Chapter 6: A Light in the Darkness
Q: What am I supposed to do with all of these? Are they going to hatch?
A: "Chansey Eggs" as they are called are one of the most nutritionally perfect foods known to exist; they are also both delicious and completely infertile. That's probably a good thing, since if you're eating well you'll produce five to seven per day! Share your Chansey Eggs with your friends and neighbors; it won't seem as weird to someone who's had their first taste.
Note that Chansey Eggs are very different from the biochemical mysteries that are Pokémon Eggs. These are not suitable as food items for a number of reasons, and you won't produce one unless you're making an active effort to grow your family. Pokémon Eggs are quite a bit larger, differently patterned, and you'll know for certain within a day if your body starts to form one due to the high metabolic strain and physical discomforts.
Species Guide Series #113: How To Be A Chansey
I headed home after breakfast, which as it turned out was not poultry eggs. Thankfully they were indeed delicious, and I'd been in and out of enough hospitals that I was accustomed to the idea of eating a Chansey's… "products." Everybody except Gramps – who had been demented at the time that a wild Chansey had stayed at their home for a week – was okay with Chansey Eggs as well. Gramps for his part was mostly just annoyed about the misrepresentation, which he said he'd address the next day when he returned to the market. I wasn't to join him; I was to pass the rest of the day and the next recuperating after the pumphouse ordeal.
I spent the afternoon laying low and reading. That night, our whole house was awoken by agonized screams. It was me, experiencing my new body's first superpowered leg cramps.
The next day was largely taken up reading, recovering, and doing my stretches as much as my stiff, screaming muscles would permit. The fact that they didn't want to be flexible made it all the more important that I force them to be, at least according to my guidebook's workout chapters. A lot was different about Pokémon bodies compared to human ones; I wasn't sure I was still even capable of binding my muscles up from improper training. Still, I wanted to make sure I was in command of my body, and forcing it to swallow its complaints would help my coordination, flexibility, and balance over the long term.
When not attending to my body, I was helping around the house as best as I could. With Dad out on his wave observation expedition we didn't see much of him during the day, and Mom was looking increasingly ragged. Philomena's sleeping troubles had only worsened as she became ever more anxious, and Grandpa Frederick Angelo's criticisms of the Harmony Project had upset Dad enough to upset Mom as well. I wound up preparing dinner for everyone myself that evening, and with Dad largely unavailable and Mom indisposed, I headed down to the Angelos that evening to let them know that I might not be able to make it the next day.
Of course, that led to me explaining what was going on. And the next morning, just after I was out of bed and showered up — silently thanking Jackson Koa for bringing the water supply back — there was a knock on the front door. I answered and it was Mrs. Lucinda Angelo and her two daughters, come to help get breakfast around and talk to Mom.
After everyone was up, it was clear that the Charmanders were planning to stay the whole day and hold down our house so I could assist the guys with the construction work at their place. Artie and Pandora wanted to see Philomena again anyway, and Mrs. Angelo was concerned about my Spinarak stepmom, especially given how she had been when the Angelos first visited us.
"There are no support services in the Hawai Region except what we choose to provide each other, sweetheart," Mrs. Angelo reminded me as she took me in a hug and sent me on my way.
So began my first foray into construction labor. I learned that Grandpa Frederick had spent a good chunk of the past couple days sketching plans for a barn and attached chicken enclosure; he had started with sample guides from one of Professor Cedar's books and modified the blueprints extensively. He was experienced with this sort of thing, being of the mindset to do things himself if he wanted them done right, and he had staked a location for the foundation. That needed to be excavated and leveled, which was where my size, strength, and stamina were needed. I brought our biggest shovel and got to work alongside the Charmanders, breaking the ground and carving deep into the dark, fertile soil.
The rest of the family helped out too; Mr. Angelo wasn't as adept as his wife at wrangling their kids but he did his best to keep them organized. Everyone helped in their own ways; even little Dio was on the move most of the time, transporting tools and water pitchers and homemade snacks in a little wooden wagon. Leon was around as well, but he was still gloomy after the fight with Becky and just focused on the work, which seemed to soothe him.
By the second day of laboring it was clear that I was getting at least as much excavation done as the rest of the Charmanders I was working with combined. Their focus shifted away from ground-breaking and toward earth-moving, filling wheelbarrows with the dirt I was digging up and getting it hauled away, toward where they were planning a garden. Their species was deceptively strong – able to lift twice their own weight with some effort – but that only counted for so much when an adult Charmander only weighed around twenty pounds. Mrs. Angelo spent the second day with Mom just as she had the first, though Artie and Pandora returned, and Pandora was as much in the dirt as anyone else despite Artie's protests. Artie for her part busied herself with organizing things, cleaning things, and bossing people around. At one point she presented me with a lei strung from daffodils, saying I needed to wear something with more color, and I gratefully accepted. She mentioned that she'd decorated my stepmom with stock blossoms the previous day, too.
