The Sims 2 Presents: Foster's Valley!

[Cassini90125]

Foster's Valley - Season One Finale, Part One

This was the very last picture I took in the Valley before I went to Comic-Con 2007:



When I got home, the game refused to start and a months-long hell began. Maybe it's just as well; had Lita followed through with what she was about to do... well, never mind. We'll never know for certain.

Meet Dr. Werner von Kohl:



The doctor is the Valley's leading scientist, a man of learning and logic. On this particular night he was outside with his telescope, studying the stars as he does almost every night, when he saw something unusual appear out of nowhere:



Curious, he focused in on this odd thing and watched, with growing anxiety, as it plummeted through the sky and landed somewhere to the East of him, landing with a dull thud that shook the entire Valley. Werner quickly got into his car and drove to the site of the impact, where he saw something he could not explain, something corrupt and unnatural, something that did not belong here:



He called it... SecuROM.

It was then that the troubles started. The Valley was already suffering from corruption from other sources, problems that were only beginning to be understood at the time, but the presence of this new thing seemed to amplify the problems. The next day, Mr. Herriman became one of the first to feel the effects:



Doesn't look like much, just a man cleaning a toilet. Trouble is, he was locked into doing so; six straight hours, cleaning the bowl over and over. There were cases of children floating in midair, displaced from their seats yet seemingly unaware of it:



And what happened to Downtown... you be the judge:



That's right; the buildings are floating free, because the ground is gone. Here's another look:



Madame Foster looks over the center of town a few nights later; you can't see her face in this picture, but she is very worried. Worried, and afraid:



"What's happening to the Valley?" she whispers. "What's happening to us?" There is fear in her voice...

To be continued...

[Ignate]

Oh my, those are some serious glitches.
Although Werner has a pretty awesome telescope.

[antgirl1]

LOL SecuROM the triangular astroid thing. XDD

[Diamond Duchess]

SecuROM, space thing of evil!

Got some pretty weird (and neat looking) phenomena going on in Foster's Valley. What's gonna happen to the residents of Foster's Home and the other residents of the Valley? Only time will tell.

Btw, LOL at Mr. Herriman cleaning the toilet continuously for six hours! Poor Mr. Herriman; Frankie, however, may be pleased that it's one less thing she'll have to clean (I hope).

[Invader Bloo]

Here we go:


Black hair- Turn off
Blonde hair- Turn on
Brown hair- Turn on
Red Hair- Turn on
Custom Hair- Turn off
Grey Hair- Turn off
Fitness- Turn on
Fatness- Turn off
Cologne- Turn on
Stink- Turn off
Formalwear- Turn on
Swimwear- Turn on
Underwear- Turn off
Facial Hair- Turn on
Glasses- Turn off
Vampirism- Turn off
Make-up- Turn on
Full-face Make-up- Turn off

[Bloo2daMacs]

I'm assuming that after time passes, and it eventually becomes season two, we will have discovered that the SecuROM meteor has corrupted everything back to day one, and some space aliens from another dimension (AKA the NF members) have decided to take up living on this bizzare planet.

....

[Cassini90125]

Originally Posted by Invader Bloo

Here we go:

(List goes here)

Uh dude? Yeah, I only need two turn-ons and one turn-off. Plus the other info noted earlier.

Originally Posted by Bloo2daMacs

I'm assuming that after time passes, and it eventually becomes season two, we will have discovered that the SecuROM meteor has corrupted everything back to day one, and some space aliens from another dimension (AKA the NF members) have decided to take up living on this bizzare planet.

Let's find out...

Foster's Valley - Season One Finale, Conclusion

The entire Valley, in better times:



Foster's is the isolated house north of the center. There were no seasons when this pic was taken, and pets had only recently arrived in the neighborhood. The Valley had it's problems and it's glitches, sure, and it took forever to load, but it was managable. The corruption underlying everything was still there, however, and the arrival of SecuROM only exacerbated the problems:



This can't be good, not in any way. The houses in white must be freezing; the red ones were pulsating, looking like hot coals. It was pretty scary to see, both for me and the residents. One house eventually disintegrated entirely:



Those colors you see are the remains of the carpeting. Cheese, Louise, and their mother Barbara lived here; they moved into Foster's after this happened. This made no one happy, as it was now no longer possible to tell Cheese to go home; he was home. Even the Valley's residents were beginning to suffer the effects:



I've always thought Amanda had an ethereal beauty all her own, but not like this.

Panic began to set in after that. The residents knew they had to get out of the Valley; the problem is, they couldn't. There wasn't anywhere they could go. Downtown was a mess, and the University was closed to adults. Bluewater Village was still untouched but it was far too small to hold everyone. The situation was getting desperate when something new happened; SecuROM pulsed. A wave of energy flowed out of it, looking like the distorted air you see over a hot surface on a summer afternoon. And suddenly, every copying device in the Valley stopped working. Every computer, DVR, whatever, all dead.

