I remember sleep.
I remember it distantly, as I trudge through the never-ending neon chatter of Celadon. And fondly, as I am chased out of Hearthome for the umpteenth time, my tattered rags not elegant enough for their town's "image." Though of course " fond" implies a degree of positive affect, and I have none. Not anymore.
For I am cursed.
Perhaps you have seen me.
As you lounge by the side of the road, under the shade of a cool tree, or wait patiently in line for tickets to the S.S. Anne. Yes, in fact, I'm sure you have seen me, though you never meet my eye.
You do not wish to catch my... particular affliction.
That is not how it works. Let me teach you.
My name is...What is my name? I have forgotten. It has been so long, so long since I needed it. It's written, somewhere, on a tag on a shirt in a bag long lost, but I do not wish to search for it, in case I see it, and remember far too much. So let us call me... Red. Yes. That will do.
I am cursed.
Ah! But you do not believe me. With withered hand and glittering eye, now wherefore stopps't thou me? You do not see the hands,- them, the giant pair of thumbs- hovering over my head. You don't see them? That's what drives me, you see. I wouldn't do this to myself; not live the way I live, nor see the things I have seen. Not on my own. It's that force; that vast, unknowable overhead drive. The Real Quest. You don't have one. Please, let me explain. Please?
I had a home, once. I must have done. A place where I was raised, with a little red mailbox, and neat wooden floors polished once a week, and a sign outside announcing that it was where I lived, and a huge industrial experimental laboratory two doors over. That was where it started, of course.
Oak. That blasted grey devil. If I could catch a hold of the old man again, I would s strangle him without a moment's hesitation. Who sends a child out to battle monsters? Who?
It was on that day that the words of the Real Quest occurred to me. I didn't want them. But I could not more stop them than I could stop breathing.
They say you're supposed to grow out of it after age eighteen, or thereabouts. All the little kids running around with bug nets, and splashing around at the beach- they'll leave it, after a while, as one might leave stamp-collecting or bird spotting.
Note- what happens to the Pokémon of kids who outgrow and forget them? If they're stuck on a computer, I mean?
Sometimes, I lost, though as the years went on, this happened less and less. It was the same thing over and over, anyway. I would faint, and wake, grey and shaking, in a Pokémon centre, half my money gone and pockets clean, askew in the most subtle of ways, clothes feeling unwashed and two-days-slept-in, the groggy headache of sleeping in daylight. There is something distinctly unsettling about waking with a fluorescent tube as one's light source. The smug little monsters would be bathed in the glowing light of the machine, of course, fit and perky and ready to go, as ever.
A note: what does it say about our country that we built free centres to heal monsters, but not people?
Not that I know what country we are in, of course, not anymore. Some bizarre cross of Japan and Southern California, I suppose. I don't know. Some damn region...
My badges clank against my chest. I have them pinned in order of win, and it is interesting to see how the tournaments have evolved. The first- Kanto, I think? Were stout little enamel things, sealed across the back with a shining brass pin. Often they were hand-made- the teardrop shaped one bears the mark of a hand-held rasp. Towards the bottom, however, they become cheap and light; plastic printed on plastic, made for mass distribution.
I have had a lot of time to study the badges. Sometimes, when the moon is full, and I can find a clear patch among the long grass, I sit, to rest my aching legs, and I examine these badges, and I laugh; though it is not a laugh with much humour in it.
The teardrop-shaped badge is starting to rust. It pokes me unpleasantly in the chest as I walk; I am glad, for it means I can still feel.
I remember my mother. She made cinnabar burgers, and she worried about me, and she... replaced me.
With a Mr. Mime.
No. 122: Mr Mime: Always practises its pantomime act. It makes enemies believe something exists that really doesn't using its psychic power.
She must have made a mint off my savings, I know that much.
