Chapter 3: Kimchi Day
All fixtures in your new home are designed to be operable by any Pokémon, regardless of species or size. Universal touch controls designed by the inimitable Professor Cedar are standard on anything that would otherwise be hand-operated, and you will find plenty of tools and gadgets available to suit any shape you may take. Never be afraid to be creative in the face of a new challenge either: Should you find any task difficult, just invent a better way to do it! Remember, your future is your own now.
Home Economics in the Hawai Region: Introduction
It was raining when I woke up the following morning. My room was dark and I fumbled for the light switch, not finding it. Grumbling, I rose from bed and headed to the bathroom, where the light switch again eluded me. It wasn't until I yanked open the curtains to the little window to get enough light that I saw my dim reflection in the mirror, and stopped.
The creature staring back at me was a few inches taller and several dozen pounds heavier than my former emaciated, scarred self. Most striking were my elongated, near-reptilian face and the red, bulging lines down my biceps and forearms. I felt one carefully – I still had five fingers – and the skin wasn't split, just stretched thin to the point of translucence, revealing the muscle.
Yesterday had, indeed, happened. Also, there were no light switches in the Hawai Region.
When I'd finished the morning rituals – with some modifications, anyway - I headed for the living room. Everyone else was still asleep, so I explored a bit. The heavy rain outside muted the light from the many windows, but there were oil lamps, and I lit one using a match from a box I found in the kitchen. Then I lit the rest of the lamps in the living and dining room, as well as the two candelabras on the dining table. There were quite a lot of fueled lamps, as well as candle-holders and sconces, none of which had been used the day previous. Granted, the day previous had had both bright sunlight and a mob of Charmanders to keep the indoors lively.
I lit up the kitchen too, where I found that the stove was an old-fashioned wood burner with a metal chimney. Practically everything about the place was old-timey and primitive; thinking about it I wasn't even sure how there was running water with hot and cold taps. I didn't light the stove, but I did take a lamp down to check the cabinets and the pantry. We had all the cookware we could ever want, the pantry was fully stocked (almost, after yesterday's little party) and my foot brushed against a ring handle on a door recessed into the kitchen floor. Lifting the door open I found a set of wooden stairs, and I headed downward to find a spacious cellar, lined with shelves that were packed with food and supplies. All of it was dry, canned, or otherwise meant to keep, and it dawned on me that we didn't have a refrigerator.
True to the Harmony Project's plan, we had enough to get by for months. The clock was ticking for the Hawai Region to start producing its own food, but we weren't going to starve immediately; that much was assured.
I headed back upstairs and closed up the cellar, then almost dropped my lamp when I heard a voice behind me.
"The doors don't all have to be opened by hand, you know. They all have touch controls, and the cellar door will retract into a pocket without needing much force."
"Morning, Dad," I replied.
I looked around at my stepdad, who was standing on the counter just in front of the sink with his toes hooked over the lip. He looked different today, and I soon realized it was his attire. He had looped on a necktie and a tiny pair of spectacles rode atop his beak. I raised an eyebrow at that, or I would have if I had any.
"How in the world did you put on a tie?" I asked.
"Same way you always did," Dad's eyes twinkled. "I asked your mom to do it."
"I hate you." He gave an innocent chirp.
"How is she, by the way?" I went on, as I hung up the lamp. "She was always up and about before you. Well, when you were ever home."
Dad sighed. "Better than I expected, though she's—" He fell silent and I looked to him again, to find him with his feathers fluffed to the point that he appeared twice his size. Two pairs of striped, chitinous limbs were wrapped around him from behind, and a set of bright red mandibles hovered less than an inch from his spindly neck. He started to speak again, slowly. "—always… been… a very… quick… learner, so she has that in her favor. Good morning, my beloved Athena. Did you use the walls?"
"The ceiling," she purred smugly, not letting go. "I figured it out while cleaning myself. And I figured out my spinnerets there as well, so I thought I'd drop by. Want me to demonstrate just what they can do?"
"Athena, you are talking about your bodily secretions in front of our son."
She growled at that, but capitulated, letting him go. "And… do please mind where you leave a trail," he smiled. "I don't mean to nag, but it's something I know I would do if our species were switched."
"I don't need any reminders that you leave a trail of messes everywhere you go, sweetie," Mom chuckled. "And I did work as a janitor until we got together," She retreated back up to the ceiling, following her trail and daintily plucking every surface clean.
"Doing better, Mom?" I asked, watching her skitter along the ceiling. In reply, she dropped down on a thread again, inches away from my face, and gave a high-pitched shriek. I yelled and recoiled reflexively. "Hey! Okay, okay, I won't ask again."
"Thank you!" She giggled, reeling herself back up to the ceiling and heading back toward the pantry. "Now why don't you be a dear and light the stove, while I start figuring out breakfast. Adam, did we even have breakfast yesterday?"
Q: Are there any animals or wild Pokémon around here?
A: After wild Pokémon completed the restoration and regrowth of the Hawai Region, they left the island with only tropical vegetation for company. Some small birds, insects, and crustaceans have settled, and Harmony Bay of course teems with fish. Thanks to the efforts of Professor Cedar, you will also find small populations of feral sheep, cattle, chickens, goats, and other such livestock. Be sure to stop by the Library to learn everything you need to know about caring for these sweet creatures!
Your Guide to the Harmony Project, Chapter 1: Quick Questions and Answers
Breakfast was a bit of a disappointment. We managed to kindle the stove, but we barely knew our way around our ingredients nor how to keep the range at a steady temperature. After a half-hour, we ended up putting out the stove and just opening up more cans. The food wasn't awful, but it was already on its way out of style after two meals like that. Still, we weren't completely unhappy, and there was a lot of talk about how we'd improve things.
