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"That will be 3,500 Poke, sir. Congratulations on your new Pokémon!" the clerk said, handing over a Pokéball and several bags of supplies. Jack had just barely graduated college, and found his new apartment lonely without the constant hustle and bustle of roommates. Now he understood why so many people had pet Pokémon, even if they weren't Trainers challenging the Gym circuit. It had always seemed so much work to him, trying to feed and take care of half a dozen Pokémon, each with their own diet and needs, not to mention the full time job it was to train even a single one for battle. There was no wonder why it wasn't a common career choice, even if it was very popular to watch others try. Every battle ended with one trainer having to pay the other, and statistically speaking, it would be very rare to break even on earnings, after paying for a Pokémon Center subscription, food, vitamins, TMs, medicine, and all of the various gear needed to keep a human and several Pokémon alive as they travel between towns and cities with Gyms. Instead of all that work with little chance of making a living, Jack went to college.
So here he was, with a brand new degree in engineering, and a bigger weekly paycheck than his old monthly pay working part time in food delivery. His new apartment was big, freshly built, and decorated with a random assortment of furniture found from various thrift stores. But it felt too big, and quiet as well. So the last month was spent on research into different kinds of Pokémon. It was a challenge to find information on keeping Pokémon as pets and companions, when the first page of search results were invariably focused on each Pokémon's use in battle, or famous trainers who used them on their teams. But Jack had spent years learning how to sort through pages of irrelevant information to find the sources he needed for the endless essays for education.
Most of the popular Pokémon were discounted. Eevee and Vulpix needed a lot of time, care, and interaction. Jack didn't want to devote half of his home time to playing with the foxes, grooming them, and taking them outside on walks. Felines were also popular, but they had reputations of escaping and terrorizing or hunting local wildlife. Jack found himself looking more at the lower maintenance Pokémon: Grass-types like Maractus or Bulbasaur, which got most of their nutrition from sunlight and spent much of their time photosynthesizing, or mineral Pokémon like Geodude or Carbink. Once a week, he would find himself wandering down to the local Pokémon shelter, where Pokémon that were injured, abandoned, or out of their battling prime could be found. Everything from Scorbunny juggling a ball between their feet to old, sleepy Stoutland could be found. Nothing really felt like it would fit him, or more importantly, not violate his lease, which put limits on the kinds of Pokémon one could keep. Sure, he could just keep it in a Pokéball unless outside, but that didn't seem like much of a life for a pet, no matter what the Pokéball companies said about the comfort inside one.
Of course, the shelter had their own suggestions: how about a Ralts? They're calm and easygoing for someone like you. Oh, you like computers? We have a Porygon that the old owner couldn't deal with going on their computer all the time. Those didn't really work either. Jack didn't like how human the Ralts line looked, and a psychic that picked up on and reacted to your emotions felt invasive. Porygon was an interesting idea, but would it live in his computer he needed for work? What kinds of Internet traffic would it look for, or glitches in his work software?
But last week, there was a new Pokemon: a Beldum, one a trainer had caught, wanting to grow it into a powerful Metagross before realizing it was a very difficult Pokémon to train. Beldum had very little battle prowess before evolution, only knowing Take Down. So she had released it, but she had traveled too far from its native range for the Beldum to find its way back.
It seemed a curious little thing, staring with its single red eye at anyone who got close. It wasn't noisy, without any kind of bark, growl, or roar that would annoy his neighbors. Occasionally it would make a soft dinging sound, like a hammer striking metal, but it wasn't loud. And Beldum weren't active Pokémon that needed to be taken outside for exercise constantly. Jack spent the week researching the line, learning out its needs and idiosyncrasies. As an inorganic Steel-type, it didn't need to eat a lot, though the iron shavings and ore could be slightly hard to find. But that wasn't much more than an inconvenience, with how popular Steel-types were for Trainers. What was really attractive was that any waste would be inoffensive, just rusty mineral scales that needed to be scrubbed off with a wire brush.
