Then I have to choose my goals and aspirations. I click: Surprise me. Sadly, I do not have any goals and aspirations. Not right now. Not today.
I choose my family and social structure. I decide to keep this simple and only choose a mum and a dad. The way things are.
Lastly, I get to choose where I want to live and seeing as I am stuck at home with no beach holidays in my foreseeable future, I decide a casual lifestyle in a trailer sounds like an exciting choice.
I have worked through all my options and I press the button: Start Game.
The screen warns me: Are you sure? Options cannot be changed.
I click: I am sure. Take me to my new life.
There was nothing special about the night Hannah was born. It was a normal night, maybe a little windier than usual, and it was one out of three hundred and sixty-five days that year.
The alignment of the stars on that star-studded evening determined her destiny and her future. The configuration of the planets in relation to each other decided her fortune and her fate. It was already decided what her life pursuits and her secret desires would be.
When Hannah was a little girl, she believed people could get what they wished for if they wished hard enough and long enough and were good enough, and although she was fifteen now and she had long ago stopped believing in fairy tales, she never stopped believing there was something magical in the world around her. Somewhere, there was somebody or something watching over her, keeping her safe, considering her wishes, her dreams, her ambitions and her hopes, and sometimes, only sometimes, if she was deserving, her prayers would be answered.
Her dad taught her this. Her dad told her when she was still a little girl and they went for their long walks together, without her mum, that there were angels and that angels would do anything and everything to get people to believe. He said although people stopped hoping as they got older, sometimes they still made a wish when they blew out their birthday candles or made a wish on a shooting star, and sometimes they really believed the wish would come true.
Hannah had a lot of wishes. Firstly, she wished they did not live in the trailer, but that they lived in a real house. Not a house on wheels, but a house built with bricks and a solid foundation, with a garden and a huge oak tree in the back garden, with a swing hanging from one of its branches. A house that would be solid and stand firm in any storm, even the strongest winds which sometimes rocked their trailer and made her feel scared when she was trying to fall asleep alone in her bed.