"Why?" Frankie wondered aloud. "Why would it do that?"
"That, I believe, is why it is here," Werner answered her. "This alien thing, it's purpose is to prevent copying. Why it would do so, I do not know, but it does not work. I repaired my computer earlier in but a few hours. If SecuROM has come to prevent copying for some reason, it has failed."
Another wave of energy passed through everyone. Madame Foster smiled. "It's refreshing. Everytime it pulses I feel energized, like I've gained back a bit of my youth." She giggled. "Maybe we can learn to live with it."
"She's right, Werner," said Frankie. "It does give me a boost when it does that." She thought for a moment. "It's kinda weird. I mean, I feel refreshed but it takes me longer to do things, like the cooking and the cleaning. Doesn't make any sense, y'know? It's like I'm forgetting how to do things."
"Have you forgotten how to make IT?" Bendy asked, hopefully.
Frankie pointed to the stairs. "Homework. Now."
"Why? I'm just gonna forget it."
Frankie growled at him; Bendy retreated up the stairs.
"Hmm..." Werner grew thoughtful. "I too have felt both energized and forgetful. This means something. I must think on this for awhile. Excuse me for a bit." Werner went home to consult his books, leaving the Foster's crew to wonder what he was thinking about.

The following day, they found out, and it was not good. SecuROM was energizing them because it was aging them backwards. In the process of aging backwards, they were forgetting things they knew; their skills were deteriorating, their relationships were falling apart. Their memories were slowly being wiped clean. Because Sims can reproduce, SecuROM had targeted them as copying devices, and since it's purpose was to prevent copying at all costs, it was slowly forcing them back to childhood, to an age where they couldn't reproduce. But it was doing so indiscriminately; children were turning back into toddlers, toddlers into babies. In just a few more days, babies would be gone; they would have to be born all over again... if some way could be found to stop the process. But there didn't seem to be any way to do that.

"We've got to get out of here!" Frankie screamed. "We can't stop this thing and it's killing us!"
"And where do you propose we run to, Miss Frances?" Mr. Herriman said, his voice filled with anguish. "There's nowhere to go!"
"There may be a way out," Werner replied. All eyes turned to him.
"Well don't just stand there, boy," said Madame Foster. "Speak up!"
"We must move to another neighborhood-"
"Preposterous," Madame Foster scoffed. "There are no other neighborhoods!"
"Hear him out, grandma," Frankie said gently. "He's been right about everything so far."
Madam Foster sat down in a huff. Werner continued. "I will not bore you with the details of my research on parallel universes," he began. "What I will tell you is that I believe there is a place with no name, which is known only by this symbol." He whipped out his notebook and drew "F:". If we can locate a passageway into F:, it is my belief that we will pass through it and find ourselves in another neighborhood, a place free of corruption and SecuROM."
"Balderdash," said Madame Foster. "Where do you come up with these things? You've been spending far too much time with that telescope. Tell me why you believe this nonsense."
So he did. For the next hour, Werner explained everything he knew to Madame Foster and the rest of the house. He was very thorough. By the time he was done, he'd managed to convince her. The problem was, he had no idea where to find the passage to F:. Nor did anyone else.
"I guess all we can do is hope for a sign," was the best Madame Foster could come up with.

(To be continued in the next post... After I moderate the board and answer my PM's. )

[Invader Bloo]

Originally Posted by Cassini90125

Uh dude? Yeah, I only need two turn-ons and one turn-off. Plus the other info noted earlier.

D'OH!
Can you please PM it to an idiot....AKA me.

[Cassini90125]

So they waited for a sign. It wasn't necessary to wait, however, for Werner hadn't been completely honest with them. The truth was, he did know where the passage to F: could be found but hadn't told them. He was taking a huge gamble, and he knew it, but if it worked, if they delayed their departure long enough, SecuROM wouldn't just be their undoing; it would be their salvation.

Early in the history of the Valley there had been a pair of unfortunate events, one by design, the second by accident. Before there were any inhabitants in Foster's Valley a wave of energy had passed through it; Werner had no idea what the source was but he determined that it was meant to somehow cleanse the land, to prepare it for new life. It did so, but had inadvertently corrupted everything it touched. What effects it had he didn't know but it had certainly contributed to the neighborhood's instability. Everyone was leaving so it wasn't really an issue anymore. But the second event was far more serious; again, he was unable to determine the cause of the event, or even what it was supposed to accomplish, but it had resulted in a death. More than that, really; whoever had been killed had been erased, completely blasted out of existance. Everyone who knew the victim now had a hole in his or her memory; they knew it was there but since there was technically nothing there, they couldn't talk about it. It was a disjoined, unlinked memory, and it was one of the worst forms of corruption possible. And they could never escape it, because it was a part of them. The residents themselves were corrupted.

