Chapter 31: Time Travels

Violet called Lyle to join her in her great-grandmother Allyson's old star trailer. Lyle's grandmother Sofia Carlton used to have one just like it, and he'd spend hours playing in it as a kid.

Violet's has some more adult games planned for him.

Late at night, ghostly noises haunt the house. Lyle was working in his office and came out to investigate the sounds coming from the hallway. He'd lived here long enough to see all manner of objects be possessed by the spirits of Violet's ancestors, but finds it strange one would choose a stack of Shadow McDermott's spirit jars to inhabit. Lyle holds Shadow McDermott in great admiration, and has often hoped to meet his ghost, but has yet not been so lucky.

The ghost that emerges from the jars is Shadow, as Lyle hoped.


"I'm your biggest fan!" Lyle introduces himself with a squee.

Violet and Lyle have a son. Since she choe to take Lyle's family name, Carlton, when they married, Violet gives her son her family name as a first name, calling him Dermott.

Lyle has been getting deep into the physics of space and time, and has finally come up with what he believes is a time travel device. Wouldn't the science facility love to have a hand in his research! But Lyle experiments for his own pleasure, and not for profit or even the advancement of Simkind. Fearless and ready to try anything, Lyle leaps into the shining void, counting on his calculations to be correct.
Luckily for himself and his family, his calculations are spot on, and he has some adventures in the future and still gets home before dinner.

Briar Rose grows into a child. Except for the eyes, which are her father's, she strongly resembles her mother.

She quickly makes friends with Drew Meredith-Coddle, visiting his house after to school to do homework and hangout together.

Dermott becomes a toddler. He's his father's image in every way.

Lyle continues to take travels through time. Sometimes he gets himself involved in dangerous situations from which he's barely able to escape alive.

The doors close behind him, nothing has followed him back to his time. What a rush!

Oregon is complacent when the reaper comes for her. Her brother Carter died the day before, and she didn't expect her life to go on much longer.

She joins her ancestors in the yard, her gravestone decorated with an expensive make up case.

With the family in mourning, Briar celebrates her birthday with just a cake and her immediate family.

The older she gets, the more she looks like her mother. No one has ever mentioned the name Beau Merrick to her, or told her that Jeromy is not her real grandfather, but anyone who saw her could instantly tell that she's a Merrick, resembling all his daughters.

Drew has become a teen as well, and Briar invites him over to celebrate their mutual birthdays.

"Your eyes are such a pretty, unusual color," she says, "Like amethysts."


Drew blushes and stammers.

He's not the courageous type; he's the opposite in fact, so Briar makes the advances she's knows he's trying to muster the courage to make, and suggests they go steady.

Lyle plays with fire.

Not surprisingly, fire burns. But still, what a rush!

Dermott becomes a child. He looks so much like father, one might suspect Lyle had cloned himself. But Lyle swears he's never conducted any kind of genetics experiments, he's strictly been playing with the space-time continuum.

Dermott is a genius like his father, and pwns his grandfather at chess.

Lyle has never had any respect for the public school system, so he makes sure his genius children are getting proper educations, reading outside materials and questioning everything they are taught.

Having mastered Logic, Handiness and Inventing, Lyle has found a  new science to experiment with, botany. NOT gardening, botany.

As a gamer, Lyle is strictly a PC elitist, but he's willing to stoop to the console level to play with his children. The parent/child bonding is more important than his standards of gaming. But he can't help expressing some of his scorn for the medium.


"This is completely dumbed down! The PC version is far superior."


"Dad, just take care of the darkspawn mobs while I go after the Archdemon."


Challenge Notes:
Generation 7 goals are complete. Violet reached level 10 in the culinary career and maxed cooking. She achieved her LTW to read all recipes.
Lyle maxed Logic, Inventing and Handiness (which also achieved his LTW).
They have their 2 children, so all that's left is to get them to YA.
I also have No Strangers, never a problem for me. And I've been voluntarily living by the Live Your Trait rule even though I didn't roll it, using Violet's Neurotic as the trait. That's been fun and successful.
Briar's traits are Artistic, Genius, Bookworm and Hopeless Romantic.
Dermott's traits are Genius, Loves the Outdoors and Good Sense of Humor. He's been getting random traits, which I do for my spares pretty often.
Interesting tidbit, my family is still living on the veggies grown in generation 1. No one has took up gardening since Zoe. We have to buy eggs, meats and cheeses, because Zoe only got the egg & cheeses growing opportunity as an elder, so never grew that much of those, and never got the meat opportunity before she died. 
Lyle kept rolling the wish to learn gardening, so I indulged him. I let Lyle get whatever he wants. Except for a career, of course. And rolls tons of wishes to get into a career. He's rolled a wish to get into every possible career available. 
Briar's boyfriend Drew is Artistic, Klepto, Coward, and I forget the fourth trait. Artistic will help with his author career, at least. His coward trait will be fun in my house full of ghosts.