Chapter 20: Into the Future

Today is Ida's graduation; Marlin is a proud boyfriend.

Marlin thinks it's cute that the only time she looks calm is when she's asleep.

Not that he's watching her sleep, of course.

"I'll leave through the portal right after graduation, so I can come home sooner," Ida promises when it's time for her to go. "I'll only be gone a few days at most."

"I'll still miss you," he grumbles. They embrace. "Congratulations on graduating," Marlin adds as she leaves.

Graduation goes very well for Ida - she didn't realize she was doing so well in school, but she is named Valedictorian and Most Likely to Save the World. 

Ida's very happy to have graduated at last. She tosses her diploma, and someone's grandfather tries to catch it with his mouth.

She heads straight to the junkyard from city hall, not even bothering to change out of her robes.

"Uh, okay, so just step into this bright light here..." The feeling of being pulled through time is quite startling.

And then...

"Wow," she breathes, staring around her. "I'm really visiting the future... oh my god!!"

Emit greets her as she steps away from the portal. He gives her a few tips on how things in the future works, as well as a jetpack and a hoverboard. Ida immediately takes to the air.

She's so excited and distracted by the exhilaration of flying that she forgets Emit's instructions on how to land properly.

Oooh, that looked like it hurt. It's all right, brush it off, brush it off...

Ida feels a little grumpy after that epic fail. Not to mention nauseous.

Even the elevator is rejecting her. :(

She perks up after coming face to face with a plumbot for the very first time. She saw some on her brief first visit, but never up close. Anyway, that was a different, more distant future and these plumbots are very different.

"Oh my god!! It's you! I mean, I don't know you, but you're like.... a plumbot! A real plumbot, and stuff! Can I take a look inside you? Ohmygod. Please?"

Ida excitedly whips out the futuristic screwdriver Emit gave her for this very purpose.

After studying the plumbot's trait chips and internal mechanics, she closes it up again and goes to thank it, but it leaves in an angry huff and refuses to speak with her. Apparently it's rude to touch other people's plumbots like that; Ida didn't know.

There's a lot about the future she doesn't know.

She asks around for a place she can go to take bot-building classes, and gets instructions on how to fly to a place called the Bot Arena. She decides the second try can't possibly go worse than the first, and puts on the jetpack again.

Oh, no. Not again...

The bot arena is huge, but despite her second failure in a row, Ida will not be intimidated. She signs up for the first available class and spends several hours learning all about how to make plumbots.

The first lesson is on how to locate and collect nanites. Nanites are insect-like robots and are an important component in almost any plumbot. Ida breathes a sigh of relief that she remembered to bring her father's Collection Helper. The little things fascinate her endlessly, and she spends most of the day and night collecting all the different types.

Collecting nanites is not much harder than catching bugs that can be found in Ida's time.

At night, Ida goes back to the community living center to find that there are no beds available. Or are they called sleep pods?

It's several hours before she is able to distract this Sim long enough to take her place in bed, but the waiting makes revenge taste all the sweeter.

The next day, Ida visits the Bot Emporium, where there are plumbots for sale and even a Bot-building station designed for public use. Ida is very eager to try it out.

The sheer number of trait blueprints and design templates saved in the machine is overwhelming; Ida can barely understand any of it. She needs time to sit down and really study it, and she can't do that here. She needs a Bot-building station of her own.

The plumbot manning the cash register is friendly and understanding. It happily sells her some more nanites, blank processors, and her very own bot-building station.

"Yes!!!"

On her last day in the future, Ida decides to do some sightseeing. She hops on her hoverboard and heads to Legacy Park.

Forgot to put on clothes, oops!

Here she's reading the inscription on a statue dedicated to the Pioneer of Plumbotics, the woman who first created a plumbot with sentience. Ida is awestruck and inspired, and wonders if one day she can possibly be good enough at plumbotics to make a sentient plumbot as well. It seems an unrealistic goal for now, but maybe someday...

While walking around, Ida notices a house with the words "Wan Family Residence" on the mailbox. Marlin's ancestors? she thinks incredulously, and goes to check it out.

A woman meets her at the front door. They stare at each other for a long moment, before the stranger pulls Ida into a unexpected, but warm hug. 

"You're my ancestor!"

Ida is sort of dumbfounded. "You're my descendant? How do you know? And wait, why is your name Wan, then? You're not saying..." Realization hits her like an anvil. "Oh... wow, that's......"

"I know you from the portraits, of course," Emily tells her. "You married into the Wan family, obviously! Well, I guess you haven't, yet. But you will! Otherwise, we wouldn't exist."

"But, okay, but, just listen," says Ida. "I'm not getting married. Not for a very long time, at least. Yeah, I love Marlin, I want to spend my life with him, but marriage? I don't.... it's not.... I just graduated from high school, for pete's sake!" Ida is beginning to freak out.

Emily just smiles sunnily at Ida. "Well, you'll change your mind! You have to get married early, how else would you have five children?"

"Five?!?!"

"Yes! Two boys, and then a set of triplet girls. It's all in the family history books. Would you like to see them?"

"NO!" Ida is terrified. Five children? She doesn't even know if she wants one. This is all too much, too sudden. She has to get out of here.

"Uh... I have to go... You know, time traveler stuff, I'm very busy... yeah... bye!" Ida all but runs out the door.

Emily: "Was it something I said?"

Ida realizes she's been in the future too long; three days is kind of a long time, when your lifespan is less than a hundred days. She wonders if Marlin misses her a lot; she hopes so. She certainly misses him. She flies straight back to the portal, suddenly desperate to see her family again.

"Okay, you... take me home now."

She steps into the light, feeling the now-familiar tug-and-pull of time travel, and tries desperately not to forget all about Emily Wan and her creepy certainty about Ida's future.

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Notes -

Argh, I'm having major writer's block these last few days, sorry if this chapter is crummy. At first I was like, I've gotta make it good enough to publish, but then nothing was getting written, so I focused more on just getting it done. So.. yeah.