PMD: Redundancy

You wake up inside the world of Pokemon, but things are not that simple! Just how you arrived is a question for statisticians as much as for the mysterious force which sent you. At best, you might be dropped within the general vicinity of the planet with a success rate as low as you'd expect. Satire of the logistics behind PMD. May contain disturbing scenes and an excessive number of Mudkips.

/ REDUNDANCY /

[TRIAL 1: No redundancy]

Redundancy is The duplication of critical functions of a system with the intention of increasing the reliability of the system. Typically, redundancy refers to the duplication of critical components within a system in the form of backups or fail-safes.

Occhiolism

The awareness of the smallness of your perspective, by which you couldn't possibly draw any meaningful conclusions at all about the world, or the past, or the complexities of culture; because although your life is an epic and unrepeatable anecdote, it still only has a sample size of one, and may end up being the control for a much wilder experiment happening in the next room.

From 'The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows' by John Koenig

The Traveller

"I first met The Traveller when it became apparent that in order to maintain balance in one universe, I must transpose a being from one realm to the next. As to why remains a frivolous question and although I do like questions, this fails to be of importance."

We may regard the speaker merely as some form of mysterious force. It is difficult to constrain their true nature into something fathomable to the average human being. Their mannerisms match that of a confused gentleman seeking a certain location but who is too prideful to seek assistance. If they had a favourite colour it would be purple, but only because it was difficult to rhyme with anything non controversial. If the mysterious force was a physical being, them they had a distinct distrust of plain speech over enigmatic idioms.

"Transposition has high accuracy but low precision."

The mysterious force continued. If it was human, the being would have rolled the words around their mouth as if savouring the taste of their own gibberish.

"Within what is effectively an infinite universe, trying to relocate a human being from one planet to another is non-trivial. Early attempts at transporting humans to the Pokemon universe was initially unsuccessful."

Here we shall pause the narrative, for therein lies our first fallacy.

The mysterious force was either unable to comprehend the nature of what is dismissed as being unsuccessful, or their potent arrogance made such concern for others superficial. The statement provided is an abhorrent understatement of a truly gruesome and horrific event. True insanity is completing the same action over and over and expecting the same results.

Put bluntly, the chances of success for a 'human' is teleported to another world whilst being transformed into a Pokemon is very low. At best, a transported Traveller can be dropped within the general vicinity of the planet. For a statistician this might be highly commendable. For an organism, such low odds of surviving are not favourable. Being near a planet is not the same as landing safely on the surface by any means. Even getting to within one percent of the planet's radius in height from the surface, there a mere one-in-two-hundred-thousand chance that a teleported human would survive the transposition. It's more likely they'd fall from a few kilometers altitude and splatter against the surface.

For a whole universe of an uncountable number of galaxies, let alone planets, it's no wonder the mysterious force felt pleased with itself just for getting that close. For the unfortunate soul being teleported however, that wasn't good enough. The chances of surviving such an ordeal were alarmingly slim.

To counteract this issue, the mysterious force felt obliged to add a certain fail-safe to guarantee success. In this case, a fail-safe can be defined as an operation that comes into use in order to prevent a certain outcome. For the incognizant and ever prideful mysterious force, it was a matter of trying and trying again until the teleportation did work and The Traveller landed on the surface alive.

The repercussions of this first attempt at redundancy only became known some time later...

I Herd U Liek Mudkips

It was a dark and stormy night.

Rain lashed down from the sky in sheets, thunder erupting into tendrils of lighting between thick black clouds. Water crashed down from the heavens to thump into the ground, tearing through the leaves of the trees and turning the ground into a quagmire. In a small forest clearing, a rickety hut was barely withstanding the wet onslaught. Water smashed against the window pain leaving black watery tendrils.

Azi was curled up inside. The Vulpix shivered uncontrollably, eyes darting between the window and the tin roof over her head. The latter was being struck continuously by the rainy onslaught cascading from above. Azi could barely hear herself think. As a fire-type, it was obvious that she hated the rain. The downpour outside reflected the Vulpix's own mood. Dark, foreboding, and lashed with hot sparks of anger.

Azi was couldn't sleep. Not because of the rain, but for what morning would bring. Tomorrow would begin her life as a guild member. That should have been exciting enough for the young fox Pokemon to miss out on a few hours sleep. But it wasn't. Azi had once dreamed of starting up her very own exploration team but the deadline for joining up with a partner was at sunrise. A flash of lightning illuminated the interior for an instant. The burning yellow after image of her small hut looked as drab and tired as she felt.

Rain splattered against the window and the Vulpix curled up tighter on her thin mat of straw.