I raised that Abra from a pup. Caught him in the patch of grass outside Pewter, fought him through the maze of Mount Moon, nursed him through a misjudged attempt at the Pokémon tower in Lavender Town. When he evolved into Kadabra, I laughed- plucked at his new moustache, which shamed my shabby, post-pubescent attempts at a beard, and told him tales of the places we would go, and the fights we would win. Together. They are intelligent, perhaps the most intelligent. Maybe he even understood me.
Some years ago, I traded him for an l. 60 golem.
Why?
Because I did not have that one yet.
The Real Quest, you see. How it drives me.
Once, in desperation, I... I tried a HM on myself. Surf, I think it was. I really had to get to Cinnabar quickly, and I couldn't be bothered running back to the centre, and... and...
Maybe I just wanted to see what would happen. A life as long as mine has little by way of incident.
It was horrible. It started only with a shift in my chest; like a deep breath of some dense gas, then relaxed. Then it shifted again. I felt something go plink in my chest, as something detached, A dull ache began, like a memory gone sour. I didn't know it, but a bruise, purplish and angry, was blooming just under the skin as blood lashed into the subdermal layers. A sharp pain in my spine faded and died in an instant as subtle bones shifted, preparing to accommodate a dorsal fin I had long since evolved out of. The slither or raw muscle over muscle. The creeping horror of feeling my lungs crawl, alveoli reshaping a flexing to a folded bellows shape.
My vision clouded. I felt my second eyelids film and close.
I ran, at this point, shrieking for help, though the cool moor was empty, as always, apart from the things in the long grass. I ran as I felt the strong bones in my legs become rubbery and bow, the tibia taut like a bowstring. I heard something snap, and tumbled, still shrieking, like a lost child.
I tried to scream as my mouth sealed over.
The pain in my in my neck was blinding. I raised a dirt-covered hand and felt warm, wet blood, and, underneath, palpating, something that made me sick with horror. I retched inwardly as I ran a finger over the feathery pink mass of gill tissue there growing.
Swiftly, I found that I couldn't breathe. Reader, I hoped then that I would die.
I woke some hours later, under the flickering fluorescents of the Pokémon centre. The Doctor wouldn't look me in the eye. He was right not to.
The nurses never look you in the eye, though. You ever notice that? They bow, they smile, they expose cute little cat teeth at you, but they never quite meet your eye. I think that's why they give them Chanseys; to make them more human. Travellers on the road would often joke that the nurses and the policewomen were clones or sexy android replicants, but no-one would make a robots to stiff, so hollow. No one hoping to successfully fool the public would make them act so exactly similar.
Still, the person I was discussing this with was the 13th Youngster I'd fought that day, so maybe they're in on it too.
Once- on route 66, this was- I carved a Snorlackks (? must check spelling) in half and slept there. Man, if you think those things smell bad on the outside...
It's alright. I have more of them. The snorlaxes, I mean. One won't matter.
The youngsters I once fought on equal terms have grown, now; become gamblers, swimmers, scientists. Fathers, some of them. My rival, he's married now. Has a wife, couple of kids. His starter Pokémon died recently- just keeled over while playing ball with the kids in the yard. Cute little bastard, in his first form. I'll miss it. I'll miss him.
What was his name?
He was head of the elite four (five?) for a while. I remember the wide, reckless space of the plateau as the door swished open; me, not surprised to see him, him very much surprised to see me. I remember towards the end, as I stood over him; watched the fear and surprise in his eyes, the trickle of blood from his nose, as I drew the last pokeball. I didn't want to.
Forgive me old friend, I had said; it is not I who does this to you.
I remember no more. This hunger- this unholy thing- it drives me on, makes me never stop.
(The Real Quest.) I don't sleep. I don't eat. I wander the earth; alone, afraid. And slowly, one by one, the people I once fought- they refuse to talk to me anymore.
Once, in Ecruteak city I think, I was happy. Mostly for the smell of the place- it smelt of autumn leaves and banked fires, dull smoke on cool air- restful sort of a city- a town, really. I was in the dance theatre, which is a gorgeous old anomaly of a place- all teak stained with aged nicotine and dumpy, comfortable sitting cushions in patrician ranks. I stumbled in hoping to rest, even for a second- the stink of sweat and desperation and the Real Quest all around me.
