The Aardvarkians
A Word From The Time Lords

For the sake of internal consistency in the story, I should mention that Exhibita arrived on campus on GD 111, long after Chapter 64 of Tales of Happy Valley. Greg and She have already moved back to Happy Valley.

When Exhibita moved into Casteroff Dormitory*, Manse Collegium was occupied by Della, Gloria, and Penelope along with some others. The Baybraces, et al., have just graduated and are just hanging out on campus until the last of the mob completes his Senior year.




*Casteroff Dormitory is the dorm of the same name that you will find in Sim State University in your game, with additional touches (among them, a third floor) funded by the Franks family and built by The Aardvarkians.

The Aardvarkians
Still More from the Time Lords

This story got in synch with Tales of Happy Valley on the day that the Gilbert Committee showed up in a helicopter at The Houstonian.

The Aardvarkians
Interlude: Cross-Reference to Chapter 17


Wilhemina researches a conundrum.

The Aardvarkians return for an interlude documented in a download topic. Click on the link below to go there.


The link to Chapter 17 will open in this window.

(In case anyone is wondering: I screwed up the Aardvarkians by not paying attention to their school work while I was telling them to run about doing other things. I was only able to partially recover, but one of the characters is still in an abysmal state. Now I'm wondering if I should just tell the tale as it happened despite my goof. There is still hope for a happy ending, and a pretty interesting story along the way.)

I'm all for interesting stories

Yes, Greg! Continue with the story.

Greg wrote:

Now I'm wondering if I should just tell the tale as it happened despite my goof. There is still hope for a happy ending, and a pretty interesting story along the way.

Another "aye" vote here. Unplanned stories can be the most fun...

Hmmm... you'll soon see why I was reluctant to continue this story, but what the heck, I'll play it as it lays.

What really happened in my game: This is the consequence of playing too many sims at once. I was having all the students in the Aardvarkians' dorm do their term papers and group research and sucking up to professors, but neglected to have two critical characters develop their skills.

I was rushing things and didn't even notice the warning messages popping up among all the other notifications. Consquently, while most of the kids were moving right along in their college careers, two of them were stalled out. They spent hours in group research but weren't getting credit for it because they hadn't learned the basic skills.


Nevertheless, integrating those events into the existing story might be fun, so here we go!

Know how that goes... Jane in the Bright house almost flunked out of school when I couldn't get her skills or aspirations up fast enough!

But she's graduated (Deans List too) now and the others are almost just marking time until the next finals, so maybe I'll just let them party every day.

The Aardvarkians
Chapter 18: The Grundy Effect

Wilhemina learned about Mrs. Grundy* in time to solve her problems, but unfortunately this learning came too late to benefit the more naive brother and sister team, Cyrnic and Eilan Caledonia.**

Tragically, they were taken in by the old biddy. Life had not prepared them for someone like her. Her ideas about how an abstract government was a storehouse of inexhaustible resources, ripe for the plunder, were very appealing to these young kids fresh from the internal communism of the nuclear family. They had no concept of economics, no idea that all the riches of government come from the labors of their neighbors.

Her diatribes about class hatred and paranoia seemed to have a ring of truth, invoking memories of the internal family strife they had known in their life as children. Dad and mom always blamed other folks for their family's troubles; this seemed to be the way of the world.

Assuming responsibility for their own lives as they moved on into adulthood was a daunting proposition. Their parents, simultaneously hostile and over-protective, had not prepared them for this. When Mrs. Grundy appeared on the scene with her speeches about dumping responsibility for their lives and behavior on someone else, anybody else, she provided them with an escape from the discomfort of having to grow up.

They got involved in Mrs. Grundy's political campaigns to the point that they completely neglected their school work. They didn't think to ask their dormmates for help; Mrs. Grundy had taught them not to trust those people. After all, people like Jonas Flanders and Wilhemina Petrie were just stooges of the evil Franks family and the equally evil Rising Tide party, pawns in the conspiracy of the upper class to rule the world. Not to be trusted.

Cyrnic realized that his final exams were fast approaching and he was completely unprepared for them. He asked Eilan what to do. For the first time, she looked at her own preparation for finals and discovered that she was in the same predicament. She suggested they talk to their most trusted mentor, Mrs. Grundy.