Exploration, mystery dungeons...adventure! It should have been so easy! Azi had more friends then she could count on two paws, but none of them had been keen on signing up as an explorer. Most of them had openly admitted they didn't want to risk their life for mere pittance. And money wasn't the only concern. Azi had been told numerous excuses ranging from inexperience, to bad typing, to a fear of the dark. The young Vulpix had done everything she could to change their minds, but to no avail. Tomorrows deadline brought to surface all those feelings of rejection she'd suffered from the past year. The little sleep Azi had got had merely resulted in her imagining that a Mudkip had joined her team. Seriously? Azi hated water-types with a passion.

Torrential rain hammering against the tin overhead disturbed any attempted shut-eye. The wind howled and screamed through the crack in her shack, shaking the timbers and rattling a small collection of pans hanging from hooks near the doorway.

The storm hadn't been forecasted by the weather Espeon, nor seen by the local Natu that had a knack for predicting the weather. Black clouds had rumbled in from the east with grey skies morphing into a perpetual shower lasting through into the night. The curtains of rain seemed to get stronger with each other. Another boom of thunder shook her shack and the young Vulpix trembled, pushing her snout deeper into her six fluffy tails. Oh how she wanted the night to be over!

A loud boom rattled the ground, but this one sounded different from the rest. Over the high pitched cacophony of rain battering tin roofing, Azi heard the loud bang somewhere outside. It must have been close, for the Pokemon felt the ground shake under her four paws. Maybe it was an impact of some kind? Could a storm this big really start ripping up the sky?

Azi could only wonder if fear what was going on outside. There was no way on this earth she was going out in this weather to check. Sniffing even at the thought of it, the Pokemon curled up tighter and returned to her musings. Flattening her ears against her head helped damped the sound of rain shattering the ground outside.

For a few minutes Azi flitted in and out of sleep as she worried about what the morning would bring. The howling wind whipped and lashed the side of the building. It trembled under the curtains of rain in much the same was as Azi under her barrage of hopeless thoughts.

She wasn't prepared for when the sky opened above her.

A tremendous CRASH turned the night into a nightmare. The Vulpix couldn't react quick enough as Azi's house buckled under a huge impact puncturing through the roof over her head. Wood splintered. Glass smashed. Timbers went flying as an object exploded through the tin roof and splattered into the ground only a few feet away from her. The vulpix screamed, jumping back in horror as wet juices splattered over her lush red fur. Backpedaling away from the impact site, it was all Azi could do not to whine in fright as the building started to collapse around her.

There was no time to lose! She had to get out!

Azi scrambled for the door not a moment too soon. Tin and nails squealed from stress as the joints of her house began to rupture. Tucking in her tails, the fire-type bounded for the door and shoulder-barged through into the ongoing storm. Rain instantly soaked through her fur as a flash of lighting illuminated a gaping puncture wound through what had been her tin roof. She pulled her eyes away, blinking her surroundings into focus.

'What was that?' Azi muttered in fear, tails between her legs as she backed away from her house slowly.

The wood buckled and with a gust of wind it collapsed.

'NOOOO!' The Vulpix cried, jumping towards the rumble as if she could have saved any remnants of the building. The shack in the woods was all she had ever known. And now the sky hand fallen in around her and EVERYTHING WAS GONE! Only a pile of broken corrugated tin and fractured wood indicated there used to be anything there at. Pulling her ears back in fright, it was all Azi could do not to burst into tears there and then.

Rain lashing against the ground starkly reminded the Vulpix that she needed to find shelter immediately. As if to match this instinctive realisation, the sky seemed to grow darker still. Never in her life had Azi seen a storm this bad.

A high pitched whizzing sound thundered through the air. A moment of silence stung the world before a BOOM as another impact shook the ground. I yelped in shock as the sound was mimicked again, and then again in quick succession. BOOM. BOOM. The sky was literally falling over top of Azi. Each impact finished with a wet-sounding splosh like when you smashed a half-rotten pumpkin against the ground. Azi shook in fear. She didn't know where to run. Black clouds turned the once known features of her territory to a shapeless maze. Trees appeared randomly through the dense drizzle, the Vulpix dodging thick roots on instinct. Huge craters had already began to pockmark the landscape. Felled birches and even a mighty oak had been severed by the projectiles. The fire-type was forced off the path into town and into the dense underbrush.

BOOM

'Waaaa!' Azi skipped to a stop. Mud splashed her face as she blinked incongruously at the fresh crater before her wet paws. Yet another object had fallen from the sky, yet this one appeared to have survived the impact. Whatever had dropped from the heavens was soft, squidgy, and had exploded upon impact a mere metre in front of the Vulpix. Azi's paws slide in the mud as a splash of pulp from the impact splashed across her fur. The Pokemon's nose twitched at the scent of the creature before her eyes could identify it.

'That's a...a…' Azi was approaching hysterical. The fire-type bit onto her tongue and tried not to vomit.

