Chapter 1 – The Monster World
It was dark in Ross' bedroom. Yet he was awake. He could hear thick drops of rain slap the window behind him, and the persistent honk and stutter of traffic, far below his high rise apartment building, wafted up on the aimless breeze. These noises didn't keep him awake, though. He had long since become accustomed to them. In fact, he thought it possible that he would be disturbed by their absence, if he ever left the sprawling city of Engrim.
Ross often found it difficult to sleep. It was as though he was forever unable to fit his mind's clock into a twenty-four hour period. If the day was just two hours longer, then maybe he could fit in.
But then his whole life so far – all nineteen years – had been one long lesson on not fitting in. Even as early as his school days – one year of basic numeracy and literacy training – he had been identified as an outsider. His subsequent two-year labour assignment - assisting with mining operations - continued the trend.
Being a quiet eight year-old and in an area of work dominated by alpha males he had been subjugated to the point where he had regarded every day in those damp, dusty catacombs with almost pathological dread. The other children, were just like him. They had come from the same school; they lived in the same apartment block; they too had been forced to carry out manual labour, but they never seemed to think they way he thought.
Ross' parent's had insisted that these other children were better behaved. That they hated mining work as much as he did, but were polite and hard-working enough to just get on with it. Ross could never quite believe that.
Engrim life was somewhat meagre. It was true that the daily needs were provided for each and every citizen. However resources were spread thin and this left little room for anything beyond basic survival. So, Ross had few playthings as he grew up. Of these few treasured objects – things his parents had managed to procure through theft or some other, darker means – there was one which Ross loved more than anything else.
It was a book. And as Ross lay there in his bed listening to traffic – a boy almost a man – he clutched that book tightly in his arms as though frightened the night would pull it away from him. The truth was that this book was his window into another world. A better world.
The book was called "The Monster World" and to put it bluntly, it had served as a much needed lifeline when Ross had felt he was drowning in a sea of his own unrealised dreams. He had whiled away many nights consumed by the pages of this magical tome.
It chronicled a boy's travels as he trained fantastic creatures to do battle against others. These amazing beasts were described in such rich detail, each of them a benign or more magnificent version of the dreary and vicious creatures that existed in his own world.
There was a period of his life, in which Ross had prayed every night that he could leave his stark existence and wake up in the pastel coloured paradise his book described. A world where life was good, where children didn't have to work and where they had constant companions both alongside them and waiting patiently for their return home. All of whom followed his commands and strove to assist him in the achieving of one goal. Supreme mastery of his field.
When he discovered that the world described in the book was not entirely fiction, but actually not-too-distant history, his interest became insatiable. However there were no libraries to offer more information. Unlike the world he dreamed of there was no back-catalogue of elderly academics to provide information whenever the whim took him. He had nothing but his imagination to further develop his knowledge of this forgotten world.
And he gladly sunk into this. After all it was much easier than facing his own bleak reality. So wherever he went – he would think about monsters.
Walking through the poisonous fog that pervaded the city, he would think about Koffing and Weezing. In reality, these things were dangerous and volatile balloons of noxious gas, but in the fantasy world, they had personalities. Rather than simply fall through the thick pockets of smog and fatally poison unlucky pedestrians, these creatures would follow their trainer's orders.
And when he was working in the mines he would think about Diglett or Onix, burrowing their way through the ground with far more proficiency that he or his nine year-old colleagues could ever hope to. When he looked out of warped plastic windows of his bedroom he would see flocks of Pidgey battling the dark grey clouds of pollution and instead imagine a climactic Trainer Battle where a young child battled for supremacy over another thrice his age.
But of course this was all childhood fantasy. As Ross grew older and moved through various labour-assignments, he realised that he was dreaming about a world that was dead. A world that was never coming back.
There were still remnants of that world. The monsters still existed, but if they ever displayed the degree of human interaction that his book suggested, then it was long since gone. The Pocket Monsters of old had become nothing more than monsters. Only specially trained zoologists would travel the feral countryside and research the creatures which for several decades had posed threat to the city of Engrim.
In fact there were only two jobs in existence, where one could expect to encounter wild monsters. The first, of course was the zoologists who investigated the creatures in the wild, noting strengths and weaknesses so as to better equip the city against the numerous incursions that beasts so often made.
The next job was that of a Caravaner. They were responsible for ensuring trade links with nearby cities and towns as well as the further flung regions: Orre, Konji and Hoenn to name but a few. They would risk their lives to protect whatever cargo was being made, whether it be foodstuffs, air and water filters or possibly even a rare shipment of tamed monsters.
The tamed monsters, usually benign and harmless things, were used as tools of labour. For example, the body of a Poliwag or Wooper could compress and store water more than any technological means and they were therefore ideally suited for cleaning tasks. These creatures could work for weeks on end before dehydration caused them to expire.
There were also the reprogrammed Magnemite. These served as local surveillance units, capable of relaying footage to government departments who monitored civilian activity for traces of anti-government groups such as Team Revolution or Team Freedom.
More recently they had automated their reconditioning process, so that Magnemite Drones could be created en masse. They had also started development on Magneton Drones (sophisticated 3D imaging units) and even Magnezone (weaponized versions of the Magnemite models).
So even from a young age, Ross knew there was no chance of him even coming close to realising his dream. Only the very rich could afford the very expensive charges associated with waiving civic-labour duty and the even costlier tuition fees for study at one of the three universities in the area. So, no, Ross knew that he was not destined for greater things. He knew that his life would be nothing, a grey flash in a sea of grey. A very dark thought for a ten year-old.
