Natalie had already pictured herself leaving the hospital with a single baby tucked safely in her arms, not through her gift, which had been totally dampened by her pregnancy, but in her minds eye. Her mental image however needed altering, if this one baby, she was going to need a wheelbarrow to cart him or her home. Natalie screamed a blood curdling howl as the duty nurse eased Nat onto a gurney and began barking orders to the receptionist. "Find Doctor Dean now!", yelled the nurse as she wheeled Nat off to an examination room.
"You know me, have I ever been wrong?", hissed the Duty Nurse. Doctor Dean remembered when Juanita had arrived as an intern, she had the weird ability to 'know' when a sim was having twins or triplets, and determine the sex of a baby, just by touching the pregnant sims stomach. All the other staff had placed bets on whether or she was not correct, the betting lasted less than a month, when everyone realized she was 100% accurate..
"Her charts say 'One human male possible werewolf hybrid' on all three checkups, and you are telling me that Mrs Jettstar is having quads, no sim in history, without unorthodox intervention has had a greater number of babies than triplets, it just doesn't make sense!", Doctor Dean mumbled. He knew science and logic, but he also knew that there were some things logic and science hadn't figured out yet. Things like Juanita's ability to rad a pregnancy faster and more accurately than the hospitals pregnancy scanning machines.
"I'm not saying quadruplets Doctor, I can't count them all, it's too hectic in there, but there is definitely more than a normal pregnancy!", Juanita explained.
Doctor Dean quickly explained to Natalie some of the details regarding her pregnancy, and the fact that she would need advanced surgery to save her babies, Natalie signed the approval and was transferred to the operating room. Her eyelids slowly closed as the pain receded, and the hospital staff scrambled.
Eric arrived at the hospital after visiting hours, and after a short argument with the reception was eventually allowed through. As Eric arrived at the maternity wing, he caught the tail end of an argument between two staff members. "Not only will they be unemployed, but they won't be able to get a job even emptying bedpans at any major hospital in the country. No media contact whatsoever, make sure every body understands my position on this, am I clear?", barked a ferocious sounding female voice.
"It's a little late for visiting, can I help you?", said a polite, friendly voice in silky tones. Eric recognized the voice as the same one that had been tearing a surgeon to shreds only moments ago. "My wife just come in, there were complications, where is my wife, where is my baby?", Eric demanded, trying to keep the anger from his voice after the debacle at reception.
"Mister Jettstar, I assume?", the lady asked, Eric nodded, and she continued. "My name is Ophelia Paine, and I am the hospital administrator, Your wife and children are in fine health, despite their early arrival.."
Eric breathed a sigh of relief, and interrupted, "If they are fine, why can't I see them, and why do all your staff have a terrified look on their faces when I ask whats going on?". "The birth of your children was a rather unusual event, Mister Jettstar. Aside from the fact that your wife delivered more babies that was thought possible, without scientific intervention, there were unexpected breed variations among your children. I have placed your family in maternity isolation, not because I am worried about their health, but their privacy."
Ophelia signaled one of the doctors behind the isolation window and continued explaining. "My specialty is genetics, Mister Jettstar, I have worked alongside all the known sentient breeds in Sim Nation, including the hidden races that prefer the world does not know of their existence. Among your children are examples of those hidden races, including my own.".
Eric stood silently trying to absorb all of this information, 'Hidden races? what was she talking about'. "But we know vampires exist, what are you talking about?", Eric asked his frustration beginning to emerge again.
"Yes, the greyish skin, the pointy ears, most people assume I am a vampire, but I am something else.", Ophelia said, removing her dark glasses. "I have threatened the staff with unemployment, and worse, because one of your children is somehow of my race, and we go to great lengths to blend in and remain a hidden race."
When Natalie emerged from the isolation unit, the administrator pressed a small computer memory storage device into his hand. "This is information that you and your wife will need regarding some of your more unusual children.", Ophelia said quietly as she turned to leave.
Eric took his wife's hands, in this moment she looked both more beautiful than ever, and more tired than ever. "I am so sorry I missed this, I came as soon as I could..", Eric began. "Shh, I know.", said Natalie. "Something magical happened, but none of that is important right now, meet out babies.", Nat quieted her husband as the nurses began parading the newborns past the viewing window.
