She continues talking as she gets herself a plate of leftover fruitcake. The meal replacement serum was a while ago, and her hours are from 10:00 AM to 7:00 PM, so she's a little peckish. And the fruitcake really is delicious.

"Because that's the only thing I can think of that makes any sense, really. I thought I was the problem, with a broken brain, but. I'm starting to think I'm not? I'm just weird for... noticing all of this. Having self awareness. Noticing that things are not adding up, and the way I expect the world to be isn't what it actually is." Fruitcake: plated. She sits at her slightly depressing wooden table and nibbles at it.

"I'll want to talk to more... sims. See if they're all as weird as the ones I've met so far are. Maybe I'm just in a weird neighborhood. But. This doesn't seem like a hostile simulation, to me, at least?" Nom. "I have a comfortable, if slightly utilitarian, house. My house change request went through nearly immediately. I got a job easily, and I like it so far, annoying sassy artificial intelligence notwithstanding, and I've been promoted. The cost of food is barely a thing that matters. I can move houses literally whenever I want. I have the concern I'll get... bills... at some point? But my paycheck seems set to cover that, especially if I'm going to be promoted at this lightning pace. If it goes like this, I'll be running the place in like, two weeks, and then I'll have the other half of my young adult life to -"

Wait, what?

She reviews her knowledge of how long a normal human lifespan is. Over fifty years, probably? Give or take, for injury and health? That feels about right. And then each year is... several hundreds of days? That seems correct, to her.

Then she reviews how long she thinks a sim's lifespan is. Well, for one, it's - staggered, she thinks, there are discrete life stages? And the one she's in is a total of... twenty-eight days. And she's lived through two of them. That's one-fourteenth of her young adult life stage, already gone. And if 'adult' and 'elder' are the same length, which she doesn't know for sure, then, that's. What, twelve weeks left to live? Total?

One of these does not match the other.

She immediately starts Siimgling life extension options. C'mon, this simulation thing has been so friendly, there's got to be something for people that properly wake up and realize twelve weeks is barely any time at all.

There are variously crackpotty hits? Also everyone online sounds like... you know. How people have been sounding so far.

Yeaaaaah. What are the various crackpotty hits, though? She is pretty willing to delve into crackpot options, here.

Grapefruit juice mixed with moon dust! Llama blood! A fairy dust-fertilised apple! The milk of a cowplant that just ate a Sim! Turning into a robot! Putting your brain in a jar! Just exercising a lot and being very happy!

- Grapefruit juice mixed with moon dust: worth testing.

- A fairy dust-fertilized apple: worth testing, just as soon as I figure out if fairies are real or not. They kinda feel real, but I haven't seen one, and need to confirm.

- The milk of a cowplant that just ate a Sim: while it could arguably not be considered murder if all of the people around me are not really people, this is going to be my last option, thanks.

- Turning into a robot???? Sure, but how????

- Brain in jar: plausible, but likely uncomfortable. Also how.

- Just exercising a lot and being very happy: .... this feels strangely plausible as a life extension option, actually? Probably not to the eternal life I want, but I can take up jogging I guess.

This all decided, she cleans up her plate, gives a sigh, and: well. Time to go jogging, she guesses.

Without even thinking about it, she changes via spinning, instead caught up in trying to timeline her night so she can get back to bed in time for a shower and getting up at a good hour for work...

... then she notices what she just did.

She looks down at herself. Yep, these sure are workout clothes. That she is just in, now.

"....... I suppose if my life is twelve weeks long, efficiency of actions makes perfect sense," she muses, and then she goes for a jog.

That is an action she can take. It's still kind of chilly, but less so than yesterday.

This will suck during the winter. She'll have to think of an alternative exercise routine by then. For now: jogging.

It's not a long jog, because she does have a schedule to keep, and work in the morning, but it's the beginning of a habit that will hopefully buy her more time to figure out solutions to the lifespan problem.

After her circuit around the cul-de-sac, she returns home for a shower, sets an alarm for 7:00 AM, and then goes to bed.

She arrives only mildly early for her job the next day, and immediately has some very important questions for her coworkers.

"Hey, do you think we could make a life extension serum or something? At these facilities?"

"Sure, I don't see why not," says one of them, and the other two coworkers nearby shrug and nod.

Well! That actually seems more promising as an option than sketchy internet ideas about synthesizing people into life extension elixirs by feeding them to cowplants. She's directly seen how a food replacement serum was completely possible. On her first day of work, with approximately no idea what she was doing. How far can she get with actual practice and training?

Yvette was always naturally inclined to be a bit of a workaholic before this revelation, but now she has full justification.

Accordingly, she gleefully flings herself back into the fun part of her job, which is: picking flowers, and mixing Substances. There will be so many Substances. Some of which, if they're a promisingly odd color that doesn't make sense, she might even test!

...

She... could theoretically get her coworkers to test serums for her. Which might even be morally justifiable, if she's the only real person in the building, which: from the conversations she's had, she's increasingly more sure of. She doesn't know what any of these things she's making do, and many of them might end up actually dangerous, friendly simulation world or not. But on the other hand: doing that feels icky, and wrong. And it's not like she knows how she became self-aware, or if the other sims around her are incapable of going through the same thing. It would be genuinely fucked up to have experimented on someone before they became a proper person, like - well, like taking advantage of children. Plus, they're also genuinely very charming. Kind of stupid, but, you know, in a cute, endearing way. She could theoretically see the shape of the person they might grow into, if they got hit with the personhood ray gun.

So, in summary: no using her coworkers as test subjects, though it did occur to her.

She does head over to the item creation station and see about trying to create a ray gun that could maybe person people. Look, it's just as crazy as everything else she does here, so why not?

"What are you on about," asks the Constructor, dryly.

"... In what sense?" she asks, looking up from the designing screen.

"Ray gun that could person people."

"So, everyone around me seems... bad... at long term planning, self awareness, and general pattern recognition? I just seem to genuinely have a skillset that nobody else has here, and I'd like to find a way to maybe share it. It doesn't need to be a ray gun specifically, just, this whole facility is very, hm, ray gun aesthetic, so it seems like the sort of shape what I want would take."

"Well aren't we full of ourselves."

Eyeroll. "Yep. That's me. I am the all knowing science protagonist out to save the whole wide world, create immortality, and defeat death itself."

"Join the club."

"Oh, are you the founder?"

"Founder of what?"