Author's Notes: Whoo, ten chapters! Milestone #1 get!
Back to Porygon, and the appearance of some familiar faces. Read on, and enjoy!
Chapter Ten: Law and Chaos
As the 4-door car shot along the motorway connecting Celadon City and Saffron City, I tried to compensate for the shaking and shuddering that interfered with my eye sensors. I was perched on the rear passenger seat, my hover unit disengaged so I wouldn't have to bother adjusting my position constantly. I dedicated my time to preparing ways to break into the Silph security system without triggering alarms. For a human hacker, it would be a difficult, time-consuming process, but I was not human, and as such I was able to produce better results. I estimated a one minute seventeen second delay until I was able to hack in, and provide Team Rocket with their necessary opening.
However, the implications of what I was to do were constantly being fed to me by the core, which had remained silent since the incident in Giovanni's study. Instead, it seemed to have adopted a different tactic to bring me around. I considered, dutifully, the impact my actions would have. If I were capable of deception, I would be misleading myself to say I would have little effect on the workers of Silph Co. and the company itself. I was very much aware, though, that if I did not carry out my orders, Team Rocket would force their way in and lives would inevitably be lost, if mission reports from previous operations were accurate.
Of course, I would likely be removed from the physical world and my back up data eliminated, a concept that did not bode well with me either. Once again, I was at an impasse.
This is not just, is it? I asked.
"Of course not. At least you bothered thinking." The core replied straightaway, sounding rather smug. I was tempted to swivel my eye sensors, but that would probably unnerve the other occupants of the car.
Yes, I was obviously not alone. It would be hard to transport myself to Saffron City in a vehicle that required hands and feet to operate. Peters sat next to me, while two Team Rocket members dressed in white outfits sat in the front seats. They were both fairly young, the man having blue, almost lavender coloured hair, while the girl had long locks of ruby-red. Quite startling, but then again, so was I.
Yes, I have been thinking. I have been thinking, and I found myself with a conundrum. You are no better than Team Rocket. I thought, peering out of the window that separated me from the outside world. Recently, my perceptions had begun to shift, and now my reality-imaging program was showing me the bars of a cage instead of a glass window. I felt the core began to emanate affrontedness, and it replied with obvious shock.
"No, Porygon, I am not! I do not experiment on helpless Pokemon, I do not lie, cheat, and steal to get what I want!" It said, it's voice amplified to fill my head.
Instead you attempt murder and manipulate. I rebuked. It was something had been pondering closely. So far, the core's actions had been decidedly hostile, not only towards Team Rocket, but myself as well. The voice remained silent, and I could feel it's confusion, until it realised what I was referring to.
"You want to know what's just, Porygon? That was just. Justice. He deserved it for what he's done!" It spluttered. I continued to watch the world pass by me, everything clear and sharp in detail to me. To the humans with me, the landscape would pass by too quickly to focus on. I was strangely wistful, watching trees, fields, houses and other vehicles zoom by, though I assumed that it was merely the core supplying the relevant feeling. I assumed accurately, when the emotion vanished to be replaced by impotent frustration at my next statement.
However, you forcibly controlled me to carry out this...justice. Unarmed and helpless, it would only have been murder. And I would have been your implement, much like Team Rocket seek to utilize me as. I myself was conflicted still. My programming, not only the core, fought against itself. The closest resemblance would be antibodies destroying cells in a human's body. It was much simpler for me to repair myself, however. I simply hard-copied the data, wiped the damaged data and replaced it with a pure copy. The core fell silent, cutting off any emotion, something I was...grateful for.
The man sitting up front turned around to speak to Peters, catching my eye, so to speak, for a brief second. He looked quickly away, unease glittering in his eyes.
"We're nearly there. We'll drop you off and then circle back when you're done." He said, his voice possessing a soft, almost aristocratic inflection. I looked past him, seeing building begin to emerge in the distance, the sun framing them in a tangerine haze as it lowered slowly. The moon was already visible, but only to me. Observed only by me as we continued on our way while Peters replied to the Rocket. I ignored them both, zooming my vision in until the shaking of the car proved too unsettling. I could see in great detail, the largest craters, and the way the sun's colour blended gently with the silvery sheen of the planetoid's surface.
