The Lost Simtown

[EileenK98]

Darren and Monica Mouffrage came back from visiting relatives to find that their entire town was gone.
Physically, it was still there. The streets were still laid out in the same pattern, the Community Center and the park and the grocery store were all still in the same places. It was just the people who were different.
The house that they had left a week ago was now a different color, and there was a green sedan parked in front of it. They didn't own a green sedan. They didn't even know anyone who owned a green sedan.
"This is our house," Monica said. "There's the garden I planted. And the koi pond."
"But it has a second story," said Darren. "Our house didn't have a second story."
"Should we ring the bell and find out what's going on?"
"I'm thinking we should just go stay at a hotel till we get this sorted out."
"What? These people are in our home, illegally! There has to be something we can do! I'm going in there!" Monica got out of the car, digging in her purse for her keys. Hopefully, they would still work.
They didn't. Not the front door key, not the back door . . . what was going on? They'd only been gone a week!
She went back to the car, where Darren still sat waiting. "I'm going next door, to ask Anna for her spare key."
"That won't work if these people changed the locks."
"Maybe they gave her a key, too." She went to the house on the right side and rang the bell.
The woman who answered was not Anna White. "Yes?"
"Where's Anna? Or Gil, her husband?"
"I don't know those people."
"Are you serious? What's going on? We left on a trip last week, came home, and everything's different! This can't be happening!"
The woman who wasn't Anna shrugged. "I've lived here for a year now. Christine and Michelle live next door. Have since before I moved in."
"Christine? Michelle? No, no, no! This can't be right!" She turned around and gazed out at the familiar yet unfamiliar neighborhood. "When we left, that house there--" she pointed directly across the street--"was blue, and Jane and Jarrad Powell lived there. That one, next to it, was Cindy Vogel. She was dating Matthew Goode, who lived in that house, which was brown last week. How could everything change so quickly? We've only been gone a week!"
"Why don't you come in and sit down, dear?" The woman held the door open, but Monica wasn't sure she wanted to come inside. The last time she'd been in this house, it had been lavender and white. Now it was brown and blue. The layout was familiar . . . but nothing else was.
"It's only been a week," she kept repeating. "Only a week."

[mrs_smartt]

This is interesting. Did they perhaps drive to the wrong town?

[penlopej]

Wow, another great story in the making. Look forward to more.

[EileenK98]

Sorry this is so short. But the mystery deepens!

___________________________________

Eventually, Darren came to see what was happening.
“This isn’t our house,” he said.
Monica glared at him. “Thank you, Captain Obvious.”
“Well, are we at least in the right town?”
“No! I’ve checked the town directory. No one we know lives here anymore! They all moved out overnight! How is that possible?”
“Look, there’s got to be a simple explanation for this.” Darren sat down on the couch, which was similar to the old one they had in the kitchen. It even had the same threadbare green pillow. Why did this woman, whoever she was, have their pillow?
“I know, but . . . it just doesn’t make any sense! Everything was here when we left! How can it just have disappeared? What did we do? Oh, my Kras!” she said, as a new thought occurred.
“Where’s Todd? Where’s our son?”

[EileenK98]

