A Sim-ple Life
Have you ever had the feeling that your life was completely out of control?
Like you were just going through the motions, puppet-like, guided by some unseen hand of fate, or God, or whatever you want to call it?
Cheryl had felt that way all of her life. She had never felt in control of anything as far back as she could remember. The worst part was the way her memory continually failed her. It was getting worse with every day that passed. Cheryl was afraid; she feared she was losing her mind.
She found herself in the most bizarre situations, doing strange, inexplicable things after each memory lapse. She would set out to accomplish an everyday task and would find herself just standing there, mind blank and at a loss as to what she should be doing next
Her surroundings changed almost daily and she was convinced her faltering memory was responsible. She would know for certain where something was, but when she went to find it, everything would be different.
Cheryl’s home was an ever-changing enigma. Every morning she woke to find new furniture, different wallpaper and a swimming pool with a new look. The pool changed shape on a regular basis; sometimes it was kidney shaped, sometimes square and sometimes rectangle. Sometimes a hot tub graced one end of the pool, sometimes two or more tubs appeared, as if by magic. Even the layout of the house seemed to change from one day to the next. There were times when entire rooms moved or disappeared altogether. Cheryl never saw a carpenter or signs of construction, yet she saw a different house each day.
Remembering simple things like the location of doorways was a new challenge every day. Once, Cheryl couldn’t find the entrance to the bathroom even though it had been there ever since she could remember. She ran from room to room searching for the toilet, bursting at the seams. She finally relieved herself on the bedroom floor because she couldn’t think of a better solution. The next day, the bathroom reappeared exactly where it had always been and Cheryl couldn’t understand for the life of her why she hadn’t been able to find it the day before.
Then there was the time she almost drowned while swimming in the pool. She climbed into the pool using the ladder, and then the ladder disappeared. One moment it was there, bolted to the cement at the side of the pool but the next time she looked, the ladder simply didn’t exist anymore. Cheryl couldn’t think of any other way to get out of the pool so she just kept swimming laps, looking for the ladder that had done an inexplicable vanishing act. Back and forth she swam until she was ready to faint from exhaustion. Unable to save herself, she was on the verge of drowning when the ladder reappeared exactly where it had been before, just as if it had never been gone. In fact, there were not one but two matching ladders now, firmly bolted to either side of the pool where she couldn’t possibly have missed them.
The other members of the household didn’t seem to notice anything unusual about the house nor did they seem to care about Cheryl’s bizarre behavior. Her housemates weren’t related to her as far as she was aware. In fact, she barely knew them. Furthermore, even the members of the household were subject to change without notice and none of the others seemed to be bothered by this. The other residents of the mysterious house were engrossed in their own activities at all times, except when eating, sleeping or the occasional interaction with Cheryl. She had no idea what any of them were talking about. They all spoke what sounded like gibberish, and Cheryl played along by replying in the same gibberish.
Cheryl’s current housemates were a young man named Damien, a woman named Tiffany and a little boy named Steven. The man and woman didn’t seem to be a couple, nor did either of them appear to be a parent of the boy, and it was all normal and acceptable.
Cheryl spent her days engaged in her favorite activities, which involved swimming laps in the pool, painting endless canvasses of abstract art and singing melodies to songs with no lyrics. She had no job that she could remember. In fact, she couldn’t even remember her own last name!
She existed from day to day, repeating the same mundane activities; eating when she was hungry and sleeping when she was tired. Sometimes she slept alone and sometimes cuddled up next to a random member of the household. None of it made any sense and yet they all did these things naturally and organically as if there was no other way.
How long had things been this way? Always? She couldn’t remember a time when anything was different. Cheryl couldn’t remember her childhood or being any other age than her current one. She couldn’t remember ever living in any other home besides this one.
She wondered if she had some sort of mental illness. Were her housemates aware that something was wrong with her? Maybe they knew she was a nutcase and weren’t telling her! Maybe they were all having laughs at her expense, mocking her by speaking nonsense words, knowing that she would reply in the same fashion. She supposed she should seek professional help from a doctor of some sort but had absolutely no idea how to go about doing it.
Cheryl dove into the pool and swam several laps to ease her worried mind. Swimming was something she did every day and it always seemed to relax her.
When she tired of swimming, she climbed out of the water to find Damien standing on the pool deck watching her.
“The sun, it go kee-kah-ka-bee,” Damien said.
Cheryl laughed and nodded in agreement.
“Ah, a ham a hizza frazzirat!” she replied with a cheerful wave as she walked past him. She wasn’t in the mood for a conversation. She was hungry and needed to find something to eat.
Cheryl wasn’t very good at cooking. She typically foraged in the fridge for something cooked by another member of the household to avoid using the stove. She found nothing in the fridge that looked edible without first being cooked. She stamped her foot in frustration and swore under her breath.