It was certainly fascinating. Most scientists favoured the theory that meteors peppering the planet were responsible for Clefairy's arrival on this planet. Of course, they were the ones who favoured the theory that Clefairy did indeed come from the moon.
Other scientists preferred to back the notion that Pokemon warred there many millennia ago when the Earth was still forming. Yet more scientists just went along with the idea that meteors formed the craters, and nothing odd happened. I thought any could be probable, as there was no evidence to prove any of the theories correct, or incorrect. The evidence mankind did possess was subject to interpretation, in truth.
We finally arrived in Saffron City proper, sliding away from the stream of vehicles entering and exiting the city, and maneuvering through side streets and a few back alleys. We passed by skyscrapers, which I gazed at with interest. Humans certainly were ingenious. Well, naturally, if they had the capacity to create myself.
The humans, meanwhile, were looking uninterested and bored. My short experience with humans and my massive stock of information on them reminded me that whatever they built, saw, and experienced, became rather dull for them. They were largely incapable of appreciating the works of the world, which was something of a pity.
I, on the other hand, was occupied with scanning the architecture of the buildings we rumbled past. The construction and elements involved were both amazing, proof of the power humans wielded in groups. For the remainder of the ride, I busied myself with analyzing the buildings. If I chose to, in all probability, I could collapse the structures with little effort.
The car ground to a halt, and Peters got out, straightening and stretching. I merely engaged my hover unit and floated out to hover next to his head. The man waved a hand as Peters shut the door, and the car accelerated away. We were alone, and for me, in unfamiliar terrain. So I followed Peters closely as he approached a door labelled "Employees Only" in white letters. There was a security camera bolted onto the wall above it. I altered the input from my eye sensors, and the infrared beam of the camera's view was visible to me. I scanned the camera remotely, rather than interfacing with it directly, and fed it a loop. Effectively, it would not pick us up. I floated ahead of Peters, who took the cue and strode behind me, pushing the door open for me.
Heading inside, I found myself in a stairwell, which only had one set leading up to a second door. It was fairly dark in here, with only a single bulb to chase away the dark. I followed Peters as he approached the door, watching as he took a small tag from his pocket and fastened it on. Pushing the door open, he walked inside confidently.
It appeared probability was on our side. At this time in the evening, most of the employees would have left. However, I remained cautious, unlike Peters, who seemed to be unaware of the consequences if we were discovered. He sped off down the hallway, at the end of which I could see an elevator. To the right of the stairway we had ascended, I spotted a second one. The door to it was open, oddly. Following Peters more closely, I peered into the rooms we passed. Some of them appeared to be locked with shutters over the doors, presumably to prevent illegal entry. After a scan of the wall, I found that the walls themselves would not stand up to an assault from a sufficiently strong Pokemon or human, or tool thereof. Humans often overlooked things, it seemed.
Peters was waiting by the lift, the doors of which appeared to be locked. I floated over, accessing the program holding the doors locked. Apparently, it would require a lift key. I, however, needed no such object, and rewrote the program to remain unlocked at all times. I felt the core re-establish a connection with my own, pushing doubt into me as I worked. It was getting faintly unsettling, these emotions being forced upon me.
Presently, the lift doors slid open, to reveal a gaping blackness. Peters peered inside, craning his neck upwards while I wrestled to make the core "bugger off" as I had heard a Rocket say the night previously. Peters was grumbling to himself as he pushed the call button. I ignored him. It was rather rare the scientist said anything of note. There was a quite loud whir as the elevator capsule ground down to us, opening it's own set of doors when it was halted. Inside we went, with myself watching once again as Peters pushed the button.
"I can't believe you're going through with this." The voice muttered rebelliously as I managed to cut it off. It seemed a lot of my time was spent ignoring and resisting others. The lift rose up to the fifth floor, upon which the security room was apparently located. From there, I would fulfil my objective...