"If we're going to catch some feral chickens and start trying to tend them for eggs, I'm thinking we might want to start soon," Mom suggested. "A few more mornings like these and everybody in the Region is going to be starved for omelets. Not to mention that without butter and milk, I'm never going to make another pancake."
"Are there any Miltanks on the island?" I asked. Everyone stopped and looked at me.
"I mean, on TV they always showed the wild Miltanks getting along really well with hoofed animals, protecting escaped domestic cows and sheep and stuff," I went on. "Figure that if anyone can tame the ferals in this region, it's someone who's been transmuted into… what's that look for?"
"Oh." I looked back down at my plate. "Sheesh. No."
"You know, since nobody's brought it up," Dad ventured, quickly changing the subject. "We do so happen to have a few books on matters such as this. Well, actually, on everything we might need to know starting out. Have any of you done any reading?"
"Nope!" We all answered in unison. He sighed and covered his face with an outstretched wing.
"Well… okay." He looked up again. "Each of you has four books on a shelf in your room. They're highly durable and have touch controls so even I can manipulate them easily. One's all about the Harmony Project and the larger plan for it, one's about how to use everything in our homes – including how to cook meals with all our available ingredients, by the way – one contains everything we know about the Hawai Region including how to get by in the wilderness, and one…" He paused, and his eyes met each of us in turn, before he continued. "One is about your species, everything you can do, and everything you need to live a happy, healthy life."
"Huh – what?" I stammered, and he looked at me again, indignantly. "Sorry, spaced out. That other stuff was a bit…"
Dad puffed and shook his wings, trying to hide another sigh. "Yes, okay. At least read about your new bodies. You might even learn to do something interesting, and it's not like we're going outside today." Mom and I agreed, and Philomena reluctantly did so as well.
After I was done with scrubbing and hand-drying dishes and rinsing out tin cans by muted lamplight, I was starting to feel fairly interested in that book about 150-year-old home economics, too.
Reading by candlelight with dim, overcast sun filtering in from behind, though, did turn out to be more pleasant than I expected. The living room had a comfy chair in my size, comfy enough that it gave me flashbacks to spending all day every other day with my blood being pumped through a machine. Still, that passed soon enough. Dad had a padded perch on a stand that he could move around without much difficulty, and Mom had cushions to sit on but had quickly grown accustomed to just spinning her own dangling furniture wherever she went. Philomena seemed comfortable floating wherever she wanted, and was happy to just stay parked at the dining table.
I had a lot of reading to do, from the semi-electronic contraptions that Dad called books. According to him, they were the highest-tech objects on the island, and I could believe that: Tapping a switch on the back cover instantly flipped the page, and the pages themselves were made of some kind of polymer that was near-impossible to tear. I suspected that the books were also extremely resistant to all the elements, but I hadn't tested that. The contents of the book I was reading – "Species Guide Series #67: How To Be A Machoke" – was far too interesting for me to want to try and use the book as kindling, anyway.
The first couple pages were mostly motivational fluff, which I didn't need, though it was interesting to discover that I was one of only two Machokes in the Hawai Region. I also found out that I was about as tall as I had used to be and weighed twice as much – granted, that wasn't difficult, since my old self was a wasted-away shamble with a good deal of hardware missing or broken. In addition, I needed three times as many calories and six times as much protein as an active human of my new weight, and I suspected that was far more than anybody else in my family. I was to be the one eating through most of the pantry and cellar, though the book also noted that Pokémon with elemental abilities, particularly stuff like fire and electricity, had extreme nutritional needs as well.
Particularly striking, to the point of being disturbing, was my strength. I was one of the strongest Pokémon known to exist, and definitely the strongest in comparison to my weight. Even the book only guessed at a Machoke's full physical potential: the author – Professor Beech – admitted that the old story of a Machoke lifting a dump truck with one hand was unsubstantiated.
Then there was the matter of my stamina. That was also an unknown, though the book had a detailed guide on how I could exercise to stay in optimal condition. The regimen it called for was positively brutal and had to be adhered to daily, with absolutely no possible compromises except in the case of injury. Even in that instance, only the affected muscle groups were to be rested, then they were worked twice as hard until they were caught up with everything else.
It was daunting, but I memorized every step of the daily routine anyway. I'd had a decent body once and had lost it, and even if that incident was no fault of my own I wasn't going to neglect paying the rent for my new lease on life. The following day the rain continued, and I kept reading, but only between workout sessions. I would have to improvise some weights later, but I made do in the meantime, pushing as hard as I could to test my body to the point of fatigue.
My adoptive parents spent most of their time reading too, though Philomena snuck out the second day to play in the rain and didn't return until late in the afternoon. I sort of missed the Angelos already, especially Leon, even though the peace and quiet of their absence wasn't entirely unwelcome. Dinner on the second day was far and away better than anything we had had previous, chiefly because Mom had gotten familiar with the kitchen and had read about what she could whip up there. She was good enough at it, in fact, that she drafted me into service as a sous chef, which mostly meant chopping stuff, measuring stuff, and stirring stuff. Philomena, since she'd been naughty, got to use her budding skill at fluid manipulation to clean up the entire kitchen afterwards, under Dad's supervision.
Over dinner that evening, the topic turned to education, since we were running out of books – and since I had still had two years of high school left prior to acceptance into the Harmony Project. Every book we had read was brimming with references and suggestions regarding the village library, which was said – and confirmed by Dad – to be the source of every last figment of knowledge we would ever need for our new lives. Besides, he and Aunt Athena both had a fifth book, "A Parent's Guide to Life in the Hawai Region," which detailed a recommended curriculum for any school-aged children somebody might have.
There were no schools in the Hawai Region – "not yet, at least," as the guide reminded.
