Chapter 37 - Back in time

Albin looked around trying to work out where he was. He felt dazed and his head felt heavy.

He thought he had been on his way to work, but here he was standing at the side of the road.
He turned round and saw Emili Solin also standing there and looking as dazed as he was. Looking down at his watch he saw that he was late. He was just outside his house so he walked over, got into the police car and drove to work.

He walked into the police station and took the lift up to the seventh floor. On this floor the special agents worked, they were the cream of the police force. He went to the security door and typed in his code and nothing happened. He then realised that he didn't work on this floor, he only aspired to be a special agent. It had been his dream ever since he joined the police force. He shook his head wondering why he had come to this floor. Yet he almost felt as if he could see the exact layout of the rooms beyond, which made no sense. 

Shaking his head to try and remove the confusing images he walked down the stairs to the sixth floor. Here was his office and he spent a busy day working on case notes.

When  the time came to drive home he was feeling much more peaceful and his head had stopped aching.

He drove back to find furniture on the lawn, he wondered why it was there and then remembered that Kainda's wedding had been yesterday.

He came to a complete stop on the lawn staring at the furniture. Kainda got married yesterday, yet he clearly remembered Lois Lutz her daugther coming to play with Merlin only a few days ago.

It made no sense. He seem to remember two very different weeks and yet they both felt real. It was like he was two different Albin's side by side, both with memories, but years apart from each other.

Albin felt fear rising, he didn't know what was going on and he was scared as to what he might find at home.

He walked quickly inside to find Charli holding a baby and he drew a breath of relief. It was his new daughter Gwen. He smiled at her and his smile froze in place as he approached.

The baby was too pale to be Gwen and with a shock he realised it was Merlin. The next minute in walked Evelyn to say hello. Evelyn his little girl.

Albin stammered an excuse and withdrew to his study to think.

He sat down with his head in his hands. He could see Merlin clearly in his minds eye, his bag on his back ready for school and Evelyn doing her hair in the mirror and worrying about her spots. Yet here they were years younger. Something terrible had happened.

Albin went through the next few days in a daze. Going to work and helping look after the kids when he got home. No one else seemed to have noticed anything was different, the question was what could he do about it.

Albin considered telling Charli, but then what would he tell her. That he was two different Albin's from different time periods. That he knew what their kids would look like when they were older and that one day they would have a little girl called Gwen. Either she wouldn't believe him and perhaps he might end up in a psychiatric hospital or she would believe him and what then? Nothing could be done. He had no idea what had happened or how to reverse it. The only way seemed to be forward. To accept where he was and take it as a second chance with his young family. 

The only thought that occurred to Albin was that his own parents had been stranded out of their time by an experiment gone wrong. Perhaps they same thing had happened here. Except this time no one but himself seemed to have noticed. 

Albin didn't know how he was going to cope with the sudden change, but he knew he needed to for Charli and the kids. They needed him and he needed to accept what had happened and be there for them.

(note: This storyline came out of necessity as my sims stopped aging. I tried many different things to sort this out and in the end the only thing I could do was go back to an earlier save where they were aging normally. It turns out the glitch had been there for sometime so I have had to turn back the clock quite a few years.)