It wasn't a comet that had fallen from the sky...nor a shooting star. It was a blue and orange Pokemon. The poor creature had most definitely died upon impact, crushed to a pulp in a bone-shattering crash. It was hard to tell what it used to be, but the blood-soaked scent warned me that it used to be a water type. Though maybe that was just the scent of rain soaking the woodland.

The sky was alight with thunder, lighting, and the unceasing rain of the bodies of Pokemon. Azi could only hope they were dead before impact. Even that thought made her retch. This was the end. Pokemon were falling out of the sky for goodness sake!

Before Azi could even contemplate the reality of what was happening, another whizz and a BOOM pushed the Vulpix into a sprint. The sound of blood pounding in the Vulpix's ears was loud enough to compete with the howl of the wind through the trees. She had to escape from what was steadily becoming a nightmare.

This was it.

This was armageddon.

Azi's small paws sunk into the thick mud as the Vulpix ran in the opposite direction from the exploded Pokemon. Though, it was rapidly become clear that they were everywhere. Blue and orange bodies had shattered through the trees, bulldozed through the ground; made even more horrific by the muffled splatter of fat raindrops across the sparse woodland.

Azi tasted salty tears mixed in with the raindrops dripping down her muzzle. And behind it, the muggy tang of blood and death. A loud whizz warned of another incoming impact. Azi winced from the splat, now aware of what the falling objects really were. Such knowledge only propelled her to run as fast as her vulpine legs could carry her.

Azi almost ran straight into the stream. The small brook meandered close to the path, but she was so far off-track that she somersaulted into the wide ditch before she could catch herself. With a yelp, the Vulpix tumbled down a muddy slope and splashed into a narrow river. Intuitively, her paws pulled as the water in an attempt to keep her furry head about the surface. However, the weight of six tails attempted to pull her back under.

Added flood water from the intense rainstorm rushed down the gully. Doggy Paddling for dear-life, Azi struggled for breath. A front paw pushed at something hard as she bobbed between what she at first thought to be boulders. But something wasn't right. Boulders didn't float.

Blinking river water from her eyes, Azi struggled to swim to the shore as floating rocks began to clog the small water way. She batted one out of her face, struggling to keep swimming. The Pokemon wasn't prepared for the rounded mass to turn over revealing large vacant white eyes staring back. A blue face, glazed over with a bloated mouth half agape. Blood was leaking from a head wound that split the water-types head like a coconut.

Azi screamed. That was, until she swallowed a mouthful of water and almost choked. Pushing furiously at the water with her four paws, she tried to pull herself out of what was quickly becoming a ball-pit of bloated dead water-types. Mudkips. They were blue backed, white bellied, floating corpses rubbing against her fur as Azi began to panic. She needed to get out. Sucking in a deep breath and the stench of death burnt her nostrils.

The river was completely saturated with Mudkips when Azi managed to pull herself free. There was no thought to her motions, only a wild and feral need to escape the nightmare. Scrabbling at the bank, she struggled to stay on her feet as she ran as fast as she could away from the river. The plug of bodies was being flushed downstream. Floodwater was already spreading across the muddy forest floor as the Vulpix ran blindly towards what she hoped was the town.

BOOM!

Another body hit the ground in front of her. The Mudkip was smashed to bits even as it crashed through a tree and splattered against the ground. Azi was too terrified to even scream when damp spongy flesh was splattered across her face. Panting, trembling, Azi only tried to run faster and faster. The world was collapsing around her.

The end had come.

This...This was Mudkipageddon.

Craters were everywhere. The forest was being battered on all sides by both the impacts and the ferocious storm. Azi stumbled and fell more times than she could count. Wet mud coated the Vulpix's once pristine ruby fur, blood and Mudkip flesh splattered her beautiful sleek tails. Azi couldn't aggrieve even as she slid once more and struggled to keep all four paws on the ground. There was only one thought on her mind as yet another BOOM shook the ground. Escape.

Azi didn't know how long she was running for. She'd almost been hit on numerous occasions by the falling bodies which seemed to be arriving in greater numbers. The splat of bodies hitting the ground at terminal velocity had become a perpetual white noise. Many of the Mudkips had become skewered on the long branches of trees, only to fall off with a squelch. Dodging left and right, Azi rapidly grew desensitised to the sight of crushed remains, broken corpses, and the disseminated Mudkip organs literally littering the ground.

But they weren't only falling from the sky. Oh no! That fact suddenly became apparent when what could only be described as an earthquake ruptured the ground to her left. Azi was swept off her feet by the sudden shaking and as a huge crack zig-zagged through the forest. There was no time to prepare for what came next. From the gaping hole erupted a fountain of fine mush and the white edge of pulped bones. Mudkips were coming up from below. The geyser peaked as high as the trees before mingling with the storm. A flash of lighting burnt the image into the back of the Vulpix' eyes.

There were no part of her left to register the horror.