For that matter, where were all the men in town?
The new resident of their house, whose name was Stephanie, called some of her friends over. As Monica and Darren met each one, they noticed that all were female. Renee and Jane, Susan and Wanda, Lisa and Donna . . .
“Where are all your husbands?” Monica asked?
Donna and Lisa looked at each other and tittered. “We don’t need any!” she declared. “We have each other!”
“You mean you’re all . . .” Monica was by no means a prude; she believed in equal rights for everyone. But it was one thing to read about it in the newspaper, and another to actually meet the subjects of the article. “This is a women-only community?”
“Well,” said Lisa, “we didn’t plan it that way. It just sort of happened. We’ve become known as a female-friendly community.”
“Some of us are straight,” said a woman named Carol. “We just like living here because it’s so clean and beautiful.”
“But--but--look, no offense, I think you should be free to live your life however you choose, but--what happened to our town? We left a week ago, and there were families here!”
“There are families here, too,” said Susan, carrying in her and Wanda’s toddler. “Some of us have children, one way or another.” She put the child down and sat next to Monica. “We may not be traditional families, but there’s a lot of love here.”
“Look, I think there’s been a misunderstanding here,” said Darren. “We think your town is lovely. You can be with whomever you want, and have children if you want. We just want to go home. Is our son here somewhere? He’s ten years old, about this tall, brown hair--“
The toddler laughed. “No boys!” she said, and her voice was like music. “No boys! Just girls!”
“He was staying at a friend’s house when we left,” Monica said, a sense of dread growing deep within her. “The Madders, on Oceanside Drive.”
The townswomen looked around at each other. “No one lives on Oceanside Drive,” said Donna. “It’s all empty lots. They were supposed to build some houses up there, but nothing ever came of it.”
“And there’s not a family named Madder here? At 2 Oceanside Drive? They have a cat and a dog, and a Progressive Insurance company car. And a twelve-year-old son named Brad.”
“Never heard of them.”
“Epikrasnu! Is there a police number that we can call, and report him missing?”
Stephanie blinked. “You know, I don’t think we have a police department. There’s no crime here, so there’s never been a need for one.”
“Come to think of it,” said Darren, “I’m not sure we had any police in our town, either.”
“Well, what are we supposed to do, then?” Monica got to her feet and started pacing around. It was hard because there were pieces of furniture in places where she wasn’t expecting them, but she managed to find a way around them each time. “Our son is missing, our house is missing, our whole TOWN is missing, and we have no one to report it to? This is outrageous! Who’s in charge here?”
No one said anything for a moment. Then Susan said, “Carol works at the Town Hall. She’s only a mid-level paper pusher, though.”
“But surely there must be someone on the upper levels! A mayor or something? Can we call him, or her?”
Carol looked perplexed. “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever met the mayor. I just go into the office and do my own work. I don’t think I ever see anyone else, either.”
“Unbelievable! We’re gone for seven days and the whole world turns upside-down! There must be something we can do!”
“I know what we can do,” said Christine. “I was the first one here, and I think I know what happened. And how we can fix it.”

[EileenK98]

Christine led them through town, out to the mountains by the Snow Park.
"I found this by accident," she said. "I was looking for the keys to the ski lift, and I found . . . something else. Before we go any further, I have something to tell you. It's a bit shocking, so you'd better prepare yourselves."
"More shocking than losing our entire town?" asked Monica.
"Yes. We, that is, all of us--you, me, the other ladies, and everyone around us--are all part of a game."
Monica and Darren blinked at her in confusion. "A . . . a what?"
"I always thought something was strange about this town. The way we had no police, but didn't have any crime, for example. But I didn't know for sure until I found this."
She pushed on what looked like a solid piece of ice, and a whole face of the mountain slid inward, revealing a space inside. "Come on, follow me. You're not gonna believe this."
There was a passage right in the mountain, like something out of a James Simond movie. Darren and Monica followed Christine closely, so that they wouldn't get lost. Eventually they came out in a huge chamber, with screens on three walls. Some of them showed different parts of Simtown, while others had verbal instructions on them.
"This is Player Control," said Christine. "This is where our Player makes the decisions and issues the commandments that control our lives. See, right now She's making Donna have a shower."
They looked. One of the top screens showed Donna in the bathroom of what had to be her house, spinning to change into her swimsuit and then stepping into the shower.
"They can see us?" Darren asked, mystified.
"She can. I know it's a She, because I was able to hack the User Controls." She pushed a button, and a hidden keyboard slid out of the wall. "See? There's our God's name, Ea."
"Can we talk to her?" asked Monica.
Christine shook her head. "I've tried. I clicked the link that says Support, but it takes me to an error message. It's been doing that for months." She rolled a chair out from nowhere and sat down before the keyboard. "Okay, here's what I think happened: you were part of a game that was erased."
"Erased?"
"The Player, for whatever reasons She may have had, decided to wipe out your town and start over. See this link up here, that says Reset?" They nodded. "That's what She used to do it. But the thing is, if you go in here, it says Cloud Saves."
"What's that?" Darren was still having trouble coming to grips with the news that their lives were in fact a game controlled by someone else. When he thought about it, though, it did explain some things that had always been troubling him: why he sometimes started doing something and then abruptly quit. Why he felt the compulsion to garden six times a day. Why the weather was always the same, even though it was nearly Christmas.
"This saves earlier versions of the game," Christine said with a grin. "It's possible--I don't know for sure, but I think it may be possible--that your town is still saved in this Cloud. We may be able to restore it."
"But if we do that," asked Monica, "what happens to your town? Won't you people all vanish if we reset?"
"We will," said Christine. "Which is why I'm glad I never told anyone about this. They won't know it, when it happens. They'll just . . . cease to be."

______________________

Of course, we know that cloud saves can't restore a reset game, but maybe this is an earlier version? Big conclusion, coming soon!

[Minima]

Eileen, I'm loving the twists to this story. Thank you!

