It was an unremarkable day in June when Blanche became a celebrity. The patch notes came through at noon. The first sarcastic message from a friend asking to join Team Mystic arrived before one o'clock. The second and third came just minutes later. She turned messaging off before a fourth notification could pop up on her HUD. It was good natured teasing, she knew, but it was irritating all the same.
Blanche suppressed her frustration by reminding herself that she was the lucky one out of her siblings. Blanche had once been an uncommon but "real" name. Her sister, Candela, and her brother, Spark, had it worse. Her name was unique, but theirs were just odd.
Their parents had grown up with the original PokemonGo. The game was already dying back then, but it had been significant enough in their lives to name three children after the in-game team leaders. It wasn't available for download these days, though her parents had made all three of them play it on emulators to see where their namesakes came from. Luckily, no one else from her generation even knew about that old game. Until today.
How many messages would she get about Team Mystic? Too many already.
She rolled onto her side. The past three hours she had spent lying in bed, hoping she'd wake up and remember this day as a funny dream. No such luck. She had to get out of bed sooner or later, and now was as good a time as any to get up and face the elephant in the room. Or the… hippo in the room?
The dopey, pink, cross-eyed hippo. It turned to stare at her and tilted its head to the side.
"Slow," it sighed at her.
"Yes," she muttered disapprovingly, "it seems you are."
Blanche glanced to the bottom left corner of her vision, then to the bottom right. Her code to toggle the AR UI. The menu reappeared, asking her to choose a starter. She had two reasons for her pick. First, she thought it was the least stupid of the three. Second, everyone was bound to choose fire because it looked cool, so it made perfect strategic sense to take Squirtle.
Continue. Continue. Continue.
The pokedex was added to her apps. Several pokeballs were delivered to her inventory. She received a brief explanation of Nanite-AR integration, the standard stuff. And finally the terms and conditions. It had only one line: "Have fun."
Accept.
Blanche sat up and wondered why she was doing this. There was no reason to suffer through this insufferable game. Except that she didn't have a choice. She couldn't turn it off, since she never turned it on. It shouldn't have gone live this way, but that was a problem for the GovNet to sort out.
Her HUD automatically loaded up the pokedex entry for slowpoke when she looked back at the pink creature. The data confirmed what she suspected about the Pokemon.
"So, you're stupid," she said while reading its info. "Too stupid to even feel pain. Of all the creatures in this game, how am I so unlucky to end up with you in my room?"
It sat for several seconds before it breathed out a delayed, "Slow."
Blanche reached to her nightstand for something to throw at the slowpoke. Her fingers closed around a tissue box and she sent it sailing to the floor. Her room lit up in a pink explosion as the nanite swarm scattered and her AR-RetinalRendering display went crazy. The skin texture coalesced where the nanobots had been and the slowpoke looked at her with half a face and said its name again.
"Impressive," she said while watching the swarm slowly reassemble. "You actually managed to get even uglier."
She double-blinked to open her virtual inventory and right-blinked with "Pokeballs" selected to use the item. Ambient nanites converged in her right hand to form a sphere. The hollow shell pressed against her palm with its magnetic simulated gravity. Blanche chucked the ball right at the slowpoke's mostly reformed face.
When it hit, there was no explosion of nanites. The two entities held together, and slowpoke dissolved into a bright red light that was swallowed up by the pokeball. It hovered above her carpet, rocking back and forth a few times before coming to a rest with a loud "ding."
"So, this is my life now," she sighed, while blinking away the congratulatory message that informed her she successfully captured a slowpoke. "Hopefully it'll go away soon. The GovNet will add an opt-out like it should've had from the start, and we'll forget about it in a week. Just another quick passing fad, like that dog playing a theremin last week."
Convinced that life would return to normal soon enough, Blanche summoned the energy to get out of bed. It was too late to make it to her first class, but she could still grab a bite to eat and catch her afternoon lab. In the kitchen she swiped her finger from the corner of her vision to the blank wall, turning off her retinal display and switching on the wallscreen.
She still wanted to avoid personal messages, but her email might be safe from any name related mockery. Plus, there might be some info from the GovNet about the whole unclosable app situation. Blanche brought up the University site and entered her pin. The mail icon flashed with a bright red "99+" that pulsed every couple seconds as new emails poured in. With a reluctant blink to the wall mounted EyeNav, the first page of emails loaded in. CNN, The New York Times, The Onion, The Sun, the list went on and on with interview requests. All because of her name.
In a single soul crushing moment, she was reduced to a meme.
Blanche gave the blink command to close the wall display. Nothing happened. She tried again. Still nothing. Then she remembered that the EyeNav had a hard time picking up signals when there were tears in your eyes. And then she realized she was crying for the first time in years.
She retreated back to her bedroom with the wall display still on. The rest of the day was a lost cause as far as she was concerned. Better to simply go back to sleep and try again tomorrow.