End of Days (An Apocalypse Sims 3 Fanfic)
Still debating on whether to beat my muse over the head or not. Here's attempt number 2. _____________________________________________________________ End of Days - Prologue Sunset Valley – The E...
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Sunset Valley – End of Days
Chapter One – "Laissez-Faire" - Part III
River's Journal (Week of June 18 - 24)
Bebe, Phil and Clarissa were over in the park making sure that they were able to fish in order to supplement our foodstuffs. Fish would be necessary for us in the coming days as the news grew more dire. The news was telling us that Soviet bloc T-72s and T-64s were massing on the East German border with West Germany. And the Soviet Union was massing for an all-out push through the Fulda Gap. It appeared as though the Soviets were deciding that now was the opportune moment to take over Europe and NATO was not going to allow for that since elements of the V Corps of the US Army, VIIIth Armored Division and the XIVth Armored Division were moving their M1A1s into place to combat the 8th Guards, and the 1st Guards Tanks of the Soviet Army. This was not a great time to be nonchalant about the world situation.
Meanwhile Mikhail Gorbachev was doing his level best to rout the hardliners in his cabinet who were making preparations to go to war. The Soviet General Secretary did not want war with the West. But his top military leaders did. Unfortunately, it was a matter of who was in a position to make decisions and that would ultimately dictate where the chips fell.
We knew that Sunset Valley was a primary target since we had a military base not far north of where we were. CFB Gnome was the primary launch site for Canadian Space Exploration missions that weren’t out of Cape Canaveral down in the United States. That meant potentially that one of the big ones was headed our direction. And they probably wouldn’t hesitate to hit our seat of government power either. Sunset Valley’s city hall was bound to be turned into a baked charnel house.
With all this, all Haruo and I had were each other and despite the ominous news, we were doing what we could to remain focused on the task at hand which was to get underground as quickly as possible. Haruo was running himself ragged trying to accumulate seeds that we were going to need and fish that we were going to be able to eat.
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We would discuss things over a campfire while the others were off doing what they were doing. I knew I was in denial of the events happening half a world over and so were the others. But I knew that Haruo was focused on a goal for the first time in his life and that also galvanized me into action. We had no other choice. I could see the rest of the town had decided their own fate. Nobody was doing anything other than to say, “We don’t know what’s going to happen and by the time it happens, it’s going to be too late to do anything about it anyways.” Haruo, on the other hand, was focused on our survival in the days ahead and that he was going to make sure that he came out the other end of this pending disaster unfazed and intact. He was a far-cry from the indecisive, hen-pecked individual that had escaped his mother’s clutches.
I knew the rest were doing what they could and well, that was all that anyone could ask of them. As long as they didn’t descend into caterwauling madness due to the mental strain that was imposed on all of us, things would keep moving forward.
Our early morning meetings were designed to make the most efficient use of our day’s activities towards getting us prepared for what was to come. And Haruo was relentless in his goals. If we were not doing our part, he made it very clear as to what needed to happen for it to improve. I had never seen him like this, but I could feel the desperation behind it, the attitude that “I’m not going to die in this and neither are the people who are closest to me.”
We ate and got busy with the things we had to do. Clarissa headed to the Falls just over the hill from the military base to do some fishing while Phil went dumpster diving to look for usable furniture to give us something to sit on when we were tired. Haruo had to go talk to someone regarding the plans for the site that we were going to build our bunker on. Even though we had the impending doom to contend with, we still had to follow government regulations and building codes. Ridiculous though the bureaucracy may seem, it would serve to protect us in the end. Haruo, on the other hand, decided that he was building over and above code regulations. When the code dictated two feet for wall thickness, he insisted on four feet with inlaid lead sheeting to keep our shelter from radiation seepage from the outside.
I appeared to be coming down with a massive case of hay-fever. It was annoying, but one had to just work through it.
When Haruo came back, he had a great big pot, I recognized it as Lord Vladimir’s Conjuring Cauldron. He did say that on the other side, we could use it as a big pot for stew. But he also did some conjuring for gemstones. That was going to be our quick way to make money enough to build a bunker quickly. If we could get some very valuable gemstones, we could get them cut quickly and make some money on consignment.