We worked until sundown on the second day of the construction job, which wasn't that long given that it was still January, and I found myself asked to bring the picnic tables out to the beach north of our house. As I was setting down the fourth one and getting it situated in the sand I heard Mrs. Angelo calling to me, and turned to see all of the Angelos fanned out in a line, facing northeast and looking for something in the distant ocean. My family was with them; Mom was standing between Dad and Mrs. Angelo, and Philomena was floating unsteadily between whom I guessed were Pan and Artie, given that Artie's tail-flame always glowed pink. I walked up to stand behind them, asking what was going on, and Mrs. Angelo hissed at me to quiet down, telling me "it's just starting," and to watch.
I still wondered what we were waiting to see when a brilliant sliver of light broke the horizon, shining atop the calm sea. All around me were little sighs of wonder, and I found myself lowering to sit in the sand, watching with everyone else as the full moon rose.
For a few minutes, there was nothing else in the world. It was just us, the sand, the rolling waves, and the Moon slowly climbing into the starry sky. And for those few minutes, it was enough.
"The first full moon to rise upon Phase Two," Dad muttered, his eyes fixed to the brilliant disk of light. "For fifteen thousand people, their tenth day as Pokémon comes to a close. Fifteen thousand people…" Dad repeated to himself, his gaze wavering and drifting toward the sea, toward the glittering horizon. "I led fifteen thousand people from their homes, promising to… promising to…" He trailed off, his feathers tightening to his body.
"It's a magnificent view, Adam," Mr. Angelo smiled at him. "No pollution, no mountains or forests getting in the way, no other lights except for… well, ours. It never was this beautiful back ho— well, back in the valley, I mean."
Dad nodded to him. "This is home now, Vincent. Has it been…" the Murkrow hesitated. "Has it been alright for all of you, so far?"
"Come again?" Mr. Angelo asked.
"I mean, it's… well, I, er…" Dad stammered, shifting uncomfortably, before Mrs. Angelo grabbed the Murkrow into a tight hug.
"Hush, silly," the Charmander chided. "Don't you dare start regretting what you did to us. You didn't make a mistake, and even if you did, you just fix it and you learn from it and you don't lose faith in yourself. And so you know, bringing me and my family to this new world you built is the best thing that anybody has ever, ever done for us. You do know that, right, Adam?"
"P… please put me down," the Murkrow croaked. "Hollow bones. C-c-can't—"
Mrs. Angelo set him down and patted his back gently. "Sorry, I can forget we're so strong. But that moon up there," she gestured to the rock in the distance, now risen fully above the sea, "The only way it knows how to move is forward. Follow that example, and don't let yourself start living in the past. If you messed something up, you just fix what you broke as best as you can, you learn from your mistake and from fixing it, and you move on. Oh, Seb, can you head to the kitchen and start bringing dinner out before it gets cold? You might have to make several trips; get Leon to help if you need. Jason, Troy, fetch the plates and silverware. As for you, Artie—"
And so we had dinner on the beach, lit by the clear night sky, a few oil lamps, and ten Charmanders' tails. Mrs. Angelo urged Dad to take a day to himself and rest, but relented when the Murkrow admitted that wavewatching helped to calm him. Dad was going through a lot, it was clear: I wasn't sure what he thought the first days of Phase Two would look like, but something was clearly not going according to his vision. Given how devoted he was to the Harmony Project's success, any deviation from what he had foreseen was bound to gnaw at him inside, and he was powerless but to watch and see what happened next.
To our Charmander neighbors, none of Dad's concerns about the Harmony Project mattered. Nothing much mattered except them and their homestead, and what happened in their own lives from one day to the next. Dad's Harmony Project had rescued them from their bankrupt farm, which made them happy; I was doing a lot of construction work for them, which made them happy – and they were eager to share that happiness with us, especially when we were having a tough time. They knew Dad was on some kind of grand mission to save humanity from itself by demonstrating a better, non-human way of life to the world, but that meant little to the Angelos; their family and homestead was their world and anything outside of it might as well have been on the moon.
The exception I kept noticing among the Angelos' attitudes was Grandpa Frederick. Ever since our visit to the pumphouse, the spectacled Charmander made a point of sitting next to me at meals, talking about this or that. He talked about his plans for the homestead, about how his farm in Wyoming had approached problems and survived hard times; he told stories from his past life on the farm, told stories about his late wife, stories about pets and farm animals he had known, stories about little Percy Angelo's late parents, the farmhands Nate and Sarah Hamilton. I would nod along and listen, sometimes almost asking questions about his more immediately present family, only to remember his former dementia.
The ten-year hole in Gramps's memory meant that Mr. and Mrs. Angelo and their children had changed a great deal since Gramps last "knew" them. On top of that, he wasn't deaf to the patronizing tone his daughter took when she spoke to him, and neither was I. It was clear that Mrs. Angelo still believed her father's mind could drift away again at any minute.
None of the Charmanders except Mrs. Angelo seemed to think that, at least. Still, Gramps seemed most comfortable talking to me – perhaps because I was an outsider, or perhaps because I seemed like less and less of one as the days wore on. I answered many questions about my own past, and Gramps urged me to go on even when I felt awkward answering about how I spent the past seven years doing mostly nothing. Even then, the Charmander would ask questions about how school was, how my adoptive parents and my stepsister Philomena treated me, how it was when I got to go out and live life a little. When I admitted that I was pretty much left to myself save for the task of shoring up what was left of my physical health, the Charmander's eyes shut and he nodded silently.