"That's something we'll have to figure out for yourselves," Dad confirmed. "As is… well, predicting and reporting on the weather. And sending messages to each other over long distances. And food production, and keeping the water running…"
"Say again?" I asked.
"The water towers feeding each village only hold enough for about a week and a half at our predicted rates of consumption before they're dry," Dad replied. "This island has excellent groundwater, but someone's got to get it up and into the towers to maintain pressure, or else we're all going down to the rivers to draw what we need every day."
"The pumping stations can be hand-operated, but that's too inefficient and energy-intensive to be better than a last resort, so…" Dad's eyes shifted to Philomena from the briefest moment, then away.
"…so that might be the day that we all come to be grateful to the Water Pokémon among us. There should be enough of those types throughout the Region to keep all the towers full without too much effort each week. That's the plan, anyway." His eyes grew distant, as if looking through me, and Mom took notice; she climbed out of the little web swing she was perched in to climb onto his perch next to him, looking up.
"But it'll work, because you designed it, Adam sweetie."
I'm not sure if Mom caught how his feathers puffed for a moment, but I did. He nodded. "Yes… it'll work."
Dad cleared his throat. "It's getting late, and I'm cooped up all day, Sebastian. Can you make plans to bring the Angelos with when you pick up schoolbooks tomorrow? Your stepmother will make a list in the morning."
The next morning, I didn't spend as much time in the shower, and I ate only a quick, dried breakfast before heading out. Given how daily life must have been inside the Angelo household, I was half expecting the place to be scorched rubble or a lava-filled crater, but it was still standing, looking cozy as ever. I knocked on the door, and after a couple moments' waiting, it was answered by Leon, who greeted me with a jolly "Hey, it's the meathead! How're you doing, Seb?"
He wasn't wearing the charm that colored his tail-flame, so if not for that he was a lighter shade than the rest of his family, I could have mistaken him for his parents or his grandfather. For that matter, the rest of them would have been indistinguishable if not for that their charms were all put on immediately – except in the case of Mrs. Angelo, who didn't have one. That was a moment before they all rushed for me and I was forced into shaking one paw after another, grinning stupidly.
Their home wasn't too different from ours on the inside, save for that every surface was stone, metal, ceramic, or otherwise fireproof. There were a lot more flames burning too, and bigger ones: In addition to the candles and shielded lanterns, there were torches along the walls and they'd built the fireplace up to a roar. That was before the flames dancing on ten different tails, most of which belonged to juveniles speeding about.
The living room was uncomfortably loud, especially with the stone acoustics, until Mrs. Angelo sent six of her seven children to the playroom. Once they'd been herded away there by Jason, the second-oldest, I told the Angelos what I was there for; they were predictably pleased as punch. Mr. Angelo went to the toolshed to get the wheelbarrow and make sure it was in working condition – I didn't even know we had toolsheds – and Mrs. Angelo ran off to ready a list of books for everyone, so I was left sitting with Leon and his grandfather. Even without his silver tail-flame, Mr. Frederick Angelo was recognizable enough by the rimless glasses he always wore. They magnified his beady eyes, which were trailing disquietingly along my body.
Leon had noticed too. "Hey now, Gramps, you can't be that hungry for beef already." For my part, I was silently contracting together in my seat, hands on my thighs.
"Gramps" scoffed and held out a finger at Leon. "You ever gonna stop talkin' at me like that? I keep tellin' ya, my head's not worked this well in fifteen years. Nah, I got a question for your meathead," the older Charmander turned to me. "How much can ya lift, young'un?"
That one had me at a disadvantage. "I, uh… I haven't, not since that stuff happened."
He lifted a brow. "No idea at all?"
"I mean, I carried those stone-reinforced benches of yours the other day, but I don't know how much they weigh—"
"I'll put it to ya straight, boy. Think you can rip an orange tree out of the ground at its roots?"
I looked at Leon and he looked back at me, equally dumfounded. His grandpa cackled. "Snuck out before any of ya woke up this mornin'. Don't need my cane anymore. They say this hunk'a dirt used to be Hawaii, so I went out lookin' for orange trees, and I found a right good one a quarter-mile to the south, just off some cobbled path I don't know the name to. I can show ya back there when the time comes. The tree's a big'un, and its root system's liable to be bigger still, but it'll be perfect out in our backyard. Once we've dug a big enough hole."
"You… want me to a pick up and carry a tree," I said slowly.
"Yep! We've done it before, with the right equipment. Leon can tell ya all about our time with the peach tree back at the old place!"
"No, I can't; I was a year and a half old," Leon replied. Grandpa just laughed and clapped his paws together at that.
"Yeah, well, the shock of transplanting that poor thing left it barren for three harvests before it recovered enough to start bearing fruit again, since we had to cut through so many roots. But I figure that if that this time around we just move enough dirt out of the way for ol' Superman here to yank that sucker the rest of the way out, with the root system mostly intact…"
Remember, for us to flourish as Pokémon, we must always do our best for each other. Meet your new neighbors, make new friends, and try new things. Work together, play together, create together, invent together, and together you will solve every problem that comes your way. Show the world what we as Pokémon can accomplish when we all live in Harmony.
Your Guide to the Harmony Project, Chapter 6: The Project Will Succeed
The wheelbarrow had been well-oiled and didn't squeak one bit. I wished it would.
"You know… you could have just told Gramps no," Leon ventured as we walked up the cobbled path together. I just grumbled.
"Sorry I didn't come to your rescue there. Kinda… taken aback, really," he shrugged. "Gramps isn't normally like this."
"Like… how?" I asked.
"He's been on the decline for years now. Forgetting stuff, losing his train of thought, doing things without thinking about them… kinda like Grandma did before she passed, a year before the Incident. Ever since things changed a few days ago, though, he's been… different. Distant, quiet for the most part, staying to himself, but… y'know, I think he's actually lucid again, Seb. And hiding it or something."
