[Editor's note: found this post from September of 2016. Posting what I had.]
Class let out at four, sharp, and we were out the door as fast as the wind. It was Foy, Mina, Sandy, and myself. We climbed into Foy's car and blasted off toward the beach.
It was Friday afternoon and we had the weekend to ourselves.
First things first, we went for a swim, then a bite down at the pier. The servers were friendly enough. We avoided making a big deal of it, but I could tell the others were still uncomfortable.
I brought it up while we ate the kebabs. Foy explained that him and Mina came from a sim where NPCs - as he called them - were illegal. Mina shrugged and said that she didn't mind, and seemed to mean it.
I explained that my parents were very present in my life, and left it at that.
Sandy just said they crept her out.
The evening we spent on a bar crawl through town. It was a small town, yet has enough bars to fell even such capable hands as the four of us. All of us had to give in and appease the porcelain gods. Never slept better.
Saturday we took the an early morning ferry to Kodo island, then hiked to the peak. We were exhausted after having covered twenty forest- and tundra-covered kilometers.
The gods were with us that day. We parascended along the ridgeline and buzzed it over and over, toes pulled up near our chins and still scraping the rock as we crossed over it. Foy and Mina even managed to swap their parasails mid-air, each letting go of theirs then parabolling toward the other's former chute. Sandy found the whole thing terribly boring. I had a good time.
The following day was Sunday and we had to visit our professors' shrines.
All of us had to go by the Cloud Village, so that was first on the list. We took the Beanstalk up.
Yeah, even the Natural University has a Beanstalk. But it's only for getting to the Cloud Village. And anyway, what's the big deal? Every sim has one, two, a dozen. It's as natural as the fake air or the sun or the infinite plane that a third of the sims were using. Give me a break.
And anyhow, it's the frugal approach. Shrines can't be too close together, so toss a few up in the air and you can pack more into a smaller sim.
The Cloud Shrine is pretty much what you'd expect: a set of Roman columns in the pit of an amphitheater, the bleachers full of students on similar homework assignments. There's a general party atmosphere, though it's emanating from the dais and not the pupils around.
We take our turns at the pedestal of the gods, introducing ourselves one by one to our professors' gods. They beamed their ascent to us, the blinding reaction explained as "essential" for full credit.
Of course, if you're gonna toss some shrines up above, you can also place a few down an abandoned mine shaft or the bottom of a box canyon. The professor of neutral neural biology had his shrine down a crevice.
Foy and Sandy left after the Cloud Shrine. I told Mina to take off as well, but she wanted to see what all the nonsense was about.