"That's no way to raise a boy," he grumbled, while we were gathering silverware into pots to bring back to the house and clean. "Would've been less cruel to force you to keep getting out and living the life you had left, even when it was painful. Give you something at least resembling a normal adolescence, not just leave you be and hope you browsed up a normal adolescence on the internet."
I nodded. "Maybe if Dad had ever been around. The time he took me in was about the same time that he started getting busy. He was just another animal biology professor at our local university, up until Eight-Seven. After that he suddenly found himself at the forefront of Pokémon research, with the whole world hanging on him for the next big discovery."
"How'd that get started, if Professor Cypress was a nobody before then?" the Charmander asked.
"I had something to do with it, in a way," I said. "He and Aunt Athena came to the hospital, since… well, Aunt Athena was basically the only family I had left, after the accident. They were in and out of that place a lot while I was being worked on after the first surgery, and Dad had a lot of run-ins with the local Chansey. One of the ones that live in hospitals and look after everything including the patients and staff. Dad was fascinated and wanted to learn more about her. He wanted to learn how she knew so much about human medicine and how she would wander around the hospital campus seemingly at random but would always show up where she was needed the most. The hospital's administration didn't want anybody bothering their Chansey, and Chanseys are fairly noncommunicative, so Dad was having trouble until he found his first opportunity to work with and study her."
"And what opportunity was that?"
"Dad saw how everyone was always opening doors and entering access codes and so on for the Chansey, almost like she was everyone's boss. Dad volunteered to get her set up in the hospital's biometric systems — face recognition, eye, voice, and so on — even though the systems were never designed for non-humans. It ended up being the first project that Dad ever took on in his whole career that truly challenged him, and he succeeded. Then next thing you knew every hospital that had Chanseys was emailing Dad asking for help on something Chansey-related, then Dad's name started to appear in news articles, and, well…"
"And he chose fame and fortune over seeing his own family," Mr. Frederick muttered.
"Or he chose Pokémon," I shrugged uncomfortably. "Not sure he'd have managed to produce as many breakthroughs as he did, if he didn't love Pokémon so much."
"That… you may have a point," Mr. Frederick let out a sigh. "Given that he had the technology to cure cancer and Alzheimer's and who knows what else, and he chose to turn people into…" the Charmander looked down at his paws, "well, this. But, tch. Shouldn't be complainin'. Seb, would you do something for me?" The Charmander looked up at me suddenly.
"What's that?"
"Once the orange tree job is done, if things are ever gloomy at home or your folks are preoccupied, you come over to our place, will ya? Not to work you or anything; I just want you around, Sebastian. Can you do that?"
I raised a hairless eyebrow. "You sure? You were threatening to move everyone away, back when we were in the pumphouse."
Gramps's brow furrowed. "You've got a violent streak and it doesn't become ya, Seb. That's what I've got a problem with, not you. You're easy to talk to when you've got yourself under control, scary as anything when that bullying side comes out, and yes, I know you've got one and I don't want to see it again. If you wanna let out some stress, you let me know and I'll make sure you've got a healthy outlet for it. We're gonna work on that, alright?"
I looked at the little spectacled Charmander for a long moment, then nodded. "Alright."
From: Quincy Beech
To: Adam Cypress
Recorded and sent: December 11, 2038 3:54 AM HST
Hey, Adam. It's me. Quincy. Probably going to be asleep when you get this; I'm hanging on by a thread as it is. I should start by owning up. Yes, I silenced Sebastian's EKG alarms for everybody except myself. You need a proper night's sleep for once, before you and Seb both wind up dead. I was woken up at 11 when Seb started to flatline, again, and he almost didn't make it, again. I gave his I.I.C.B. bed the command to hook up every life support system it had, watched it stick him through with tubes all over his body, then, well… I took some extra steps.
Sebastian is in a Pokéball, Adam. There was nothing else left that could save him; I figured we had maybe 24 hours left at most even with all of the smartbed's hardware running at its limit. I pumped Seb's blood full of Theseus Solution, stimmed him up to the point of hypertension to accelerate the mutation through the home stretch. I hope he didn't wake up for any of that. Either way, his electromagnetics came into line, and his body deconstituted when I activated the Pokéball we put aside for him. Sebastian made it, Adam, weeks ahead of schedule. He can be transmuted now; he's going to live. He's going to get a new, healthy Pokémon body, once we do the rewrite.
That's the good news. The bad news is that I've already connected the Pokéball to our backup resequencer, and Seb's energy stream could be a lot better. With all the hardware your boy's body was missing, well, my algorithms aren't going to be able to do the transmutation automatically. I might need all four of our minds on this; we might even have to hybridize Sebastian in order to fill in all the gaps. He should still come out as the assigned species, though maybe with a few quirks.