But there was one problem: Beldum typically weighed over two hundred pounds. Combined with their Take Down topping out at thirty miles an hour, that was a lot of force to contend with. As nice as his apartment was, he doubted its walls were more than plaster and drywall. And if it was startled and attacked him? Broken ribs weren't a joke. But everything he could read showed the advantages beat the cons. Slow metabolism meant he wouldn't spend more feeding his pet than himself. It didn't need grooming, other than maybe a weekly polish or burnishing if mineral scales began to build up on its body. And they were curious and intelligent without being needy like every Glameow he had ever met.
So today was the day he bought his very own Pokémon. He had the very few supplies a new Beldum would need in his house. A simple plastic food bowl (metal might be mistaken for the food itself) and a medium sized punching bag for Beldum to ram into was enough. Sure, the small one was rated for Fighting-types like Machop or Riolu, which could hit harder in theory, but a ramming Beldum had a lot more follow-though than a single changed up punch. Better to over-engineer than to marginally succeed. And the one thing that his landlord had required: an Everstone. The Beldum had only been allowed because it was unusually light for its size, like it had a parent with the so called "light metal" mutation, but this one was only seventy-five percent of the normal weight, not the full fifty percent weight reduction that was often sought after by breeders and high level trainers. But even though it was below the two hundred pound threshold to be allowed in the apartment complex, a Metang would soar past that limit, and no cajoling the landlord would deny the reality that it wouldn't fit through most interior doorways. But as long as Jack held the stone against Beldum for a few minutes each week, it would prevent evolution, so long as he avoided real battle and training.
Beldum hadn't come with a name, and for now, its species was name enough. Jack had set up everything the new Pokémon would need. It would be best to keep it in the spare room to start. He didn't want to scare or overstimulate the Pokémon after it had been confined to a small cage for the last month. There was the punching bag, a dish of metal shavings, and a wire brush attached to the wall that the Beldum could scratch itself with. Now was the time.
Jack fished the Pokéball out of his too-tight pocket; these pants hadn't been made with Trainers in mind. Taking a short breath, he pushed the button on the front, and Beldum materialized in red light.
Beldum was silent. Jack knew it was a quiet Pokémon, but after seeing all the Pancham and Growlithe in the streets, or the battles when he happened to click past them on the television, it was still weird to see a Pokémon that barely vocalized.
Beldum just stared at Jack. Sure, he'd handled him a little at the shelter, but Beldum hadn't acted like this. Usually, it bobbed around to look at its surroundings. Suddenly awkward, Jack reached out a hand.
"Hey, little buddy, I'm your owner now. This is your new home," he said.
Beldum barely reacted to his voice. It made a slow rotation, seemingly inspecting the room. It made a full revolution, then hovered to Jack, and pushed the button on the Pokéball Jack was still holding. Red light enveloped Beldum, and it was sucked back into the ball.
That was... unexpected. Jack wasn't a trainer, but he had a few friends that dabbled in it. Never had he heard of a Pokémon wanting to go back in a Pokéball, unless it was seriously hurt. The problem was rather the opposite: most Pokémon tolerated Pokéballs, but a few hated them and refused to go in even the best Luxury Balls. Jack had a friend with a troublesome Magby who had taken a lot of training and care before she wouldn't pop out of her Pokéball, often inside a building, usually right next to something flammable. How had that worked out? Didn't his friend have to make a deal with her that she got to come out every hour or something? That friend did have to go outside occasionally whenever he had visited growing up.
But what was up with Beldum? He had the right ingredients; food, shelter, enrichment. Everything he could find that a Pokémon would need. Maybe it was a fluke.
Jack pushed the button on the ball again. Feeling a little foolish, he said, "Beldum, come out!" like he was about to challenge the local Gym. The result was quicker this time. Beldum barely glanced around the room before zooming back into the Pokéball. Jack flinched a little when he saw that nearly two hundred pound bullet rushing toward him before it was swallowed up by the ball.
