It was once a good world to live in.
Once.
It was a world plentifully supplied with sunshine. Man breathed in
the clean air and drank his fill of pure water; he farmed the fertile soil and
reaped harvests of plenty. He built homes to live in, invented systems of
writing and mathematics, discovered new ways of thinking. He crossed oceans,
hiked over and through mountain ranges, and flew through the air. He invented
tools that would help him satisfy his raging curiosity: machines that gazed
down at the building blocks of life and nudged them into new combinations;
machines that looked out to the farthest stars; machines that even seemed to
think, as Man himself did. Man even took a few tentative steps out into the
dark of space itself, orbiting high above the world.
And through all of this, Man had the Pokemon at his side. Creatures
of fur, of feather, of petals, of rock or fire or water or metal or
electricity... Coming in all shapes, in all sizes, they seemed to be just one
more proof that life was good and rich and wonderful. For the Pokemon seemed
born to be Man's companions: protectors, proteges, servants, friends. From
the Tauros that plowed his fields to the Growlithe that made the traveller's
journey safe; from the Lapras that carried him across the waves to the Drowzee
that soothed his sleep; Man relied on the Pokemon.
Then the Benevolent Ones came.
Coming from farther away in space than Man dreamed possible, they
ripped up the surface of the planet. All centers of organization they could
identify, they destroyed, and all men who seemed capable of opposing them. As
a matter of course, the Pokemon were all but eliminated, to destroy Man's
known way of fending for himself, and make him dependent upon his conquerors.
That was their meaning of 'Benevolence': that Man should have his
insignificant way of life uprooted, and bent towards the greater, glorious
task of serving his superiors, as they had done to near a hundred enslaved
races on other planets.
Food is no longer plentiful. The air and water are no longer clean;
if anything breaks through a cloud of the foul smog generated by the aliens'
war factories, it is not a flock of Pidgeottos or a swarm of Butterfrees, but
the gleaming hull of an Overseer Sphere, the warships by which the Benevolent
Ones most often enforce their will. The only way in which humans are allowed
to own Pokemon is if they pit them against each other in savage gladiatorial
games held for the aliens' amusement; unlike the Pokemon battles of decades
past, a match is not considered finished until at least one competitor is
dead. In such a way has the heart of Man been turned weak and sour, for once
he has betrayed his truest and oldest friend, what is left but to betray
himself?
It was once a good world to live in. But that world has gone.
* * *
Asher decided that whoever had built the walls of the Pallet Town
Hall had done their work well. The walls were no longer standing, of course,
but neither had they crumbled, unlike many of the other buildings destroyed by
the aliens. The walls had broken but not shattered, and the formations into
which the pieces had fallen formed many caves and lean-tos of various sizes,
in which a wanderer could hide from the elements. Or from others of his own
kind.
Asher groaned softly. He didn't really care who had built the walls.
He was only trying to distract himself from the pain in his stomach. The
dull pain of hunger, he knew well and could handle, but this was a sharp
roiling pain that cramped his guts every few minutes. He suspected that the
food he'd managed to scavenge from a farm's refuse heap last night had been
tainted, either by accident or on purpose. He just hoped he could keep up the
appearance of control during the coming negotiations.
The palm-sized sphere nestled in the crook of his elbow rocked
slightly. From inside came a high-pitched voice making a whispered but
plaintive protest. "pika pika, pikahu..."
Asher sighed, and winced as what felt like a steel cable wrapped
around his stomach tightened. "I know, Pikoo, I know. I smell something back
there too. What can I do about it, though?" The answer was hopeful in tone.
Asher shook his head, though Pikoo couldn't see him from inside the Poke Ball.
"No, we can't skip it and move on to Viridian. We need that money to buy
food." He wasn't sure he would recover even if he managed to put good food on
his stomach, but one more tainted meal would surely kill him. He gritted his
teeth and doubled over as another wave of pain washed over him; when he could
finally uncurl his body again, he took a long, shaky breath and wiped a sweat
from his brow.
By stretching out as flat as he could in his cramped hiding space,
Asher managed to keep the cramps down to just occasional shocks. He stayed on
his back until a metallic shriek split the air, and seemed to pierce his
eardrums through. He clapped his hands to his ears and sat up, and gasped at
his mistake as his stomach started roiling again. Pallet Town, like every
other town where the aliens had built their arms factories, built its life
around the "factory whistle" that summoned a new shift of forced labor every
one-and-a-half human hours. He waited for the shriek and its echo off the
western mountains to die down, and started easing himself carefully out of his
narrow shelter, holding the Poke Ball with Pikoo inside tightly.
The boy swaggered into sight just a little while later. Asher had
him pegged as a pampered son of whoever the puppet mayor might be; no one who
wasn't so shielded by influence would dare flaunt his wealth so openly on the
streets, let alone strut so conspicuously on his way to an illicit
transaction. The boy, just a little older than Asher himself, wore his long
blue hair in a single ponytail held by a jeweled gold band. Over his black
tunic, he wore a short cape embroidered with gold thread, and since their
first encounter that morning, he'd added a pearl-handled dagger at his belt --
a completely useless weapon, but still illegal for anyone against whom the
laws were enforced. He carried a small drawstring bag, which he tossed
carelessly from hand to gloved hand as he looked around him.
Asher stepped out into the open, keeping a hand on the jagged edge of
the wall for support. "Over here."
The boy turned, saw Asher and smirked. "Ah, there you are. For a
second, I thought you'd taken a better offer. You still have the Pikachu?"
Asher nodded, too tired to trade fancy words. He held the Poke Ball
out -- and pulled it back as the boy moved for it too fast. "Uh-uh. I want
to see your gold first." The boy grimaced, and opened the bag, showing Asher
the pieces. "I want them counted. In front of me." The boy sighed as if
he'd been asked to do factory labor, but counted out three piles of five gold
coins each on the ground, then scooped them back into the bag.
"Satisfied?" He pulled the strings on the bag shut. "Good. Now I
want to see my Pikachu."
Asher held up the Poke Ball. "Pikachu! I choose you!"
The lid of the Poke Ball flipped open, and Pikoo materialized. He
immediately went into his act, growling and snarling like a just-caught
Pokemon that had only bonded with its trainer enough not to run away. His
ears were flattened back against his head, his yellow fur bristled, and his
lightning-bolt tail stuck straight out. He pawed the ground. "Pika!" Pikoo
snarled. "Pika hu! Pika pika!"
"Marvelous!" the boy cried. "Let's see his Thundershock attack!"
Asher flinched as the boy grabbed his dagger from its sheath, but the boy
merely flipped the blade up, held it by its tip for a moment, and threw it
end-over-end into the dirt a couple of yards away. "Well? Go on! Make it
Thundershock!"
"Pikachu!" Asher said. He pointed to the knife. "Thundershock,
now!" Another cramp hit without warning, and his knees gave out on him for a
second; he was only glad the boy seemed totally focused on Pikoo and his
dagger.
"PI... KA... HUUU!!!" screeched Pikoo. From the two red circles of
the electric sacs on his cheeks, Pikoo sent forth a stream of crackling
electricity that surged in a short arc and converged on the target of the
dagger. Asher blinked to clear the bright floating spots from his vision.
When the clouds of dust and dirt cleared, he could see the dagger uprooted by
the attack, lying on its side with its shiny blade and handle tarnished.
"Wonderful," cried the boy, clasping his hands. "Why, he could be a
descendant of Professor Ash's famous Pikachu!" Asher gave a start, but the
boy was bending down towards Pikoo. "Aren't you, little Mousey?" He yanked
his hand back quickly as Pikoo snarled and spat sparks from his cheeks. "I
bet you he's pretty fast." He gestured with his hand.
"Fast?" Asher shrugged. "Sure, I guess he's fast. I mean -- you're
not going to race him, I assume, so he's fast enough in a fight, and that's
what counts."
"I just said he was fast," the boy said. He made the same gesture,
moving a flattened hand palm-down across his chest at the level of his lowest
ribs. Again, Asher had the feeling he was missing something important, but
Pikoo picked that moment to scamper up Asher's side and perch on his shoulder.
"Well, then," the boy said. "Shall we exchange?" He balanced the
drawstring bag on the tips of his fingers. Asher was about to reply when he
noticed that the shadows cast by the walls only a second ago were disappearing.
"Pikoo! Return!" he said. Pikoo dived into the red light from the
Poke Ball's capture lens, and dematerialized into it in a split second. The
blue-haired boy was already under cover; with surprising quickness for one
who'd been protected by others all his life, he'd hit the ground rolling and
shoved himself under the edge of a tilted slab. Asher dived into his recent
hiding spot and huddled there, shuddering.
Everyone knew what it meant when the shadows vanished. The Overseer
Spheres were perfectly mirrored over their whole behemoth surfaces; even when
they were cruising with their weapons uncharged, they reflected enough light
down to the earth below to make mid-morning bright as noon, and noon a glaring
hell. Of course, when the hulls were charging up for assault on those below,
they gleamed with a light generated from within. Asher hunched over Pikoo's
Poke Ball, shaking uncontrollably, writhing when a lance of pain went through
his stomach but not daring to move, even within the shelter of the rubble.
His face pressed to the sandy dirt, Asher trembled, and even after
the unearthly light had faded, his skin still seemed to bake with heat. As
the high and oddly-worn boot heels appeared before his face, he forced himself
to scramble to his hands and knees and then to his feet, but he couldn't force
himself fast enough.
Asher knew what was coming by the way the boy's hand curled around
the wrist in which he held the Pokeball. "Here," came the boy's voice. "Let
me help --" The boot toe lashed into his stomach, driving hard; he cried out
with pain. "-- myself to this valuable Pokemon, to which you have no right."
Asher clutched the Pokeball with all his remaining strength, but his fingers
were efficiently, brutally pulled back, and his one wild swing at the boy's
own stomach earned him a knee in the face that dropped him, collapsing, to the
dirt. "Many thanks," the boy said, "and I hope you've learned a lesson in
loyalties from this." Asher gasped like a landed fish as the boy's footsteps
galloped away.
Many minutes passed before he was able to lurch to his feet and run,
bent over with an arm wrapped around his belly, for the tree cover of the
ancient Viridian Forest. Once there, he dropped to the ground and burrowed
into the shelter of a leaf-pile in a ditch. The cool soil drained the burning
heat from his face, giving him at least some clarity of thought in what he
believed might be his last hours. _Learned a lesson?_ He lay on his side and
flopped helplessly. _What lesson? That the strong get what they want, and
the weak only get to hope they aren't noticed... I already knew that._
"Huuuuu..."
Asher cracked his eyes open. Pikoo's round black eyes, seen
sideways, blinked back. He held something in his jaws, from which ragged
edges of torn cloth stuck out. Carefully, he opened his jaws and laid his
prize before Asher's face. The shiny coins clinked against each other as they
tumbled onto the dirt.