"It's the fault of the Rising Tide!" Mrs. Grundy proclaimed. "The college owes you a degree, but their conspiracy is keeping you down!"

To say that this advice was decidedly unhelpful would be the greatest understatement yet to occur in the lives of Eilan and Cyrnic. Nevertheless, they were still taken in. Even when faced with the consequences of their own behavior, they continued to buy in to Mrs. Grundy's assurances that somehow they would prevail against the evil system that had created their plight.

Their first semester ended with both of them on academic probation. By the end of their Freshman year, the situation had grown worse.



Cyrnic is expelled from college.


He got the notice while he was in a clandestine meeting with his sister in the basement locker room at the dorm. They were planning one of Mrs. Grundy's poster campaigns. Since they were the only students on campus who were willing to distribute her leaflets and posters, she worked them hard. Their session was interrupted when Cyrnic's cell phone rang.

It was the dean. With great regret, the dean had to inform him that when he failed his second set of final exams, Cyrnic was expelled from Happy Valley University.

Moments later, Eilan's cell phone rang. Again, it was the dean.

They dialed up Mrs. Grundy. No answer.

They called the dean back. Deepest regrets. Maybe try at Boveena College.

They finally broke down and talked to Jonas and Wilhemina. Jonas called Tommy. There was nothing even Tommy could do; Eilan and Cyrnic were just not prepared for college. No, his mom would not intervene. She believed in letting kids develop at their own pace, but to completely neglect their studies doesn't offer much promise.

Tommy suggested they take some time and get some experience with living on their own, away from their parents. If they could develop a sense of self-reliance, they could make it, but it was something they would have to learn on their own. They would never learn if someone handed it to them.

And so, Eilan and Cyrnic caught the bus for the town, wondering all the while what to do.



*Ref: Chapter 17: Wilhemina's Modest Moment

**So, now you see why I was reluctant to tell this tale.

The Aardvarkians
Chapter 19: The Cabin

When Eilan and Cyrnic arrived in town, they were tired, disillusioned, and flat broke. They didn't have enough money to split up and live separate lives, so they were stuck with each other.

Unable to afford even a night in a hotel, they caught the midnight movie at the Orpheum and sacked out in the back row of the balcony. The theater manager found them fast asleep in their seats and quietly left them alone as he locked up.

The next morning, they stopped by the offices of the Happy Valley Tribune to pick up a newspaper. Eilan wanted to find a place to live. Cyrnic was more interested in getting a job. The Tribune's editor, Perry White, solved both of their problems.

They couldn't afford a place to live, but Perry told them about an old trapper's cabin, high in the hills on the road north of town.



There was an old trapper's cabin in the hills north of town.


"It's not much," Perry said. "Just an old cabin with two rooms and a path, but nobody has lived there for as long as I remember. Nobody owns it. It's on public land, in the national forest. At least it would be a roof over your heads. Maybe you could fix it up!"

"Now, Cyrnic," he continued, "I have an idea. I can't keep up with distribution of the newspaper. I want to spend more time watching out for what Amarilla is writing, so I need a distribution manager. The pay wouldn't be much; I can't afford much more than minimum wage. The job's not much, either--just managing a bunch of high school kids to make sure the newspapers get delivered--but it's important to me. What do you say?"

Without hesitation, Cyrnic accepted the job. He had taken Tommy's advice to heart and recognized this as a golden opportunity to develop some self-reliance.

Delighted to have some help at the Tribune, Perry gave him an advance on his salary so that they could get a cab up to the old cabin and check out the place.

The Aardvarkians
Chapter 20: Up on the Hill


The Old Trapper's Cabin


As Perry had warned them, the cabin wasn't much. They found it had two rooms and, as predicted, a path, to an outhouse. Inside they found some old furniture and an ancient, rusty pot-bellied stove.

There was an old refrigerator sitting outside. He found that the place was wired for electricity. Old wiring, but it looked to be intact. The fuses were rusted, but he could replace them as soon as he could afford fuses.

To Cyrnic's delight, the outhouse turned out to have modern plumbing; or at least plumbing that had been modern a century before. Somebody had once tried to fix the place up. Perhaps there was even a happy family living there, long ago. The most important thing was that it was connected to the city water supply and apparently even the sewer system.