"Or he's just got a lot to think about. I probably would too, if I could… well, think again. That and everything going on has been kinda nuts," I replied, relaxing a bit.
"I mean, his hips don't seem to be blown anymore either, if he slipped out the back and walked a half-mile or more to scout out an orange tree," Leon laughed. "That reminds me…" He trailed off for a moment. "Mom said your folks say you used to be some kind of cripple?"
"That's one way to put it," I nodded. "I could walk and so on, but almost all physical exertion was out of the question, couldn't eat much of anything either. Body was pretty wrecked."
"Dude. What happened?"
"Was riding the L in Chicago with my parents. We were on the way back from a ballgame, back in 2031. On Eight-Seven." Leon winced.
"We were going through an underground tunnel when the earthquakes hit, and Chicago was never hardened against those like Ring of Fire cities are. Neither I, nor mom and dad, knew what was going on until the lights were out and the train was derailed, then the tunnel collapsed and everything got flattened by State Street. The roof came down and pinned me into the floor, stuck me through too in a few places, and I was lucky enough to take a concussion that kept me in a daze until I saw the light of day again. Otherwise I would have panicked and screamed until I either burned all the remaining oxygen down there or just bled out."
"Did they rescue anyone besides you?" Leon asked, after a moment's silence.
"Only three other people, and no one I knew. My real parents are resting in the cemetery that takes up most of Wrigley Field Memorial Park. At least they got to see the Cubs win their very last game."
"How'd the emergency responders even find you in time?"
"They didn't; the Pokémon rescue teams did," I replied. "From how I hear it, the smoke up above hadn't even cleared before there were Pokémon all over the place; no one knew what those creatures were but they seemed to be trying to help people. There were always a lot of the really big, strong Pokémon showing up out of nowhere whenever anything happened in one of the cities, Fighters as they came to be called. They'd just start pulling people out of the rubble, twisting broken gas lines shut, ripping down buildings that had started to burn unless a Water Pokémon had gotten to them first…"
"And one of them dug you out?"
"Started to, anyway. It was a Machamp, one of those four-armed guys, who just went into the middle of the caved-in street and started digging, lifting out slabs of asphalt and then broken concrete. He kept going after every other survivor on the block had been evacuated, people started wondering what he was doing… and then they figured it out and started digging alongside him. I mean, by that time my kidneys and spleen were dead, but they still got me out and to a hospital that was operational."
"What… happened to the Machamp?" Leon asked.
"Died peeling open the roof of the train. He blundered into some live wires and took a bad enough shock that his heart couldn't be restarted. He still managed to snap the cable before he went down, though."
We continued on in silence for several minutes. Leon was looking down at the cobbled path as the wheelbarrow rumbled along, frowning.
"I never did get where the Pokémon came from," he muttered at last.
"Even my stepdad doesn't know," I replied, "and he was out in the field from day one, trying to study them. All we know is that some of them were documented to simply… appear. Funny story about that, too, on this same subject…" Leon looked over at me, his eyes doubtful, and I nodded. "If you want to hear it."
"Sure," he shrugged.
"Well, the hospital I wound up in was in triage mode – heck, pretty much every hospital on the globe wound up in triage mode for a long time in the days that followed, when cities kept getting slammed by geological stuff. Too many injured, so the doctors were focusing on the patients who were in the least critical condition first, working their way through the patients who could be saved, and everybody who wasn't critical or was too far gone was left to their fate. I needed emergency surgery, but so did a ton of other people, but one of the nurses didn't want to give up on me because I was a kid; she swapped my triage tag to put me at the front of the queue. Then she fainted from fatigue in the operating room anyway. She'd been running for close to 20 hours already, was doing the work of both a surgeon's assistant and an anesthetist, and her knees just gave out under her and she went down. Surgeon didn't even notice, he just kept working on me."
"You… said there were Pokémon in this story…" Leon said slowly.
"Yeah. My dad showed me the security footage from the surgical suite once. A moment after the nurse goes down, a supply closet down the hall from the operating room opens and this Chansey walks out in a surgical gown, cap, and mask. She goes right down the hall to the room where I'm getting my guts worked on, lets herself in, and takes the nurse's place. Does whatever the surgeon asks using those stubby little arms of hers, works with skill equal to that of a professional practitioner with fifteen years' experience, never says a word. The surgeon, running on fumes as he was, didn't notice anything had changed until my incisions were all closed up and wrapped and I was ready to send off to recovery. Then he looked up at who he thought was his nurse to say thank you, and he fainted too. The Chansey didn't miss a beat; she just carted me off to recovery and came back with gurneys to take the surgeon and nurse there and tuck them into beds. Like on top of everything else, she even knew the layout of the hospital. And she stayed around, monitoring me and doing reports and taking notes in perfectly-typed English, until more help arrived."
Leon was nodding appreciatively, though his brow suddenly furrowed. "What… happened to her, then?"
"She still works there, far as I know. Never leaves either, she just sleeps where and when she needs to. Takes a little bit of time each day to eat and clean herself, the rest of the time she's just working like a bee. You actually see that a lot nowadays in the big city hospitals. A Chansey or even several who just appeared out of nowhere during the crises of 2031 and never left. No one knows why they're so good at their jobs; they just… sense whatever task needs doing most urgently and come running to do it."
"And they just – like – appeared?"
"Yeah. We ran back the camera footage to where we could see that supply closet being opened and rummaged in by one of the surgeons an hour earlier, and there was nobody inside. No other way she could have got in, either."
"Well, that explains where they came from," Leon thought aloud. "Or, well, it doesn't, but it answers a few questions… I guess."