"Oh, _good_ boy," Asher breathed, feeling his eyes mist up. _This_
was the lesson to be learned, that there was nothing to compare with a loyal
friend. The wet and ragged synthetic velvet had gotten stuck on Pikoo's
incisors, and Asher reached out to help the poor rodent, who was trying to paw
the obstruction free.
He pulled the thin cloth free... and as quickly as his heart had
lifted, it sank again. Adhering to Pikoo's upper lip were flakes of gold,
almost blending in with the yellow fur. Asher pulled aside the velvet,
dreading what he knew he would see... moistened in Pikoo's mouth, the discs
were losing their coatings of glistening foil, and showing the dull black
metal underneath.
Pikoo's tail, with its characteristic 'lightning tufts', had begun to
sag in dejection as he watched Asher's face. "Pi... ku?" it asked softly.
"It was a good try, Pikoo." Asher's stomach throbbed around the
impact point of the kick. "But... I don't think we go on from here." He
tried to manage a brave tone for Pikoo. "Maybe you will. I hope you do.
You've been a good friend."
Pikoo had laid his tail and forequarters down along the ground, and
started crooning a plaintive protest. The dark eyes pleaded -- and then
blinked in surprise.
"What is it?" Asher whispered. He held his breath, trying to listen
for whatever Pikoo might have heard. He heard nothing. Meanwhile Pikoo,
standing on his hind legs, turned in a circle and stared up at the thickly
massed trees. Suddenly Pikoo scampered off into the brush, leaving Asher
staring off at the lingering trace of yellow in his field of vision.
"I didn't mean to go on without me yet," Asher whispered. He sighed.
He couldn't blame Pikoo; there was no percentage for him in staying here. If
one had to die -- and without position or protector, many did -- there could
be worse things than to have a life-long friend sticking with you until the
last hours.
To his surprise, after a few moments, Pikoo came rocketing back
through the brush, and skidded to a stop. "Pika!" he squeaked. He turned
back the way he had come, and made a 'follow' gesture with his paw. When
Asher didn't move, Pikoo was suddenly in front of his outstretched hand, the
points of his teeth pressing sharply against the skin as he tugged.
"Pi-kfa-*huu*!"
At Pikoo's inexplicable insistence, Asher managed to get up and
stumble along in the underbrush, crouched over. Twice he fell and clutched at
his stomach, the second time actually blinded by the pain; each time Pikoo
harried him with squeaks and insistent nudging until it seemed less
problematic to get up and continue on.
Finally Pikoo led him to a small clearing. "ka-hooo!" he chirped
triumphantly, waving his paw up at the tallest of the trees.
Asher lay his head down to rest; the entire clearing seemed to be
spinning around him, and he wished it would stop. Or that the pain would
stop. Or that his heart would stop. "What is it, Pikoo? What's so special
that we had to come out here?"
Pikoo put his paws together, not ungently, under Asher's chin, and
strained upwards, until Asher found it less difficult to give in and sit back,
looking up at the tree. "Pi-*ka*!" Pikoo insisted. Asher looked up at the
tree. What was supposed to be special about it? True, it seemed surprisingly
healthy next to the stunted, twisted trees around it... He looked up into the
tree's crown of green foliage --
"Greetings, Professor Ash!" announced a chirpy voice.
Asher stared upwards, where the voice seemed to have come from. The
chirpy voice continued. "Can you explain why you appear to have become
younger, Professor Ash?"
"I... I'm not Professor Ash... I'm Asher," he managed. "Who... who
are you?" Pikoo gave a soft 'pika-pika', scrambled onto his shoulder, and
pointed up to the top of the tree, where Asher finally spotted a gleam of
light in the middle of a dark circle.
"I am a Pokedex pattern-recognition computer; version
seven-point-one, with experimental software upgrade version alpha-eighteen!
Also known as Dexter X!" the voice chirped. "I am the creation of Professor
Ash Ketchum!" Asher felt his heart and head pound as the dark circle
telescoped towards him with a whir, and he suddenly recognized it as the lens
of an auto-camera, like the kind that watched the factories day and night.
"Data suggests that it is not possible for humans to reverse aging.
Therefore, you are not Professor Ash."
"No, I'm not," Asher said. "That was... my grandfather. He... he
died." Pikoo put his paw to Asher's cheek and pika-ed in a tone of worry.
The lens whirred from side to side, as if taking in the scenery.
"You are Asher Ketchum?" it asked finally.
Asher sighed. "I just said that."
The lens whirred. "Professor Ash has a grandson named Asher. You
bear a 93.6% resemblance to images of Professor Ash Ketchum as he was at the
age of eight." I'm eleven, Asher could have said, but he didn't see a point.
His stomach had begun to cramp again. The lens whirred around. "Substantial
changes are also observed in the surroundings of the installation. This
supports the hypothesis of a passage of time during which Professor Ash may
have deceased."
"huuuu?"
"Contingency instructions of Professor Ash are now activated. You
are now the authorized personnel of the installation." Asher thought the
rumble was in his roiling stomach... until a flat circle of the ground
beneath him began to lower into the earth, and revealed an entrance to a dark
stairway leading downwards.
***
The air inside was musty -- unbelievably musty -- but it was
wonderfully cool, and it cleared Asher's head a little and let him think.
Even if he still had to use the handrails to inch his way down the stairs, and
blinked, blind, each time another light overhead flickered on to guide his
way, it was welcome. "He ... it ... thought I was Grandpa Ash. Does that
mean ... Grandpa worked in this place?" Pikoo squeaked clarification. "Built
this place? You mean this was... Grandpa's secret laboratory? Something
like that?" Pikoo chirped a soft 'pika-pika'.
As they continued down the stairs, one of the overhead lights failed
to turn itself on as they passed. Pikoo growled softly, and leapt from
Asher's shoulder to a ledge running along the side of the stairway; he aimed
his cheek-pads at the light fixture, and let go with a few jolts of
electricity until the light fixture glowed to life, if dimly. Asher continued
inching his way along the rail, thinking.
He'd never have suspected his grandfather to have a secret hideaway
like this. He remembered his grandfather as an amazing figure, a worker of
wonders, but he had long ago written that perception off as an illusion, like
the illusion of safety he had had at the same age, or the illusion that his
mother and father and baby sister would always be there. Now he had to
re-evaluate... "Pikoo? How did you know about this place?"
Pikoo looked down from the ledge. "ka?" Asher could see the tiny
paw tapping the lip, thoughtfully. "kahu," Pikoo replied, uncertainly, after
a while.
"But you don't remember it well, because you were very young?" Pikoo
agreed with a nodding and a flicking of his ears. Asher continued inching
down the stairs while Pikoo crept along the ledge. He only remembered as a
dim blur the day on which Grandpa had presented him with a little yellow
bundle of fur who would shortly be his best friend.
Now it felt as if his grandfather was, in some strange way, reaching
out from the past, reaching out from beyond death, to give him another gift
that would change things forever.
He couldn't help wondering with a shiver whether the gifts the dead
gave were exactly those that the living would have chosen.
* * *
The stairs finally ended in a long, roughly-oval cavern with strange
rough-hewn walls, packed with complicated-looking devices, jerry-rigged
equipment and storage cabinets. What was strange about the walls was the
irregularity of their shape; it seemed as if every time an extra nook or
cranny had been needed, it had been dug out of the -- ah, that explained why
that style of excavation looked so familiar; Asher had seen it before, when he
had taken shelter in the abandoned lairs dug by Ground and Rock Pokemon. Human
construction crews had once been in the habit of employing such Pokemon to
quickly and safely excavate foundations and underground spaces, later moving
in to refine the space to human standards.
_So my grandfather builds a secret laboratory -- by the look of it,
with Pokemon labor alone, as if humans couldn't be trusted with the secret.
What kind of a secret was he keeping?_
"Greetings, Asher Ketchum!" announced the bright voice again, so
loudly that Asher winced. There was a central pillar set into the wall
opposite the stairs, and as the voice spoke, lights flickered on a read-screen
set into that pillar; Asher guessed that the pillar housed this "Dexter X"
who kept speaking to him. "Now that you are the authorized personnel of this
installation, you will probably want to review Professor Ash Ketchum's notes
--"
"Medicine," Asher gasped. "Please. Is there any medicine here?"
"Certainly!" Dexter X chirped. "The cabinet to your immediate right
may be opened for a full stock of Potions and Heals!" The lights on the read
screen formed into a circle, which made one complete rotation. "Full potency
of the formulation," continued Dexter X in a more muted tone, "cannot be
guaranteed due to the passage of time."
Asher opened the steel-doored cabinet, and sure enough, inside there
were racks after wooden racks of bottles and vials, carefully sorted by the
color of the contents. Most of them still had the faint glow that meant they
were still potent, and though he couldn't read the labels, he thought he
remembered the color code for Potions and Heals made in the Indigo style, the
kind his grandfather had always favored. Soft amber, that should be the Full
Heal. Pikoo eyed it worriedly. "Pi huu?"
Asher turned with the vial in his hand, and staggered over to the
read-screen, holding the vial up with the inscription on it facing front.
"This says 'Full Heal', right? That cures poison?"
"Correct; that vial is marked 'Full Heal'." The lights on
the read-screen made another full rotation. "However, the Pikachu does not
appear to be poisoned."
"'s not him that's poisoned," Asher muttered, fumbling with the
nozzle-cap. "'s me."
"Effects of Pokemon medications on human physiologies are not
determined," Dexter X replied quickly. "Use of Pokemon medication for human
conditions *cannot be recommended*," it added, with perhaps a touch of alarm.
Asher paused in his struggle with the cap. "Is there any human
medicine here?"
Another full rotation and a half of the lights. "No."
No choice then, and not really much to lose. Asher put his back to
the pillar and sank down it as he finally got the nozzle open. He fumbled
the vial's cap into spritzing position, and sprayed all of the viscous
liquid down his throat.
The Heal had no taste, but an odd syrupy aftertaste. It seemed to
descend straight to his stomach, and glow there with a quiet heat that eased
the pain there. That was about the last thought he had with any coherence as
he doubled over and everything in his stomach including its own walls tried to
rush out his throat at once.
A while later, Asher returned to a more aware state. Pikoo's paws
were patting his cheeks gently, and the little rodent was crooning in a
worried tone. "'s okay, kay," he assured Pikoo. "'m doing mu' better..."
And he was, too; his stomach now felt very hungry and empty but at least
clean. The only thing still wrong was feeling a little light-headed from
bringing up the poisoned food. And being made a little queasy by the sight of
that poisoned food spread across the laboratory floor, glowing. And the way
that everything seemed to be outlined in a faint rainbow haze that left
streaks in his vision as he turned his head... "'m just gonna sit here a
while."
"That is recommended procedure in times of illness," announced Dexter
X cheerily. "Remain quiet, warm and comfortable. Would you like to review
Professor Ketchum's notes now?" Pikoo hopped into his lap and snuggled there,
pressing his little head against Asher's chest. "They are quite lengthy, so
it is recommended that you be comfortably seated while reviewing them."