We'll have extra time for that at least, since I finally figured out how to get Ruby's allosome swap to proceed correctly, and all the other customizations to her new body are comparatively straightforward. Anyways, hope you got some sleep by the time you hear this, Adam. Just twenty days left in Phase One, and Seb's going to make it now. We're almost there, buddy. Almost there.
I hadn't even told the old Charmander about what I had been like before I was crippled in 2031, but his assessment had been accurate. I'd been one of the bigger kids at school, and since I was involved with athletics I was one of the stronger and quicker kids as well. I had learned that as long as I picked on the right people I could get away with it and earn friends and admirers. That led to me seeking out more and more of "the right people" as time went on. I was popular as long as bystanders felt like they weren't my targets, and as long as I gave them a good show.
That had ended when my body was rendered useless. Once it was clear that I'd be unable to play baseball or engage in any sort of strenuous activity ever again, let alone get in fights, all the friends and admirers disappeared. School switched to remote learning, and expectations of my ability to perform at even that were low; no one really cared about my academic performance anyway given that my estimated life expectancy kept getting downgraded. People regarded me less as a human being and more as a slab of meat to keep from spoiling for as long as possible.
Things had changed somewhat in September 2036 when Dad came into contact with the many-talented physician and medical researcher known as Professor Quincy Beech. Once known for developing advanced automated life support systems that integrated into hospital beds, Quincy had largely withdrawn from public life as he turned his attention toward an old friend of his: a retired celebrity fighter whose mind was gradually spiraling downward due to chronic traumatic encephalopathy. After every other treatment that Beech attempted had failed, he turned to risky and desperate experimental ones, culminating in gene therapy using Pokémon DNA. The Professor had hoped he could introduce a Pokémon's regenerative capabilities to Entellus Dare's body; instead, the mutations caused by retrovirally splicing in parts of the Pokémon genome killed his patient's bone marrow and set several vital organs on a short path toward failure. Unable to stop or reverse the mutations, Beech called frantically upon Dad and Professor Mangrove to find some way to fix his mistake before it became a fatal one.
The two Pokémon professors were as shocked as Quincy Beech when they discovered that Entellus Dare's body, while terminally damaged by the Pokémon DNA bonded to its genome, was emanating the same faint energy frequencies as a Pokémon — even more surprising was when Dad tried activating an empty Pokéball on a passing hunch and it "captured" the human inside as a bundle of coded electromagnetic energy. This was barely a fix, as even though the patient's body was in stasis as long as it was encapsulated, "releasing" it from the Pokéball would just reconstitute Entellus in the same, near-dead state as before. Dad and Professor Mangrove took the Pokéball back to their own laboratory, and Professor Beech accompanied them, where they connected the Pokéball to a prototype machine that had been under development for analyzing and sequencing the energy streams of encapsulated Pokémon. The ever-quick-minded Beech came up with modifications to the machine to allow it to edit energy sequences in addition to just reading them, seeking a way to remove the Pokémon mutations. Lily Mangrove was the one who suggested the opposite approach: They'd have a better chance if they changed or removed everything still "human" about Entellus Dare's body, making it a Pokémon's.
Seemingly impossibly, Lily Mangrove's approach was a success. Dad and the others turned Entellus from a slurring, incoherent, punch-drunk shadow of a man into a healthy Geodude with Entellus's mind — a healthy, functioning mind at that. Quincy Beech wanted to reveal this treatment — newly dubbed "Human-to-Pokémon Transmutation" — to the whole world as a medical miracle, a way to cure practically any disease and extend lifespans and all manner of other benefits that came with being a Pokémon.
Professor Lily Mangrove had balked at releasing transmutation to the world, and Dad knew why. Only months prior to that discovery, Lily had watched Mew – the most enigmatic, intelligent, and benevolent Pokémon known to exist – die in her arms. Part of Lily had died too on the night of July 6, 2036.
Even with millions of people across the world grieving for Mew and for Lily Mangrove, flooding Lily's newly-launched Harmony Foundation with donations and promises of unconditional support, she was quiet and withdrawn, spending hours and even days sitting alone and silent in a featureless side room of her home. Dad said that she had retreated into a sort of fantasy in the months since Mew's death; she was dreaming about a better future, where people could coexist both with Pokémon and, at long last, with each other. It was for this reason that when Lily proposed something else be done with the secret of Pokémon transmutation, Dad sided with her. He allowed her to withdraw again; she spent one last week sitting alone and silent — and when she spoke to Dad and Quincy Beech again, it was to share with them a vision of a new, better world made possible by Pokémon transmutation. Lily's vision was not merely a society where everybody was a Pokémon; it was a society with no human legacy, no human political boundaries, and no human culture. It was a world that would start over as non-humans.