What had happened on that dark, tragic day, Werner didn't know. Every bit of research he did was to little avail. He knew it had effected a lot of people, including almost everyone at Foster's; only Wilt had escaped, but he had no idea why. He knew the event had centered largely on Foster's, and the erasure had probably happened there, too, yet strangely enough the hardest hit seemed to be the girl Louise, who lived halfway across the Valley. In fact, teens in general seemed to have been hurt more, corrupted more, than any other age group. It was bizarre; he doubted he's ever figure it all out. And now, into all this, SecuROM had dropped out of the sky on an unfathomable mission of it's own, slowly but surely reversing everyone's age and taking away their memories. And that, Werner knew, was the key. The timing was critical; everyone needed to stay in the Valley, in the presence of SecuROM, long enough for the hole in their memories to be wiped clean. And then they had to run for their lives before SecuROM finished them all. Madame Foster had decided they were going to wait for a sign, something to tell them where to find the passage to F:; Werner knew that trying to argue with the grand old lady was futile, and a lot of the Valley's residents listened to her. He needed to come up with something that everyone would take as the sign they were waiting for.

The moment came and went; SecuROM continued to send out it's pulses of energy, everyone aged in reverse a little further, and the memory hole was gone, So, unfortunately, were most of their other memories as well. Werner began to doubt his plan; he no longer had the skills necessary to create a fake sign to get everyone moving, and simply telling them what he'd done wasn't likely to be enough. He needed a miracle; everyone in the Valley needed a miracle. They got one. With time running out, Frankie stepped out of the house, worn and weary, for a breath of fresh air, and saw something in the nightime sky that she and the rest of the inhabitants of Foster's Valley would never forget:



At which point everyone panicked and ran in the opposite direction as fast as they could, to the imagined safety of the Northwest hills. Which, as fate would have it, was where Mac and Bloo found a network of caves that turned out to be the passage to F:.

Werner, however, stayed behind. Whatever intelligence had provided a sign that spectacular was probably going to do something else, too; he wanted to see what would happen next. Such is the nature of the scientific mind; always questioning, always curious. He hoped that whatever it did, getting rid of SecuROM was on it's agenda. He didn't have long to wait. Strange icons began appearing in the sky, probing the now deserted Valley with beams of colored light, seeming to search for something. Always the beams would hit SecuROM, and simply pass through; it was invisible to them. Lacking anything else to do, Werner gave names to the icons, names like Norton and McAfee. Finally, one he called A-Squared located SecuROM and then things got interesting. Other icons appeared and lashed out at SecuROM with much fiercer rays of light, fighting with it, attacking it, but nothing happened; it resisted everything thrown at it. Soon, the attacks ceased; SecuROM had beaten them all.

Night fell. Werner continued to watch but knew he was nearly out of time. He'd wanted to see an end to this alien thing, this thing that had it's uses but didn't belong here. It seemed that it wasn't going to happen. He wondered if it was here to stay, if it would eventually destroy other neighborhoods as well. Time to head for F:, he thought as he went to his car. He turned for one last look, and just behind SecuROM a new icon appeared in the sky:



Werner didn't know how he knew it, but he suddenly realized that he was in extreme danger; he had to go, and go now, or he was going to be obliterated. He sped away as fast as his car could move; in the rearview mirror he watched as a beam of brilliant golden light shot out from this new icon, an icon he called Windows XP, and touched the ground. Nothing seemed to happen, but then a blast of power rippled down the golden beam, a thousand times brighter than the sun, and the entire Valley rocked under it's impact. Werner drove on as fast as he could, watching all the while as a wall of blue-white fire rolled out of the blast site, vaporizing, erasing, reformatting everything in it's path. He took some grim satisfaction in knowing that SecuROM had finally been destroyed, that the fear was finally over. He barely made it to the passage to F: when the fire washed over the northwest hills, and then they were gone. As was the rest of Foster's Valley.

"Um, does anyone know how we got here?" asked Frankie. She and all the other residents of the Valley were gathered on a hillside, looking down on a lovely bay. She knew that her house, a place called Foster's Home For Imaginary Friends, was down there somewhere:



She just wasn't sure where. Or who all these people were, for that matter. Eh, she'd worry about it later. Right now it was time to go home; after all, the Welcome Wagon would be arriving soon.

In the downtown area of Foster's Valley, the new Foster's Valley, there is a woman who wanders around town, selling potions of many sorts and finding love for those who ask her help. She has a proper name, but is usually referred to as the Gypsy Matchmaker:



She sees many things in that crystal ball, things that were, things that are, and things that might be. She sees the new arrivals and wonders how they will get along with the current residents. There are stories here, stories that will arise from the newcomers and the natives both. Which ones will come to pass, she wonders. There are rivalries yet unborn here, where a bitter conflict may ignite and come to a head, or never begin at all. Which of these people is the one known as the Dark Sun? Who is Avatar, and who is the Chosen One? Is SecuROM finally gone, or is there another fragment of alien malware lurking in the shadows? Will this be the birthplace of the Melancholic Fighter? And what secrets are hidden in The Piano? Which of these stories will someday be told? Questions for later; for now, the Gypsy Matchmaker is content to smile at the new arrivals. "So, the Imaginary Friends and their families have finally arrived, eh?" she says to herself. "Welcome, one and all. Make yourself at home, dearies; some of your fans are waiting to greet you."

[antgirl1]

Wow, I never thought it was possible for Wilt to (unknowningly) excape first. Now there's this task of finding HIM, if they hadn't already. XDD

But ahh~ Safety at last.