Asher nodded his head, regretting the motion as soon as he made it;
apparently the thing couldn't see the nod, so he said, "Yes, I'd like to know
what my grandfather was doing here. Can you read the notes to me?" He closed
his eyes as the cheery computer voice settled in for a long reading.
"July 17: Construction of the laboratory is now complete; the
Reinhardt Museum has confirmed shipment of the last genetic sample needed to
put this hypothesis to the full test. I pray God I may be wrong..."
* * *
In a field just on the edge of Viridian Forest, two figures sat
around a shielded campfire. Both were dressed in identical outfits of
undecorated black; both spoke in whispers, out of habits of caution that had
been drilled into them early. Each had a task to work on.
The blue-haired boy peeled off his glove, flexed his fingers
experimentally, and shook them out. "I'm still numb through all this arm," he
moaned. He held the arm out and shook it awkwardly to demonstrate.
Across the campfire from him, the girl looked up from the metal
tube-like device in her lap. Her features resembled his slightly, but her
hair was short-cut and red. She merely looked at him waving his arm around,
and arched an eyebrow. Then she bent her head down over what she was doing,
which was carefully filling a reservoir in the tube device with a powder she
tapped out carefully from a ceramic vial.
"Well, it hurt!" he insisted. "I don't think that was an ordinary
Pikachu. I'm lucky I didn't get a burn from a Thundershock that strong."
"I hope you realize," she answered, "that I'm just bleeding with
sympathy over here. You run the distinct risk of cracking my heart in two if
you continue to share your tales of woe." She re-capped the vial and slid it
into a pocket along the seam of her jacket. "Meanwhile, are you going to take
out your radio or have I been getting a relay drone ready for nothing?" She
reached down and picked up two thin wings, which she fixed to the sides of the
tube.
His grumblings subsided, but he dug into his pack. What he pulled
out looked like a Poke Ball; but when he pulled at what looked like the
capture lens, a telescoping antenna emerged instead, and the two halves fell
away from each other to reveal an audio pickup and a speaker grille, among
other things.
He tapped in a security code and then a routing code, and looked up
at his partner, holding the completed plane aloft. "Oh, and don't tell the
boss about your arm being numb," she said. "The drone only has seven minutes
of fuel in any case, and besides, I don't think he'll care." She grinned at
his sour look, and launched the plane.
As the drone's engine sputtered to hissing life, it carried the plane
up above the tree level. It wandered around in nearly random fashion, making
it difficult for any trackers to guess where the signals it amplified were
coming from. The boy pushed the button that completed a call request and
began speaking immediately. "J17, J18, calling Control. J17, J18, calling
Control. J17, J18, calling --"
"Control," rasped a harsh voice. "Report."
"Have left location P.T., on planned route to location V. Tried to
acquire a Pokemon today, in accordance with mission objectives. A young --
er, younger boy, claimed he'd caught a wild Pikachu and wanted to sell it for
money. I was posing as a local collaborator with money to spend, but I didn't
have as much as he wanted on hand."
"Did you borrow emergency funds from the local contact?" the voice
demanded.
"No!" the boy replied. "I didn't see a long-term contact to be made,
so I obtained counterfeit to make the acquisition." The girl coughed. "At
the suggestion of my partner," the boy added reluctantly.
"And yet you didn't acquire the Pikachu," the voice stated flatly.
"I, uh..." the boy faltered. "I thought I saw an opportunity to get
the Pikachu without even losing the counterfeit. It would have worked, but --
the Pikachu was in on it. It opened the Poke Ball by itself, Thundershocked
me... and, uh, escaped. With some of the counterfeit," he added, and winced
even before the explosive snort came from the speaker.
"J17, proceed to location V. as per previous orders. If similar
opportunities come to your attention, turn them over to an agent with some
shred of competence. Do not under any circum..." the voice from the speaker
suddenly died, replaced by a hard, throbbing buzz.
"Jamming," the girl said, breathlessly. She ran out into the field,
and turned into circles, eyes trained to the sky. Up above the canopy of the
Viridian Forest, there was a sudden arc of brightness, a curved sliver of
light like the first night after the new moon. The Overseer Sphere continued
collecting light that shimmered along its underside -- and then sent a thin
finger of it downwards in a low-power Bright Burst that, despite being
low-power, ripped through the relay drone and through the trees, which
shattered as if struck by lightning. Then, still gleaming with energy, the
Sphere glided smoothly in the direction of the campfire.
"Ditch!" she shouted. "Ditch!" The boy had already hurled the radio
as far away as he could, in hopes that the Sphere would pursue the source of
the radio signals first rather than locking onto visual targets. He had
grabbed up both their packs and began stomping out their campfire; she grabbed
him by the arm. "No time! Just run! River's that way!" She yanked her hood
up over her head as she sprinted, and he did like-wise; both of them gasped
but neither looked back as another Bright Burst split open the night and made
the ground beneath their feet shake.
The Sphere hovered for a moment above the now-destroyed source of
radio signals. There were no more radio signals, but there was a heat source
not far off; a heat source strong enough to make tracking other heat sources
difficult. The Sphere stabbed downward with another Bright Burst; the
campfire and the ground where it had been flew outward from the blast in all
directions. A still-burning wisp of tinder lodged in the fork of a branch,
and spread to some leaves hanging down from the higher branches. The Sphere
paid no attention; the sensors now gave a clear picture of two moving,
human-sized heat sources. It followed the heat sources, setting its hull
energy to recharge as it did so.
* * *
"The M. comes out of the tank two days from now."
Professor Ash -- he looked so grave, white-haired and worn down
with responsibility, it seemed wrong somehow to call him "Grandpa" -- spoke in
a tight voice, and paced back and forth as he spoke. Asher had been drifting
in and out of sleep, so he wasn't quite sure when or how time's pages had
folded in the wrong direction and deposited him here years out of sequence,
but here his grandfather was...
"I am more afraid now than I was at any point during the recreation
of 2. There, I was only trying to re-create what had done before -- without
the ill-advised last-minute modifications to its genetics that may have pushed
it towards hostility, and of course without the employment in destruction from
the moment of its birth that surely set it on such a stony road. And in the
end, my faith that such a creature could choose peaceful co-existence if
taught of it proved justified.
"But if my theory is correct, the creature that shortly will emerge
from the tank may have been designed for destruction by intelligences far
greater than any human scientist ever possessed."
Asher was still trying to work out the puzzle of the time-slip. He
had gotten as far as remembering that his mother and father had broken the
news about his grandfather's death to him; this meant, then... that if he was
in a time when his grandfather was still alive, then so must... His heart
leapt with joy, and he opened his mouth to get his grandfather's attention, to
tell him that they had to go, there was still time to change it all. But no
sound came from him; he was not even sure that his mouth had actually opened,
and his grandfather continued to speak and to pace.
"Less than twelve hours now. I must rid myself of this fear; I do not
know how soon it may be able to read such things from my mind, and it would be
disaster for my worst-case scenarios to be read from my mind and taken as
guidance.
"Instead, I have taken steps to give it love from the very beginning.
B. was glad to send to me a very old and gentle Growlithe whom, he assures me,
will be more comfortable in Indigo's cooler climate than on his ranch. Indeed,
the Growlithe has taken to its new residence in the laboratory with aplomb,
and every so often pads over to stare at M. in the tank with every evidence of
welcoming curiosity."
Asher tried to interrupt his grandfather's narrative, without success.
We could hide better this time, he tried to say. Please, don't you hear me?
Don't you understand? They kill you. They kill Daddy. Amber dies of
cold and sickness. Then Mama dies and there's no one left but me. This time
we can make a safe hiding hole, one like this one; we can hide and wait till it
all passes by. I don't have to lose everyone this time...
But his grandfather continued on, oblivious to Asher's warning, and
even to the tears that began to roll down his cheeks. Then Asher was sure it
wasn't his grandfather after all, the Professor never would have ignored his
tears like that. A wave of bleakness washed over him...
And as it did, Asher became aware of something very strange that had
been happening. At his sudden rush of hope, there had been an answering
awakening flash of curiosity. At his puzzlement at how to make his
grandfather understand, there had been interest. At his frustration,
there was sympathy. Someone else, he realized in a moment of returning
clarity, was thinking inside his head.
His heart twinged, and he curled in on himself bitterly. He didn't
know who this stranger was; he didn't want to know. He had re-lost his entire
family in the space of ... however long. Strangers offered nothing but
trouble -- in attractive guises, sometimes, looking like shining gold, but
underneath nothing but hard painful coldness.
The strange mind hovered around his uncertainly, radiating confusion
at this sudden attempt to shut it out. After a while, the presence offered
something new, and Asher felt sensations, images, slipping into his
consciousness. Panicked, he tried to block them out, but they were
firmer and clearer than his own perceptions; they flowed into his mind...
... and much to his surprise, they didn't hurt. Instead, the smells
of a home-cooked meal tickled his nose. He felt the warm amusement of the Tall
White-Haired Man, who laughed as the Little Yellow Furry Thing scurried over
to the plate to get its share of the food. Little Yellow Furry's mind was
only just starting to develop memories; most of the time it was a streaking
electric current of instincts, the prime instinct of which sent it racing
towards the meals whenever they were unpacked. Both Tall White-Haired Man and
Little Yellow Furry's mind danced with laughter as Man scooped Furry up from
the table and deposited it into an upturned hat.
Still sleepy, he curled up comfortably, wrapping his paws around the
bulbous tip of his tail, and snuggling up against the Big Soft Warm Thing,
listening to its thumping heart. Big Soft Warm rruffed softly, and curled its
body slightly to make for a comfier cuddling surface. Big Soft Warm let
out a yawn that ran through its whole body, and its tail curled around to
nearly cover him with warm fur. Too comforted to think about who he was,
Asher drifted off as the stranger, the owner of these memories, had done.
* * *
Sitting by the little cottage's cracked window, Molly sighed. She
was hungry and she was bored, but there was no one was around to read to her,
and there would be no food either until Ma or Pa returned from their long
workdays in the city. She didn't even know when that would be; she knew that
they never came back until after it was dark, but for her, it was nearly
always dark.
She slowly stroked the fur on Charry, her Charmander doll. Ma and Pa
said it was because of the aliens' chemicals that she had been born with eyes
that needed an awful lot of light to see, and with a right hand whose fingers
were connected all together like a Golduck's foot. She knew what a Golduck's
foot was like because Scott from next door had a statue of one that he'd
brought over and let her feel.
Until the aliens had decided he could work too, Scott had come over
all the time to keep her company. They'd spend the day playing
make-believe that the Pokemon were all going to return; he'd told her
so many stories about Pokemon, and all the great things they'd been able to
do. Some day, Scott told her, the aliens might go away and the Pokemon
would come back and then she could have a seeing-eye Pokemon that could walk
around with her all the time and keep her safe.