That new, better society was what the Harmony Project was meant to represent, as both a blueprint and a working model. All work was done with utmost secrecy, including the necessary political acrobatics to secure use of the Hawai Region and the recruitment of Professor Cassius Cedar and his engineering firm, the Cedar Institute. On July 6, 2038, at a press conference carefully prepared by my stepdad, the Harmony Project was unveiled. The event had been highly anticipated due to occasional Harmony Foundation leaks suggesting that Dad and Lily were been working together on something huge, so once again, the world was watching when the four Professors took the stage — as well as somebody else. The press conference's slogan, "Dare To Be Better," was crafted to foreshadow the big reveal when a Geodude drifted onto the stage alongside Professor Beech and introduced himself as the famous Entellus Dare: living proof that human-to-Pokémon transmutation was real. The website and app suite for applying to the Harmony Project all appeared at Dad's exact cue, and miraculously, managed to stay up for two whole hours before giving into the initial flood of traffic.
I had known about Pokémon transmutation since day one, since Dad didn't keep his work a secret from the family as long as we kept it a secret from everyone else. Dad could have had me transmuted to fix my ruined body, but he said that the gene therapy — using a cocktail of retroviruses that Quincy Beech had named Theseus Solution — was too dangerous given my physical condition until another set of organ transplants was attempted. Of course, once my body rejected the transplants, Dad was forced to move forward as best as he could with what apparently had been a harrowing ordeal to give me a healthy, able Pokémon body.
Now, however, as I worked and played and studied alongside the Angelos day after day, I wondered if I had been part of the reason why Dad built the Harmony Project. If I had been turned into a Pokémon and allowed to live among humans, I would have had a working body again, but I would always have been some sort of freak, always regarded differently – whether favorably or unfavorably – based on what I was. Making me a Pokémon and putting me among people who were also turned into Pokémon was the best chance Dad would ever have to give me a life that could be remotely considered "normal."
And "normal" was about what life with the Charmanders was coming to feel like, strangely. Despite that I was many times the size of even Mrs. Angelo, she and her family never treated me as anything but an equal. I knew they were keeping an eye on me, given how they reacted if I ever did anything unexpected, but that came with them being so tiny compared to me. Dad had once told me how animals – even humans – behaved differently around a creature larger than themselves; they always paid much closer attention to its demeanor and body language. The little Charmanders liked me best when I was calm and relaxed, and were quick to become anxious if I ever became frustrated or reckless. Helpfully, my former body had forced me to get used to keeping a placid disposition, since my precarious metabolism had led to me feeling sick if I ever got worked up about anything.
I didn't see much of Dad during daylight hours, since he was usually away from home. Day by day we worked on preparing the barn's foundation; as the excavation finished we began assembling a wooden mold for the slab, which was slow, precise work due to lacking any power tools, and we also started breaking rocks and gathering the gravel that would be shaped into the stone foundation.
Despite the interruption that the water fiasco had caused, Gramps did manage to rustle up a Rock Pokémon: A Graveler, much larger than a Geodude, though still a round, floating boulder with limbs and a face. Gramps hadn't found him in town at all; he had come across the Pokémon while scouting for stone. This quiet, reclusive fellow lived by himself up in the mountains to the south, and had been experimenting with his ability to shape and fuse rocks together. He also had an idea of what would be needed to create the "floating" foundation slab, which about matched what Gramps had planned.
For me, that plan meant a few days of heading out to a field of basalt rubble to the south, where I smashed rocks into gravel using our house's biggest sledgehammer, then helped the Charmanders shovel it into wheelbarrows to haul home. The work didn't feel that strenuous with my body being how it was, but I still came back home each day caked with rock dust and sweat. More than ever, I was happy the water supply was keeping up with my need for frequent showering; Jackson the Squirtle was apparently doing an excellent job in the pumphouse.
One day I even saw Jackson taking a stroll and examining trees alongside my stepdad; I asked them what was up and was told that the Squirtle was searching for koa wood to use in the Hawai Region's first generation of training surfboards. Dad, for his part, was also eager for the chance to become more familiar with the area's flora.
I spent four days breaking rocks for the Angelos, after the five days of leveling earth. I started to notice that I never wound up taking so much as a scratch during those excursions, even though each swing of my hammer sent stone splinters flying everywhere and I had almost no clothes to protect my skin. The Charmanders kept their distance while I worked, and Mrs. Angelo once had me put on a spare bedsheet as a makeshift protective smock – but even when a shard of stone ripped through the fabric and hit me in the knee, I didn't find any damage. The little lizard-people seemed themselves capable of getting hurt, especially as their hides lacked any protective scales or hair, though like all Pokémon they could heal quickly. Leon himself once accidentally dropped a large rock on his foot, gouging and nearly breaking it, but the injury only needed to stay bandaged for a half day.
As for me, I was seemingly almost immune to physical damage. This was confirmed seven days after our full moon celebration when I was hammering a nail into the foundation mold, filling in for Leon. A couple of the younger Charmanders were watching, and I thought to show off my strength by trying to drive the nail in all the way with a single blow. I of course missed and slammed the hammer into my thumb with superhuman force.
The hammer made a strangely muffled 'ping' sound when it impacted, and I wanted to let go of the nail, but my hand felt like it was paralyzed. For a couple seconds I thought it was broken in some way, and I was instantly yelling because I thought I was going to be in pain, but I wasn't. Mrs. Angelo was at my side seconds later, examining my hand, prodding it with her claws – muttering something about the skin and flesh being rock-hard, like it was that badly swollen. She brought me into the house, where we realized that my thumb and some of the flesh of my palm were emitting a faint green luminescence and had hardened to the point of near-immobility.