"Pokémon showed up whenever and wherever the world needed them. That's as much as we've been able to figure out."
"So, you been to town before, Seb?" He asked.
"No, I haven't. Rained the last couple days. Why do you… oh."
I hadn't noticed that the wheelbarrow had left the cobbled path and hit gray paving bricks until we were approaching the market square. The road was considerably wider now: Not nearly as wide as the suburban streets I had once known, but enough for several Pokémon of my size to walk together without rubbing shoulders. Turning around for a moment, I could we had crossed a couple intersections already, though there were almost no buildings. Vacant lots were split out evenly via faint lines in the grass, but aside from having streets, the outskirts of the town were undeveloped. We passed a few empty blocks before coming to an archway over the street, two sturdy wooden posts holding up a painted wooden banner sign announcing that we had reached "New Moloka'i Marketplace." Underneath it swung a wooden shingle sign painted in the likeness of a smiling Wailord.
Leon looked up at the sign, then through the archway. "Not much of a market," he muttered.
He wasn't wrong. Before us lay an open tract of empty space, perfectly flat and paved with dark basalt bricks. Here and there, lighter-colored basalt bricks formed snaking patterns, measuring out walking paths and suggested spaces for stalls, and there were a thick basalt pillars jutting out of the ground, probably as bulletin boards. The place was almost empty – I counted four stalls total, all set up in a row, with nothing but open space around them. A few Pokémon were browsing, and around and around one pillar ran a pair of tiny Charmanders. Seeing them, Leon fidgeted; they had charms coloring their tail-flames different sets of green and Leon hadn't brought his.
"Don't sweat it, grapefruit," I told him. "No one will ever mistake you for someone else." He rolled his eyes, but nodded. "Wanna check out the merch?"
The stalls weren't much to look at, either. A Sentret had set up a table where she was offering charcoal sketches, but since almost no one was around she was just sketching a Teddiursa who, from the looks of things, had been trying to sell rough stoneworks and taking custom orders. Somewhat more appealing was the next table, where a skinny Charmander in a chef's hat – I wasn't sure where he had got the hat – was offering samples of what he claimed to be fresh kimchi, and trying to get people to trade for jars of it. For that one we stopped, and the samples were pretty good, though the chef was disappointed when told that our wheelbarrow wasn't for trade.
"You have one in your toolshed anyway, Mr. Jaredson. You do have a toolshed at your place, right?" Leon told him.
"It's Mr. Geraldson, and I… er…" the fellow looked away, rubbing the back of his neck with a paw. "I hadn't gone in there. I… guess…" His eyes went distant. "Y'know, maybe I could have kept the jars in there during fermentation, instead of in the cellar where they might…"
Leon cringed. "Explode and stink up all your other food supplies? Duuuude. Is kimchi even a thing you normally do? I mean, you know your way around it obviously, this is a really good batch, but…"
Chef Geraldson nodded, his paws clasped together and an awkward blush growing on his face. "Yes, well, three days ago was kimchi day, I was just chopping up the cabbage when my phone went off with a notice that a video about something was starting… then suddenly everything was different, and I looked like this now, but it was still kimchi day, so, I, er…"
I turned away to hide a chuckle, but Leon registered nothing of that at all. "Man, I getcha. Nothing gets in the way of kimchi day. NOTHING. You'll understand when you've done kimchi, Seb." He winked at me, then gave the chef a thumb's up, or as much of one as he could manage. "Now I've just gotta know, Chef Jared – I mean Geraldson – how'd you manage to get the garlic to blend in so well? Your sample's just swimming in garlic but I can't see a single minced fragment in any of your jars; you got a secret to that or something?"
The chef's eyes twinkled, and he rubbed his chin. "Oh, the garlic? Well… hmmmm… perhaps if we could arrange a quid pro quo, one secret for another…"
They were clearly getting along, so I flashed Leon a thumb's up and moved to the last table. It was a tiny one, tiny enough to be carried on the back of a Vulpix, which it apparently had been. The table was barren save for a sheet of paper folded into an arch, which read: "Help wanted."
I'd already volunteered myself for enough massive endeavors that day already, so I felt cautious, but I still squatted down and gave the six-tailed fox a little wave. "Hey. Whaddya—"
"Your… friend… seems pretty nice…" the Vulpix muttered, looking over at Leon. Hers was a woman's voice, though one only a couple years older than me. "Are… all of his family… Shinies?"
I blinked for a moment at that. "Shinies?"
"Yeah, er…" She replied. "Colored differently. It's supposed to be only one in thousands who are like that…"
"No, I've met the rest of his family and they're definitely not, uh, Shiny. Great people, though."
"Ah…" Her eyes sparkled and widened. "So he's the only one? Wow…"
"I mean, there's only two of me," I chuckled. "How many Vulpixes are there?"
"Fifteen," she replied, looking down with what looked strangely like shame. "So, um… are you here about work? My name's Becky, by the way."
"Sebastian," I replied. "Not sure I can take on any more jobs myself, but I can spread the word."
"Well, it depends…" She thought to herself. "Are you planning to go to New Lehua any time soon?"
"Where?"
"It's a beach town on the northwestern edge of the Hawai Region. I want to send a letter there; I… well, I know some… one over there. And I guess we don't have a post office," she sighed.
"Not yet, anyway. How far is it from here to New Lehua, do you know?"
"I measured it on the maps we all got, it's around two hundred miles as the – as a straight flight," she said, looking away for a moment. I noticed she was looking at Leon again.
"Two hundred…" I started, then it sank in. "Wait. Two hundred miles? The Hawai Region is that big?!"
She gave a single nod. "That's only about halfway across. Everything that used to be the Windward Islands and the channels between is now one single, connected landmass, and there's more besides, south of the great Harmony Bay. You… did look at the maps, didn't you?"