She had dreams, though, about an even better Pokemon -- a Pokemon
called Angelite, a Pokemon that could do _anything_. Angelite was big
and strong; Angelite would _drive_ the aliens away and they'd never dare come
back. And then once they were gone, Angelite would fix her hand and her eyes
so that they were okay, and then he'd come and live with her and Ma and Pa
forever.
She hugged Charry tighter and sighed. Sometimes Ma and Pa liked to
hear her stories about Angelite, when they came home less tired than usual.
But she didn't know when they were coming home; she only knew that it would be
after it was dark, and for her it was --
-- light. Molly stared out the window, opening her eyes wide, trying
to make them work better. Coming from outside, from the direction of the big
Viridian Forest, there was definitely a spot of flickering light. And it was
getting bigger.
* * *
"M's ability grows daily," read Dexter X. "So far it has demonstrated
Telepathy, and today, for the first time, Telekinesis."
"That's you that it's talking about, isn't it?" Asher said out loud to
the presence in his head. It radiated confusion to him until he rephrased the
question as a series of concepts and mental images, at which point it
responded with an affirmative. He tried to ask it what it looked like, but
either it didn't understand the question or didn't have an answer. Perhaps it
didn't know what it looked like.
Pikoo snuggled in Asher's lap, radiating the smugness of the finally
well-fed. During Asher's long hallucinatory rest, Pikoo had discovered a prize
to be treasured more than gold: a cabinet filled with bags and bags of
foodstuffs, specially formulated for maximum Pokemon nutrition. Several bags
had gone bad over the years, but at least one large sack had been vacuum-sealed
and its contents had not spoiled. After Dexter X had confirmed without
hesitation that it was safe for human consumption, he and Pikoo had dug in
thoroughly; the Poke-biscuits were hard and bland and charcoal-like in texture
and heavenly. Asher popped another in his mouth and chewed thoughtfully.
"I confess to more pride than a scientist should probably take, in
seeing my predictions proving true. Like its forebears -- who are in a sense,
too, its descendants -- it manifests Psychic abilities at the highest levels.
The only major areas in which it has differed from my predictions, in fact, is
that it has yet shown no signs of that particular ability whose implications I
so greatly fear; that, and that it seems to have an actual need, not just a
preference, for the semi-suspended animation available inside its
customized Ball." The presence in Asher's head, trying to follow along with
this commentary, through Asher's understanding, presented an image of this
object, resting on one of the shelves in this very laboratory; it had obviously
started life as one of SilphCo's best Ultra Balls, but then been so modified
with experimental additions it was now shaped more like a Poke Cube.
"It displays weakness and fatigue after several hours outside the
Ball, and I have had to modify the internal mechanism so that the capture
pulse is generated more or less continuously, rather than only at the moment
of entry or exit; this influx of power seems to be necessary to sustain its
metabolism. This anomaly could, of course, mean I incorrectly reconstructed
its root DNA. But I wonder if, instead, this is a control mechanism that its
creators and masters built into the original creature from the very beginning,
to prevent its awesome power from escaping their control. If I am right, then
such precautions would not have been overdone; M. and its brethren would have
been the keys to breathtaking power."
Asher's stomach began to grow uneasy, and not because of the food
which Pikoo was now rummaging in the sack for a second share of. The strange
visitor in his head -- whatever it was -- seemed friendly enough, but Asher
had trouble reconciling that with 'breathtaking power'. His eyes fell on the
food sack; it didn't have handles, but it was just small enough, minus the
food they'd eaten, to make a good carrying sack... and they could probably
take most of the Heals and Potions, too, if they took the vials out of their
racks and pushed them down among the biscuits. He wondered, carefully hiding
this thought away from the observing presence in his head, what might be in
the other cabinets that could be worth keeping on the road, or valuable
enough to sell. Maybe some Poke Balls that could be rigged to play the 'buy
this Pikachu I caught' game again...
He looked up at the pillar set into the wall, and at the hardware set
into it, from which Dexter X continued to recite the Professor's notes. He
stood up and walked over to the pillar, and examined the set-up. Now that he
had time and concentration and his eyes weren't so blurry, he could see that
there was one unit that projected from the wall slightly, about the size and
thickness of a papercover book, and this was the unit on which the video
display was mounted. It also had its own speaker grille, though the wall
panel on which it was mounted had speakers, and -- he ran his fingers along
the side -- aha, yes, a little gap where you dug your fingers in when you were
removing it from its wall cradle. This unit was designed to be portable.
The question then, he supposed, was -- he hesitated -- who would buy
such a thing? He'd found that a handful of raw components would always find a
buyer sooner or later, but surely something like this was worth many, many
more days of food in its assembled form. If he could figure out what it
could do, what it was good for...
He suddenly realized that he wasn't just shielding these thoughts from
the curious presence in his mind. He was trying to shield them from the part
of his own mind that was outraged; outraged that he had been snatched from the
brink of death by poison and starvation and given the keys to a treasure, not
just of technology from before the Benevolents' purge, but of his own
grandfather's wisdom. And here he was, immediately wondering how to sell this
birthright for food.
"... seems to have stabilized at a constant level, apart from small
fluctuations," read Dexter X in its simulation of the Professor's voice. It
switched to its own chirpy tones again. "Entries resume on the 17th."
Asher had figured out that it did the voice simulation to separate what it was
quoting from its own words, but when it returned to its Professor-voice, he
was shaken by the quiet tension put into the words -- so shaken that he let
his mental blocking slip, and felt the curious, unafraid mind touch his own
again.
"It possesses that power," the voice said, and let it hang there.
There was a world of desperation in the words. "Dear God. How could we have
ever been so innocent, so blind -- how could we take the Pokemon for nothing
more than our servants and playthings? Did we never wonder why they were so
suited for battle?" Another pause. "I suppose hindsight will always suggest
that we should have known --"
Pikoo had also picked up on the changed tone of voice, ears going
back; now he scampered around the mess on the floor and leapt up into Asher's
arms. Dexter X spoke again, and this time its own tones were edged with
urgency. "Pardon the interruption of existing tasks. Internal logic suggests
that this news is of higher priority."
Asher stroked carefully between Pikoo's ears. "What is it?"
The whirling lights on the video screen gave way to a live image of
trees, and smoke curling between them, and the not-very-distant glow of
firelight. "It appears that the Viridian Forest is on fire." A moment of
stunned silence went by, and Dexter X added, unnecessarily, "We are currently
beneath the Viridian Forest. The safety of the installation may be
threatened."
Asher stood stock-still, watching the flames rising and getting
closer. "I don't suppose... can't we just wait it out in here?" He had been
ready just a few minutes ago to leave this cave to its mysterious Pokemon
inhabitant, but now it was a sanctuary he never wanted to leave.
Dexter X clicked. "Doubtful. Ventilation subsystems were never
tested under strain and cannot be guaranteed. Also --" Abruptly the ground
shook, throwing Asher to the floor; he twisted to keep from landing on Pikoo,
who shrieked in panic as they fell. The lights flared and went dead; the video
image of the forest on fire was abruptly cut off as the ceiling in the far
corner of the room abruptly dented inwards, spilling dirt as it crumbled. "--
structural integrity of the installation may be stressed," concluded Dexter X
from its staticky screen.
Asher stood, shakily, trying to keep down his own panic despite Pikoo's
shrill urgent squeals, not to mention the signals of alarm coming directly
into his mind from the hidden Pokemon. "Okay, we can't stay here! Pikoo, you
open every cabinet you can, pull out everything useful you can find! Stuff it
into the sack if you can." Pikoo scampered into the cabinet that was already
open and began tugging out the racks of Heals and Revives and Potions. "You,"
he spoke out loud to the presence in his mind, "tell me where your Poke Ball
is; we'll get you out of here too."
"Take me as well!" cried Dexter X. "I can be useful!"
"Tell me where this 'M' pokemon my grandfather talked about is, then!"
Asher was already trying the second cabinet from the left, the best match for
the fuzzy, alarmed image being fed into his mind, but it contained nothing
like the Poke Cube he'd seen. He scooped the couple of Leaf Stones that
weighted down papers on the shelf into his pocket.
"Next cabinet to the right," directed the computer. "Structural
integrity cannot be guaranteed for any length of time! Previous partial
collapse was caused by an unexplained impact on the surface. Possibly a
falling tree," it added, though it did not sound sure. Asher yanked open the
indicated cabinet, and behind a videophone that was being disassembled for
parts, found the Poke Cube. He pulled it from the cabinet; thankfully all
the loose parts had been taped down. "Further impacts of that magnitude will
surely collapse the installation!"
"We're not staying!" Asher tossed the Poke Cube to Pikoo. "Put that
on the top of the sack!" He ran over to the pillar, grabbed Dexter X with
both hands, and pulled it free of its cradle; it came free more easily than
he expected, and he nearly lost his footing as he backed into the mess on the
floor. Not wasting time with curses, he tucked Dexter X under one arm,
scooped up the food sack under the other, and sprinted up the stairs. Pikoo
ran alongside, once or twice spitting out a flurry of sparks to give them
light.
At the top of the stairs, there was plenty of light; orange-white
light from the blazing trees of the forest above. The circular door
which had retracted to let him in, earlier, was now stuck half-way. Coughing
on smoke, Asher had to put down the food sack and bash at the door with his
forearms, making it retract enough to let them out. Finally it yielded, and
Asher clambered out, reaching back to pull up the precious sack.
Probably the only reason that the fire wasn't right on top of them
was that something had reduced every tree in a radius of several yards to a
carpet of shredded bark and splintered wood, but even that could be sparked
into a blaze any second. Asher, on hands and knees and panting, raised
Dexter X high above his head and turned him in a circle. "Which way do
we go to get out!" he shouted, and choked on the thick, noxious smoke.
Dexter X chirped. "Cannot determine any fire-free path!" it chirped
back, volume raised to carry above the crackle of the blaze. "Suggest we
summon authorities --"
"They don't care," Asher shouted. "They like us *just fine* dead!"
"Suggest we get assistance of flying Pokemon above us!" Dexter X
insisted.
Asher looked up into the smoke-and-light-crowded sky. "Where? *What*
flying Pokemon!?" Pikoo pika'ed frantically, and craned its own neck,
looking for this theoretical rescuer.
The video screen flickered into life. "Unrecognized species of
Pokemon! Tentatively classified as Flying-type, Steel-type, or possibly
Electric-type!" The video image faded in and out, correcting for the
obscuring smoke, until it finally brought into focus a curved metallic
horizon.
Mute with horror, Asher turned his eyes to the sky. It didn't take
advanced vision-correcting perceptors now to see the Overseer Sphere gliding
over the clearing, its mammoth mirrored surface turned into a deadly harvest
moon by the orange glow of the blaze that surrounded and trapped them. "That's
no Pokemon." Hanging above them, the warship's underside began to shimmer, the
reflected orange light replaced with deadly white.