Very strange. Was the Beldum hurt? No way; the shelter checked that. Sick? Also doubtful. Had he missed some vital thing that Beldum needed? They were magnetic, maybe the wiring in his house made some electromagnetic interference that was bothering it. Well, Jack wasn't going to get any more answers here. It was time for more research.
The Internet failed him. "Pokémon goes back in ball" said the most likely cause was injury or illness. In some Pokémon, it could be due to stress or overstimulation. All of those causes were unlikely. He'd already ruled out physical ailments. He could take it down to the neighborhood Pokémon Center to be sure, but Beldum had been just fine earlier today. Over-stimulation was completely ruled out; he'd chosen that room specifically because it was basic and boring. Stress was possible, but what was stressful? Going from two square feet of cage to a hundred square feet of lightly furnished bedroom?
But to make sure his research was complete, he had to check more niche sources. 'Beldum stays in Pokéball' didn't turn up any relevant information either. One person on a forum said they needed to keep their Metang read to their Metang or let it listen to radio, or else it bashed in walls; but Jack had the opposite problem here. Even the bland room had to be more interesting than the suspended animation of a Pokéball.
Well, a day inside a Pokéball wouldn't hurt Beldum at all. Jack would chill out with a game or two, and make some calls after work tomorrow. Maybe the shelter would know if Beldum had any quirks they hadn't mentioned from its previous owner.
"Well, it looks fine to me!" Nurse Joy said. Her name wasn't really Joy, any more than all policewomen were named Jenny. It was just a tradition, a holdover from the first founders of the careers who had gone by that name. Beldum was acting like a totally different Pokémon in the examination room; it floated around, looking at the graphs on the wall, the screen monitoring its magnetic impulses, and the back of Nurse Joy's hair. It was more active than it had been even in the shelter, where it mostly stared at the people going by.
"There's no illnesses that I can see; its health is perfect as far as I can tell. The only cases I know of where a Pokémon keeps going back into the Pokéball are when the Pokémon feels unsafe. Sometimes it's from past abuse or trauma, but nothing I'm seeing indicates that. Maybe your home has some electrical or magnetic interference that disturbs it somehow, but if it could float and move around with no problem right after coming out of the ball, that seems unlikely. What's your home like? Is it cluttered, noisy, or dirty?" she asked.
Jack told her about the room, ideal for introducing a new Pokémon to a home without feeling overwhelmed by a new environment.
"That is strange, there doesn't seem to be anything that could cause issues. Try just carrying the ball around the house; they're made to let Pokémon be aware of their surroundings, and Pokémon can even listen to you from the inside. Try to make it feel comfortable in your home, and if Beldum still keeps returning to its Pokéball by tomorrow, I can call a behavior expert to help. But that's not covered under typical care, so you might have to pay a fee for a private inspector." Nurse Joy said.
With barely any real answers, Jack held out the Pokéball and returned Beldum before heading home.
Calling the shelter wasn't any more helpful; Beldum had been aloof in groups of Pokémon, but seemed to enjoy one-on-one time with the site nurse. Without any other option, Jack carried the Pokéball in one hand, touring around his apartment.
"So, this is the kitchen. You won't really need to come in here, since you just eat metal. But all this stuff is to cook my food or keep it cold. I guess it's kinda funny how we seem to want our food anything but room temperature," Jack said. This felt dumb, talking to the inanimate Pokéball in his hand. But maybe making the Pokémon familiar with its new home might make it more comfortable outside of its ball.
"And, uh, this is my office. I spend a lot of time here, actually, since my job lets me work from home. I can design just fine on my home computer without having to deal with the three trains and two buses it takes to get to work in the middle of the city. I hadn't really planned on that, but turns out that a good gaming computer works as a great CAD machine too. I don't have anything else to do today, so I guess I'll let you out and let you explore while I mess around with bridge simulators," Jack said.
