(You know, part of this was almost like an argument with myself. Because how many of us are still the same Pokemon fan we were when we were kids? Where no one cared about shinies or EVs or IVs or Action Replay? Even I've changed. It's natural. But this work haunts me still. Mark of a good piece of fiction, but...ah, poor Pikachu. Anyways, I don't own Pokemon.)
(Game Over! Would you like to play again?)
...
No.
The man stands before the box of his childhood; his shoebox of life is scattered across the room, the toys all across the entire floor, reminescent of his own childhood when these toys would be scattered in an adventure to the Moon, or perhaps to Mars, China, wherever...but...
He spies it on the floor, and suddenly remembers a basic tenet of his childhood; don't drop the Gameboy. He snatches it up without knowing exactly why, and checks it. Pokemon Yellow was still in there, fit snug in its' little data pocket in the Gameboy.
Suddenly, he wonders what would happen if he turned it on. Part of him is disinterested; after all, it's a child's game, nothing he, a college-age boy should be playing with.
But then he remembers Ivysaur, Charizard, Blastoise. His Ninetales, his Gengar, and...
Pikachu.
He pauses. Pikachu. Yes, the iconic little rat, the cheerful companion that followed you about all through Kanto, awaiting every single command you could give it.
What if he was still waiting for your command?
The man flicks the switch, turns the game on. He watches as the cheerful barrage of color and sound greets him; Pikachu on a surfboard, Pikachu floating away with balloons, Pikachu racing towards him on the screen--
He isn't stopping--
It was like one of those bubbles you blew up with that strange, bad-smelling elastic substance; it grew and it grew, and there were suddenly tears in the bubble, so you were forced to watch in horror as your bubble collapsed into a wad of plastic and failed dreams of flight.
The bubble burst.
Pikachu stood there on the screen. He was there, in the flesh-that-wasn't flesh.
It was data.
His beloved Pokemon was lines of code.
"Just as I'd expected." He said out loud, as Pikachu continued to stare up at him silently.
He didn't seem to be able to move away from the Gameboy's screen. Trapped still, bound to the game. Pikachu stared. He began to get uncomfortable, wilting under the gaze of the small electric rodent.
And then Pikachu spoke.
"Master?" He says softly, as he breathes. The man sees it and realizes; he's breathing out data. Binary escapes his mouth and breezes off to parts unknown. The man doesn't know what to do. Pikachu stares for one more long second, and then his cheeks flash red.
"Master!" He cries out joyfully. "It IS you! Master, I've missed you so much!" The man is unable to speak for a second, and then he asks the one question that has been niggling at him for awhile, ever since Pikachu phased out of the game.
"Where are the others?" He says, and for a second, Pikachu freezes. Then as if nothing had ever happened, he started up again and said, "They didn't want to come. But I did, Master. They said it wasn't you, but I knew. I believed, Master. And now you're really here." The man suddenly realizes something.
He's supposed to be cleaning his room before going to college. Not talking to a hologram or whatever this thing was. No, he needs to let this be and pick up those toys before donating them to some kid who'd probably want them more.
"Not for long, I'm not." He said in a gruff tone, before picking up the box and turning his back on Pikachu. The poor little beast looks so confused, and he finally pipes up, "But Master, I've been waiting for you for so long! What about everything we did together? Don't you want to go back?" The man stops again, and he remembers.
Pokemon. Yes. Gotta catch 'em all, they said, but he started with Pikachu and was content with Pikachu. He trained Bulbasaur, Charmander, Squirtle, he tamed an Eevee, he did all those wondrous things only possible with the aid of a sixty-dollar Gameboy, a thirty-dollar game, and a pack of batteries.
/Well, that's putting it in perspective./ A dry voice in his head notes. He shakes his head.
"We did those things, but it's over now. I haven't played in five years. Why would I start now?" He looks at the small creature. "I'm not a child anymore, Pikachu." Pikachu puffs himself up for a second.
"Well, neither am I! It doesn't matter, Master! You don't need to be a child to play! All you need is to turn the game on and go! Master, I can take you with me! You'll never have to work again, or go to school, or do anything! You can stay with me forever! We can get all the others, and we'll go on an adventure! Don't you remember how much fun we had!?" The man pauses.