When we came to a stop and the doors opened, however, we came across a guard patrolling the hallway before us. He peered into a door as he froze, then straightened and turned to face the elevator. Unfortunately, we had nowhere to hide, and he spotted us immediately. His eyes roved over me, wonder and suspicion etched on his face. He stepped closer, his gaze settling on Peters. He visibly relaxed when he spotted the outfit and nametag my companion was wearing, and waved a hand at us.
"Ah, staying late tonight?" He asked Peters jovially, who exited the elevator, nodding with a sheepish grin. He was an admirable actor.
"Yep, heading over to the lab." He said vaguely as we passed the guard, who nodded. Obviously, it didn't occur to him to question my presence. News of my capture would surely have spread by now. Or, rather not as it appeared. We rounded the corner, passing the same set of stairs I saw on the second floor, and I spotted the security room door up ahead.
It was marked as such, with white letters like the employee entrance outside. We entered the room, surprising a security guard who was about to exit. Peters threw the door open the rest of the way, making the wood material of the door connect rather forcefully with the hapless man's head and chest, knocking him down, and out cold as he uttered a short yelp. To be sure, I scanned his vital signs, and felt the core's relief at his continued existence. Peters shut the door behind us, while I hovered towards the computer banks. A wall full of monitors displaying video feeds of various cameras greeted me, their soft glow making my body illuminate that bit brighter. The colours of my body reflected onto the dark walls, bathing them in a pinkish-turquoise glow that was oddly comforting. Peters took a USB device from his pocket, the device he had used to manifest me in the physical world, and plugged it in to a random computer.
I hovered over it, and felt an odd feeling. My hover unit and gyro-stabilizers went crazy, struggling at maximum power for a moment while my body seemed to fracture and come apart.
And then I saw ones and zeroes again, much to chagrin of the core. It threw up a image of the same sunny field that I had seen when it first made it's existence known to me. I shut of my eye sensors and set about my assigned task.
"Last chance, Porygon. If you do this, then there's no going back. If the Rockets kill anyone, on their way in, it's your fault." The core probed at my defences, trying to win me over.
Cease your interactions with me. I retorted, entering into the network of cameras and runtimes that filled the memory of this computer. The cameras were only observational tools to let the guards on duty know of intruders like ourselves, while triggering the alert was reserved for various fire alarm switches and a button inside this room. Effectively, only a human could trigger the alarm, although a wireless signal that I detected traced back to a device that it appeared the unconscious guard was carrying. This device could trigger the alarm remotely, and the only way to shut off an alarm was with the proper authorization code entered into this terminal.
It was quite simple to rewrite the programming, disconnect the runtimes, and make the alarm inoperable under all circumstances. The core emanated growing anger and a sense of defeat as I finished my work. I exited the system, manifesting back into the physical world with that same tugging sensation.
Peters turned to me, glee and ugly triumph on his features.
"It's done?" He asked, almost scraping the skin from his hands as he rubbed them together.
"Yes." I replied shortly. He turned away, and I made to follow.
...Should I have resisted? What if it is right, and lives will be lost needlessly? Having experienced this world, I do not think I could sit by and let others lose their opportunity to do so. I thought, sealing myself away from the core. I remained conflicted as we exited the room, mulling it over and over. Perhaps...perhaps I could obey both urges of my programming. Remotely, I dove back into the network. Instead of restoring the original state of the program, I made it so all the rooms in the building could be locked from the inside. In all probability, the Rockets may overlook their ability to break through the walls when their operation commenced. My runtimes were, strangely, no longer fighting each other, and I could stop recycling my data.
The core knew nothing of my editing, too occupied with it's emotions. In a way, I was grateful I had none. Being able to perceive the world with perfect clarity...it was good not to be constrained by petty things.
We made our way back down, using the stairs this time to avoid the guard who was still patrolling the floor. It would not be long before the man we incapacitated would be discovered, so we hurried as best we could. Peters was puffing heavily as we used the employee entrance to leave. Once out of visual range, I eliminated the loop, restoring the camera's function to normal. The car was waiting, engine growling like a Poochyena as Peters opened the door. I hovered inside, settling on the seat once again. The car dipped to the side as Peters clambered in, and then we were off.
I wondered, the full duration of the return journey, whether I had had done all I could.