Sue Scotch over at Aleister’s had gotten her hands on a RBG Gem Cutter which was an advanced gem cutting machine that also smelted metals. It was far more advanced than the Gem-U-Cut which helped matters immensely insofar as profit. And she’d already gotten back some of the money that she’d spent for it because it wasn’t cheap. Frankly, it cost §50,000.00 and that was a huge chunk of money to spend on such a machine.
Towards the late afternoon, early evening, Clarissa, Phil and Bebe came back and then headed across the street to the park to do some fishing to make sure that our stockpiles were large enough to make sure we had enough to eat while we were stuck in the bunker. I informed Haruo that we may have to use some of that money in order to make sure that we topped up our meat-stocks.
Towards nightfall, Haruo did some more conjuring to see what gemstones we could get and hopefully we would have enough that we could start building.
Sunset Valley – End of Days
Chapter One – "Laissez-Faire" - Part IV
River's Journal (Week of June 18 - 24)
We were exhausted to the point where we all fell asleep rather quickly, the tents weren’t much more comfortable than sleeping on open ground but at least it provided a layer between us and the grass fleas which seemed to love quite a number of us and it made it very itchy. We found that we were scratching constantly to try and deal with the bites that we had received from them.
Morning was early. Going to sleep at around 8:45PM meant that we were up at four in the morning. The sun doesn’t come up until at least five in the morning so we still had an hour of pre-dawn and well, Haruo was up the earliest of all of us. At least as far as I knew since he was quiet slipping out of our tent.
I soon followed after he headed out to do some hunting to fill our meat-stocks. He was getting better at it and as such, was able to nail down quite a few steaks. Don’t ask me what animals they came from, but at least it was meat that we could utilize after some good solid cooking over the camp fire. We made sure that the meat was well-done.
We had more immediate concerns than the pending war in Europe and the potential for it to spark into actual conflict. Namely the fact that we needed to gather enough money to build us a deep subterranean bunker well out of the blast zone. We’d already known that Sunset Valley was a target for a nuclear attack, due to the military base’s proximity, so what we needed to do was protect ourselves.
Bebe and Clarissa were next up and got themselves breakfast from the make-shift fridge that Phil had managed to cobble together from stones and an old refrigerator that no longer had a door. Somehow even though it appeared as though Phil was a few bricks short of a full-load, he was a whiz when it came to making things work. For that we were eternally grateful. At least, if anything, it kept our perishables cold.
The sun rose on a rather cloudy day, but like most summer days, the morning mist and haziness cleared to bright sunshine. It was far better than rain as far as I was concerned which was mostly what consisted of British Columbia weather in the spring-time. At least rain during the summer was warm, but you didn’t want to be wet in the mornings. Mornings were still chilly above the 49th Parallel even at the height of middle of June.
Clarissa headed down to Central Park to do some fishing. Luckily for her, she was able to make some catches that stocked up our fish in preparation for the long sojourn in what would become our bunker. We would probably have no access to food and we would have no choice but to rely on fish stocks that we had in order to get us through the lean times, which meant that we had to fish enough for us to have proper fish breed-stock so that we wouldn’t run out midway through waiting for the radiation from all-out nuclear war to clear. Hopefully the Warsaw Pact wouldn’t be sadistic enough to resort to using territory-denial weapons such as salted nuclear arms (nuclear weapons laced with cobalt 59 that when detonated would release large amounts of gamma-radiation emitting Cobalt 60).
When Haruo came back from hunting he set about doing some conjuring with Lord Vladimir’s Conjuring Cauldron again. I had warned him about conjuring too much but, of course, males are stubborn and bull-headed and well, he rearranged his brain-cells again when he impacted the ground. Out of exhaustion thanks to conjuring too often, I assume.
When he recovered consciousness, he gathered up all the gemstones that he’d conjured and headed over to see Sue at Aleister’s in order to cut the gemstones and consign them. Evidently once five o’clock post-meridiem rolled around, the additional money that we’d received from the sales of the consigned cut gems was enough to purchase several new items that we were going to need in order to make more money.
Clarissa decided to take on the mantle of family alchemist. Conjuring and alchemy had a rather sordid reputation in the past with a lot of fakery, however, somehow, Lord Vladimir’s Conjuring Cauldron and Aleister’s Alchemy Station actually worked. How that collates with the Law of Conservation of Mass or the First Law of Thermodynamics dictating that an object cannot be created from nothing and if deconstructed, that said object would have to be reduced to components whose sum is equal in mass. Yet things were being created from nothing when the conjuring cauldron was utilized. Rudolf Clausius and William Thomson would be spinning in their collective graves.