The dances they did were slow, and filled with a heavy dignity, I remember that; no move undeliberate and to gesture unconsidered. It would take a scholar, I suppose, to tell you the meaning. That place had its own smell too- the rich kuroyaki perfume, old-fashioned and knowing; hair wax and red camellias; above all, the scent of old expensive fabric, rich and forgiving, worn well by the young.
There was one- girl- in red- who I admired particularly. I heard the chime of bells when she walked. She moved in graceful arcs, hands describing a wave, a tower, a letter, a sleeve damp with tears. Though off stage, she giggled and chattered like any other.
She smiled at me, that girl, that mask of white powder, and the face underneath it.
I was barely sixteen.
Reader, what else could I do?
I beat every single one of her and her sisters into the ground with a ghost/ground team combo. Soon, they chased me out. One more town I cannot go back to without the forgiving cover of darkness.
No 124: That's a Jynx.
They don't like it when you try anything funny, I know that.
Sometimes, I see it, out of the corner of my eye- the Pokémon I missed. Sometimes it is an Entai, sometimes a Geodude, sometimes even a shining Pidgey. I see it out of the corner of my eye. I see it in my nightmares, in the deeps of the cave; the fabric at the bottom of my pocket, picked out in pin-sharp detail, no shop nearby, the stony back retreating. I have no pokeballs and I must scream.
You'll never know the hells I suffered with the Unown. I- caught- every- single- one. Seven weeks, in the caves. I nearly went mad. I nearly went blind. That music; I began to hear it, distantly, even when I slept. Black shapes blur into the same, after a while. Who knows how many I really caught? Who knows how many I killed?
Accidentally, I mean?
Win battles. To get money. To buy supplies. To catch monsters. to train monsters. To win battles. You see?
I liked my Lapras, great blubbery thing that it was. On land, a barely movable lump. In the sea, a twisting poem of grace and surf.
Do you know what it is like? To be so in tune with another thing that you feel poison inside, slowly corrupting its system? I tried to get to Pokémon centre, really I did. My vision kept flickering and fading before me, with each step. I was too late. I buried her in a hole two inches square, pokeball as a coffin. It didn't seem right somehow.
No-that's a mistake.
You think they are alright- you tend to humanise them. After a few years, you realise- they really are little monsters. Little bundles of screech and instinct, getting nowhere and nothing fast. They want feeding and fighting and not much else. I heard of another young kid toting a thunder rat around with him outside the ball- pfft. Talk about deluded. Might as well carry a plague rat around on your shoulder. Less dangerous. Eventually they will snap, and it will not be pretty. I once saw a Machop get splashes of bodily viscera sixteen feet up a wall. It's a conditioned reflex, not a skill, and you can't teach it anymore than you can redirect a river. Animal is animal. It's all tooth and fur in the end.
It thought they were playing, that Machop.
I remember, now, when I first really knew this; when the truth was brought to me in blood, and flesh, and- and bone.
No.105: Marowak.
I had had the good luck to catch a pregnant female of the species one day while hunting up in the mountains- not that I was particularly fond of them, but I figured I could trade the offspring on for other, newer monsters-
Not that I knew how they bred, of course; that was not part of the Real Quest; and the furtive actions behind the closed (and, one assumes, slightly sticky) doors of the Pokémon breeding centre will remain forever lost to me. Thank god.
I was sleeping whenever I heard the keen of the birth pains; I wanted to help, but decided not to approach; I had seen dogs snap at intruders during birth, and well, I didn't know exactly what the Marowak was…
Anyway, the egg was-
Wait.
A note: Marowaks and Cubones have fur, as do Clefairies, for example, and Rattata. Tangela are nothing but. The Miltank, certainly, suckle their young, and everything except Arbok and Dratini are warm-blooded.
So why…
How…
Do they all hatch from eggs?
The egg was safely delivered, and the mother was hale and healthy, if not a little woozy. Soon, we went on our way. Seeing as she was freshly in the family way, I decided not to let her battle. Ain't I a saint?
