Chapter 56: The Past is Now Your Future

It's been a long time since anyone in the family has spent time in museum Rex Enmity built. But there have been complaints lately of strange noises coming from the attic, so Phoenix, as the heir to the Enmity  fortune. goes to check it out, bringing Emilio along with her.

There's nothing in the attic but a bunch of crates, and some strange metal device, the size of a phone booth.

'What the hell is that?' Emilio asks.

"Not a clue," Phoenix answers, "All the other gadgets on display downstairs are inventions by my however many greats grandmother Corinne. Maybe this is something she made that Rex never found  place for."

"It looks broken," Emilio observes, noting the smoke and sparks emitting from the front panel.

"It's making a popping noise," Phoenix says, "But I doubt anyone can hear that from downstairs. It definitely doesn't explain the complaints." She pulls out her handy screwdriver (she's never without her travel size tool kit) and starts fiddling with the broken mystery machine.

"Are you sure you want to mess with that?" Emilio asks, cowering.

"Well, it's a hazard," Phoenix says, not stopping her work, "Those sparks could start a fire. Even if this isn't the source of the noises, it has to be fixed."

Once she gets it to stop smoking and sparking, Phoenix starts punching the keys on the panel. She wants to know what this thing is.

"Nix, I think we should leave it alone..." Emilio warns, not liking this situation one bit.

"Oooh," she gasps as the doors open, revealing a glowing, smoky light, "I bet this is what's making the noise."

"Nix, don't go in there!" Emilio cries, but he's too late, she's already gone. The door closes behind her.

"Nix, what have you done?" Emilio asks, "Come back!" Mere seconds after the doors close behind her, the machine makes a creaking groan, then it shakes and finally dies, once again emitting sparks and smoke. "Nix! Nix!" Emilio call after repeatedly as he tries to pry open the doors with his fingers.

The doors won't open, and though he waits for hours in this old attic, Phoenix never returns.

Phoenix stepped into the glowing portal, and stepped out into a frozen tundra. The prehistoric man she saw there was a good indication that she had traveled back to the Ice Age. Was the strange device a time machine, then?

Before she could speak to the cave man, staring at her in mute wonder, there was a horrible creaking groan, a thunderous boom, and the glowing light surrounded her again. When it dissipated, there was silence, and sunshine. The cave man was still there, but the ice was gone.

She knew this place. It was Sunshine Pond, one of her favorite fishing spots.

The cave man hunkered down defensively as she approached. No doubt he was frightened by all the noise and lights, and suddenly finding himself in an unfamiliar place. Phoenix was just glad they landed here, and not in the middle of Roth Square.

"Don't be afraid," Phoenix said soothingly, "I'm a friend."

"Ice is gone," the cave man observes, calming when she doesn't immediately attack, "Warm."

"This is Sunshine Pond," Phoenix says, "There's been...I seem to have inadvertently brought you out of your time and into mine. This is the future. Many, many years after your time."

His head tilts to one side, listening. He doesn't understand all of her words, and the words he does understand don't make much sense. "Fox," he says pointing to his chest in introduction.

"My name is Phoenix," she introduces herself. She has to get him back to the museum, back to the time machine, to get him back to his own time and place. But she can't just walk through town with a cave man, that would attract too much attention. She pulls out her cell phone to call Emilio; he must be wondering where she is. And, he can bring some clothes for Fox. She pushes the buttons, but her phone is dead. Maybe the time travel messed it up. "Wait for me here," she directs her new friend, "I'll be right back."

"I go with you," he says.

Phoenix sighs. "I need to...scout the area first. "she's trying to find an explanation he'd understand. "Wait for me here. It's safe here. Fish," she says, pointing to the pond.

Fox nods in agreement to her plan.

Please don't let anyone come here and see him, Phoenix prays silently. Sunshine Pond doesn't draw a lot of visitors, and she's counting on that to keep him out of sight until she can get him some clothes.