"The administrator wants us to stay for a week to keep an eye on them because they came early, and because of their differences.", Natalie said quietly. Eric hugged his wife, "I will make sure the I am back from the next mission in time to help you all come home!", he vowed.
Eric's rank as a flight instructor was used as a cover to get into Egypt.
His waitress slipped him a coded message. "Have you visited the Sphinx yet Effendi? Despite the heat, midday is the most fortunate time to be there.", the waitress said quietly.
Eric arrived at five minutes to Midday, the place appeared to be deserted, he moved into the shade and waited.
Eric resisted his fathers continual nudging to transfer to the international spy divisions, his heart had always been, and still was, set on joining the astronaut program. All of his life he had dreamed of being one of the elite few who traveled beyond the worlds atmosphere, and lived in one of the orbiting science stations.
A babies gentle cry interrupted his reverie. Now that he had a family, he only wanted a few quick visits to those stations. Eric opened his eyes, Natalie had just finished feeding one of the boys and was attempting to rock him to sleep, another of his sons lay curled up in his arms. Eric gently rose from the rocking chair and headed for Natalie's brothers old room. He needed to swap the sleeping one in his arms for the noisy one, before they all awoke.
"You are hovering again.", Natalie informed Lil. "I can't help my self Nat, I watched my soulmate raise a son, I watched her sons wife raise triplets, and now I see you trying to raise all of these sprouts, even with Eric and I helping, you are wearing out Natalie, you need to have a nap before you pass out. I'm worried about your health Nat."
Natalie gently put her finger in her son's mouth, and popped her nipple out of his mouth, she hated the idea of putting her little ones on bottles so soon, but she could only produce so much milk. Natalie crept out of the nursery and sat on the couch for a rest in one of those rare moments when all of her babies were sleeping.
Authors notes:
This chapter could have been written so many different ways. I made several attempts at creating a set to use as an operating room, in which I had intended to introduce each child as they arrived, (with name, sex, race, traits, etc.). Eventually I gave up on that idea, mostly due to lack of suitable CC. Because of that, every bit of dialogue that I had come up with had to be modified to not reveal the actual number of babies until the very end. Similar to the previous generation, I'm having trouble focusing on the heir and partner, when there are other characters who are more involved in the epic background plot, (The epic background plot is not the key feature of this story, and writing it without making it the focus is constantly challenging.)
Why so many babies? When I first decided to do a RLC, I only had Pets and SN, and I had made the decision between reading the rules and first using the roller that every generation in my RLC would include a pet, and by the time I had reached the final chapter of the final generation, that the Jettstar Family would have included, by birth or partnership, one of each playable life forms. And then I bought all the other Expansions on sale, and suddenly I had extra life forms to slip in.
Several RLC's that I have read have ended early due to corruption or real life interference, and some have had extended hiatus. I have several concerns that this may happen to me, so between exploring the new expansions, fiddling with the wide arrangement of tools from NRAAS.NET, and constantly bloating my game with new CC, I decided to push up the schedule of the only immutable, unbendable, unbreakable rule of my RLC, and bring on the life states as soon as possible, rather than planning them for generations than may never get written.
Clearly, I am quite willing to bend, warp, twist, and even break any of the RLC rules if I need to tell a story.
I decided to do this, not because I thought the RLC would challenge my sims 3 player skills, but because my story telling skills have declined over the years due to infrequent use and personal reasons.
Of course the game has chucked a wobbler with Imaginary friends, despite them spawning none of my children actually receive their dolls due to some, as yet unknown error. Hopefully I can fix or bypass this soon.
I split this title over two chapters because (A) there is so much to tell you, and (B) Taco babies are not overly photogenic. As such I don't want to write the second half of the chapter, until the children age up, and can show some individualism, at the moment they all look identical except for skin color. :P
As always, I can (mostly) see the whole picture, if my attempting to describe it to you clearly has failed in some way, or some detail has been lost in translation, please ask in comments. I am more than happen to clarify or obfuscate!