The egg hatched late one evening, just after I had set up camp for the night. I confess I had left the egg at the bottom of my rucksack with the other pokéballs, and so the only way I knew about it was when I heard a pathetic mewling from within. After a few minutes careful poking around (and more than one nip on the finger from toothless gums) I hauled out the freshly-hatched Cubone, bald-headed and shiny with albumen, blinking huge, round eyes anxiously in the faint reflected campfire light.
I confess, I thought it rather cute. I set it down by the fire and soon, like a new born calf, it was gambolling around on shaky legs, growling at the embers with plucky little squeaks and taking practise swings at mayflies.
What better way, I thought, for the creature to learn than to be reunited with its mother? They could feed, bond. She could teach it how to hunt. Perhaps they had to, I dunno, trade scents or something. The mother Marowak sniffed amicably enough at the new born, licked it clean, in fact, with a long grey tongue, and soon they were curled nose-to-tail in front of the dying embers of the fire, white bone and brown fur like an oddly unbalanced taijitu, breathing steadily. Dunno
Reader, could I have put them back into pokéballs after that? I turned over and let them sleep, chuckling to myself that hey, perhaps they were not so bad after all.
Perhaps I even said "D'aaaaaw."
I awoke some hours later to a gristly, cracking noise.
Reader, I will never forget that noise. Especially when I am trying to sleep.
I woke muzzily, at first; the sound not registering as One Of Those Sounds, the kind that runs straight down your spinal column and presses all the buttons your monkey ancestors left there for just such an occasion. Then, once I had recognised it, I grew suddenly afraid; what if a wild dog or bear had gotten into the campsite and tore apart the poor exposed Pokémon I had left sleeping innocently by the campfire? Or simply a bigger, badder Pokémon? (There were rumours of wild Kangaskhan in the area.) I looked to the ashy campfire, straining to see traces of struggle or blood.
Oh reader, there was blood, alright.
With growing horror, I saw the bloody trail from where my little family had slept- leading only a few feet away, to where the blood-matted form of the mother Marowak slumped, back to me, head in the grass, clearly dead and gone beyond all hope or saving. I was horrified, and sure then; a wild dog had attacked the mother, and carried off the baby, leaving me unharmed. Perhaps, I foolishly thought then, the mother had died trying to defend-
The gristling and crackling continued. Summoning up all my bravery, I edged forward, to inspect the site- and-
And-
The little Cubone was there, feasting greedily, no- gnawing, gnawing away at the flesh around the muzzle and head, trying- yes, and there was that sickening rip noise- to expose the pale white bone of the skull, and- and succeeding.
I was sickened- trying not to vomit, in fact- but I could not look away. I watched, quietly, for close to twenty minutes. The neat little fast-growing teeth made short work of it. He will bite well, I thought giddily; that will be good in battle.
Finally- I might have cried- he tottered away, his new prize triumphantly on his head. He made triumphant little horking noises, the bone helmet echoing the noise oddly, and staggered as he tried to compensate for the new, unaccustomed weight. Thin blood covered the mask in a pale crimson wash, and streamed in rivulets from the- gah- from the former eye sockets.
But he was not finished. Oh no.
He returned to the former mother's body, and- I couldn't bring myself to look- I only heard the noise- a fleshy little tearing sound. When I opened my eyes, he was hefting a long, white bone, proudly- testing it as one might test the swing of a baseball bat. He swung- spun too far- once, twice- fell backwards, onto his precious little tail. This seemed to strike him as amusing, and he gave the funny little horking laugh I had come to hate and dread.
Would come to hate and dread, and to hear again, and again, even when I was not awake.
So I put him back in his pokéball, and decided, over the voices screaming terror in my head, what to do next. I was tempted simply to throw the vile thing in a river, and be done with it, but- argh, blast and damn- the Real Quest would not let me do even that. And I certainly did not want to battle with the little abomination.