“Hem a flama huzzit!”
She selected a food item that looked like it had potential and placed it in a frying pan. After dousing it with cooking oil, she turned the burner on as high as possible to speed the cooking process. It was cooking too slowly so she stirred the pan vigorously in her impatience.
All at once the oil in the pan ignited, sending angry fingers of flame toward the ceiling. Cheryl slapped at the pan in a lame attempt to extinguish the blaze but succeeded only in catching her hand on fire. The flames spread to her clothing, racing up her arm until her entire blouse was burning. Her hair caught fire next. A human torch, Cheryl ran in frantic circles around the kitchen, shrieking and waving her arms.
Outside, Damien did a slow backstroke in the pool, oblivious to the fact that one of his housemates was burning to death in the kitchen. In another room, Steven and Tiffany laughed and joked, unaware that their gibberish was being drowned out by Cheryl’s dying wails.
* * *
After dinner, Jeremy rushed to finish his homework so he could get back to his game. He had left his computer up and running with the game loaded and he was anxious to see what had transpired in his absence. He woke the screen up from its sleep mode and slapped his palm to his forehead when he saw the carnage in the kitchen.
“Aw, nuts! My stupid Cheryl Sim went and burned herself to death! I knew I shoulda locked her outta the kitchen while I was away!”
The Sims was one of Jeremy’s favorite computer games. He had all the expansion packs and plenty of cheat codes that allowed him limitless hours of play – redesigning and recreating the virtual environment in which his computer-generated characters lived. The characters were always a learning experience. They always turned out to be a bit unpredictable, no matter how carefully he designed them. If you endowed a Sim with too much of one characteristic and not enough of another you’d wind up with a dumbass who’d end up getting killed.
Take Cheryl, for example. He had made her athletic and artistically skilled but obviously a little too much so because she turned out to be a bit of an airhead. She had no culinary skills whatsoever and not a shred of common sense to solve even the simplest problems. She was the proverbial turkey who would drown looking up at the rain.
Jeremy sighed and set out to create a replacement for Cheryl. The new one would be able to cook like a master chef but he would have to make sacrifices in other areas. Cutting back on artistic ability, sense of humor and athleticism would make her a bit dull but maybe this one would live a little longer.
The creators of games like The Sims had done some pretty cool things with artificial intelligence, but in the opinion of that particular twelve-year-old, they still had a long way to go.
Copyright © 2012 Mandy White
Like you were just going through the motions, puppet-like, guided by some unseen hand of fate, or God, or whatever you want to call it?
Cheryl had felt that way all of her life. She had never felt in control of anything as far back as she could remember. The worst part was the way her memory continually failed her. It was getting worse with every day that passed. Cheryl was afraid; she feared she was losing her mind.
She found herself in the most bizarre situations, doing strange, inexplicable things after each memory lapse. She would set out to accomplish an everyday task and would find herself just standing there, mind blank and at a loss as to what she should be doing next
Her surroundings changed almost daily and she was convinced her faltering memory was responsible. She would know for certain where something was, but when she went to find it, everything would be different.
Cheryl’s home was an ever-changing enigma. Every morning she woke to find new furniture, different wallpaper and a swimming pool with a new look. The pool changed shape on a regular basis; sometimes it was kidney shaped, sometimes square and sometimes rectangle. Sometimes a hot tub graced one end of the pool, sometimes two or more tubs appeared, as if by magic. Even the layout of the house seemed to change from one day to the next. There were times when entire rooms moved or disappeared altogether. Cheryl never saw a carpenter or signs of construction, yet she saw a different house each day.
Remembering simple things like the location of doorways was a new challenge every day. Once, Cheryl couldn’t find the entrance to the bathroom even though it had been there ever since she could remember. She ran from room to room searching for the toilet, bursting at the seams. She finally relieved herself on the bedroom floor because she couldn’t think of a better solution. The next day, the bathroom reappeared exactly where it had always been and Cheryl couldn’t understand for the life of her why she hadn’t been able to find it the day before.
Then there was the time she almost drowned while swimming in the pool. She climbed into the pool using the ladder, and then the ladder disappeared. One moment it was there, bolted to the cement at the side of the pool but the next time she looked, the ladder simply didn’t exist anymore. Cheryl couldn’t think of any other way to get out of the pool so she just kept swimming laps, looking for the ladder that had done an inexplicable vanishing act. Back and forth she swam until she was ready to faint from exhaustion. Unable to save herself, she was on the verge of drowning when the ladder reappeared exactly where it had been before, just as if it had never been gone. In fact, there were not one but two matching ladders now, firmly bolted to either side of the pool where she couldn’t possibly have missed them.
