any different?
She swatted Bronson away when he tried to lull his daughter to sleep with new rocket engine developments.
“You’re just want to destroy everything!” Tegan buried her head under the covers and turned away from Bronson, “Like the atom bomb.”
“Peapod, we’re not like that. We’ll never be like that. Heck, even the earthlings keep those things under tight control.”
She heard none of it, and dropped any plans to be like him, even if a job in the military was full of all of the rockets and planes she was told about.
In spite of that, she still kept herself in Junior Shop Class, even through the gears and and metals. Tegan was still a natural at it, handling delicate moving parts and more cranks and wind-up bits. None of those bothered her, as it was all physics that moved the gears which moved more gears. She faced little trouble there, aside from wood splinters when they worked on construction and one small burn from the blowtorch the school allowed children to use.
Math had its own troubles. Not that Tegan barely survived the course, not at all, considering that she walked out of it with an A. But Bryant from Programming took the desk next to her. At first, he did his assignments like a normal student and stayed out of trouble, keeping his round head turned away from Tegan when she finished the classwork for the day three minutes before he did. He turned his head away and faced Tegan only with the mass of jet-black hair on the back of his head when she got her assignments back, scoring in the 90’s much like he did.
One day, he turned towards her, elbowing her in the arm.
“What was that for?” she asked.
“You shouldn’t do math,” he said.
“Why? I like it.”
“You’re a girly girl who wears bows and ribbons. Why don’t you go play with your Easy Bake?”
Again, Tegan came home in tears, after both facing Bryant and tumbling over in the four inches of snow that fell that day while biking home. Neither of her parents greeted her at the door.
Mum had a career to get back on track.
And dad? He obsessed over himself in the mirror, worse than Franco ever did in a week. He ran his hands over his kind-of smooth skin, with the laugh lines and wrinkles. He ran his fingers through his curly black hair, with maybe five grey strands in it. He sighed deeply each time he finished, then admiring the signs of his youth again.
When Lily came home, he had to say good-bye to all of it. Good bye nice skin, good bye black hair, good bye muscles. Good bye to the attractive younger wife? Hopefully not. She still cheered for him.
While Tegan made amends with her father over the military thing, still wary of what he could do but in a friendlier way, she ducked out of his last birthday party with Hephaestus for some hot chocolate at the winter festival. He stepped outside in a manly lilac sarong and no shirt instead of anything that could keep his noodle arms from freezing off. After a cup of hot chocolate for the both of them, they played tag, at Tegan’s request. Warm and cozy in her hooded dress, stockings, and furry boots, she didn’t complain about the temperature. And neither did Hephaestus.
She trusted that dad was doing just fine.
But as Bronson got dressed in a conservative violet sweater, someone at the festival fell with a thud muffled by the thick snow.
Hephaestus was down, with his skin pale and blue in the winter cold.
“Guys, help?” Tegan asked, scared for her friend.
“Oh, we keep a hairdryer around for these things,” the worker said, “It’s battery-powered.”
She ran it for ten minutes, nearly exhausting all of the battery’s power, for the sake of saving Hephaestus’ skin. But after those ten minutes, he could move his joints, and lifted himself up from the cold powder. After buying a cup of tea for the road to soothe his freezing body, Hephaestus quickly piled himself, Tegan, and the tea into the car. In spite of having a game of tag with her best friend, Tegan still sulked in the passenger’s seat.
“Something getting you down?” he asked.
“I can’t do math,” she said.
“But you’re doing so well in that class.”
“Bryant told me that I can’t do it because I’m a girly-girl. I want to take, something else.”
“I’m not letting you give up another passion. I think you can do math better than any guy, and you can double the ribbons in your hair and it won’t matter.”
“Really?”
“That’s actually how it works,” he said, “You’re good at math because you’re good at it. A lot of people don’t like girly-girls, but you know what? The world can use some smiles and sunshine from girls like you.”
She looked out the window and smiled, watching snowflakes blanket the world.
When they arrived home, Lily and Bronson were still occupied.
“Don’t you have a sculpture to finish?” he asked Lily.
“What sculpture? We need to give the new you a test run first.”
In the absence of any other adults, Hephaestus stepped in to give Tegan a hug goodnight.
“So I’m still smart?” she asked him.
“You’re the smartest kid I know. And the best. Good night, peapod.”
Word Count for this chapter:
1,990Word Count so far:
116,471I needed some way to justify my inventing technophobe named Tegan, I guess. She kept the ribbons and bows and ultra-feminine aesthetic throughout her life, which clashed with her intellectual leanings until I realized that, you know, girly-girls can be smart too.
The Bryant jerk will make future appearances, in images too! I just didn't get any of him until a little later. Oops.
