Entry from the journal of Professor Samuel Oak, September 17, 2931
It has been three years since our fleet of colony ships arrived at Grapis IV and our situation is desperate. Upon arrival, we found a native animal population unlike anything reported by the exploratory probes launched 50 years prior to our departure. We were told that this planet was populated almost entirely by marine life forms and fauna similar to that on earth, but this proved incorrect after we landed. In only about one century of time, terrestrial life evolved and experienced explosive levels of evolution, resulting in a multitude of terrestrial species which approaches that of Earth's in variation and seems to be constantly growing. My initial research was limited by the necessity for the colony to grow quickly in order to sustain our population, but I would surmise that in only the time that we've been here, at least ten new species have evolved.
Within a year of arrival, we had expanded from Pallet Town and grown from that tiny seed into an expansive and progressive nation, much like a tree and its branches. After Viridian City was built, Pewter City became our first true metropolitan area and the stress placed on us all by an overflowing population was relieved greatly. Despite splitting the fleet into three groups, each with its own continent to settle, overpopulation was a problem which repeated itself many times over. Once Pewter City had reached the limits of its capacity, Cerulean City followed and so on and so forth until the ten great cities had been constructed, each shouldering a large portion of the population problem. In the middle of them all rose Saffron City, a testament to our determination and desire to thrive on this new and alien world.
Each of the three colonizing groups maintained near-constant communications. The Kanto, Hoenn and Sinnoh groups each prospered, Kanto so much so that we spread to the twin continent separated from our own by only thin waterway, which we named Johto. At that point, I truly began my research into the biological and chemical nature of the native animal and fauna species in an attempt to discover the secret behind their rapid evolution and development. From the other biologists brought with the colony, I learned of greater number of species than I had ever previously suspected, each continent containing its own unique groups of animals and plants in a divide very similar to that of Earth. On occasion, we found overlapping species shared by the continents, most notably between Kanto and Johto (almost certainly due to the infinitely smaller barrier between the two as compared to the other continents). My associates, Professor Elm in Johto, Professor Birch in Hoenn, and Professor Rowan in Sinnoh, along with myself stationed in Kanto, studied these species at length.
In the meantime, the colony continued to grow rapidly. Our engineers set up the route system between cities and towns which were barricaded against the local animals in order to provide safe passage between urban centers as well as create easier transportation of crops from the agricultural centers. Cars and trucks and trains and planes were commonplace, creating a constant stream of travel and exploration. The colony had become a marvel of modern technology and innovation. A unique culture had developed here, determined in part by the environment in which we lived and the people who had come to this new world. A new invention called the "Capture Ball" had allowed the colonists to bring some of the local wildlife into our communities. By that point, we barely resembled civilization on Earth. That was at our peak.
The problems began soon after that. A wealthy businessman from Viridian City named Giovanni Desoti acted upon a radical business proposition which would throw everything out of order. Giovanni had the idea that the local wildlife, being so different from those found on Earth, would make for fantastic pets with the proper use of the Capture Ball. However, he was dissatisfied with the "limited" selection of the natural world and, in secret, began a project to create new life to sell to the colonists. To do so, Giovanni tracked down one of the rarer and more wondrous species of this planet, an animal which, for reasons yet unknown to us, has abilities similar to telekinesis and telepathy. Once he had found a sample of this species, Giovanni obtained a sample of its genetic code and used this to clone the species with his own modifications. What was created brought about our downfall.
Pallet Town was silent, its doors closed and its windows shut. The buildings were plain and unremarkable and seemed almost to be crouching in an effort to hide from the world. Interspersed amongst the standing houses were the skeletons of abandoned and empty homes, their interiors dark and the paint on their walls flaking. These corpses rotted in plain sight, their darkened windows looking like the empty sockets of a skull. In the second story of one house, a boy stared out of the window, looking at one of these broken down constructs. He wore a pair of faded jeans and an old, red windbreaker which had seen better days. On the desk next to him was a red baseball cap with a green swoosh over a white background on the front. One look at his sullen, green eyes showed that this boy was anything but happy.