The other members of the household didn’t seem to notice anything unusual about the house nor did they seem to care about Cheryl’s bizarre behavior. Her housemates weren’t related to her as far as she was aware. In fact, she barely knew them. Furthermore, even the members of the household were subject to change without notice and none of the others seemed to be bothered by this. The other residents of the mysterious house were engrossed in their own activities at all times, except when eating, sleeping or the occasional interaction with Cheryl. She had no idea what any of them were talking about. They all spoke what sounded like gibberish, and Cheryl played along by replying in the same gibberish.
Cheryl’s current housemates were a young man named Damien, a woman named Tiffany and a little boy named Steven. The man and woman didn’t seem to be a couple, nor did either of them appear to be a parent of the boy, and it was all normal and acceptable.
Cheryl spent her days engaged in her favorite activities, which involved swimming laps in the pool, painting endless canvasses of abstract art and singing melodies to songs with no lyrics. She had no job that she could remember. In fact, she couldn’t even remember her own last name!
She existed from day to day, repeating the same mundane activities; eating when she was hungry and sleeping when she was tired. Sometimes she slept alone and sometimes cuddled up next to a random member of the household. None of it made any sense and yet they all did these things naturally and organically as if there was no other way.
How long had things been this way? Always? She couldn’t remember a time when anything was different. Cheryl couldn’t remember her childhood or being any other age than her current one. She couldn’t remember ever living in any other home besides this one.
She wondered if she had some sort of mental illness. Were her housemates aware that something was wrong with her? Maybe they knew she was a nutcase and weren’t telling her! Maybe they were all having laughs at her expense, mocking her by speaking nonsense words, knowing that she would reply in the same fashion. She supposed she should seek professional help from a doctor of some sort but had absolutely no idea how to go about doing it.
Cheryl dove into the pool and swam several laps to ease her worried mind. Swimming was something she did every day and it always seemed to relax her.
When she tired of swimming, she climbed out of the water to find Damien standing on the pool deck watching her.
“The sun, it go kee-kah-ka-bee,” Damien said.
Cheryl laughed and nodded in agreement.
“Ah, a ham a hizza frazzirat!” she replied with a cheerful wave as she walked past him. She wasn’t in the mood for a conversation. She was hungry and needed to find something to eat.
Cheryl wasn’t very good at cooking. She typically foraged in the fridge for something cooked by another member of the household to avoid using the stove. She found nothing in the fridge that looked edible without first being cooked. She stamped her foot in frustration and swore under her breath.
“Hem a flama huzzit!”
She selected a food item that looked like it had potential and placed it in a frying pan. After dousing it with cooking oil, she turned the burner on as high as possible to speed the cooking process. It was cooking too slowly so she stirred the pan vigorously in her impatience.
All at once the oil in the pan ignited, sending angry fingers of flame toward the ceiling. Cheryl slapped at the pan in a lame attempt to extinguish the blaze but succeeded only in catching her hand on fire. The flames spread to her clothing, racing up her arm until her entire blouse was burning. Her hair caught fire next. A human torch, Cheryl ran in frantic circles around the kitchen, shrieking and waving her arms.
Outside, Damien did a slow backstroke in the pool, oblivious to the fact that one of his housemates was burning to death in the kitchen. In another room, Steven and Tiffany laughed and joked, unaware that their gibberish was being drowned out by Cheryl’s dying wails.
* * *
After dinner, Jeremy rushed to finish his homework so he could get back to his game. He had left his computer up and running with the game loaded and he was anxious to see what had transpired in his absence. He woke the screen up from its sleep mode and slapped his palm to his forehead when he saw the carnage in the kitchen.
“Aw, nuts! My stupid Cheryl Sim went and burned herself to death! I knew I shoulda locked her outta the kitchen while I was away!”
The Sims was one of Jeremy’s favorite computer games. He had all the expansion packs and plenty of cheat codes that allowed him limitless hours of play – redesigning and recreating the virtual environment in which his computer-generated characters lived. The characters were always a learning experience. They always turned out to be a bit unpredictable, no matter how carefully he designed them. If you endowed a Sim with too much of one characteristic and not enough of another you’d wind up with a dumbass who’d end up getting killed.
Take Cheryl, for example. He had made her athletic and artistically skilled but obviously a little too much so because she turned out to be a bit of an airhead. She had no culinary skills whatsoever and not a shred of common sense to solve even the simplest problems. She was the proverbial turkey who would drown looking up at the rain.
Jeremy sighed and set out to create a replacement for Cheryl. The new one would be able to cook like a master chef but he would have to make sacrifices in other areas. Cutting back on artistic ability, sense of humor and athleticism would make her a bit dull but maybe this one would live a little longer.
The creators of games like The Sims had done some pretty cool things with artificial intelligence, but in the opinion of that particular twelve-year-old, they still had a long way to go.
Copyright © 2012 Mandy White