Then, within a minute more, the glow was gone and my hand worked again, back to its usual firmness. There wasn't an injury to be seen. Mrs. Angelo still bandaged it and sent me home early to be on the safe side, but we were both confused. My species' guide said nothing whatsoever about anything of this sort. I wanted to talk to Dad about it, but he was only downstairs for a little bit each day before heading to bed, and I didn't feel like trying to injure myself again to test whether the effect would repeat itself.
When I did manage to get a chance to talk to Dad, I found myself hesitating to breach the topic of my accident anyway. I didn't want to give Dad something else to worry about, though he did seem to be in an increasingly good mood. When not watching waves – which itself relaxed him and cleared his head – he had been in town, chatting with people and observing how society was progressing. Apparently New Molokai was seeing its first businesses take root: A food stand run by a pair of Snorlaxes had grown popular enough that it was becoming a fixture of the marketplace. Now, the two cooks had lain claim to a vacant lot nearby where they were setting up tents to shelter tables and planning a semi-permanent kitchen area.
Mr. Geraldson, the Charmander who had approached becoming a Pokémon by immediately making kimchi, was around as well – though his food stand was still trying to find its identity. Apparently he couldn't decide whether to make donuts or Japanese-style riceballs, so he was trying to serve both at the same time. Both were delicious, or at least they were when he kept the ingredients in order. The absentminded Charmander had accidentally made an entire batch of "jelly donuts" filled with seasoned fish eggs and ruined somebody's birthday party.
Elsewhere, a Sneasel named Linda had converted the bottom floor of her home into a nail salon, though she was having more trouble than the Snorlaxes when it came to establishing herself. After all, any client who came in the door might be a Pokémon species with nails, horns, talons, or other keratinous projections of a sort that Linda had never previously worked on. She didn't like turning anyone away based solely on species, but she had been forced to restrict herself to only accepting Charmanders and other Sneasels as walk-ins. Any other species needed an appointment and was warned that she'd work at a glacial pace as she figured out the necessary techniques and tools, sometimes improvising new tools on the fly and redesigning them afterwards. No one had been injured, except Linda herself on her second day as a Pokémon, when she had trimmed a nail too short and drawn blood. This she had taken as a very painful but valuable lesson as she re-learned her former human self's trade.
With no currency, everything was running on barter. People acquired things by trading other things that were (or were claimed to be) valuable, or they just made themselves useful for a bit in lieu of payment. The latter was very popular for interspecies transactions, since practically everyone had something they needed doing that would be a lot easier if they were a bit bigger, a bit smaller, a bit differently shaped, or gifted with different elemental abilities. Pokémon of the same species were more prone to exchanging goods, which was generally more burdensome since there were already so many different items people might have or need. Food was a popular trade commodity – especially among the town's many Charmanders, whose sugar supply was dwindling faster than anything else in their cellars. I mentioned that when chatting with the Angelos and Gramps joked about setting up a mint and trading with coins struck from hard candy, to simplify things.
In fact, I found myself spending more time at the Angelos' house than my own home, on many days. I was always welcome even when not working, and my stepmom was usually busy dealing with Philomena. The Phione's sleeping troubles had worsened as she grew anxious about falling asleep, which left her drowsy and short-tempered during the day. I helped Mom around the house when I could and made sure she knew I was available, but as her patience with her daughter wore down she seemed only more determined to fix things on her own – especially since Dad was only around for a couple hours each day.
Q: My sweat smells horrible and there's a lot of it and I've heard some pretty worrying rumors.
A: Your bodily secretions are not poisonous; Professor Cypress determined this conclusively in his 2032 peer review of the Hinoki Pokédex. You can wind up smelling pretty bad if you don't wash yourself frequently, though. Wild Umbreons use their tongues, but we expect that could taste rather rank to a former human, so check the library for shampoo formulas!
- Species Guide Series #197: How To Be An Umbreon
It was on my tenth day of working at the Angelo homestead that we decided I was ready to move the orange tree. The decision came when they asked me for help moving a palm tree that they had felled, and I just hefted the whole thing up on my shoulder without thinking nor asking any questions. They had planned to lay planks to have me drag it to the site, given it was twice my height and nearly a foot thick at the base. I hadn't even realized its weight until I saw everybody staring at me, with Gramps nodding appreciatively.
The day was replanned completely; we headed down to the orange tree with three wheelbarrows and spent a good chunk of the day picking it clean of fruit so as to strip it of as much weight as we could. The whole family helped with that job; all the Charmanders were excellent climbers thanks to their claws and modest weight and the youngest of them were able to get highest into the tree without breaking any branches. I was treated to an early dinner and asked to go right to bed and come over at the crack of dawn the next morning, which I did.