"Nope."
The Vulpix sniffed. "No one has yet. And no one wants to deliver my message, not even the Pelipper who stopped by. I'd think someone like that could do it…"
"Might have had something else to do, don't sweat it," I assured. "But, hey, I imagine there are a lot of avian Pokémon around here. Even my stepdad's one, a Murkrow."
"Your… stepdad?" Becky asked, tilting her head cutely.
"Yeah, my aunt and her husband took me in after stuff happened in 2031. We live a little ways up along the road north of here, right by the ocean. Leon and his folks are practically next door. They're awesome. What's your family like?"
She stiffened at that and looked down and to the side. "I, uh… they didn't come. I was by myself at college when I applied to the project."
"Oh, you live alone?"
"Yes," she replied. "That's why I'm looking to – oh, I think Leon's ready to go…" She stood up.
A paw slapped my back and I heard a familiar whoop. Leon had brought the wheelbarrow around, and it wasn't empty any longer. "Score, man!"
Q: How do I buy stuff?
A: Every good and service in the Hawai Region will be provided by your fellow Pokémon. In the early days, we expect there might not be much to buy or sell at all, until your fellow Pokémon get their feet wet and figure out what they can do for each other and what they'd like others to do for them.
Trade for what you can't make yourself, or what someone else can make for you. As the Harmony Project did not stipulate a government, there is no stipulated currency or lack of currency; if bartering becomes too inconvenient then you can work out a standard unit of exchange that every Pokémon can agree on. Make sure to be creative with what you choose, though; being a young volcanic landmass the Hawai Region has no precious metal deposits!
Your Guide to the Harmony Project, Chapter 1: Quick Questions and Answers
"I think she likes you," I grinned.
We were heading up the street again, a bit slower than before now that I had one hand on several large mason jars to keep them from rattling together. "Think so?" Leon chuckled at my remark. "I thought I'd have to fend her off with a stick. Or with a jar of kimchi. Four jars, man. Four quart jars! And I only had to give up a homemade spaghetti recipe!"
Leon wasn't exaggerating. Becky had come at him like a freight train, doing a cute little pose in her quadrupedal form and a sultry voice, introducing herself as Rebecca Fox (but, of course, he could call her Becky) and asking what he was up to, then acting excited and enthralled that he was collecting schoolbooks for his younger siblings. They exchanged locations before parting ways, too.
"Whoa. Homemade spaghetti? Hey now, Leonidas, you'd better have your mom's permission before raiding the innermost sanctum of family cooking secrets," I teased.
"Leonidas," he grumbled to himself. "Dad's such a dork like that. I like Leon a lot better, but Becky gave me her full name so I didn't have a choice. And nah, I pulled that recipe off the internet a few years ago and we've been using it since with no modifications except the dash of tomato paste."
"That's… kind of the definition of a family cooking secret."
"Yeah?" Leon laughed. "Mom didn't say not to share it. And hey, on top of the kimchi I got the coolest trick for cooking with whole garlic cloves I've ever heard of. Now I'll just need to make sure my knifework is up to stuff with these new paws…"
"Tell me about it," I waved a hand. "I've gotta strength-train enough to uproot and carry a live tree a quarter-mile to your house, and I've got a two-week deadline to do it. All because I can't stand up to your granddad."
"Hah! You'll get there," Leon assured me. "Your species is crazy strong. Need a trainer, by the way?"
"I need weights," I replied. "But what would I need a trainer for?"
"Weights, Gramps should be able to help with if he's been out exploring. With any luck he'll have found some boulders or something that you can rig up. As for a trainer… well, come to think of it, Gramps should be able to help with that too. I mean, he'd better, after dragging you into this. You ever even lift before?"
"Nope. Kinda couldn't."
"Oh. Yeah. Well, if he's the one that got the idea of having you rip a tree out of the ground, then he's the one who's gotta make sure you're up to the task. You'll do just fine, man."
We continued to talk all the way to the library, which stood at the center of the town – a gleaming glass-and-white-basalt tower, round and four stories tall, held a floor higher by the square stepped platform around it, built from white basalt bricks. There was a snaking ramp up the platform for Pokémon who wanted to avoid the stairs, but I only noticed it once I was at the top, having picked up the wheelbarrow and slung it under my arm.
Directly in front of the library's ornate entrance was a pedestal with a statue carved from solid blue crystal, in the likeness of a crested bird with an enormous tailplume snaking around it. Underneath it was a simple brass plaque that read: "IN MEMORIAM 2034."
Articuno, heroine of Seattle, killed by egg thieves from the city she had saved from the fury of Mount Rainier.
I put the wheelbarrow back on the ground, suddenly self-conscious, and set about polishing up its front tire and wiping down the wooden underside for any dirt. Then, we continued into the library in silence.
The library was larger and looked far more modern than any other structure I had seen on the island. It had two revolving glass doors, leading into a carpeted lobby lit by huge, clear windows and skylights set in the roof, shining down through the great void space at the center of the building. It was ringed with balconies, metal railings atop glass panels, and I saw a Pidgey flitting through the great open space above to perch on a rail before taking flight through a row of bookshelves. There were hanging light fixtures suspended everywhere, though they were all turned off, given it was still an overcast midday.
The ground floor was a public reading area, with groups of seating for every Pokémon body shape, and everything was easily movable. There was also a massive bank of what looked to be some sort of computer kiosks, rows of standing terminals with touch controls. On the outer ring of the building were the bookshelves, one row after another of them, with stairs leading up and down between floors, including down into at least one basement floor.
"Professor Mangrove kinda undersold this place," Leon remarked, and I nodded. "Every village has a library like this?" He asked.
