The Drake Equation - Chapter 2
“Jenny, with recent developments,” Petey glanced at her stomach, “there’s just not enough money. You know I want Johnny to get the college experience, too.” He opened up the bar and started pouring drinks.
"Then why don’t I see you looking for ways to deal with this?" Jenny put her hands to her head.
"What do you suggest?"
“We could cut back on some things around the house?” Jenny looked around, trying to find unnecessary expenses.
“Like?” Petey folded his arms, a man waiting for his wife to come to the same conclusion he had.
“We can cut back on the water bill if we don’t keep up with the lawn. Everyone else in Strangetown has sand, we don’t need grass.”
“Honey, that’s a start, and I don’t want to discourage you-“
“And the bar,” Jenny gestured to the grouping of drinks, “This is exactly what I’m talking about.”
“Jenny, that’s not going to add up to tuition.”
--
“I don’t know about this, Vid,” Lazlo peeked out from his hiding spot behind a tree in the Smiths’ front yard. “I just don’t think Petey’s involved with whatever’s wrong with Pascal.”
“‘Petey Smith’. Do you think that’s even his real name?”
“Probably not,” Lazlo rolled his eyes, “he’s an alien. Why would they have the same names as humans? He probably has some weird name, like Vidcund.”
Vidcund scowled, “I’m just pointing out how little we know about him. Do you know what he did for a living back on his home world?”
“No, but none of that means he’s caused Pascal’s illness.”
“But we don’t know. So what can it hurt to ask Jenny some questions?”
--
“If he's not playing on a college team, how will scouts see him? This is his dream.”
“Johnny’s good, but we both know sports isn’t exactly a safe career choice. Good’s one thing, you’d have to be extraordinarily lucky to get signed.”
“All the more reason why he needs to go to college! If basketball doesn’t work out, he’ll need a degree to fall back on. We won’t be able to take care of him forever.” Jenny’s voice cracked at the last sentence.
“Hey,” Petey put his arm around his wife, “I’m not saying we won’t work this out. We will. I’m just saying, it won’t kill him to have to go to community college for a bit.”
“I know, I just want to be able to give them everything they want. And I know you do too. I forgot how much babies cost. I just thought it would take longer to get pregnant.”
“I’m sorry my dear, but I’m very efficient at it. It was my job.” PT9 cuddled up to his spouse, but Jenny’s eyes widened at the last word of his sentence.
“But you could get a new job.”
Petey shifted uncomfortably, “Jenny, do you know what kinds of jobs are available to a sim my age with no documented work history?”
“But for your son?” Jenny looked at him, pleading.
“I worked for 200 years, with no days off. You can’t imagine what that was like.” Petey’s eyes looked like black pits.
“Don’t you give me that. I work every day for this family, and I work 12 hour shifts on my feet some days, with doctors who don’t give their nurses a lick of respect, not sitting in a cushy chair in a space ship.”
“You love your job. And I loved mine. I don’t see how you expect me to go become a golf caddy or a convenience store clerk!”
“Not even for your son? What kind of job does that, gives you a house, but no pension to raise a family on?”
Johnny walked down the stairs, startling them both, “If you’re going to fight, can you at least do it in the library, where it doesn’t echo upstairs? I’m going to go hang out with Ripp.”
“I’m going to go talk to him,” Petey stared out the open door.
“Dinner will be ready at seven,” Jenny said. “Love you.”
“Love you, too.”
--
“This is it!” Vidcund checked to make sure Lazlo’s taller form was hidden behind the tree, “Let’s go!”
As soon as PT9 disappeared around the corner, the brothers scurried up to the front door and rang the bell.
Lazlo fidgeted, “I’m freaking out Vid. I don’t know if I can do this.”
Vidcund snapped, “We’ll be fine. Just leave all the talking to me.”
Jenny answered the door.
“Viddy! Laz! What are you guys doing here?”
Vidcund straightened his collar, “May we come in?”
“Of course!”
“Where are my favorite niece and nephew?” Lazlo looked around, searching for the source of quiet in the house.
“Johnny’s off with Ripp, and Jill’s still at school, she’s in an after school music program.”
“Oh yeah? What does she play?”
“Lazlo!” Vidcund barked, shutting up his little brother. “Sorry, Jenny, but we’ve got other things we need to discuss.”
“Oh?”
“Let me be blunt: Pascal’s told us everything,” Vidcund continued. “But hearing it from him and hearing it from you are two different things.”
Jenny nodded. “Of course. Please, let’s go sit down. This all goes back to when Petey retired, before I even met him. They just didn’t set him up very well to provide for a family.”
“So has he come out of retirement..?” Vidcund prodded. This was even easier than he had imagined.
“I know! You’d think he would, right? But he’s just so proud about these things, which makes me feel even worse asking you boys for help.”
“Can you tell us more about what happened?”
“Well, my little green man is upset, naturally. He really had his heart set on this, and you know it’s such an important time to experiment.”
Lazlo and Vidcund exchanged glances.
“So, how involved is he in all this?” Vidcund led her.
“Very. He’s been visiting different places (though naturally I won’t let him go far from home), sending out letters, applying for different scholarships. It’d break his heart not to get this opportunity.”
Lazlo furrowed his brow and opened his mouth to speak, but Vidcund kicked him under the table.