When I arrived, all of the Angelos were already excavating the site where the orange tree would be transplanted. Gramps refreshed me on the plan, which we had gone over just before I had left the previous evening: To make sure that the tree's destination soil would be naturally moist, the hole would be finished just in the nick of time for me to lay in the tree atop its root ball. For the same reason, they would dig out the tree — which I would then forcibly uproot by the trunk — as quickly as possible, as well. Mrs. Angelo and her three oldest sons – Leon, Jason, and Troy – stayed behind to finish carving out the hole, while I and everybody else headed for the tree and set to shoveling around it while trying to minimize root damage.
We were done sooner than I had expected, given how small most of the "digging crew's" shovels and paws were. After we had dug as wide and deep a trench around the tree as we dared, it was up to me. We fastened a rope harness around the base of the trunk to give me a couple handles, and everybody stood back, watching with held breath as I gripped as tightly as I could, and pulled.
For the first few moments, nothing seemed to happen, and I pulled harder — still harder. I felt the earth start to shift underneath me, followed by the first dry, muffled snaps as roots beneath the earth started to give. The orange tree's branches wavered above me, and I heard little Artie gasp, followed by a giggle from her little sister. "Told you," she whispered as I gradually dragged the tree out of the ground by its trunk, followed by a mass of roots nearly as large and extensive as its branches, covered in damp earth.
Gramps was already barking commands to his son-and-law and grandchildren, who were unfolding and laying out a flat sheet of burlap. With a mighty heft I laid the tree's root ball on the sheet, with the tree on its side, and six Charmanders were on it a second later, getting the sheet wrapped around and cinched together into a protective swaddle. My muscles were starting to complain as I got my breath and the red lines along my arms were throbbing strangely, but Gramps reminded me that the real job was just beginning — since they didn't have a wagon quite big enough to safely carry something so heavy.
Gramps sent back everybody else – Mr. Angelo, Artie, Pan, Percy, and Dio – to make sure the destination hole was going to be ready in time for my arrival. Pointing to the silver gem on his wrist charm, he reminded the others of the signaling scheme he had planned: "If you see silver flame in the distance, I'm letting you know all is well. Any other color flame, get over here right now." The old Charmander himself stayed at my side, making sure I was okay while I hefted up the tree by its enormous, burlap-wrapped root ball.
The tree with its roots and dirt was far heavier than the palm had been, and the root ball was awkward and cumbersome to carry, to the point that I essentially had the whole thing pressed into my face. I required Gramps to navigate me, and since I was blinded, the journey felt like an eternity. Still, Gramps didn't stop encouraging me, chiding at times if I started to slow down. I knew we had made it halfway when he scurried a few yards away and breathed a vertical jet of flame into the air as a signal. He did it again when we were three fourths of the way there, though by then I was easily visible from the house. There were cheers when I lowered the tree down to the ground, a short rest while they removed the burlap covering – then it was just one final heave to get it into the fresh hole, perfectly upright. With that, I fell to sit on the grass, filthy from sweat and soil, my whole body aching – but I had done it. A water pitcher was pushed into my hand, and I downed almost the whole thing in one gulp. Then, I fell to my back in the grass, letting out a groan followed by a hoarse laugh.
I was going to be sore as anything for the next day or two, but it didn't matter to me. Nothing mattered, save for the satisfaction of conquering that tree. It barely mattered to me that I had comic-book levels of strength, only that I had accomplished something with it. Well, it did matter enough for me to try to flex there on the ground, only to abort with a roar of pain when my biceps reminded me just how much they were done with the day. As I rolled to my side, groaning, Gramps laughed and slapped me on the back with a tiny paw.
Once I had gotten back to my feet, I headed back home and showered while the Angelos went inside to clean themselves off. I returned with Mom and Philomena, leaving notes around the house for Dad to come over as well once he got home. At the Charmanders' homestead we found Artie at the door with a lei made of brilliant blue flax flowers that she hung around my neck. The rest of the day was a celebration.
They put together a feast that was both for me, for my adoptive family, and for everyone else who had worked themselves to the bone planning, preparing, and carrying out the transplant. Moving that orange tree was the first big project that the Angelos had completed successfully in their strange new life, and that accomplishment meant even more to them than it did to me as their heavy lifter. That wasn't to say I wasn't practically family to the Charmanders now, especially to Gramps and Leonidas. Tellingly, by now I could identify every one of the Angelos by their size, mannerisms, and voice, unlike the rest of my family. For that reason, the Angelos all kept their wrist charms on while my family visited, making the house a miniature lightshow of colored tail-flames as Charmanders small and big (for Charmanders) darted around preparing our evening banquet.
Gramps was the life of the party, telling jokes and stories all day long. The children were excited to see Philomena again, if a bit sad to hear that she still hadn't been sleeping well and her powers weren't at their best – but while the Phione was tired, her skills had grown substantially. This became clear after the sun had gone down, when my sister caved to pressure and put on a show with a constellation of water droplets that she levitated into the air and spun around and around. The round, quivering water globules caught the many flickering lights from the Charmanders' hearth, torchlights, candles, and tail-flames, creating a shifting kaleidoscope of colored lights that had everybody pausing and turning to watch.
