Chapter 3 #3
Eleanor graciously skipped pointing out that I’d changed my mind with respect to impregnating my Sim.
Having finished my braid, she resumed her seat by my side, her knee against mine.
We had to sit close together in order to both see the screen.
My laptop, always warm, began to truly overheat.
It was an old computer, and the game taxed its systems. After every fifteen minutes or so of gameplay, its internal fan would reach an alarming hum, and I’d have to hold the laptop out in the air above me like a baby in order to cool it down.
My laptop back on my lap, Ginevra used her cellphone to invite Gavin Richards to the park in her in-game neighborhood.
She would be more amenable to flirtation in an outdoor setting.
The two Sims materialized at the edge of the lot.
I paused before Ginevra and Gavin could begin self-generating behavior.
While playing the game, you had control over only the characters in your household, but if you assigned actions to your Sim that implicated someone outside your household, the game would make the other Sim available to participate.
I assigned Ginevra a queue of actions from the Friendly menu.
If you used interactions from the Romantic menu too quickly, the other Sim got weirded out, which then made your Sim feel embarrassed.
I un-paused the game. Ginevra and Gavin began to address each other with animated gibberish.
Ginevra produced a speech bubble with an image of a rainbow in it.
Gavin replied with an image of a slice of pizza.
“Have her Tell a Flirtatious Joke,” Eleanor said.
“It’s too soon,” I countered. “Give it a minute.”
“Have them take off all their clothes and run around the park naked.”
Interestingly, streaking had no effect on the Sims’ relationship with each other and relied on a threshold of Friendliness rather than Romance to activate. Streaking together was apparently considered by the game purely amicable, and therefore we didn’t have time for it.
“Lol but no,” I said. “We can’t waste their good need bars if we want them to hook up before they have to go home and sleep.”
“Just buff their moods, so we can play with them for longer.”
Ignoring this suggestion, I paused the game again to add a string of Romantic actions to the queue.
We were playing at my house on my save file, so I got to make the decisions.
Pink plus signs began to appear above their heads as Ginevra successfully Confessed Her Attraction, but when she tried to Give a Massage, Gavin shook his head and Ginevra stepped away looking ashamed.
The game added a yellow embarrassed effect to her mood status.
I quickly canceled my planned escalation of interactions and added back in some lower-stakes gestures.
I told her to Compliment Appearance, and he fanned his face as though overwhelmed.
A few minutes later, they successfully executed their first kiss.
Congratulatory music played. Their moods both turned very pink and flirty.
Maybe I was glad that Margaret hadn’t texted me back and that Eleanor had come over by herself to talk to me, because I felt alarmed by Margaret’s adventure in the mall parking lot.
I felt like I was eighty years away from having oral sex with anyone.
I felt like by the time we went to college Margaret would be an adult woman, and I would be a frog wearing a bow on its head.
I had been kissed fewer than five total times in my life, and none of them really counted.
I thought a kiss only counted if you liked it a lot.
Margaret counted all her kisses, including the ones she didn’t like.
Eleanor counted all her kisses too, but she never actually described them to me, so they felt less real.
“Should we make them get married?” she asked.
“No way,” I said, but then felt shy about my vehemence. “Ginevra has high standards.”
“You’re right,” Eleanor agreed. “If she gets married, then you won’t let her WooHoo with anyone else. Now make them Kiss Passionately.”
I did what she said.
“Have them do it again.”
They did it again.
I turned to face Eleanor for her reaction, but she was already looking at me. I thought one of us should laugh, but neither of us did. We looked back at the computer screen.
“I don’t want them to get married, because I don’t want him to move into her household,” I explained. El nodded but said nothing. I opened the Romantic menu again and saw that the options we’d been waiting for were now available to us.
“You might as well Try for Baby,” she said. “Like as long as we’re here.”
I didn’t argue. I’d rather get Ginevra pregnant with Eleanor than by myself.
In fact, I wondered if there were any other Sims I could impregnate while Eleanor was still with me.
I wondered how close I should zoom in the view of the game to watch what happened next.
Only somewhat, I decided. Too close and the game lost its overhead perspective.
Try for Baby automatically made use of the nearest eligible object, usually a bed or a shower or a walk-in closet, but because Ginevra and Gavin were at the park, they walked single file in synchronized step to a large bush with red flowers at the perimeter of the lot.
They stood in front of the bush, turned simultaneously to face each other, and then leapt into its foliage.
The bush began to quiver, shimmy, shiver.
It emitted delighted Sim sounds and steam animations until eventually the whole plant jumped in climax, and tiny fireworks erupted above its leaves.
At last, the two Sims emerged looking smuttily pleased with themselves and straightened their clothing.
Try for Baby had a high but not quite guaranteed success rate, so we felt justified in instructing Ginevra and Gavin to repeat the action six or seven times to be sure it had worked.
By the end of their marathon, most of Ginevra’s need bars were deeply red from neglect, but her social bar was a pulsing lime-green rod.
I sent Ginevra back to her house alone to go to the bathroom, eat leftover grilled cheese, take a shower, and go to bed.
Twenty-four hours of game time later, we got a notification that she was pregnant.
“We should brag to Margaret,” I said. “She may have gone down on a live human boy, but we collectively impregnated a tiny digital woman.”
Eleanor rolled her gray eyes at me. “Text me a picture when the baby’s born,” she said. She had to go home. “I want to know if it inherits her purple hair.”
After she left, I put my laptop on the ground next to my bed. The computer was too hot from the game. I wanted to keep playing but I needed to touch myself first. Ginevra sometimes had that effect on me.