At the age of fifteen, having survived a total of four years in the mines and three year stint as a mechanic - young boys possessed the strength and slenderness needed to wriggle through dangerous machines and carry out repairs – he discarded the book. He hid it behind his empty wardrobe, not able to throw it away without raising questions as to how his family had acquired it.
By that point he hated the book, the way children sometimes hate a favoured sibling. The characters in that book didn't know how lucky they were. To be born into a world so pleasant and free. While they worried about adding to their already extensive menagerie of friends, he worried about whether he would lose a limb the next day. While the Hero of The Monster World collected badges from Gym Leaders, Ross collected the bodies of unlucky peers who had been fatally wounded by the machines they were sent to fix. And while this hero travelled far and wide helping old men find their sons or ditzy blondes recover their lost Skitty, Ross carried out the same job day in, day out. Whether he was oiling a cog or dislodging a severed arm from a mechanism, he was always in constant danger and constant unhappiness.
So he forgot about the book. He didn't need it. As he grew older it became a source of pain as opposed to escapism. And then tonight - a night like any other – for that was how the government designed the days in Engrim, his wardrobe broke. The back panel splintered with a loud crack and as he tried to right it, a thumping, thunking clunk revealed the dusty volume had emerged from its hiding place. Reviving lost memories. Lost hope.
Ross had picked up that ancient tome slowly, like a pet reunited with its long lost owner. The familiarity was there. The thoughts simmered in his head, occasionally bubbling into existence as he remembered both the gruelling misery and ecstatic high that the book represented to him.
He couldn't bring himself to open it. Instead he fell onto his creaky bed and clutched the thing to his chest. Hugging it as though it was a parent and he a lost child. Inside that volume were his hopes and dreams, but they had to stay inside. That was the only place that they couldn't hurt him.
But it was too late. Even the cover itself had awoken something inside him. Not just memories of the story or his own obsession, but also a snapshot of his life. When he still had parents. When he was assigned mining work, or his mechanic days: the whirr and hiss of the machines as they worked around his tiny frame.
Back then he had hated his life. He couldn't imagine anything worse. But in the past four years, life had taken even more from him. First his father – arrested by militia. Then his mother, killed by a particularly lethal strain of the Porygon Virus. Forced to shared his home with strangers. They made his life hell. After his time as a mechanic, he was transferred to work as a fisherman far out in the Chasma Sea. He would be gone for months at a time, and when he returned for his standard three-day respite, he would find the apartment in increasing states of disrepair.
The front door was smashed from its hinges when militia forces had traced rebel activity to his apartment block. Even though the offender had been several floors up, the entire complex had been searched for propaganda or explosive materials. Two dead bodies were left to rot for weeks after two occupants overdosed on the recreational drug Stunspore. Another woman committed suicide after her children were killed in a blast orchestrated by Team Revolution.
Each of these morbid discoveries had whittled even further, Ross' deep feelings of cold and terrified loneliness. And his rediscovery of the book caused quite a contrast, opening up these old wounds, causing tears to form in his eyes as he wallowed in self-pity.
He hugged the book for hours, late into the night until the last rays of sunlight had long since passed over the horizon and the traffic had subsided to leave nothing but silence outside. He didn't want to let go. The book was once again a safe haven, and he would do anything not to cross the threshold into his own world.
But a loud booming knock on his door pulled him so very reluctantly from his thoughts. Even in three years, the front door had never been repaired. It merely sat separate and leaning on the doorframe. From his lying down position, Ross could see two shiny black shoes and the impeccably pressed cuffs of a pair of navy trousers.
Another three knocks. This time the broken door shook and thumped loudly against the frame.
"Hang on," Ross said to the mystery figure.
He dragged himself to his feet and hastily hid "The Monster World" underneath his frayed bedclothes. The last thing he needed was for someone to find out he had contraband media in his possession. With a great heave, he peeled the door from the wall and was greeted with the stern face of a delivery official.
"Are you R. Durante?" The man asked. His voice was far more condescending than his vocation would account for. Yet it was late at night and, judging from the large box under his arm, he was carrying out a dangerous out-of-hours delivery. Ross supposed he wouldn't bee too friendly if he were standing in the man's pristinely polished shoes.
"I am," Ross answered. He was puzzled, because he couldn't understand who would possibly send him a package.
"You got ID?" the man asked.
Ross fumbled around in his wardrobe, until he found his ID card.
It was a small palm sized rectangle of plastic. On the front it had his photograph, name, address and citizen number. Next to this was a transparent circular window which he held up to his eye. He made sure to push his thumb against the fingerprint reader on the back of the card.
As he stared through the tiny retina-mapped window, the delivery man shone a blue light-pen directly into his eye. A green LED immediately lit up on the light-pen indicating that Ross was the owner of the ID card.
"Package for you," the man said. He peered behind Ross at his living quarters and no doubt wondering – as Ross himself was – who the hell would spend money sending a package to a nobody like Ross Durante.
Ross took the box, considerably light for its size and the deliveryman promptly left. Once Ross had replaced the door he turned and faced the box, now sitting patiently on his bed. It was neat and carefully packaged on the outside. Printed in large capital letters was his name and address.
Ross knew he could debate with himself over the origin of the package well into the night and arrive at no answer. The only course of action - and a compulsion he couldn't set aside was to open the package.
He did this carefully, using the edge of his ID card to slice through the plastic tape. Yet as he peeled back the covering he couldn't quite believe his eyes. And for one beautiful second Ross forgot about his bleak life, or his jealousy of a saccharine storybook. He forgot about the Monster World as he tried to make sense of the mysterious package and its impossible contents.