Once.
It was a world plentifully supplied with sunshine. Man breathed in
the clean air and drank his fill of pure water; he farmed the fertile soil and
reaped harvests of plenty. He built homes to live in, invented systems of
writing and mathematics, discovered new ways of thinking. He crossed oceans,
hiked over and through mountain ranges, and flew through the air. He invented
tools that would help him satisfy his raging curiosity: machines that gazed
down at the building blocks of life and nudged them into new combinations;
machines that looked out to the farthest stars; machines that even seemed to
think, as Man himself did. Man even took a few tentative steps out into the
dark of space itself, orbiting high above the world.
And through all of this, Man had the Pokemon at his side. Creatures
of fur, of feather, of petals, of rock or fire or water or metal or
electricity... Coming in all shapes, in all sizes, they seemed to be just one
more proof that life was good and rich and wonderful. For the Pokemon seemed
born to be Man's companions: protectors, proteges, servants, friends. From
the Tauros that plowed his fields to the Growlithe that made the traveller's
journey safe; from the Lapras that carried him across the waves to the Drowzee
that soothed his sleep; Man relied on the Pokemon.
Then the Benevolent Ones came.
Coming from farther away in space than Man dreamed possible, they
ripped up the surface of the planet. All centers of organization they could
identify, they destroyed, and all men who seemed capable of opposing them. As
a matter of course, the Pokemon were all but eliminated, to destroy Man's
known way of fending for himself, and make him dependent upon his conquerors.
That was their meaning of 'Benevolence': that Man should have his
insignificant way of life uprooted, and bent towards the greater, glorious
task of serving his superiors, as they had done to near a hundred enslaved
races on other planets.
Food is no longer plentiful. The air and water are no longer clean;
if anything breaks through a cloud of the foul smog generated by the aliens'
war factories, it is not a flock of Pidgeottos or a swarm of Butterfrees, but
the gleaming hull of an Overseer Sphere, the warships by which the Benevolent
Ones most often enforce their will. The only way in which humans are allowed
to own Pokemon is if they pit them against each other in savage gladiatorial
games held for the aliens' amusement; unlike the Pokemon battles of decades
past, a match is not considered finished until at least one competitor is
dead. In such a way has the heart of Man been turned weak and sour, for once
he has betrayed his truest and oldest friend, what is left but to betray
himself?
It was once a good world to live in. But that world has gone.
* * *
Asher decided that whoever had built the walls of the Pallet Town
Hall had done their work well. The walls were no longer standing, of course,
but neither had they crumbled, unlike many of the other buildings destroyed by
the aliens. The walls had broken but not shattered, and the formations into
which the pieces had fallen formed many caves and lean-tos of various sizes,
in which a wanderer could hide from the elements. Or from others of his own
kind.
Asher groaned softly. He didn't really care who had built the walls.
He was only trying to distract himself from the pain in his stomach. The
dull pain of hunger, he knew well and could handle, but this was a sharp
roiling pain that cramped his guts every few minutes. He suspected that the
food he'd managed to scavenge from a farm's refuse heap last night had been
tainted, either by accident or on purpose. He just hoped he could keep up the
appearance of control during the coming negotiations.
The palm-sized sphere nestled in the crook of his elbow rocked
slightly. From inside came a high-pitched voice making a whispered but
plaintive protest. "pika pika, pikahu..."
Asher sighed, and winced as what felt like a steel cable wrapped
around his stomach tightened. "I know, Pikoo, I know. I smell something back
there too. What can I do about it, though?" The answer was hopeful in tone.
Asher shook his head, though Pikoo couldn't see him from inside the Poke Ball.
"No, we can't skip it and move on to Viridian. We need that money to buy
food." He wasn't sure he would recover even if he managed to put good food on
his stomach, but one more tainted meal would surely kill him. He gritted his
teeth and doubled over as another wave of pain washed over him; when he could
finally uncurl his body again, he took a long, shaky breath and wiped a sweat
from his brow.
By stretching out as flat as he could in his cramped hiding space,
Asher managed to keep the cramps down to just occasional shocks. He stayed on
his back until a metallic shriek split the air, and seemed to pierce his
eardrums through. He clapped his hands to his ears and sat up, and gasped at
his mistake as his stomach started roiling again. Pallet Town, like every
other town where the aliens had built their arms factories, built its life
around the "factory whistle" that summoned a new shift of forced labor every
one-and-a-half human hours. He waited for the shriek and its echo off the
western mountains to die down, and started easing himself carefully out of his
narrow shelter, holding the Poke Ball with Pikoo inside tightly.
The boy swaggered into sight just a little while later. Asher had
him pegged as a pampered son of whoever the puppet mayor might be; no one who
wasn't so shielded by influence would dare flaunt his wealth so openly on the
streets, let alone strut so conspicuously on his way to an illicit
transaction. The boy, just a little older than Asher himself, wore his long
blue hair in a single ponytail held by a jeweled gold band. Over his black
tunic, he wore a short cape embroidered with gold thread, and since their
first encounter that morning, he'd added a pearl-handled dagger at his belt --
a completely useless weapon, but still illegal for anyone against whom the
laws were enforced. He carried a small drawstring bag, which he tossed
carelessly from hand to gloved hand as he looked around him.
Asher stepped out into the open, keeping a hand on the jagged edge of
the wall for support. "Over here."
The boy turned, saw Asher and smirked. "Ah, there you are. For a
second, I thought you'd taken a better offer. You still have the Pikachu?"
Asher nodded, too tired to trade fancy words. He held the Poke Ball
out -- and pulled it back as the boy moved for it too fast. "Uh-uh. I want
to see your gold first." The boy grimaced, and opened the bag, showing Asher
the pieces. "I want them counted. In front of me." The boy sighed as if
he'd been asked to do factory labor, but counted out three piles of five gold
coins each on the ground, then scooped them back into the bag.
"Satisfied?" He pulled the strings on the bag shut. "Good. Now I
want to see my Pikachu."
Asher held up the Poke Ball. "Pikachu! I choose you!"
The lid of the Poke Ball flipped open, and Pikoo materialized. He
immediately went into his act, growling and snarling like a just-caught
Pokemon that had only bonded with its trainer enough not to run away. His
ears were flattened back against his head, his yellow fur bristled, and his
lightning-bolt tail stuck straight out. He pawed the ground. "Pika!" Pikoo
snarled. "Pika hu! Pika pika!"
"Marvelous!" the boy cried. "Let's see his Thundershock attack!"
Asher flinched as the boy grabbed his dagger from its sheath, but the boy
merely flipped the blade up, held it by its tip for a moment, and threw it
end-over-end into the dirt a couple of yards away. "Well? Go on! Make it
Thundershock!"
"Pikachu!" Asher said. He pointed to the knife. "Thundershock,
now!" Another cramp hit without warning, and his knees gave out on him for a
second; he was only glad the boy seemed totally focused on Pikoo and his
dagger.
"PI... KA... HUUU!!!" screeched Pikoo. From the two red circles of
the electric sacs on his cheeks, Pikoo sent forth a stream of crackling
electricity that surged in a short arc and converged on the target of the
dagger. Asher blinked to clear the bright floating spots from his vision.
When the clouds of dust and dirt cleared, he could see the dagger uprooted by
the attack, lying on its side with its shiny blade and handle tarnished.
"Wonderful," cried the boy, clasping his hands. "Why, he could be a
descendant of Professor Ash's famous Pikachu!" Asher gave a start, but the
boy was bending down towards Pikoo. "Aren't you, little Mousey?" He yanked
his hand back quickly as Pikoo snarled and spat sparks from his cheeks. "I
bet you he's pretty fast." He gestured with his hand.
"Fast?" Asher shrugged. "Sure, I guess he's fast. I mean -- you're
not going to race him, I assume, so he's fast enough in a fight, and that's
what counts."
"I just said he was fast," the boy said. He made the same gesture,
moving a flattened hand palm-down across his chest at the level of his lowest
ribs. Again, Asher had the feeling he was missing something important, but
Pikoo picked that moment to scamper up Asher's side and perch on his shoulder.
"Well, then," the boy said. "Shall we exchange?" He balanced the
drawstring bag on the tips of his fingers. Asher was about to reply when he
noticed that the shadows cast by the walls only a second ago were disappearing.
"Pikoo! Return!" he said. Pikoo dived into the red light from the
Poke Ball's capture lens, and dematerialized into it in a split second. The
blue-haired boy was already under cover; with surprising quickness for one
who'd been protected by others all his life, he'd hit the ground rolling and
shoved himself under the edge of a tilted slab. Asher dived into his recent
hiding spot and huddled there, shuddering.
Everyone knew what it meant when the shadows vanished. The Overseer
Spheres were perfectly mirrored over their whole behemoth surfaces; even when
they were cruising with their weapons uncharged, they reflected enough light
down to the earth below to make mid-morning bright as noon, and noon a glaring
hell. Of course, when the hulls were charging up for assault on those below,
they gleamed with a light generated from within. Asher hunched over Pikoo's
Poke Ball, shaking uncontrollably, writhing when a lance of pain went through
his stomach but not daring to move, even within the shelter of the rubble.
His face pressed to the sandy dirt, Asher trembled, and even after
the unearthly light had faded, his skin still seemed to bake with heat. As
the high and oddly-worn boot heels appeared before his face, he forced himself
to scramble to his hands and knees and then to his feet, but he couldn't force
himself fast enough.
Asher knew what was coming by the way the boy's hand curled around
the wrist in which he held the Pokeball. "Here," came the boy's voice. "Let
me help --" The boot toe lashed into his stomach, driving hard; he cried out
with pain. "-- myself to this valuable Pokemon, to which you have no right."
Asher clutched the Pokeball with all his remaining strength, but his fingers
were efficiently, brutally pulled back, and his one wild swing at the boy's
own stomach earned him a knee in the face that dropped him, collapsing, to the
dirt. "Many thanks," the boy said, "and I hope you've learned a lesson in
loyalties from this." Asher gasped like a landed fish as the boy's footsteps
galloped away.
Many minutes passed before he was able to lurch to his feet and run,
bent over with an arm wrapped around his belly, for the tree cover of the
ancient Viridian Forest. Once there, he dropped to the ground and burrowed
into the shelter of a leaf-pile in a ditch. The cool soil drained the burning
heat from his face, giving him at least some clarity of thought in what he
believed might be his last hours. _Learned a lesson?_ He lay on his side and
flopped helplessly. _What lesson? That the strong get what they want, and
the weak only get to hope they aren't noticed... I already knew that._
"Huuuuu..."
Asher cracked his eyes open. Pikoo's round black eyes, seen
sideways, blinked back. He held something in his jaws, from which ragged
edges of torn cloth stuck out. Carefully, he opened his jaws and laid his
prize before Asher's face. The shiny coins clinked against each other as they
tumbled onto the dirt.