If Pikachu had offered him this all those years ago, he would've accepted. It was every child's dream to leave responsibility behind and go on fantastic journeys with friends. It was a dream come true--but the dream came too late.
And he couldn't accept it now. No.
"I have a life now, Pikachu," he said, "I have a girlfriend. I have a ton of friends now, I have a job--I want to go to college, become a doctor. I can't give it up for lines of code." Pikachu stares up at him for a second, and then speaks again.
"You were only with us because you were lonely?" He sounds so hurt, so dejected, that the man is tempted to lie. But it's just code. Code can't feel pain, sadness, or hunger. Code can't understand that one day, he'd just left the game behind and never looked back.
He'd left his childhood behind, and never looked back.
"Well, I needed friends. You were there. But I grew up. I didn't need games anymore, I didn't need to play. I could go out and find friends without you. I'm sorry, but..." He shrugs haplessly.
"I grew up. You were part of a childhood I hated; why would I want my childhood to stay with me? Do I need that weight dragging me down for the rest of my life? Pikachu, the second I walk out this door, I'm free. I can go wherever I like. I don't need to hide behind bits of data for protection anymore." Pikachu shakes his head.
"No no no, Master! Isn't there anything in your childhood you'd want to stay? Weren't we the good part? The part you'd want to stay? Master, please! Come with me! We can be free together! I promise!" Pikachu is getting more and more desperate; his voice is getting high and strained.
"The good ones, the gentle ones; we want you! They'll never love you like we will! They fade, we don't! We'll stay here...forever...we waited for a master, and it was you. You were perfect, wondrous. We lived to serve you. And we still do. We want to. It's all we are! You are our God, Master, you can control us! Isn't that what you want? This power? The freedom to create?" The man says nothing for a second, as Pikachu panted from the amount of yelling he'd done. The man spoke eventually, and Pikachu perked his ears up to listen.
"I don't want to hide anymore. Pikachu, listen to me. I'll fade away, as every human does. I'm not going to be around forever. What will you do when I die? You'll float in a sea of data forever, and...you deserve better. I don't want to hide from my problems, because with those problems eventually there will be joy. I want to be free. Living in a game isn't freedom. I'll still wither away and die, and I want to wither and die in a world that will go on without me." This seems to give him an epiphany of sorts.
"That's why I can't go, Pikachu. The world will go on without me here, but if I go with you and die--I don't know what that'll do to the game. This world can survive if I die, and it'll survive if I fail in all my goals and die alone and unloved. But your world relies too much on me; if I do anything less than godlike, I fail." Pikachu shakes his head.
"Master, please...just trust me...I don't care about the world; all I care about is you. Come with me. The cities are waiting, Master. The mountains want to be explored, and there's Pokemon to be caught! Come on Master, we've got to catch them all!" The man considers, and picks the game up. Pikachu rests in his palm now; a pocket-sized monster. The man closes his eyes.
He has to let go. He can't leave the house that's trapped him without breaking all the bars on the cage; even the ones inlaid with gold.
But Pikachu doesn't have to know.
"Alright. I'll turn the game on, Pikachu." The little mouse brightens up, and he presses start.
A new game, one that was never started. The others deserve to die in peace; he owes them that much.
"I love you, Pikachu." He says out loud, hating himself for it. Pikachu smiles.
"I love you too, Master." The man lays his chin on Pikachu's head and brings him close; the data-fur is a weird buzzing on his skin. He presses start, opens the little menu.
/Just a bit more.../
He presses 'save'. The words ask him if he wants to overwrite the file, and he says, 'yes.' The file is slowly disappearing, fading away and taking his world with it. Pikachu looks up at him, panicked. "Master, please! Don't do this!" The man shakes his head.
"I'm sorry, Pikachu."
He flicks the switch off, and Pikachu disappears, turning into zeros and ones before flying away like moths of binary.
He flings the game against the wall, and it shatters, garishly colored plastic mixed in upon the dark wires and pieces of computer chips.
He looks at the room he's spent all his life in, and the room he's wanted to escape from for all of his life. He turns, leaving the figures to collect dust along with the shattered bits of a dream spent, and walks away.
(Childhood is a city in dust.)