He tapped the button on the Pokéball, letting Beldum materialize in a flash of red light. Just like before, Beldum spun around the room, but this time it didn't go back into the ball. Instead, it just stared at Jack.
"Well that's an improvement, I guess," Jack said, pushing the start button on his computer. Beldum floated over, staring at the spinning fans and lights.
"I did go a bit overboard on the RGB, didn't I? Well, if you're not going to ram into it, it should be okay for you to watch. I just want to play something simple for a while," Jack said. He logged in, then brought up a game where the object was to make the simplest bridge that could carry a car across ever more impractical gaps. It wasn't much different from his normal job, but here there were a lot less variables and restrictions. Sometimes it was fun just to see what kinds of impractical creations could technically fill the roles, but wouldn't work at all in reality. Catapults to launch cars across the gaps, constructions that fell apart in just the right way to drop a car in the goal, or a single steel beam a hundred feet long spanning the gap that acted more as a seesaw, but still technically sufficed as a bridge.
Of course, this kind of creation could succeed or fail based on a few pixels of material. That was part of the fun though, to see the glitches in the physics engine that could be exploited for maximum points.
Through all of this, Jack kept an eye on Beldum. It had gotten bored of the spinning fans flashing in all the shades of the rainbow, and now stared at the screen, where building blocks of virtual wood, steel, and concrete were placed into representations of a bridge. Beldum's eye stared unblinkingly as Jack would see one test fail, move a piece incrementally, then try again, seeking to shave a few dollars off his previous best cost. Beldum bobbed with the movement of the mouse or car as it moved.
"Beldum really seems into this. I've heard of Pokémon watching TV, or some trying to hunt bugs or prey on a screen, but I swear it's understanding what's going on. He's bouncing up and down a half second before the car does!" Jack thought to himself. But that was ridiculous. Sure, some Pokémon were supposedly really smart, like claims that Metagross had similar calculation speed and accuracy as supercomputers. But if that were true, why would it ever bother with humans and battle? That claim never made sense to Jack.
That didn't stop Beldum from staring at the game, which had stopped being a fun diversion for Jack, and had now become a personal challenge. No matter what he tried, he couldn't find any way to save costs on this level. He had a running contest with another player, each stealing the top score from each other as they found more optimal ways to trick the level. But now it seemed he had reached the limit. Only three beams, and all at their shortest possible length that kept them solid. But it felt like there was still some progress to be made. Two of the beams were at 90% load, but the third was only at 60%. Surely there was some length or angle that could push that last one further with cheaper or less material. But Jack had puzzled over this for hours now. Any further breakthrough might have to be a different design, more than an optimization of the current design.
Then Beldum did something curious and sudden; it tapped the screen where the beam was and scratched the screen. Jack jumped up, yelling.
"Ack! Why'd you scratch the screen? I shouldn't have let you out in here! That's expensive!" Jack yelled in frustration.
Beldum jumped, ramming back into Jack. Jack caught all hundred and seventy pounds of solid steel straight into his chest, knocking him back into his chair. Beldum flew in a panic, looking for its Pokéball. Finding it on the desk, it tapped the button, disappearing in a flash of red light.
"Oww," Jack groaned. An anvil speeding right into the sternum wasn't comfortable, no matter how fast or slow it was going. Maybe he should get a padded vest, along with the new computer screen he needed now. He shouldn't have yelled at his Pokémon, everybody knew that it scared or traumatized them, but now there was a permanent scratch on something he had saved for months to afford...