Eventually I buried him, as far and as deep in Bill's storage system as I could, and tried- only tried, mark you, never succeeded- to forget. Because- and this only struck me some days after, when I was trying to sleep, and I assure you I did not, that night-
Because the whole time it was happening- that uncompromising little Oedipal nightmare that I was sole witness to- the whole time it was happening, the mother Marowak did not make one sound. Not a cry of pain, not a defensive sigh, nothing.
This was meant to happen.
I am no believer in God nor men- for god seems improbable and Man seems foolish. But I cannot believe that a loving god- a just god- would create a system whereby the son must, through natural instinct, slay the mother in the name of accessories, and I cannot see man- proud paragon of animals- see him as the product of same system which created this monstrosity. Clearly, this is just the Way Of Nature in this stinking, rotten world.
I could not even bury the mother Marowak, nor bring myself to touch it; t'was this flesh begot those pelican daughters.
The barbarous Scyther
Or he that makes his generation messes
To gorge his appetite, shall to my bosom
be as well neighboured, pitied and relieved,
as you, my sometime Cubone.
A note: the latest scientific theory suggests that man has evolved in degrees from lower forms of life. That is the simplified version, yes; but it underlies the whole majestic, awe-inspiring theory of evolution, by which man has come to adapt uniquely to his environment and develop abstract thought, music, laughter, love and… sigh… Pokémon. But Pokémon also evolve, albeit in a slightly different, more rapid process.
So has human evolution- the whole proud, majestic, bloody, savage glorious rise- has it all just been one long search for the right theoretical level of EXP?
I run, now, farther and faster than any man could. I eat on the run, when I remember to; snatching handfuls of food from passing strangers, or, when I'm up in the mountains, snatching the very berries from the trees and forcing them down my throat, bitter juice squirting over hands and face. I reason- when I am capable of reasoning- that I will know if they are poisonous when I vomit.
Thankfully, if I mean such a word, I cannot taste much anymore; the Real Quest has robbed me of that, as a distraction; so I imagine they taste sweet instead. It is not much of an improvement.
No 128: Miltank. Looks like a cow. Doesn't taste much like beef.
Chicken, if anything.
Normal? How can I be normal again, with the things I have seen? I have seen vast caves, the floor an elaborate cryptogram, and, floating deep within, creatures of incomprehensible power. And I have caught them, with plastic. I have seen animals rend time and space, with a thought, a cry, a great unknowable word. I have flown on the backs of wingless animals, seen them mutate and shift at some pre-appointed time. I was there when a rat-like being crawled from the bowels of a humming canister of a machine an announced, in cheery human tones, that it's name was Bill, pleased ta meetcha. Tired, sweating and afraid, I have caught the pink, cat-like creature that maintains the universe. In the forests, deep in the shadowed wood, I have seen the fleeting glimpse of the spirit of nature.
I have seen a creature evolved to mimic the shape of a pokeball. It is nature's cruellest joke.
So what are they? These words, this mantra, that repeats over and over in my head; sings in my sleep; makes me fly from town to town, never stopping, never slowing; makes me sleep in long grass, cowslips and bluebells in my hair, dead to the world? That gripped me first, that terrible day on my tenth birthday, and has hung over me ever since? This Real Quest?
Simply-
To catch them is my real quest.
To train them is my cause. Only this-
And truly, it is my curse-
That I-
Arrgh-
Gotta catch 'em all.
Gotta catch 'em all Gotta catch 'em all Gotta catch 'em all Gotta catch 'em all Gotta catch 'em all Gotta catch 'em all Gotta catch 'em all Gotta catch 'em all Gotta catch 'em all Gotta catch 'em all Gotta catch 'em all Gotta catch 'em all Gotta catch 'em all Gotta catch 'em all Gotta catch 'em all Gotta catch 'em all Gotta catch 'em all Gotta catch 'em all Gotta catch 'em all Gotta catch 'em all Gotta catch 'em all Gotta catch 'em all Gotta catch 'em all Gotta-
The note ends here, apart from some suspicious red stains.