"Yep. Twelve villages, twelve libraries. Every library has the same knowledge, too: Everything we need to survive and thrive, to hear Dad say it," I replied. "Oh, and the books are pretty much unlimited. They went all out on this place."
"Unlimited? Like, how? What's the trick to that?" Leon asked as we headed toward the terminals: wide touch-screen contraptions each outfitted with a couple chairs, with slots set into the table next to each. Half of the terminals on this floor were unoccupied, at least; I expected there was at least one bank of terminals underground.
"It says on the inside front cover of every book. Bring a book here, connect it to one of the terminals, copy the book of your choice onto the pages. All the data itself is kept digitally underground."
"Right on. The books don't need to be charged or anything, do they?"
"Nope. The library's power source is self-contained, too. It'll stay operational for at least a couple decades, and the plan is for the people of the Hawai Region have developed something better by then. Something more… Pokémon-based."
"They invented all that tech just for the Harmony Project?" Leon raised a brow.
"You've never heard of Professor Cedar?" I asked.
"Not one thing. I never really kept up with much outside news back on the ranch."
"Yeah, well, Dr. Cassius Cedar's chosen field of study was apocalypse-proof tech, prior to Eight-Seven. Ways to preserve knowledge and rebuild in a future where all high technology would be fried or otherwise inoperable, ways to sustain civilization after fossil power ran out and renewables were all that remained. These libraries are miniaturized working models of his design for a self-sustained, EMP-proofed archive of all humanity's knowledge, something to help people rebuild after electricity wasn't a thing anymore and people had to figure out practical, non-computer-assisted engineering again."
Leon chuckled. "You know all that off the top of your head?"
"Yeah, my stepdad gushes about Professor Cedar a lot. Getting him onboard was one of the Harmony Project's biggest wins. Granted, it wasn't too difficult given what the Professor saw in 2031. The apocalypse did almost happen, you know that."
I unfolded Mrs. Angelo's list from where it had been wedged between two kimchi jars. "It was that bad?" Leon asked.
"Yep. Professor Cedar modeled it a year ago, did a big spiel about it that got all over TV and the web. Had Pokémon not intervened on Eight-Seven and throughout the following years, then between urban devastation, global crop failures, and secondary environmental destruction from failing infrastructure we'd be looking at world superpowers cannibalizing each other for whatever they needed to survive. Resource wars and all that."
"Jeeze, man. So where's Professor Cedar now?"
"On the island, somewhere. He's an Entei now, so he'll never be hard to spot if he's out and about. Those guys are huge. He's got about the same mustache that he did when he was a human, too – oh, come on."
I had been going down Mrs. Angelo's book list and flipped it over, and my eyes had gone right to the bottom. A postscript was waiting for me there.
One last thing, Seb:
Can you be a dear and find some schematics for the best spinning wheel, silk reel, and handloom that your aunt Athena could operate? It's been a bit since I chatted with her so I'm not quite sure how she's been doing, but I've been thinking of her and I thought I might build her something. Not to make her feel like she's obligated to work or anything, but something to make her proud of what her new body is capable of. I know I'd be scrambling for a way to busy myself if I was in her position and didn't have paws that work as well as these ones.
Don't tell her I asked you to do this! We'll make the gifts a surprise.
Love,
Lucinda
I whistled. Leon had seen the note, too, and he nodded. "How is your stepmom, anyway?"
"A lot better than she was. Still spooks a bit if she sees her reflection and isn't prepared for it, so Dad had me take all the mirrors out of their bed and bathroom. Otherwise, though, she seems to be comfortable. She does spin a lot, too. Makes hammocks and stuff out of webs whenever she wants to relax someplace."
I'd flipped the list back over and started looking up schoolbooks, starting from the youngest – Diogenes or "Dio," age six - and working upward. Blank books were available through a port in the desk, fed from below from what must have been a spring mechanism so another was always ready to take off the stack and place in the port for writing. Each book I wrote data to got its own illustrated cover, and the pages were often full of illustrations and diagrams. The process took a few seconds for each, so most of the time was just spent running searches.
The process was fairly monotonous, since we had a few dozen books to get through, and Leon excused himself to head up to the top floor and check out the view. When I heard thunder rumble and rain began to fall outside I expected him to return in a hurry, but he didn't come back down for awhile. Even after I had finished prepping the books and loaded them into the wheelbarrow in a somewhat sorted fashion, it was still raining and he was still up there, leaned into the glass and shading his eyes with a paw, surveying the land.
So, I rolled the wheelbarrow to one edge of the library, parked myself in a comfortable chair, and set about paging through the book I had retrieved about home textile manufacturing. It was a Professor Cedar volume, so I wasn't surprised that it was all oriented toward mechanical, non-electrical solutions – but I was delighted to see that it had a chapter specifically on Pokémon adaptations, and went into detail with some additional plans for equipment optimized for home use by a lone Spinarak using self-produced fiber. The designs were pretty clever at first glance and included references to "Species Guide Series #167: How To Be A Spinarak" when it came to understanding spinneret operation, technique, and care.
I went back to the schematics and started bookmarking them – which was just a matter of pinching hard on the corner of a page to change its color and stretch it a little – when I heard whispering from across a bookshelf. It wasn't directed at me; rather it was a few Pokémon giggling to each other.
"Come oooon, just use the terminal and copy it down from there," a female voice teased.
"What, so everyone can see the screen go red with an age-restriction gate again? Kinda keeping this private for now. Prudes," a male voice snorted.
"Yeah, this place is just… that stuffy," the first voice groaned. "Oh well, it'll be better once we get to New Lehua. Wonder how many others are headed toward there…"
"Hey, we'll find out soon enough," a third male voice chimed in. "And with any luck, we'll have learned a few new tricks by then. There we go, there's the one – gotcha!" I heard a book being drawn from the shelf, followed by something being tucked into a bag, then the bag being zipped shut.