Jack rubbed the painful bump on his chest, getting an ice pack from his freezer. It wasn't painful to breathe, so he probably didn't have any broken ribs, just a large bump in the shape of Beldum's face. Jack should have known better; the moment Beldum had started watching the screen, Jack should have ordered a protective cover. It wasn't something that was put on every screen, but manufacturers knew that accidents happened around creatures that could break rocks with their bare fists, or shoot lightning, or any number of other problems from the aptly named Pocket Monsters. Jack would just have to order a cover with strong anti-scratch and anti- cracking properties. Hmm, since Beldum levitated with magnetism, maybe magnetic shielding for his computer would be a good idea as well. He hadn't noticed any glitches or errors from the computer, but it only took one accident to wipe all his data.
Sighing, Jack sat back down at his computer, loading a shopping website. He brushed the scratched area with his sleeve, trying to clear the acrylic dust that had been scraped off. It wasn't an easily ignored hairline scratch that Beldum had made; it was thick and deep, nearly the width of Jack's fingernail, and was straight in the middle of the monitor. There were a few black spots as well; dead pixels that couldn't be fixed with a fresh clear sheet. He'd have to get a totally new monitor, or always scroll around to see what was behind the dead area.
Nowhere in town was had the type of screen he wanted in stock: extra-wide, low latency, with the new requirement of high crash rating. He'd have to order it shipped to his house. It felt wrong to just spend several hundred dollars without planning out a monthly budget, but he had emergency funds now. What had been a four-month investment as a birthday present was now a moderate annoyance. Heh, since he used this for work, a new screen might even be a tax write off. If he bothered to fill out that paperwork, at least.
Jack leaned back in his chair. "Well, it'll be here by the end of the week. Even if I can afford it, it feels wasteful to shell out another hundred for next day delivery." His frustration cooled and his chest no longer throbbing, Jack looked at the Pokéball sitting on his desk. Beldum seemed like it had been a fairly intelligent Pokémon; maybe it was trying to help with his game. Jack opened the game window back up, one end of the scratch perfectly centered on the troublesome support beam. Out of curiosity, Jack squinted around the cloudy scratch, and selected the end of the beam, moving it to where Beldum had stopped scraping the screen. There was now a strange angle to the bridge; the test car was going to have a pretty major bump. Acceptable for the game, destructive to any real life shock absorbers and tires.
Jack pushed play, watching the simulated minivan bounce along the rickety bridge. The first beam flashed red with strain, but it held. So did the second and third beams. It had made it across, with a new record for lowest cost by a few dollars. That wasn't much for early levels of optimization, but in Jack's personal contest between him and his rival, it may as well be a hundred. Each part recorded ninety five percent strain. Any new improvement would require a radically new strategy, and with the current most optimal blueprint only needing three pieces, there wasn't much lower to go. It would probably require major glitches to get lower than this.
Only an hour of watching, and it had figured out a puzzle that Jack had spent days puzzling over. Maybe there was something to the claim that the Beldum line was excellent at calculations.
Jack picked up the Pokéball, leaving the simulation repeating his success. Jack pushed the button, turning the ball to face his screen. Beldum came out, slightly shaking as it hovered.
"Beldum, I'm sorry I yelled at you. I should have said that this was fragile." Jack sighed. "I was angry because it took me a long time to afford that screen, but I forgot that it's easy for me to get a new one now. But look: You figured out the puzzle I spent weeks on. See?" Jack pointed at the screen.
Beldum watched the simulation, bobbing up and down with the bumps the van hit. Then a flash and fanfare of confetti, saying "Success!" for a few seconds before repeating the test.
Beldum made an odd sound, like an iron ingot being struck by a hammer. It bounced and gonged every time the "Success!" banner popped up.
"Yeah, we finally beat ForceMassSquared at that level. Now let's see how you do with catapult designs," Jack said, loading up a different level. This one had the ending platform significantly higher than the loading side. Rather than building all the supports and beams and slopes needed to do such a task properly, a few hinges and blocks of concrete flung the car like a trebuchet up to the platform, where it slowly rotated back onto its wheels before ending at the finish line.