"Oh, _good_ boy," Asher breathed, feeling his eyes mist up. _This_
was the lesson to be learned, that there was nothing to compare with a loyal
friend. The wet and ragged synthetic velvet had gotten stuck on Pikoo's
incisors, and Asher reached out to help the poor rodent, who was trying to paw
the obstruction free.
He pulled the thin cloth free... and as quickly as his heart had
lifted, it sank again. Adhering to Pikoo's upper lip were flakes of gold,
almost blending in with the yellow fur. Asher pulled aside the velvet,
dreading what he knew he would see... moistened in Pikoo's mouth, the discs
were losing their coatings of glistening foil, and showing the dull black
metal underneath.
Pikoo's tail, with its characteristic 'lightning tufts', had begun to
sag in dejection as he watched Asher's face. "Pi... ku?" it asked softly.
"It was a good try, Pikoo." Asher's stomach throbbed around the
impact point of the kick. "But... I don't think we go on from here." He
tried to manage a brave tone for Pikoo. "Maybe you will. I hope you do.
You've been a good friend."
Pikoo had laid his tail and forequarters down along the ground, and
started crooning a plaintive protest. The dark eyes pleaded -- and then
blinked in surprise.
"What is it?" Asher whispered. He held his breath, trying to listen
for whatever Pikoo might have heard. He heard nothing. Meanwhile Pikoo,
standing on his hind legs, turned in a circle and stared up at the thickly
massed trees. Suddenly Pikoo scampered off into the brush, leaving Asher
staring off at the lingering trace of yellow in his field of vision.
"I didn't mean to go on without me yet," Asher whispered. He sighed.
He couldn't blame Pikoo; there was no percentage for him in staying here. If
one had to die -- and without position or protector, many did -- there could
be worse things than to have a life-long friend sticking with you until the
last hours.
To his surprise, after a few moments, Pikoo came rocketing back
through the brush, and skidded to a stop. "Pika!" he squeaked. He turned
back the way he had come, and made a 'follow' gesture with his paw. When
Asher didn't move, Pikoo was suddenly in front of his outstretched hand, the
points of his teeth pressing sharply against the skin as he tugged.
"Pi-kfa-*huu*!"
At Pikoo's inexplicable insistence, Asher managed to get up and
stumble along in the underbrush, crouched over. Twice he fell and clutched at
his stomach, the second time actually blinded by the pain; each time Pikoo
harried him with squeaks and insistent nudging until it seemed less
problematic to get up and continue on.
Finally Pikoo led him to a small clearing. "ka-hooo!" he chirped
triumphantly, waving his paw up at the tallest of the trees.
Asher lay his head down to rest; the entire clearing seemed to be
spinning around him, and he wished it would stop. Or that the pain would
stop. Or that his heart would stop. "What is it, Pikoo? What's so special
that we had to come out here?"
Pikoo put his paws together, not ungently, under Asher's chin, and
strained upwards, until Asher found it less difficult to give in and sit back,
looking up at the tree. "Pi-*ka*!" Pikoo insisted. Asher looked up at the
tree. What was supposed to be special about it? True, it seemed surprisingly
healthy next to the stunted, twisted trees around it... He looked up into the
tree's crown of green foliage --
"Greetings, Professor Ash!" announced a chirpy voice.
Asher stared upwards, where the voice seemed to have come from. The
chirpy voice continued. "Can you explain why you appear to have become
younger, Professor Ash?"
"I... I'm not Professor Ash... I'm Asher," he managed. "Who... who
are you?" Pikoo gave a soft 'pika-pika', scrambled onto his shoulder, and
pointed up to the top of the tree, where Asher finally spotted a gleam of
light in the middle of a dark circle.
"I am a Pokedex pattern-recognition computer; version
seven-point-one, with experimental software upgrade version alpha-eighteen!
Also known as Dexter X!" the voice chirped. "I am the creation of Professor
Ash Ketchum!" Asher felt his heart and head pound as the dark circle
telescoped towards him with a whir, and he suddenly recognized it as the lens
of an auto-camera, like the kind that watched the factories day and night.
"Data suggests that it is not possible for humans to reverse aging.
Therefore, you are not Professor Ash."
"No, I'm not," Asher said. "That was... my grandfather. He... he
died." Pikoo put his paw to Asher's cheek and pika-ed in a tone of worry.
The lens whirred from side to side, as if taking in the scenery.
"You are Asher Ketchum?" it asked finally.
Asher sighed. "I just said that."
The lens whirred. "Professor Ash has a grandson named Asher. You
bear a 93.6% resemblance to images of Professor Ash Ketchum as he was at the
age of eight." I'm eleven, Asher could have said, but he didn't see a point.
His stomach had begun to cramp again. The lens whirred around. "Substantial
changes are also observed in the surroundings of the installation. This
supports the hypothesis of a passage of time during which Professor Ash may
have deceased."
"huuuu?"
"Contingency instructions of Professor Ash are now activated. You
are now the authorized personnel of the installation." Asher thought the
rumble was in his roiling stomach... until a flat circle of the ground
beneath him began to lower into the earth, and revealed an entrance to a dark
stairway leading downwards.
***
The air inside was musty -- unbelievably musty -- but it was
wonderfully cool, and it cleared Asher's head a little and let him think.
Even if he still had to use the handrails to inch his way down the stairs, and
blinked, blind, each time another light overhead flickered on to guide his
way, it was welcome. "He ... it ... thought I was Grandpa Ash. Does that
mean ... Grandpa worked in this place?" Pikoo squeaked clarification. "Built
this place? You mean this was... Grandpa's secret laboratory? Something
like that?" Pikoo chirped a soft 'pika-pika'.
As they continued down the stairs, one of the overhead lights failed
to turn itself on as they passed. Pikoo growled softly, and leapt from
Asher's shoulder to a ledge running along the side of the stairway; he aimed
his cheek-pads at the light fixture, and let go with a few jolts of
electricity until the light fixture glowed to life, if dimly. Asher continued
inching his way along the rail, thinking.
He'd never have suspected his grandfather to have a secret hideaway
like this. He remembered his grandfather as an amazing figure, a worker of
wonders, but he had long ago written that perception off as an illusion, like
the illusion of safety he had had at the same age, or the illusion that his
mother and father and baby sister would always be there. Now he had to
re-evaluate... "Pikoo? How did you know about this place?"
Pikoo looked down from the ledge. "ka?" Asher could see the tiny
paw tapping the lip, thoughtfully. "kahu," Pikoo replied, uncertainly, after
a while.
"But you don't remember it well, because you were very young?" Pikoo
agreed with a nodding and a flicking of his ears. Asher continued inching
down the stairs while Pikoo crept along the ledge. He only remembered as a
dim blur the day on which Grandpa had presented him with a little yellow
bundle of fur who would shortly be his best friend.
Now it felt as if his grandfather was, in some strange way, reaching
out from the past, reaching out from beyond death, to give him another gift
that would change things forever.
He couldn't help wondering with a shiver whether the gifts the dead
gave were exactly those that the living would have chosen.
* * *
The stairs finally ended in a long, roughly-oval cavern with strange
rough-hewn walls, packed with complicated-looking devices, jerry-rigged
equipment and storage cabinets. What was strange about the walls was the
irregularity of their shape; it seemed as if every time an extra nook or
cranny had been needed, it had been dug out of the -- ah, that explained why
that style of excavation looked so familiar; Asher had seen it before, when he
had taken shelter in the abandoned lairs dug by Ground and Rock Pokemon. Human
construction crews had once been in the habit of employing such Pokemon to
quickly and safely excavate foundations and underground spaces, later moving
in to refine the space to human standards.
_So my grandfather builds a secret laboratory -- by the look of it,
with Pokemon labor alone, as if humans couldn't be trusted with the secret.
What kind of a secret was he keeping?_
"Greetings, Asher Ketchum!" announced the bright voice again, so
loudly that Asher winced. There was a central pillar set into the wall
opposite the stairs, and as the voice spoke, lights flickered on a read-screen
set into that pillar; Asher guessed that the pillar housed this "Dexter X"
who kept speaking to him. "Now that you are the authorized personnel of this
installation, you will probably want to review Professor Ash Ketchum's notes
--"
"Medicine," Asher gasped. "Please. Is there any medicine here?"
"Certainly!" Dexter X chirped. "The cabinet to your immediate right
may be opened for a full stock of Potions and Heals!" The lights on the read
screen formed into a circle, which made one complete rotation. "Full potency
of the formulation," continued Dexter X in a more muted tone, "cannot be
guaranteed due to the passage of time."
Asher opened the steel-doored cabinet, and sure enough, inside there
were racks after wooden racks of bottles and vials, carefully sorted by the
color of the contents. Most of them still had the faint glow that meant they
were still potent, and though he couldn't read the labels, he thought he
remembered the color code for Potions and Heals made in the Indigo style, the
kind his grandfather had always favored. Soft amber, that should be the Full
Heal. Pikoo eyed it worriedly. "Pi huu?"
Asher turned with the vial in his hand, and staggered over to the
read-screen, holding the vial up with the inscription on it facing front.
"This says 'Full Heal', right? That cures poison?"
"Correct; that vial is marked 'Full Heal'." The lights on
the read-screen made another full rotation. "However, the Pikachu does not
appear to be poisoned."
"'s not him that's poisoned," Asher muttered, fumbling with the
nozzle-cap. "'s me."
"Effects of Pokemon medications on human physiologies are not
determined," Dexter X replied quickly. "Use of Pokemon medication for human
conditions *cannot be recommended*," it added, with perhaps a touch of alarm.
Asher paused in his struggle with the cap. "Is there any human
medicine here?"
Another full rotation and a half of the lights. "No."
No choice then, and not really much to lose. Asher put his back to
the pillar and sank down it as he finally got the nozzle open. He fumbled
the vial's cap into spritzing position, and sprayed all of the viscous
liquid down his throat.
The Heal had no taste, but an odd syrupy aftertaste. It seemed to
descend straight to his stomach, and glow there with a quiet heat that eased
the pain there. That was about the last thought he had with any coherence as
he doubled over and everything in his stomach including its own walls tried to
rush out his throat at once.
A while later, Asher returned to a more aware state. Pikoo's paws
were patting his cheeks gently, and the little rodent was crooning in a
worried tone. "'s okay, kay," he assured Pikoo. "'m doing mu' better..."
And he was, too; his stomach now felt very hungry and empty but at least
clean. The only thing still wrong was feeling a little light-headed from
bringing up the poisoned food. And being made a little queasy by the sight of
that poisoned food spread across the laboratory floor, glowing. And the way
that everything seemed to be outlined in a faint rainbow haze that left
streaks in his vision as he turned his head... "'m just gonna sit here a
while."
"That is recommended procedure in times of illness," announced Dexter
X cheerily. "Remain quiet, warm and comfortable. Would you like to review
Professor Ketchum's notes now?" Pikoo hopped into his lap and snuggled there,
pressing his little head against Asher's chest. "They are quite lengthy, so
it is recommended that you be comfortably seated while reviewing them."