That's when the row started.

"I'm pretty sure I can run a water line underground to the house so that you'll have running water in the kitchen, sis," he said.



"Just look at this dump!"


"What?" Eilan yelled. "Running water in the kitchen! Oh wow! How loverly! Geez, Cyrnic, just look at this dump! Look where we have to live! If you hadn't spent all your time putting leaflets in the johns all over campus--"

"Ho! Wait! I seem to recall that it was you who wanted to help distribute Mrs. Grundy's little tracts--"

"That was your choice to make, bro! If you had spent more time on your studies--"

"Now look, sis. This isn't going to get us anywhere. We have a place to live. I've got a job. We have another chance, so let's take it!"

Eilan continued on, blaming him, blaming Tommy Franks, blaming Jonas and Wilhemina, blaming the dean, blaming the college, blaming their parents, blaming the government, and even blaming Perry White. Cyrnic just tuned her out. He was used to it.

Instead of arguing back, he got busy and started making a list of the plumbing supplies he would need. Maybe he could borrow a shovel from somebody. Better borrow an axe, too. That old stove looked serviceable, but they'd need firewood to keep the place warm.

The Aardvarkians
Chapter 21: Life in the Slow Lane

The first day on his job, Cyrnic made sure that the newspaper got distributed to their little cabin up on the hill. With no radio or television and only a few days left on their cell phones, that was the only way they had of keeping in touch with events happening in the world around them.

They didn't have any groceries so Eilan ignored their ecomic plight and used her cell phone to call for a pizza. That started another row. Cyrnic was not at all happy that she was blowing all of his hard-earned salary on junk food.

Eilan adopted a defensive posture, arguing that if it weren't for pizza they would be starving because Cyrnic certainly wasn't bringing home any groceries, but that heated discussion was an eye-opener for her. She wanted money, lots of it! She just had to figure out how to get somebody to give it to her.



Eilan checks the newspaper.


'Hrmph. The only job I'm qualified is working in a fast-food joint,' she thought. 'The last thing I want to do is slave away at some crummy minimum-wage job, but if I don't work, Cyrnic will lord it over me. He has a job and I don't. I'll never hear the end of it!'

Greg wrote:

Eilan continued on, blaming him, blaming Tommy Franks, blaming Jonas and Wilhemina, blaming the dean, blaming the college, blaming their parents, blaming...

Yay, an unsympathetic character! Keep it up, we're all rooting for you! *8)

The Aardvarkians
Chapter 22: The Chicken Didn't Cut It

It only took one day on the job for Eilan to conclude that peddling fried chicken was beneath her. Even worse, with little food at home, she was spending her evenings at the restaurant sneaking pieces of fried chicken and stuffing her face with it, and this was having a noticeable effect on her figure!

Eventually she got to the point where she just couldn't bring herself to show up for the carpool into town. Let them sit their and toot their damn horn; she just wasn't going to do this any more! It's all Cyrnic's fault!

Not surprisingly, she got fired.



Begging was an even less successful career.


In desparation, Eilan tried begging by the roadside. No luck; nobody was going to take her seriously while she was panhandling decked out in designer clothing.

She suffered her first breakdown, right there on the lawn. The situation looked grim. Cyrnic wasn't there to help her through it. A passing neighbor noticed and made a call to the county pshrink.



The Pshrink


"Vat you need ist money," the phsrink said. "Zo go get some!"

The advice seemed to be absurdly obvious, but in Eilan's state, she took it seriously. Cyrnic had built a little iron fence out of some material he had found discarded in the gully behind the house. She called a scrap dealer and got a few simoleans for the fence. Cyrnic would be totally torqued, but at least she had a bit of money in her pocket.

She found an advertisement for a thrift shop in town and wondered what else she could sell. Quickly taking inventory, she discovered that the only thing she owned was her clothes.

So she sold her clothes.

She pilfered one of Cyrnic's old undershirts and a pair of his cutoffs. After donning these, she bundled up all her fancy clothes and headed down to the thrift shop. Used clothing wasn't worth much, but it was enough for groceries that would last another week. At least Cyrnic wouldn't be on her case about ordering out for pizza.