This was very confusing for Beldum. It didn't just stare at the car bouncing across the screen, after a few repetitions, it spun sideways and upside down. The dings that it had made in excitement was now the grinding noise of metal dragging across itself.
"Uh, are you all right, Beldum? Is this too fast for you?" Jack asked. Beldum slowly spun back right side up, staring at the poor subcompact car being used as ammo to siege the top ledge. Jack saw Beldum inch towards the screen again.
"Wait! No! Don't scratch it again!" Jack cried, trying to wrench the Beldum away from adding a second scratch on the ruined screen. For the most part, all Jack managed to do was drag his wheeled office chair toward Beldum, rather than pulling it away. Which made absolutely no sense how Beldum was so anchored in midair, but since when did Pokémon obey the laws of physics? There was an entire major at his college on all the ways Pocket Monsters flew in the face of conservation of mass, energy, in addition to density and the square cube law.
But whether it was Jack's pulling or his pleading having more effect, Beldum stopped from adding a second dent into the already ruined screen. It stared at Jack, letting out a soft ding.
"Um, you can't move it by touching the screen." Jack waved the mouse in his hand. "See? I move this, and then the pointer moves on the screen. You have to move the mouse, not scratch the screen. I don't think they even make touchscreens that can stand up to steel-types."
Jack coaxed Beldum onto the mouse, trying to hold it so that Beldum could see how the mouse was the way of interacting with the computer, not scratching the screen.
Beldum lowered itself onto the mouse, resting its three claws on the buttons. But that had the problem of Beldum not being able to see the screen. Laying horizontally wasn't much better, because then it didn't have the dexterity to hit the keys.
"Huh. That's not gonna work, is it? I wonder if they have special mice for Pokémon to use..." Jack pulled out his phone and started typing into a search engine. "Never mind. I'm an engineer! I can just build one custom for you! I've even got a 3D printer to test my designs, I just need to scan you in as a computer model, then I can make a bracket for you to fit into on top of the mouse!" Jack dug his old 3D printer out of a box, something he had found used at a thrift store after another person had tried modeling for a month, before getting bored. It even had a scanner in it, so he could instantly get models of any shape he put into it.
Jack plugged it into his computer and booted it up, along with the software to run it. A series of red lasers flashed inside the box, calibrating themselves.
"Hey, I have an idea. I can make you something that you can sit in and use the mouse, but I need to know your measurements. It doesn't hurt, watch," Jack said, putting a Porygon figurine into the scanner. A grid of lasers flashed over it for a few seconds, and a wire-frame model appeared on the screen, an exact replica of the statue. Then Jack put his hand in and scanned it, so the wire-frame hand sat next to the Porygon.
Beldum floated very close to the machine, observing the lasers with its one red eye. Jack tried guiding Beldum in, but the anvil of steel didn't easily move. After a moment, it allowed Jack to guide it into the scanning platform.
But Jack now found a second problem: Beldum was too big to fit in the small, entry level scanner Jack had. He couldn't make a complete scan of Beldum's body, and there was too much individual variance in Pokémon for Jack to hunt down a free online model and hope it worked.
Jack settled for simply scanning the back half of Beldum, where its claws protruded from the flat surface. He cleared the models of the Porygon and his hand, leaving Beldum's back as a warped cylinder with a sudden cutoff where its head should be. Now he could make a base for Beldum to fit into, and he could match it up with his mouse.
Less than an hour later, Jack had a working file for a platform. He had scanned in his mouse as well, subtracting the shape of Beldum's claws and the shape of the mouse. A little bit of guessing what angle would work the best, and Jack fed the prototype model file into the 3D printer. The machine started its steady buzzing as it extruded layers of plastic.
While the printer worked, Jack started to teach Beldum how the game worked. "You need to push on the left button to grab things, but don't push too hard. You could probably break the mouse if you're not careful," Jack said. He demonstrated how the mouse moved around the screen, and what each button did. It was a good thing that this bridge simulator was a mouse-only program; Jack didn't think that he could make something that would make a keyboard work for Beldum; they didn't get any telekinetic abilities until they evolved.