The rest of the week went much like the previous days. We did what we had to. Some of us fished, some of us hunted and the rest tried to utilize the new items that Haruo bought so that we would have a leg up on what came down the turnpike. And Haruo’s cousin Masaharu joined us and I could see that Bebe was immediately smitten. Hopefully it works out better for her than the guy who dumped her in middle-school. None of us have forgiven Jay yet and probably never will.
Nice to see you posting your epic stories on here @NikkeiSimmer 😃
You getting the hang of it? 😉
Me? Almost! 😅
@emorrill- I dunno, some of the formatting conceptualizations are kinda weird here, no offense, @EA_Cade 🤣 But I'm gonna try to work within it and try to understand it. I seem to be getting there. Oh by the way, I LOVE the Horizontal line feature - makes it easy to separate things when it comes to stories...from responses. ~high-five~
I make reference in this section of Chapter One to some historical events. Those of us who have lived through this will recognize it. Forgive me, I'm Gen X...I'm getting old I tend to ramble. 🤣
Sunset Valley - End of Days.
Chapter One – "Laissez-Faire" - Part V
River’s Journal - June 25 -July 1st, 1989
Thank the Watcher, the bunker was done in record time. It appeared that one day we had a big vacant empty lot, the next a large bunker was taking shape and it would ultimately keep us safe since the excavation of the bunker had lowered the surface of our lot deep into the ground which a wall and a concrete ceiling reinforced with steel rebar of multiple layers. This meant that radiation wouldn’t get in to flood the main surface area with contamination.
The floor of our surface had been sunk thirty feet with brick and concrete forming the walls that surrounded us. From there the ground surface would allow us to plant our harvestables. Our fish on the other hand would be subject to living their lives in a large pool of water that would be our breeding ground for aquaculture. At least that would make sure that we had a good variety of foodstuffs to keep us all fed.
We also managed to get two sets of dairy cows and four hen-houses into the space that was required. Plus we had additional space if necessary to move the cows to if they bred – we’re still trying to figure out how to breed the cows without the intervention of a bull. Because if there is one, it certainly isn’t apparent to us where exactly it is. Hopefully we’ll be able to snag a bull before we close up...and seal ourselves in to wait out the radiation. Or we may just have to genetically engineer cows and chickens to replenish our feed-stocks.
Our garden got a boost with donations of plant-stock in order to save them from extinction. So we have a lot of things that we have to do in order to make certain that these plant species survive. And with the conjuring cauldron and being able to conjure up necessary items to plant, with some luck, hopefully we should be able to make certain that these plants will become hardy enough to survive once we return to the surface.
Meanwhile, up topside, while we were digging in to the bunker, the rest of Sunset Valley went along in what appeared to us to be ignorant bliss or just trying to not think about the impending heating up of the war in Europe. Everyone else in town appeared to go about their daily business as if the war did not exist across the Atlantic. The news however discussed China making preparations for war against the Soviet Union if the Soviets were going to kick-off against the West. China, as insular and Marxist as they were, didn’t want any part of a war against the West, but if they were about to get annihilated, their viewpoint was in the interests of either sitting and standing idle while nuclear weapons were lobbed in their direction, or take out their enemies both the Soviets and the West, then they would launch in a last-ditch effort to remove both threats and go down fighting.
Day after sunny day passed as we worked down in the bowels of the bunker. Clarissa chose to learn alchemy, while Masaharu worked on potions and Bebe although she was a technophobe decided to work on her science skills. That was rather astounding to say in the least since the science station was highly technical and technology-related.
Phil on the other hand decided to tackle robotics which he had heretofore shown no interest in technology related matters. Yet he took to it like a fish to water. And was making nanites and trait chips like nobody’s business.
Bebe was learning science at the science station, irradiating bugs and making other scientific discoveries which surprisingly didn’t leave her too stressed with learning something that she was previously scared of. But at least it certainly helped matters as finances would be necessary in order to subsist in the post-apocalyptic society that we would be facing. And Bebe, bless her for overcoming any discomfort that she had in using that machine, stuck to it and learned as much as she could to the point where she could clone objects from samples. She was a trooper for doing that.