“Ugh,” Jenny looked suddenly ill, “I’m sorry, I’ve just been feeling really bad lately. Nauseated, tired all the time, over emotional, the works. Sounds familiar, huh? Excuse me for a moment.”
Jenny rushed to the bathroom, trying to slow her movements to a more casual pace.
“That last part didn’t make sense,” Lazlo whispered as Jenny left the room. “What do scholarships have to do with anything?”
“I’m sure we’ll learn more about that. Right now we have to find out why it’s such a good time to experiment. If it means more people are going to be abducted, we need to know about it.”
“Oh my god…” Lazlo might as well have had a light bulb above his head. “What Jenny said, about being emotional, tired, nauseated…”
“Those are Pascal’s symptoms!” Vidcund caught on. “Lazlo, I don’t mean to alarm you, but we may be dealing with some kind of alien plague.”
“I’m sorry I doubted you, big bro. We’ve got to find out what’s going on, and fast.”
Lazlo was cut off by the sound of one final loud retch, followed shortly by a flush.
“Shut up! She’s coming back.”
Jenny sat back down, looking a little more haggard. “Sorry about that. I know it’ll all be over in seven months, but it’s still tough now.”
Lazlo started mouthing something to Vidcund, who kicked him under the table again. “Later,” he hissed.
Jenny glanced back and forth, used to weird behavior from her brothers, “So, I hate asking you guys like this, but is there any way you can help?”
“Frankly, we’re amazed you didn’t come to us sooner,” Vidcund smiled.
Jenny hugged them both, “Thank you so much. You have no idea how much this means to all of us. I’ve got to get started on dinner, but do you to want to stay?”
“What are you making?” Lazlo licked his lips.
“No, I think we’ve got to get going, extra work at the lab,” Vidcund cut him off.
“Alright,” Jenny looked at Lazlo again, who now seemed to be towing the line Vidcund had set, “Well, I’ll let you know when we know anything more.”
Jenny hugged them again, and the brothers departed, victorious.
--
“Parents fight, man, it’s what they do,” Ripp shrugged.
“Mine don’t.”
“You’ve never seen your parents fight before?”
“No.”
“That’s not healthy. You gotta express anger in some way, or else it just builds and builds and then you snap.”
“And fighting is healthy? Then why’d it make your mom walk out on the General?” Johnny winced after he said it, knowing he had crossed a line, but Ripp took it in stride.
“My mom left for a lot of reasons, and only one of them was the fighting. But they didn’t fight healthily. There was no love in it.”
“Some couples just don’t need to fight.” Johnny huffed.
“Well apparently your old man and your old lady aren’t one of them. So that leaves who? You and Ophelia? You’ll fight someday, too. And it won’t be because you don’t love each other. It’s just sometimes people fight.”
“Thanks, Ripp, I had no idea you were a licensed psychiatrist,” Johnny scowled.
“I mean, it makes sense that your folks don’t fight a lot. You mom’s a fox. If I were your dad, I’d try to keep the peace to get a piece too…”
“Ripp!”
“What? You get to talk about my broken home; I get to talk about how your mom’s a MILF. This is actually a really good example. We’re arguing right now, but that doesn’t mean there’s no love... Anyway, I’d stop worrying about it, and start worrying about all the beer you’re going to buy me when you’re an adult and still hanging around this dump.”
Johnny laughed, “Is Tank going to college?”
“Yeah. What a waste. We could send you in his place, and just say he took his face paint too far one day.”
“He already takes it too far,” Johnny smiled, “But at least we’ll be rid of him, right?”
“See, always a silver lining. There’s the Johnny I know. Hey, that cloud looks like boobs.”
--
Vidcund and Lazlo announced their arrival triumphantly.
“Pascal! We’re back!”
Then they both began talking at once.
“So we went to Jenny’s and we found out Petey is in on it, just as I predicted.”
“He’s ‘very involved’ to quote Jenny.”
“We also found out that this is a special time for the aliens, when experimentation is especially fruitful for some reason.”
“But it’ll end in 7 months.”
“Lazlo figured out that there’s an alien disease that you and Jenny are both infected with.”
“It causes vomiting, fatigue, and mood swings.”
It was about this time Pascal put his head in his hands and wouldn’t look at his brothers.
“Don’t worry, we’ll find you the cure!”
“Yeah, we just got recruited. We’re alien double agents now. We’ll thwart the system from the inside.”
“Pascal? Pascal? It’s going to be alright.”
Pascal finally looked up. “Jenny doesn’t have an alien plague. She’s pregnant. Seven months is when she’s due.”
Lazlo and Vidcund stared back in silence.
Pascal continued, “She told me about it the day before I was abducted, because with costs associated with the baby, they don’t have the money to send Johnny to college like they’d planned. She wanted to know if we could help them out. I forgot to get back to her, with everything going on…”
Lazlo was the first to speak, “So we just agreed to pay for Johnny’s college?”
--
Author's Note: Sorry this chapter took so long to get up; I had a family emergency in the middle of it. I expect future chapters will be more regular, and I already have an outline for chapter 3, which will focus more on Ripp, Johnny, and Ophelia... and maybe Tank too. Also, thank you so much to aledstrange for recommending a camera mod. I've still got a lot to learn about taking pictures, but now at least I have the tools for it, and I think this chapter reflects that.