[EileenK98]

“We can’t do this,” Darren was saying.
There was a nice couch against the far wall, the only one that wasn’t covered in screens, and Monica was sitting on it while her husband paced back and forth in front of her, trying to convince her to stay in this town instead of going home.
“We have to! It’s our only way home!”
“But if we do, this whole town will be erased! We’d be killing these people! I can’t live with that on my conscience; can you?”
Monica stared at him. “If Christine’s right, and this is a game . . . then they’re all just data bits anyway. We won’t be ‘killing’ them, because they were never alive in the first place.”
“Not alive? You might as well say we’re not alive!”
“Well, what would you do, then?”
“We can stay here. We can move into the empty house behind the Diving Center. I’m not sure if we can get jobs, but at least we’ll have the revenue from the house . . .”
“I can’t. I can’t face the rest of my life without seeing Todd, or our friends, ever again.”
“We’ll make new friends.”
“It won’t be the same! I want to go home, Dar. I’m sorry this town has to be erased for us to do that, but I can’t live here.”
“And I can’t live with what we have to do to get home. I don’t want all these people’s deaths on my head. Even if all they are is bits of data, it’ll be my fault if they get erased! How can you do that to them?”
“You can stay if you want! I’m going home with or without you!”
“I’m afraid that’s not possible,” Christine said. “I’ve been studying the support documents, and it seems that you two are a glitch.”
“A glitch?” Darren asked.
“Because you were in a neighboring town at the time of the reset, you weren’t included in the erase. And when your visit was up, you were stuck here instead of the town you came from. I can’t fix just one of you; you both have to go.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“If I tried,” Christine said, looking at a screen on which a teenager was staring blankly into a fridge, “it might erase both of you, or make a duplicate of you in the restored town. You see, if we reset it from a save where you were both in the town, there would be two versions of you. The game can’t handle that, and it would erase all four of you. Or maybe it would shut down entirely. I’m not even sure restoring the game would work, from so far back. I’m trying to reset it to a point just after you left, but before the Player reset the town. If I fail, you could both die.”
“But if you succeed,” said Darren, “all of you here could be . . . erased.”
“It’s not like dying, really. We just cease to exist. It shouldn’t even hurt. Don’t feel bad for us. A town of all women probably wouldn’t have worked out, anyway.”
“But the children! They won’t have a chance to grow up--“
“They don’t anyway. At least, not yet. They haven’t released the update yet that allows teens to grow into adults, and I don’t know if they ever will. But if they do . . . your boy should have that chance.”
“Thank you,” said Monica. “For doing this for us, when you know what will happen to you. Not many people could go to their deaths--well, non-existences--so willingly. I know I couldn’t.”
“I’m just glad I could help you. Now, you have to go out into the town when I do the restore. You can’t be in here, or . . . actually, I don’t know what would happen to you in here. But it’s safer for you outside. Get to a place you know exists in both towns, and wait. I’ll give you ten minutes, and then I’ll click the button.”
Monica couldn’t help herself; she rushed forward and threw her arms around the other woman. “Goodbye,” she said, “and good luck. Maybe, if you stay in here when it happens--“
“No, I have to go outside, too. There’s a one-minute delay on the restore, and I want to have one last practice skate on the rink before I go. Good luck to you both.”
“I’m sorry,” said Darren. “I wouldn’t make you do this if we didn’t have to . . .”
“I understand.”
“What happens if you restore it, and the Player decides to reset again?”
“That won’t happen. Now go! Ten minutes and counting.”
Darren took his wife’s hand and led her out of the mountain, past the ski resort, and back into town. They didn’t stop running until they were back outside their own house.
As for Christine, she set up a block in the system that would prevent the Player from ever being able to reset the game again, or restore it back to Christine’s town. Then she set the one-minute timer, strapped on her skates, and performed her best routine ever.
And she was right: she didn’t feel a thing, when it happened.

Monica had her eyes closed, unwilling to see the town changing around them. Would it happen all at once, or would it be like a gradual wipe and replace of the buildings, the houses, and the people?
“I can’t look,” she said. “Is it done yet?”
Darren looked at their house. It was brown.
“It’s done,” he said, a bit sadly. For a moment, he thought he saw a little face peeping out of a second-floor window, and then there was no second floor.
“Mom! Dad!” Todd came running up the street to meet them. “You’re back!”
“Yes,” Darren said. “We’re back. For good.”
He knew he could never tell anyone about what had happened to them. But if Christine was right, and this version of the town was now permanent, he’d never have to.
“I have an idea,” he said. “Let’s all go skiing this weekend!”

THE END

[Microdot]

Thank You - I loved your story

[telemwill]

This is great! Really enjoyed it.