Phoenix runs through the fields to the street, heading toward home. She can grab some of her father's clothes and call Emilio from there. "I'm pretty sure there was a house right there," she thinks as she hits the sidewalk. This street is far more empty than she remembered it.

It's when she arrives 'home' that the differences in this place from the one she remembered become more obvious. Her family's house is gone, tress growing in its place like it never existed.

The consignment store is still across the street, so Phoenix goes in to ask the cashier what's going on. He's not the same cashier that usually works here, she notes.

"I'm looking for the Enmity house," she says, feeling ridiculous, "Do you know where it is?"

"Enmity house?" the cashier asks, "Oh, you mean that asshole Foster Enmity? Babe, you can totally better than that, you know."

"Foster Enmity?" Phoenix gasps. She knows that name, of course. He's one of her long dead ancestors. He built the house she lives in. The house that no longer exists.

"Yeah, you almost can't blame the guy for being an asshole, with such a stupid name," the cashier says, "My name's Shady, by the way. Shady Hicks. Why don't you forget that Foster asshole and let me take you out sometime?"

Phoenix excuses herself and gets away from Shady as fast as she can.

Sh starts to head out toward the houses on Nature Way, knowing that's where Foster Enmity and Carey Burden first lived, needing to see for herself. But before she turns down the street, she notices that the Hills Community center has a water slide that never used to be there, in place of the sandbox where she had played as a child. Sh goes to check it out, only to encounter Foster Enmity himself.

"Hey, baby, you new in town?" Foster leers at her, "Why don't you get into your bikini and slide with me?"

Phoenix is rescued from any further advances from her ancestor by Carey Burden, who introduces with much more class than his roommate. "My name is Carey. Carey Burden," he says, shaking her hand.

"I'm Phoenix...Roman," she says, taking her father's family name on the spot. Introducing herself as an Enmity would raise questions she'd rather not deal with.

Claiming to have urgent business elsewhere, Phoenix gets away from Foster and Carey as fast as she can. It's become obvious that the time machine fell short a few generations when bringing her back to her own time. Which means that her fsmily's museum and the time machine itself have not yet been built. How will she get the cave man back to his time, and get home herself?

Corinne Enmity has not yet been born, but Phoenix can think of one person alive in this time who might be able to help. So she heads up to Professor von Threadneedle's EcoDome. When the charred old woman invites her in, Phoenix immediately has doubts, but she follows the nutty professor inside. It's the only hope she has.

"I'm from the future, about 9 gnerations from now" Phoenix explains,  figuring the direct approach is best, "I got dropped here accidentally by a broken time machine. I also somehow picked up a stray cave man. I need to get him back to where he belongs, and get myself back home. Can you help?"

"From the future, you say?" the old professor asks, "Have they invented hover cars yet?"

"Well, no, but there's a hover bed."

"Hover bed? What use is that?"

"Not much, really. It's also kind of ugly,"Phoenix answers, "But, please, can we focus on getting me back to my time?"

"Have you ever heard of M Theory?" the professor asks.

"No, what has that got to do with anything?"

"See, there are multiple versions of the universe existing simultaneously. Every decision people make creates a split, a new version of the universe. In one you go left, the other, you go right. When you came to this place, your past, you created another universe, one that is no longer your past. The fact that you are here makes this universe a different place from the one that you were born in. To go forward in time now would bring you to a place similar to the one you came from, but not exactly the same. It might even be a place in which you were never born."

"So, you're saying I'm stuck here?" Phoenix asks, not quite grasping everything the Professor was rambling about, but enough to get the gist of it.

"Well, you don't  have to stay here," the professor says, ""But you can't go back to the exact time and place you came from."

"And what about the cave man?"

"Him too."

While he waits for Phoenix's return, Fox has a successful day of fishing.