Asher nodded his head, regretting the motion as soon as he made it;
apparently the thing couldn't see the nod, so he said, "Yes, I'd like to know
what my grandfather was doing here. Can you read the notes to me?" He closed
his eyes as the cheery computer voice settled in for a long reading.
"July 17: Construction of the laboratory is now complete; the
Reinhardt Museum has confirmed shipment of the last genetic sample needed to
put this hypothesis to the full test. I pray God I may be wrong..."
* * *
In a field just on the edge of Viridian Forest, two figures sat
around a shielded campfire. Both were dressed in identical outfits of
undecorated black; both spoke in whispers, out of habits of caution that had
been drilled into them early. Each had a task to work on.
The blue-haired boy peeled off his glove, flexed his fingers
experimentally, and shook them out. "I'm still numb through all this arm," he
moaned. He held the arm out and shook it awkwardly to demonstrate.
Across the campfire from him, the girl looked up from the metal
tube-like device in her lap. Her features resembled his slightly, but her
hair was short-cut and red. She merely looked at him waving his arm around,
and arched an eyebrow. Then she bent her head down over what she was doing,
which was carefully filling a reservoir in the tube device with a powder she
tapped out carefully from a ceramic vial.
"Well, it hurt!" he insisted. "I don't think that was an ordinary
Pikachu. I'm lucky I didn't get a burn from a Thundershock that strong."
"I hope you realize," she answered, "that I'm just bleeding with
sympathy over here. You run the distinct risk of cracking my heart in two if
you continue to share your tales of woe." She re-capped the vial and slid it
into a pocket along the seam of her jacket. "Meanwhile, are you going to take
out your radio or have I been getting a relay drone ready for nothing?" She
reached down and picked up two thin wings, which she fixed to the sides of the
tube.
His grumblings subsided, but he dug into his pack. What he pulled
out looked like a Poke Ball; but when he pulled at what looked like the
capture lens, a telescoping antenna emerged instead, and the two halves fell
away from each other to reveal an audio pickup and a speaker grille, among
other things.
He tapped in a security code and then a routing code, and looked up
at his partner, holding the completed plane aloft. "Oh, and don't tell the
boss about your arm being numb," she said. "The drone only has seven minutes
of fuel in any case, and besides, I don't think he'll care." She grinned at
his sour look, and launched the plane.
As the drone's engine sputtered to hissing life, it carried the plane
up above the tree level. It wandered around in nearly random fashion, making
it difficult for any trackers to guess where the signals it amplified were
coming from. The boy pushed the button that completed a call request and
began speaking immediately. "J17, J18, calling Control. J17, J18, calling
Control. J17, J18, calling --"
"Control," rasped a harsh voice. "Report."
"Have left location P.T., on planned route to location V. Tried to
acquire a Pokemon today, in accordance with mission objectives. A young --
er, younger boy, claimed he'd caught a wild Pikachu and wanted to sell it for
money. I was posing as a local collaborator with money to spend, but I didn't
have as much as he wanted on hand."
"Did you borrow emergency funds from the local contact?" the voice
demanded.
"No!" the boy replied. "I didn't see a long-term contact to be made,
so I obtained counterfeit to make the acquisition." The girl coughed. "At
the suggestion of my partner," the boy added reluctantly.
"And yet you didn't acquire the Pikachu," the voice stated flatly.
"I, uh..." the boy faltered. "I thought I saw an opportunity to get
the Pikachu without even losing the counterfeit. It would have worked, but --
the Pikachu was in on it. It opened the Poke Ball by itself, Thundershocked
me... and, uh, escaped. With some of the counterfeit," he added, and winced
even before the explosive snort came from the speaker.
"J17, proceed to location V. as per previous orders. If similar
opportunities come to your attention, turn them over to an agent with some
shred of competence. Do not under any circum..." the voice from the speaker
suddenly died, replaced by a hard, throbbing buzz.
"Jamming," the girl said, breathlessly. She ran out into the field,
and turned into circles, eyes trained to the sky. Up above the canopy of the
Viridian Forest, there was a sudden arc of brightness, a curved sliver of
light like the first night after the new moon. The Overseer Sphere continued
collecting light that shimmered along its underside -- and then sent a thin
finger of it downwards in a low-power Bright Burst that, despite being
low-power, ripped through the relay drone and through the trees, which
shattered as if struck by lightning. Then, still gleaming with energy, the
Sphere glided smoothly in the direction of the campfire.
"Ditch!" she shouted. "Ditch!" The boy had already hurled the radio
as far away as he could, in hopes that the Sphere would pursue the source of
the radio signals first rather than locking onto visual targets. He had
grabbed up both their packs and began stomping out their campfire; she grabbed
him by the arm. "No time! Just run! River's that way!" She yanked her hood
up over her head as she sprinted, and he did like-wise; both of them gasped
but neither looked back as another Bright Burst split open the night and made
the ground beneath their feet shake.
The Sphere hovered for a moment above the now-destroyed source of
radio signals. There were no more radio signals, but there was a heat source
not far off; a heat source strong enough to make tracking other heat sources
difficult. The Sphere stabbed downward with another Bright Burst; the
campfire and the ground where it had been flew outward from the blast in all
directions. A still-burning wisp of tinder lodged in the fork of a branch,
and spread to some leaves hanging down from the higher branches. The Sphere
paid no attention; the sensors now gave a clear picture of two moving,
human-sized heat sources. It followed the heat sources, setting its hull
energy to recharge as it did so.
* * *
"The M. comes out of the tank two days from now."
Professor Ash -- he looked so grave, white-haired and worn down
with responsibility, it seemed wrong somehow to call him "Grandpa" -- spoke in
a tight voice, and paced back and forth as he spoke. Asher had been drifting
in and out of sleep, so he wasn't quite sure when or how time's pages had
folded in the wrong direction and deposited him here years out of sequence,
but here his grandfather was...
"I am more afraid now than I was at any point during the recreation
of 2. There, I was only trying to re-create what had done before -- without
the ill-advised last-minute modifications to its genetics that may have pushed
it towards hostility, and of course without the employment in destruction from
the moment of its birth that surely set it on such a stony road. And in the
end, my faith that such a creature could choose peaceful co-existence if
taught of it proved justified.
"But if my theory is correct, the creature that shortly will emerge
from the tank may have been designed for destruction by intelligences far
greater than any human scientist ever possessed."
Asher was still trying to work out the puzzle of the time-slip. He
had gotten as far as remembering that his mother and father had broken the
news about his grandfather's death to him; this meant, then... that if he was
in a time when his grandfather was still alive, then so must... His heart
leapt with joy, and he opened his mouth to get his grandfather's attention, to
tell him that they had to go, there was still time to change it all. But no
sound came from him; he was not even sure that his mouth had actually opened,
and his grandfather continued to speak and to pace.
"Less than twelve hours now. I must rid myself of this fear; I do not
know how soon it may be able to read such things from my mind, and it would be
disaster for my worst-case scenarios to be read from my mind and taken as
guidance.
"Instead, I have taken steps to give it love from the very beginning.
B. was glad to send to me a very old and gentle Growlithe whom, he assures me,
will be more comfortable in Indigo's cooler climate than on his ranch. Indeed,
the Growlithe has taken to its new residence in the laboratory with aplomb,
and every so often pads over to stare at M. in the tank with every evidence of
welcoming curiosity."
Asher tried to interrupt his grandfather's narrative, without success.
We could hide better this time, he tried to say. Please, don't you hear me?
Don't you understand? They kill you. They kill Daddy. Amber dies of
cold and sickness. Then Mama dies and there's no one left but me. This time
we can make a safe hiding hole, one like this one; we can hide and wait till it
all passes by. I don't have to lose everyone this time...
But his grandfather continued on, oblivious to Asher's warning, and
even to the tears that began to roll down his cheeks. Then Asher was sure it
wasn't his grandfather after all, the Professor never would have ignored his
tears like that. A wave of bleakness washed over him...
And as it did, Asher became aware of something very strange that had
been happening. At his sudden rush of hope, there had been an answering
awakening flash of curiosity. At his puzzlement at how to make his
grandfather understand, there had been interest. At his frustration,
there was sympathy. Someone else, he realized in a moment of returning
clarity, was thinking inside his head.
His heart twinged, and he curled in on himself bitterly. He didn't
know who this stranger was; he didn't want to know. He had re-lost his entire
family in the space of ... however long. Strangers offered nothing but
trouble -- in attractive guises, sometimes, looking like shining gold, but
underneath nothing but hard painful coldness.
The strange mind hovered around his uncertainly, radiating confusion
at this sudden attempt to shut it out. After a while, the presence offered
something new, and Asher felt sensations, images, slipping into his
consciousness. Panicked, he tried to block them out, but they were
firmer and clearer than his own perceptions; they flowed into his mind...
... and much to his surprise, they didn't hurt. Instead, the smells
of a home-cooked meal tickled his nose. He felt the warm amusement of the Tall
White-Haired Man, who laughed as the Little Yellow Furry Thing scurried over
to the plate to get its share of the food. Little Yellow Furry's mind was
only just starting to develop memories; most of the time it was a streaking
electric current of instincts, the prime instinct of which sent it racing
towards the meals whenever they were unpacked. Both Tall White-Haired Man and
Little Yellow Furry's mind danced with laughter as Man scooped Furry up from
the table and deposited it into an upturned hat.
Still sleepy, he curled up comfortably, wrapping his paws around the
bulbous tip of his tail, and snuggling up against the Big Soft Warm Thing,
listening to its thumping heart. Big Soft Warm rruffed softly, and curled its
body slightly to make for a comfier cuddling surface. Big Soft Warm let
out a yawn that ran through its whole body, and its tail curled around to
nearly cover him with warm fur. Too comforted to think about who he was,
Asher drifted off as the stranger, the owner of these memories, had done.
* * *
Sitting by the little cottage's cracked window, Molly sighed. She
was hungry and she was bored, but there was no one was around to read to her,
and there would be no food either until Ma or Pa returned from their long
workdays in the city. She didn't even know when that would be; she knew that
they never came back until after it was dark, but for her, it was nearly
always dark.
She slowly stroked the fur on Charry, her Charmander doll. Ma and Pa
said it was because of the aliens' chemicals that she had been born with eyes
that needed an awful lot of light to see, and with a right hand whose fingers
were connected all together like a Golduck's foot. She knew what a Golduck's
foot was like because Scott from next door had a statue of one that he'd
brought over and let her feel.
Until the aliens had decided he could work too, Scott had come over
all the time to keep her company. They'd spend the day playing
make-believe that the Pokemon were all going to return; he'd told her
so many stories about Pokemon, and all the great things they'd been able to
do. Some day, Scott told her, the aliens might go away and the Pokemon
would come back and then she could have a seeing-eye Pokemon that could walk
around with her all the time and keep her safe.