"Aww, not going to have a peek? See if it's got any illustrations?" The female voice whined. My legs had contracted together and I was sitting upright, holding my book rigidly.
"Nah, don't wanna get all hot and bothered just yet," the second male voice chuckled. "Though speaking of hot… you been checking out the goods? Y'know, the cutie on the top floor?" When I realized who they were talking about, I stiffened further.
"Oh, that guy?" The female scoffed. "He's just another Charmander. Aren't there, like, two or three thousand of those?"
"But he's a Shiiiiiiny," the first male voice cooed.
"And he's with a Machoke? Like, yech. Tasteless. I'd have never applied if I wanted to spend any time with something so mundane," she sneered the word. "Hard pass; when I go for a Shiny it'll be one who might actually be fun to play with."
"Fair enough," replied the first male voice to the female. "Just don't be too disappointed if you wind up in the back of the queue to get a piece. New Lehua's gonna get wild, I'm tellin' ya."
"Oh, we're gonna get plenty wild before then," purred the female. "C'mon, rain's stopped. We're leaving."
I felt myself relaxing, and I craned my head around to see who had been there. The three figures leaving the aisle were all quadrupeds: I identified a Delcatty, a Leafeon, and a Glameow. They had their backs to me, but something about the way they swaggered made me stiffen again.
Once they had left the library, I got out of the chair and checked the aisle they had visited. There was a single book missing from a middle shelf, though the empty space was marked with what had once occupied it, possibly in case anyone ever wanted to re-stock the shelves for aesthetics' sake. I was able to read the missing book's title:
Pokémon Reproductive Biological Theory: Volume VI, Essays on Cross-Species Anatomical Compatibility
I immediately wished I hadn't looked. Leon was waiting for me when I left the aisle and got the wheelbarrow. "You alright there, buddy?" He asked, looking up at me suddenly.
"Yeah… I…" I began, looking away before he grabbed my wrist, his eyes fixing mine with a glare that looked genuinely serious and upset.
"Seb, if someone bothers you, come get me next time, you hear?"
"I… okay." I nodded. I didn't tell him why I had been afraid to go fetch him before. "I'll do that next time. Thanks, Leon."
As of the commencement of Phase Two there are 2,677 Charmanders in the Hawai Region. Your species thus ranks #1 on the list of Harmony Project Pokémon ranked by population. There is also one Shiny Charmander in existence, one of only two Shiny Pokémon. Lucky you for getting assigned such a prestigious species!
Species Guide Series #4: How To Be A Charmander
The sun was setting by the time I knocked on the front door to my family's house, lugging a burlap sack full of books with two jars of kimchi on top. Philomena answered the door and smiled at me. "Hi! Mommy's in the kitchen."
Mom was there indeed, dangling from the ceiling while she fussed with a can opener. I greeted her and she kept working. "Good evening Seb, how were the Angelos?" she asked.
"Well, Mr. Frederick drafted me into transplanting a fully-grown orange tree a quarter of a mile two weeks from now, Leon traded away his family's secret spaghetti recipe right in front of me and then got a girlfriend like two minutes later, I got revenge on Mr. Frederick by drafting him into being my personal trainer for the orange tree job, and Mrs. Angelo's engaged in some kind of secret scheme I don't know about. Oh, and I got a couple quart jars of fresh homemade kimchi." I put them on the counter. "Where's Dad?"
"Dad's out for the night, thinks he might be back mid-morning."
I looked at her. "What's going on? Did the other professors summon him?"
Mom shook her head. "He's running an errand. A young woman came by, a Vulpix. Said she'd heard a Murkrow lived here and asked if he could deliver a letter to someplace called… New Lehua?"
"W… what." I was left silent for a moment before I managed to get myself together. "Was her name Becky?"
"Mmhmm. Someone you know?"
"That's Leon's new girlfriend. I'd talked to her too. I mentioned Dad's a Murkrow, but I didn't say where we lived…" I trailed off. "Well… maybe I did."
"That's fine. He said it would be a good speed and endurance test, and besides, he's never flown cross-country before. It's strange, though, that Becky would want a letter sent to a place like that. Does she know someone over there? In that New Lehua place? I mean, it wasn't even a full-fledged town when I looked it up on the map, just a beach-side campground."
I almost told her about the trio at the library, but stopped myself. Nothing good could come of that. We had dinner, which included some of the kimchi, and the evening concluded itself quietly. I retired after a few hours, slipping quickly into slumber.
In the morning I made sure to have things ready for Dad's return, even prepping a big breakfast, though I was certain he'd want to sleep right away. He did arrive home as scheduled, right in the middle of the morning. When I saw him, though, my heart sank into my gut.
He was drooping from exhaustion, but that wasn't all. His posture was off, his feathers fluffed out defensively. Mom dropped from her web hammock and scurried across the table to him, reaching out a foreleg, but he shook a wing at her and squawked. Sensing trouble, I took Philomena to her room and shut the door, telling her Dad was sick and promising I'd come for her as soon as I got him some medicine, and returned to the dining table.
"Is Becky still in town? Has she been around?" Dad was asking, looking through my stepmom.
"I haven't seen her… do you know where she lives?" Mom asked. I cleared my throat.
"I heard her give her address to Leon, she's on the east edge of town past the library. Dad, what's going on?"
At that, he breathed a sigh of some sort of relief, and shook out his feathers, deflating a bit, before he spoke.
"If you see her again, tell her to never go to New Lehua."
I thought of the trio in the library, of them being in some kind of trouble. "Dad, is there something I should—"
"The Harmony Project may very well have made some terrible mistakes, or it might even all be a mistake," Dad interrupted quickly. Then, he took wing and headed for the master bedroom, and the door slammed behind him.
