Even My Sim Won’t Live Forever

Luce Sci is a florist who has lived in Oasis Springs most of her life. Her world is a constellation of pixels arranged to resemble the dry, burnt sienna sands of the American Southwest. Thanks to an early-in-life motherlode, she lives in the wealthy part of town where palm trees line the verdant lawn her stone pool is carved into. A stable for her cowboy-hat-wearing pet horse, Sarsaparilla, sits out back. Luce is Outdoorsy, Creative, and a Loner. As my main Sim, she has lived on the hours I’ve lost to the vortex of the game, each one spent directing her through the mundane and extraordinary actions that make up a life.

Her days begin outside, harvesting her robust garden, where plants bloom on schedule at 5 AM every day. After adding what’s valuable to her inventory and selling the rest, I toggle between a series of leisurely, yet productive excursions like dropping Sarsaparilla off at the equestrian center or combing the beach for seashells. It’s a good life, and the metrics bear that out: Luce has been Happy a staggering 866 times, compared with just four instances of Fear.

Very soon, Luce will become an Elder. This birthday (Age-Up!) will be her last. Once she becomes an Elder, the bulk of her life will officially be behind her, and at some unknowable point in the near future, death will find her. In spite of, or perhaps because of, the enduring happiness she’s experienced, the Grim Reaper’s forthcoming visit has stirred in me a wave of nostalgic panic, igniting a frantic need to make each of her remaining minutes count. It has forced me to confront the fact that even in The Sims, there is never enough time.

Though an inkling of acceptance might be germinating deep in the back of my mind, my natural response to my digital avatar’s impending demise is to try to make her immortal. For an expert gardener like Luce, one way to extend the clock is by crafting an orchid-scented bouquet. Each time a Sim sniffs its petals, they are granted one more day of life. Orchids, however, are rare and not reliably available for purchase. They’re grown by grafting a lily and a snapdragon together—their cultivation is simple enough, but slow. So I have reorganized Luce’s days around tending, watering, and weeding the plant that will keep her alive. Seasons come and go. Still, nothing flowers.

Now, I should be clear that far easier ways to cheat death exist—this is a fantasy world built for sublimating our desires and fears, after all! If I really didn’t want Luce to die, I’d simply turn off the game’s aging function. She could remain suspended in late adulthood forever, with no physical marker of time passing. But as I sit and click, I think about all the other paths and endless aspirations I’d envisioned when I first created her.

I imagined her growing old with the boyfriend she shared a tiny chalet with as a Young Adult in the Japan-inspired ski town of Mt. Komorebi. I wanted her to take up rock climbing, eventually scale the mountain with her best friend Jenna, maybe even become a scientist. The game—and perhaps my subconscious—had other plans. The boyfriend lasted a day, naturally incompatible. Jenna died young because of a glitch. Luce has never so much as purchased climbing gear, nor looked under a microscope. Instead, she became a gardener. She liked it. It stuck. Now, it seems inevitable.

The hardest, most irresistible part of our quest for this eternal, elusive orchid is that I don’t know why it hasn’t bloomed. Given Luce’s veritable Green thumb, this outcome must be random. I could have chosen, and still could, to try my hand at another of the game’s numerous routes to immortality. But I can’t—I’m committed to this one and don’t want to change course. Much like in life, the satisfaction of playing comes from choosing to spend time doing the specific things we are drawn to, even (and especially) when other options exist.

The more we experience what life has to offer, the more our possibilities narrow, by necessity. I have become hell-bent, resolute in my conviction that this is the truest path for Luce. Every morning, I wake Luce and send her outside to check the garden, hoping an orchid has appeared overnight. Slowly, I’m making peace with the possibility that the Grim Reaper will get there first. For now, though, I keep watering.