Azi's only goal was the flee such madness.

The view of the town through the trees was like seeing heaven one step from hell. The Pokemon cried in delight at the vision of the short highstreet and suburbs illuminated in a merry orange glow. Surely she would be safe there, hidden behind the guild's high stone walls?

It was only when she got into the outskirts of town that Azi realised just how wrong she was.

Fires illuminated the urban buildings. Even in the downpour, bright orange flames were licking at the buildings. Huge gusts of wind only seemed to fan the fire, making it burn brighter and hotter. Where before there had been houses, now there was only ruins. Where before had stood evidence for civilisation there was nothing. Only the sight of broken buildings turned to collenders from the impacts. No roof was left standing.

No! This couldn't be right!

Azi skidded through the suburbs, sidestepping around huge craters before slipping round a corner on the main highstreet. With a yelp, Azi only stopped herself in the nick of time. Red-stained mud splashed into the void before her, A huge crack, wider than she was tall, had opened-up between the broken store fronts. There was a low gurgling noise before a huge geyser erupted, and then another.

Mushed up, as well as whole mudkips were foaming out of the ground even as more and more cascaded down from the sky. Azi ducked as a falling blue body shot like a cannon shot through a building to her left. The sky was dark not from rain clouds, but the sheer number of bodies falling from the heavens.

So may Mudkips were accumulating that their remains began to coat the ground in a thick red sludge. Blue spongy skin only acted to save later Mudkips from impact, cushioning the impacts. So many were falling from the sky and erupting from the ground that a thick gruel was starting to coat the town. All hope at escaping fled the small Vulpix in an instant. The town was destroyed. There was nowhere else left to go.

Azi backpedaled from the high street, jumping into a run as a small wave of bodies began to rush towards the Vulpix. Bleating in fright, she rushed backwards away from the tsunami of decapitated Mudkips. A body splattered onto the street next to her, showering the Vulpix. Dazed, she slid across slick cobblestones before the blue wave of dismembered water-types smashed into her. In an instant she was consumed by the thick sludge.

Azi screamed.

She fought with her paws to try and keep her head above the warm, thick tide but it wasn't enough. The dense mix of floodwater and dead Mudkips was too dense to fight. There was no strength left in the Vulpix as she began to succumb. The last thing Azi felt was mushy material squeezing against her muzzle as she fell victim to the ever deepening mass of Mudkips. She screamed one last time only to choke of the mixture squeezing into every pore of her body.

This was the end.

REDUNDANCY

"There were indeed a number of issues to consider to ensure the safe arrival of The Traveller." The mysterious force continued after a moment's contemplation. They twisted the words into a net of casual conversation, as if to hide the sinister undertones implied by such a statement. There was little in the way of inflection in their tone. No emotion to even hint at the monstrosity they had committed.

"Considerations were required to apply more representative and by extension more achievable constraints. Partly, to ensure that initial success has a higher probability than earlier attempts."

Anyone that has studied the nature of education, or any theories regarding the learning cycle, may understand the underlying issue. Although their active experimentation was commendable, the mysterious force lacked the reflective observation required to conceptualize potential solutions. In fact, it took numerous attempts for the mysterious force to learn from their mistakes. Only after four failed instances of human to Pokemon relocation were any redundancy plans initiated.

"Adding further conditions prior to the transposition of the human provided better odds for a human's safe arrival. Things to consider include air pressure, as a measure of altitude, of course, and the topography of the surface."

Something that was a little too late for a large number of Pokemon.

It was also too late for a whole planet when initial testing of transportation occurred. It may take a stretch of the imagination to fathom an entire globe being coated with a twenty-one metre deep layer of deceased Mudkips. Nonetheless, the result was a lost, lifeless planet for which a transported human was the end of civilisation, not the saviour of it.

Later attempts were more successful.

Slightly more successful, that is.

XXX

AUTHOR NOTES:

PMD: Redundancy is a collaboration between Zen (Zencolour) and R'love (Just-A-Reader0Love), and will wrap up as a three-shot. The story plays with the logistics behind how a human may be transported to the Pokemon world. It casts some rather dark humour over the possible difficulties in relocating a human to a different planet, and why the mysterious force at work behind such an effort may not be as savvy as we may first expect.

This fiction was partly inspired by the PMD gates to infinity opening, as well as Zen considering morbid time loops after a certain scene within the book 'The Abyss Beyond Dreams' by Peter F. Hamilton. Redundancy is a side project alongside FH and Error. As such, there is no time schedule for uploading at present. This fiction is rated M for obvious reasons.

R'love wishes to add that Azi the Vulpix is saved from the horrid event, and that neither of us have a vendetta against Mudkips. Later chapters will focus more on efforts by the mysterious force to add fail-safes. As a result, later chapters should be less...uh...messed up than this chapter.

Thanks for reading!

XXX