Phoenix returns to Sunshine Pond just before sunset. "I brought you some clothes," she says, and helps Fox dress, showing him how to operate buttons and zippers. The clothes were stolen from a clothesline, and she pulled a torn up pair of sneakers from a trash can; Phoenix isn't carrying much cash, and her vast family fortune doesn't exist here.

She also trims up his hair with the scissors in her tool kit, which happily came with her.

"There," she says, brushing his hair back, "Just like my brother, Hawke."

"Hawk is a good name," Fox says, "Very strong."

Phoenix smiles sadly, missing her brother.

Phoenix gets a fire going in the pit, and they sit to roast Fox's catch.

Fire can be frightening and dangerous.

After they eat, Phoenix tries to break the bad news to her new friend. Explaining time travel to a cave man with a limited vocabulary is a difficult business.

"This isn't the time I was born in, but it's closer to my time than yours," she finishes, "We are both stuck here, and it's my fault you got dragged into this. So, I'll make sure you are taken care of, I promise."

"This is a good place," Fox says, "Many fish. No ice."

Phoenix smiles. At least he's not miserably upset by her news.

"But you must have family where you came from," Phoenix says, sitting on the ground beside him, thinking about her own family, and about Emilio, "You must want to go home to them?"

Fox looks up at the sky, his eyes sad, "It was a hard winter. Long, with no spring, no thaw. No food. People died. I was alone."

"I'm so sorry," Phoenix says. She'd never thought about how hard life could be, she'd always taken the availability of food and shelter for granted. But here she is, penniless and homeless, and yet still in a better position than Fox had been in during the Ice Age. At least they won't freeze to death, and fish are readily available.

Luckily, Sunshine Pond comes equipped with tents even in this universe, so they don't have to sleep on the grass. But they can't live like this forever, Phoenix thinks, tomorrow she'll have to see about getting a job.

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Challenge Notes:
Inspired by CDream's Dawson Diaries legacy, I used the time machine as a device to move my heir out of her time and into another. However, I didn't move Phoenix into a medieval (or Victorian, etc) past, but into a past that is technologically identical to the one she came from. Instead, I used it as a way to drop her into a place where she has no money and no family. Living the living in the past rule will come from her state of poverty.
I moved Phoenix into an empty 40x40 lot in a fresh copy of Riverblossom Hills (the new and improved version). I also moved Foster and Carey into a copy of their first house, and I moved in Roslyn McDermott and her bunch of roommates. I look forward to seeing what story progression does with that. :D
Phoenix is not a clone; she retains her skills and her personal inventory. She had only the 16,500 a single starter family comes with. I created Fox and moved him in with her, and I transferred the extra cash out. None of this is required, I could have taken all her family's cash, but I'm looking forward to starting from scratch on this roll. Her personal inventory is mostly her awards from school, her prom pic, some fish she caught, a few fruits. No car, no laptop, nothing technology.
I haven't shown the lot they own yet; they only own it because you can't really have homeless Sims. But they won't build a house there right away. For now, they live in the park. And since she rolled firefighter as a job, they'll be able to use facilities at the fire station.

For Perfectionist, I want to do the Handiness skill for Phoenix. Though that poses a challenge, as one of the challenges requires repairing 10 electronics/appliances. She managed 5 of those while a teen. I hope she get enough chances to break and repair these items at the fire station, and get Opportunities to repair other Sim's stereos, etc.
She could do the Athletic skill, but I really don't want her to put in 60 hours of strength training, because I don't want her to get that muscular, lol.

About cave man language: I am aware that in real life, whatever language people in the Ice Age may have been using is nothing like any of our modern languages, and if you did travel in time, you couldn't just slip into verbal communication. But, this is Sims, not real life. People in France, China and Egypt all speak the same Simlish as the Sims in your hometown, and, as a Ghost Hunter, your Sim is able to communicate with the ghosts of cave men and women, so I'm going with the idea that cave Simlish is pretty similar to modern Simlish, minus a lot of words for more modern objects and ideas.

Title is from a song lyric by Dead Can Dance.