She had dreams, though, about an even better Pokemon -- a Pokemon
called Angelite, a Pokemon that could do _anything_. Angelite was big
and strong; Angelite would _drive_ the aliens away and they'd never dare come
back. And then once they were gone, Angelite would fix her hand and her eyes
so that they were okay, and then he'd come and live with her and Ma and Pa
forever.
She hugged Charry tighter and sighed. Sometimes Ma and Pa liked to
hear her stories about Angelite, when they came home less tired than usual.
But she didn't know when they were coming home; she only knew that it would be
after it was dark, and for her it was --
-- light. Molly stared out the window, opening her eyes wide, trying
to make them work better. Coming from outside, from the direction of the big
Viridian Forest, there was definitely a spot of flickering light. And it was
getting bigger.
* * *
"M's ability grows daily," read Dexter X. "So far it has demonstrated
Telepathy, and today, for the first time, Telekinesis."
"That's you that it's talking about, isn't it?" Asher said out loud to
the presence in his head. It radiated confusion to him until he rephrased the
question as a series of concepts and mental images, at which point it
responded with an affirmative. He tried to ask it what it looked like, but
either it didn't understand the question or didn't have an answer. Perhaps it
didn't know what it looked like.
Pikoo snuggled in Asher's lap, radiating the smugness of the finally
well-fed. During Asher's long hallucinatory rest, Pikoo had discovered a prize
to be treasured more than gold: a cabinet filled with bags and bags of
foodstuffs, specially formulated for maximum Pokemon nutrition. Several bags
had gone bad over the years, but at least one large sack had been vacuum-sealed
and its contents had not spoiled. After Dexter X had confirmed without
hesitation that it was safe for human consumption, he and Pikoo had dug in
thoroughly; the Poke-biscuits were hard and bland and charcoal-like in texture
and heavenly. Asher popped another in his mouth and chewed thoughtfully.
"I confess to more pride than a scientist should probably take, in
seeing my predictions proving true. Like its forebears -- who are in a sense,
too, its descendants -- it manifests Psychic abilities at the highest levels.
The only major areas in which it has differed from my predictions, in fact, is
that it has yet shown no signs of that particular ability whose implications I
so greatly fear; that, and that it seems to have an actual need, not just a
preference, for the semi-suspended animation available inside its
customized Ball." The presence in Asher's head, trying to follow along with
this commentary, through Asher's understanding, presented an image of this
object, resting on one of the shelves in this very laboratory; it had obviously
started life as one of SilphCo's best Ultra Balls, but then been so modified
with experimental additions it was now shaped more like a Poke Cube.
"It displays weakness and fatigue after several hours outside the
Ball, and I have had to modify the internal mechanism so that the capture
pulse is generated more or less continuously, rather than only at the moment
of entry or exit; this influx of power seems to be necessary to sustain its
metabolism. This anomaly could, of course, mean I incorrectly reconstructed
its root DNA. But I wonder if, instead, this is a control mechanism that its
creators and masters built into the original creature from the very beginning,
to prevent its awesome power from escaping their control. If I am right, then
such precautions would not have been overdone; M. and its brethren would have
been the keys to breathtaking power."
Asher's stomach began to grow uneasy, and not because of the food
which Pikoo was now rummaging in the sack for a second share of. The strange
visitor in his head -- whatever it was -- seemed friendly enough, but Asher
had trouble reconciling that with 'breathtaking power'. His eyes fell on the
food sack; it didn't have handles, but it was just small enough, minus the
food they'd eaten, to make a good carrying sack... and they could probably
take most of the Heals and Potions, too, if they took the vials out of their
racks and pushed them down among the biscuits. He wondered, carefully hiding
this thought away from the observing presence in his head, what might be in
the other cabinets that could be worth keeping on the road, or valuable
enough to sell. Maybe some Poke Balls that could be rigged to play the 'buy
this Pikachu I caught' game again...
He looked up at the pillar set into the wall, and at the hardware set
into it, from which Dexter X continued to recite the Professor's notes. He
stood up and walked over to the pillar, and examined the set-up. Now that he
had time and concentration and his eyes weren't so blurry, he could see that
there was one unit that projected from the wall slightly, about the size and
thickness of a papercover book, and this was the unit on which the video
display was mounted. It also had its own speaker grille, though the wall
panel on which it was mounted had speakers, and -- he ran his fingers along
the side -- aha, yes, a little gap where you dug your fingers in when you were
removing it from its wall cradle. This unit was designed to be portable.
The question then, he supposed, was -- he hesitated -- who would buy
such a thing? He'd found that a handful of raw components would always find a
buyer sooner or later, but surely something like this was worth many, many
more days of food in its assembled form. If he could figure out what it
could do, what it was good for...
He suddenly realized that he wasn't just shielding these thoughts from
the curious presence in his mind. He was trying to shield them from the part
of his own mind that was outraged; outraged that he had been snatched from the
brink of death by poison and starvation and given the keys to a treasure, not
just of technology from before the Benevolents' purge, but of his own
grandfather's wisdom. And here he was, immediately wondering how to sell this
birthright for food.
"... seems to have stabilized at a constant level, apart from small
fluctuations," read Dexter X in its simulation of the Professor's voice. It
switched to its own chirpy tones again. "Entries resume on the 17th."
Asher had figured out that it did the voice simulation to separate what it was
quoting from its own words, but when it returned to its Professor-voice, he
was shaken by the quiet tension put into the words -- so shaken that he let
his mental blocking slip, and felt the curious, unafraid mind touch his own
again.
"It possesses that power," the voice said, and let it hang there.
There was a world of desperation in the words. "Dear God. How could we have
ever been so innocent, so blind -- how could we take the Pokemon for nothing
more than our servants and playthings? Did we never wonder why they were so
suited for battle?" Another pause. "I suppose hindsight will always suggest
that we should have known --"
Pikoo had also picked up on the changed tone of voice, ears going
back; now he scampered around the mess on the floor and leapt up into Asher's
arms. Dexter X spoke again, and this time its own tones were edged with
urgency. "Pardon the interruption of existing tasks. Internal logic suggests
that this news is of higher priority."
Asher stroked carefully between Pikoo's ears. "What is it?"
The whirling lights on the video screen gave way to a live image of
trees, and smoke curling between them, and the not-very-distant glow of
firelight. "It appears that the Viridian Forest is on fire." A moment of
stunned silence went by, and Dexter X added, unnecessarily, "We are currently
beneath the Viridian Forest. The safety of the installation may be
threatened."
Asher stood stock-still, watching the flames rising and getting
closer. "I don't suppose... can't we just wait it out in here?" He had been
ready just a few minutes ago to leave this cave to its mysterious Pokemon
inhabitant, but now it was a sanctuary he never wanted to leave.
Dexter X clicked. "Doubtful. Ventilation subsystems were never
tested under strain and cannot be guaranteed. Also --" Abruptly the ground
shook, throwing Asher to the floor; he twisted to keep from landing on Pikoo,
who shrieked in panic as they fell. The lights flared and went dead; the video
image of the forest on fire was abruptly cut off as the ceiling in the far
corner of the room abruptly dented inwards, spilling dirt as it crumbled. "--
structural integrity of the installation may be stressed," concluded Dexter X
from its staticky screen.
Asher stood, shakily, trying to keep down his own panic despite Pikoo's
shrill urgent squeals, not to mention the signals of alarm coming directly
into his mind from the hidden Pokemon. "Okay, we can't stay here! Pikoo, you
open every cabinet you can, pull out everything useful you can find! Stuff it
into the sack if you can." Pikoo scampered into the cabinet that was already
open and began tugging out the racks of Heals and Revives and Potions. "You,"
he spoke out loud to the presence in his mind, "tell me where your Poke Ball
is; we'll get you out of here too."
"Take me as well!" cried Dexter X. "I can be useful!"
"Tell me where this 'M' pokemon my grandfather talked about is, then!"
Asher was already trying the second cabinet from the left, the best match for
the fuzzy, alarmed image being fed into his mind, but it contained nothing
like the Poke Cube he'd seen. He scooped the couple of Leaf Stones that
weighted down papers on the shelf into his pocket.
"Next cabinet to the right," directed the computer. "Structural
integrity cannot be guaranteed for any length of time! Previous partial
collapse was caused by an unexplained impact on the surface. Possibly a
falling tree," it added, though it did not sound sure. Asher yanked open the
indicated cabinet, and behind a videophone that was being disassembled for
parts, found the Poke Cube. He pulled it from the cabinet; thankfully all
the loose parts had been taped down. "Further impacts of that magnitude will
surely collapse the installation!"
"We're not staying!" Asher tossed the Poke Cube to Pikoo. "Put that
on the top of the sack!" He ran over to the pillar, grabbed Dexter X with
both hands, and pulled it free of its cradle; it came free more easily than
he expected, and he nearly lost his footing as he backed into the mess on the
floor. Not wasting time with curses, he tucked Dexter X under one arm,
scooped up the food sack under the other, and sprinted up the stairs. Pikoo
ran alongside, once or twice spitting out a flurry of sparks to give them
light.
At the top of the stairs, there was plenty of light; orange-white
light from the blazing trees of the forest above. The circular door
which had retracted to let him in, earlier, was now stuck half-way. Coughing
on smoke, Asher had to put down the food sack and bash at the door with his
forearms, making it retract enough to let them out. Finally it yielded, and
Asher clambered out, reaching back to pull up the precious sack.
Probably the only reason that the fire wasn't right on top of them
was that something had reduced every tree in a radius of several yards to a
carpet of shredded bark and splintered wood, but even that could be sparked
into a blaze any second. Asher, on hands and knees and panting, raised
Dexter X high above his head and turned him in a circle. "Which way do
we go to get out!" he shouted, and choked on the thick, noxious smoke.
Dexter X chirped. "Cannot determine any fire-free path!" it chirped
back, volume raised to carry above the crackle of the blaze. "Suggest we
summon authorities --"
"They don't care," Asher shouted. "They like us *just fine* dead!"
"Suggest we get assistance of flying Pokemon above us!" Dexter X
insisted.
Asher looked up into the smoke-and-light-crowded sky. "Where? *What*
flying Pokemon!?" Pikoo pika'ed frantically, and craned its own neck,
looking for this theoretical rescuer.
The video screen flickered into life. "Unrecognized species of
Pokemon! Tentatively classified as Flying-type, Steel-type, or possibly
Electric-type!" The video image faded in and out, correcting for the
obscuring smoke, until it finally brought into focus a curved metallic
horizon.
Mute with horror, Asher turned his eyes to the sky. It didn't take
advanced vision-correcting perceptors now to see the Overseer Sphere gliding
over the clearing, its mammoth mirrored surface turned into a deadly harvest
moon by the orange glow of the blaze that surrounded and trapped them. "That's
no Pokemon." Hanging above them, the warship's underside began to shimmer, the
reflected orange light replaced with deadly white.