A few hours later, the printer chimed that it was done. Jack took the prototype off the platform and scraped out the flimsy supports the printer made to fill the empty space for Beldum and the mouse. He slid the mouse into the bottom of the base, making sure that it fit and that it wouldn't keep the mouse buttons pushed. Then Jack reached the other side to push the buttons. He had noticed that Beldum's claws weren't totally immoblie, and that they could be used to click the buttons without moving its whole body. It all seemed to work.
Now it was time for the real challenge; whether it would fit Beldum and if the angle was comfortable to allow Beldum to see the screen. It had been watching the printer for the last few hours as it slowly created the shape Jack had made. Jack coaxed Beldum into the base, trying to find the exact angle its claws fit. It was snug, using rigid plastic for the curved body of Beldum, but with a satisfying snap, Beldum slid into the platform.
Beldum reacted much the same way as a Skitty with its head in a plastic bag. The feeling of extra weight was so sudden, too different for anything Beldum had experienced before. It wobbled side to side, flinching as the slightly loose fitting rattled.
"Hey! Beldum! It's alright! This is so that you can use the computer too!" Jack said. He reached for the platform, wrists complaining as Beldum tried to shake off the plastic. But with a firm tug, it popped off, leaving Beldum softly dinging at the creation repeatedly.
"This isn't scary. See?" Jack said as he placed the mouse back into its slot. He wiggled his fingers into the spot for Beldum, and was barely able to tap the buttons. Jack placed the contraption on the desk, showing how Beldum would be able to sit in it and use the mouse comfortably while seeing the screen. He pulled the bridge simulator back up, fumbling with the controls as his hand was in an awkward position.
"If you sit in this, then you can play it with me!" Jack said.
Finally, Beldum seemed to realize that the movement of the mouse corresponded to the cursor on the screen, and the clicking sound happened when other objects moved. It slowly lowered itself into the base, staring at Jack as if to say, "You can get me back out of this, right?"
It pushed itself into the base, sliding in with a dull thud. Beldum then inched its body around, watching the cursor move on the screen.
Jack grabbed the base to center the cursor on a metal pylon, then tapped his finger where the mouse button would be under the base. A muffled click could be heard, and Jack moved the pylon to the start of the level. Then he heard the button release, dropping the pylon on the ground. Beldum dinged in satisfaction, then started grabbing all the available pieces to drag them onto the platform.
"Looks like you got the basics down. And then to connect them, you have to do this," Jack demonstrated how to bring up the menu with the right click button.
Seeing Beldum happily move the pieces around like a toddler playing with blocks, Jack slowly left the room to get himself a snack. A minute later, he found Beldum carefully building the start of what looked like an arch bridge. A classic design, one that had served humans for hundreds of years. It was simple and intuitive design, but was rather heavy due to its need for a lot of material and wasn't as suited for long crossings like newer designs.
Jack watched quietly as he ate. It looked like Beldum was as smart as the internet said. He couldn't see a Meowth picking up concepts like symmetry and strong, stable shapes, like Beldum using triangles as much as possible. Who knew? Maybe it would be able to help him with other designs in the future. Sure, Beldum had already gone over the suggested budget for this level in the game, but it was more of a silly challenge to see what unorthodox designs could still work. What it was making now was a perfectly functional bridge, one that would require very little changes in the real world. He'd just have to teach them that steel pylons weren't always the answer.
"I know what I'm gonna name you now!" Jack exclaimed. "Pylon!"
And the two worked together from then on, making designs for work and for fun. Jack would find new designs to use in civil engineering, and Pylon would look at the prototype, making adjustments that always bore out to be more strong, stable, and efficient than the first idea. Then, after a long day of drafting and calculations, they might settle back with some other simulation, Beldum always trying to optimize as much as possible within the rules of the game.