Red watched the streets, looking for his mother unsuccessfully. The sky outside was bleak and grey. Without even going outside, Red knew that there was a cold, bitter wind blowing angrily through the town, encouraging its inhabitants to stay indoors. Finally, he tore his eyes from the window and, after jamming his cap backwards onto his head, walked downstairs.
Ever since he had been six, Red had never been called by his birth name even once. His bright red hair had stood out in a community in which almost everybody else had dark brown hair. Once the other kids had started to make fun of him, Red had taken to wearing his baseball cap at all times to hide his hair from the world. But he had made sure that the hat was red in an effort to be a part of the joke rather than to run from it. Now, he could be recognized by his hat, which he wore backwards each and every day. Thankfully, the bullying had stopped shortly after he had begun to wear the hat and so it had become Red's most valuable possession.
The room downstairs was mostly empty and bleak. A single couch squatted in front of a television, its screen dusty from disuse. Red couldn't remember the last time that he had seen the television lit up and blaring. As the other cities and towns had been cut off one by one, news had become more and more limited until finally many of the stations had gone dark, showing only static when the family attempted to find out what was happening. Red looked at the couch sadly. Its cushions were indented from extensive use but the man who had left them hadn't sat there in nearly three months now. With a sudden jerk, Red hurried into the kitchen so that he didn't have to see the couch any more.
Rather than being a completely separate room, the kitchen was only separated from the living room by a single wall which jutted out into the space and only blocked the view of the television and the couch, which at the moment, was exactly what Red desired. However, the kitchen was no more encouraging than the living room. The refrigerator, which had used to hum cheerily, now sat in the corner silently. Red had long since gotten over the habit of checking the refrigerator for food inside. Dishes sat out on the counter, unused and dusty. In the corner, an empty bag which had once held food sat, crumpled and forlorn. For a few minutes, Red stood there and stared about the room, remembering a room in which his mother had used to practically dance through, her singing carrying through the house and promising tasty food in the near future. The specter of that seemingly distant past slowly faded until Red was left alone in the empty and desolate kitchen.
At that moment, the door clicked and opened and out of the chill came his mother. She wore a long coat wrapped tightly around her. Her hands were stuffed into two of the many pockets and the color of the jacket was raised to cover her neck and part of her face from the elements. Red watched as his mother kicked the door shut behind her and stood in the entrance shivering for a few seconds before taking the jacket off and hanging it up on the stand next to the door. Beneath her coat, she wore a bright yellow dress with a red belt around her waist. Both had once been cheery and playful, hinting at a happy mother and wife. Now, the colors had faded and the fabric was worn in spots. Rather than cheerful, the dress had become a pale mockery of its former self and the joyful life which the people of Pallet Town had once lived. Red watched his mother carefully and without moving, trying to see if she had brought any food.
After a few moments, Red's patience ran out and he shuffled his feet noisily. His mother jumped slightly and turned around to look at her son. Instead of saying anything, as Red had expected, she simply stared at him, her eyes unreadable and her hair hanging down in a tangled mess. Finally, Red saw his mother gulp and took a step towards her hopefully.
"I'm so sorry, Red."
The boy froze in place, his foot having barely touched the ground. His eyes fixated on the ground at his mother's feet, confusion rife in his mind. Slowly, he dragged his eyes upwards to meet his mother's, which were filled with sorrow and pain.
"What are you apologizing for?" asked Red fearfully, sensing danger upon the horizon. His mother didn't answer, just stumbled past her son and sat heavily upon the couch. Her head drooped and ended up in her hands as a sob wracked her body. Unable to move, Red stood there awkwardly, unsure of what to do. He had never had to comfort his mother before, not even in the past few months.