Masaharu kept at it producing one potion after another without failure. He decided to make multiple sleep potions to help us all maximize our waking hours. He also ended up trying his hand at conjuring like my boyfriend did, but he realized too late that the floor was as hard as it appeared. It was surprising with how hard he’d hit the floor that he’d escaped giving himself a solid concussion.
We used our body-clocks to determine what the time was. We didn’t have the benefit of seeing the sky outside. For all we knew it could be daylight out, but we went to sleep when our bodies were tired and got up when they weren’t. It appeared that we’d all paired off unofficially. Of course, I had no eyes for anyone else other than Haruo and he was the same towards me as a mate, so we both slept in the same bed.
Bebe and Masaharu paired off too and slept together.
And well, I don’t know what Clarissa sees in Phil, but the two of them were together as well. Phil, of course, being our robotics expert as well as our chef was someone one doesn’t insult. When he can make things that are supposed to defend our bunker as well as cook our food, we make absolutely certain that we are on his good side. You don’t bite the hand that feeds you.
(to be continued)
Sunset Valley - End of Days.
Chapter One – "Laissez-Faire" - Part VI
River’s Journal - June 25 -July 1st, 1989
Phil had made us all some breakfast calzones. And we ate those. And they were delicious. And in fact, Phil had done quite a bit of research, a first for him, since he when we were in school, was not one for studying. But knowing that we faced at minimum a month to six months in the bunker depending on how severe the nuclear fallout was, whenever the conflict happened, we needed to make sure that we had sources of, as he said, “We need Vitamin D...if we don’t want to end up with a raging case of scurvy.” Someone was listening during history class.
It wasn’t too long after that Phil made a breakthrough and constructed our first plumbot. Phil called him F3L-1X or Felix for short. He was our stocky heavy duty plumbot that would be part body-guard, part conjurer. The main reason behind this was that Phil suspected, as was soon borne out, that Felix would be incapable of wearing himself out while conjuring, unlike my boyfriend, who would practically pass out, risking severe concussion, after five conjurings. Felix could, without fail, conjure repeatedly for as long as his battery held out which was only consumed by regular activity during the course of the day. The conjuring cauldron had no effect on him. So he would be the one providing gemstones from now on and he would be the one going outside the bunker to be selling said gemstones.
We’d had multiple discussions on what we could do to ensure that supply lines were still available after everything went to hell in a handbasket. Haruo’s solution was to bring the storekeepers into our bunker and have them keep the supply lines running. We needed a consignment person to take our gemstones; a storekeeper to sell our harvestable wares to as well as a bookseller. We would also conspire to bring in a relics salesperson who could provide us with the international relics that we could utilize as bargaining chips when we met up with other survivors. There were a lot of things to take into consideration as we prepared for the unthinkable.
At the start, Felix would use either my bike or my boyfriend’s however we decided that it would be best if we got him his own and we splurged a bit on that because we got him a hoverbike that he could ride. It was much faster than our two-wheeled form of locomotion.
“We need to make sure that we have a means of transferring our gemstones into money…” my boyfriend stated to Bebe who was chowing down on her breakfast calzone around mid-afternoon. “Even if we don’t have a functioning world any more, we still need a system of barter to be able to trade between groups of survivors. Even if we have no use for gemstones, others may find it useful as a form of currency and we can get the necessary supplies we need.”
“I suppose so. And as long as I can clone the gemstones that you conjure, I’ll be able to make sure that we have that ready currency to be able to barter.” was Bebe’s ready response to Haruo’s concerns.
I retreated to Haruo’s and my bedroom to paint while Bebe went directly to the science station to irradiate a ladybug.
Haruo went downstairs to go milk the cows and collect the eggs.
From some of the exterior camera shots to keep the security of the bunker, we could note that there was one heck of an electrical storm going on outside. In the news evidently a woman had gotten hit by lightning. Evidently she was Pauline Wan. I didn’t know her personally, but I knew her by her reputation.
Next morning, Haruo went out to do some hunting and I set out to sell some of my paintings. My first sale was to my old room-mate when I was living with my mother. Evidently she and her daughter are doing well. Molly was now with Leighton Sekemoto and they evidently were happy together because evidently, Molly was in the family way.
After spending some time with her and with my mother just chatting, I headed back up to the bunker as the sun was aiming to set.
It felt good to be home and be with my boyfriend.