"Mom, what happened?" When she lifted her face to look at Red, his mother's face was one of pure anguish and torment. Tears ran down her cheek and dripped from her chin to land on the worn fabric of her dress. For a few seconds, his mother tried to find the necessary words and repeatedly failed, an incomprehensible stuttering the only sound that she seemed capable of making. Finally, she closed her mouth and took a few moments, closing her eyes and breathing deeply. When she looked her son in the eyes, Red knew that his mother had found the words.
"There was a meeting today, honey," began his mother. "We were making some important decisions about the town." She paused for a moment and when she began again, she rushed through the explanation in an effort to get it over with as quickly as possible. "You know we've been a little low on food recently, and so we were talking about what to do to deal with the shortage. And we decided that there was no way to feed everyone anymore. So we need to have somebody leave so that the rest of us can live." A frozen pit had appeared in Red's stomach as he began to understand what had happened. "We wanted to make sure that whoever stayed would have the best chance of living if they had food. So we…so we decided that the ones to leave should be children since they might not live anyway. Nobody wanted to lose their own child, but we knew it had to be done." Her eyes were desperate, seeking acceptance and understanding from the 10-year-old to whom she was giving a death sentence. Red only stared at her numbly, waiting for her to say the words that he knew were coming.
"It was random," his mother choked out, barely containing a sob. "It was completely random so that it would be fair. Everyone had an equal chance. You…the one that was selected…" His mother finally broke down, the fragile calm which she had barely constructed in an effort to explain cracked and shattered. All that remained was a mother who was coming apart piece by piece until all that remained was the deepest, darkest part of her being.
"It's me," finished Red, the numbness spreading to his brain so that his thoughts came to a complete halt. The world around him blurred until everything had run together and become one jumbled mess. From a distance, Red thought he could hear voices speaking. They echoed slightly, as if they were coming from far down a hallway. At first, it was just two voices.
"Dad, where are you going?"
"I'll be back soon."
"But where are you going?"
"I'm going to Pewter City."
"Why?"
"People's lives are in danger." A third voice spoke joined in.
"Honey, let someone else help them."
"You know I can't do that."
"But we need you here!"
"Don't go Dad!"
"Goodbye…" The other two voices screamed, rising in volume until they nearly overwhelmed Red. Suddenly, he snapped back to the present and once again he saw his mother weeping, but from a curious angle. Red was confused until he looked down and realized that he had fallen to his knees without realizing. They sat there in the house, one crying tears of anguish and the other simply on the ground, staring into space.
All of a sudden, Red felt the need to move, to run, to jump, to scream. Without so much as a warning, the boy bolted to his feet and practically flew out through the door. His mother was too busy with her tears to notice and the last Red saw of her before the door closed, she was still on the couch with her head in her hands. Then the door closed with a bang and he was running away blindly, tears finally appearing in his eyes and blinding him as they welled up. Red ran for minutes, then hours, then years. He ran into the future and saw himself, now an adult, living happily in Pallet Town with a wife and kids. Then the image became black and white, the color bleeding out of it as the figures slowed to a halt. Finally, the image shattered and Red stumbled to the ground, smacking his head on the rough earth as he rolled over, finally coming to a halt several feet farther on. While he pushed himself up and tried to recover, his vision swam and Red felt cuts and scrapes paining him all over his body. Tears dotted the ground in front of the fallen boy, wetting the dirt in dark little dots. Red sat there, crying, for a long while before the tears began to stop flowing. When he had finally regained control over himself, Red noticed something terrifying.
He had run out of Pallet Town onto Route 1.
At that exact moment, Red heard a rustling in a nearby bush. Still sitting on the ground, Red hadn't even gotten to his knees before something leapt from the brush and charged at him. Before it caught him, Red saw that the animal was some kind of large rat with purple fur and gigantic front teeth. Then the thing rammed into him and Red no longer cared what it looked like. All that mattered was escape.