Mrs. Angelo was the most dazzled by the unexpected display: she had been chatting with Mom about something, only to fall silent, turn, and stare in wonder alongside everyone else. She kept staring for several moments with her mouth hanging open, even after Philomena had gathered all the droplets into a single floating orb and lowered it back into the water pitcher she had drawn from.
"Are you alright—" Mom started to ask her, but was stopped when the Charmander's eyes suddenly widened, her tailflame releasing a brilliant flash of light.
"Lucinda?" The Spinarak prodded her again, as Mrs. Angelo's tailflame started to quiver, just before her body shook in a violent sob. "Lucinda—"
With a tiny squeak, Mrs. Angelo took off across the room, grabbing Gramps's wrist and pulling him toward the kitchen. Her face was glinting from tears starting to stream down. I watched, wondering myself what was going on, but was interrupted by a voice. It was unfamiliar for a moment, and I glanced around suddenly, before I noticed a tingling in the back of my head.
"Sebastian, are you there?" The voice was asking. It was Professor Lily Mangrove, and her voice was weak and quavering. I stiffened briefly, then lowered my head, bringing two fingers to an earslit. I wasn't sure whether the Angelos were aware of psychic communication, but this seemed like a decent enough hint to them.
"Professor? I'm a bit busy; what's up?" I replied in a whisper.
Out of the corner of my eye I could see Mrs. Angelo and her father in the kitchen. She was fidgeting with her paws, looking to one side, trying to find words, while Professor Mangrove spoke into my mind.
"I'm sorry, Sebastian," the Mew was saying. "It's… I'm not sure how to say this. Your father's not coming home toni – no, t-that's a poor way to word it." She sounded choked up, on the edge of tears. "I've asked him, Quincy, and Cassius to head immediately to Macapuno Village, east of you. They'll be there for at least a few days. There's been a disaster."
I was distracted. I could still see Mrs. Angelo and Gramps talking. "I… need to ask something," Lucinda was saying. Her voice was different, as well. I'd never heard her so soft and vulnerable.
"A-are you there, Sebastian?" Professor Mangrove stammered into my mind.
"Yes, I'm here," I told her. "Sorry. You… said there was a disaster. Is it something we need to worry about?"
I didn't hear the Professor's reply; I was still distracted. Mrs. Angelo was continuing to speak. "I-is it really you, Father?" She was asking. "Did you really come back? I-I mean, after the fall, and the painkillers they put you on after the surgery, after what those did to you, I-I thought… I thought that you were—"
"Sebastian?!" The Professor's voice seemed hurt, even angered. "Did you just hear me?"
"No, I… er, can you repeat it?"
"There's been—" The Mew almost yelled at me, before she restarted. "There's been a death, Sebastian."
Those words clamped down around my heart like an icy fist. My eavesdropping was forgotten. With two fingers still held to my earslit, I turned and ran out the door, muttering an apology to little Dio as I nudged him to one side to make way.
The sun was down and the night was overcast as I got myself some distance from the house. "I suppose you don't remember Ruby, given the memory alterations we did, but…" Lily was saying as I ran to the site of the newly-transplanted orange tree and crouched down.
"What happened, Professor," I asked, once I was sure no one was close enough to hear. "Was it an accident?"
"N… no, it wasn't," she replied, her voice cracking.
I almost shouted my response, only to force the words back down my throat and answer in a croaked whisper: "A murder?!"
"No… no, it wasn't a murder, Sebastian." I could hear the tremor in her voice growing by the moment. "She hanged herself. She… had a note on her chest-spike, saying she c-chased a mirage into the d-d-desert—" With that, the Mew's voice disintegrated completely and she started to sob and whine.
"Miss Mangrove. Do we know anything else," I asked, trying to keep calm. "Is there anything I need to know?"
"No, there isn't," the Mew squeaked helplessly. "I—I—I shouldn't even be telling you this, I just… I just don't— she was supposed to be happy— she was a special project—"
"Professor!" I barked, before trying to soften my voice, offering the first thing that came to mind. "Do you need to come over here and talk to someone? I know some people who can—"
Lily didn't seem to have heard me; she continued to cry and mutter things, barely coherent. It was the July 7th press conference all over again; she was breaking down and there was nothing I could do but listen. "It's… this wasn't supposed to happen, Sebastian—" she was blubbering. "It's all going to go wrong, it's all a mistake, everything I did was a mistake, the whole Harmony Project was — was — I'm sorry, Sebastian, I have to go—"
"Professor?" I spoke, louder. "Professor!"
She didn't respond, and my skull was no longer tingling. My heart felt like it was going to pound out of my chest, and a dull soreness was spreading through my body that was worse than any muscle fatigue my Machoke body had ever felt. I looked around and up at the Angelos' homestead, every window shining brilliantly. Then I looked away, got up, and walked further away to sit behind a bush where I wouldn't see it.
I didn't want to look at their house. I wanted to be alone. I needed to be. Even thinking about the Angelos and their beautiful, innocent little life brought a new pang of dread. I hoped they didn't know what was going on elsewhere on the island, and I was determined to never tell them. I couldn't watch that innocence and joy disappear from their eyes. I couldn't let them know that grief, tragedy, and despair had followed us all to the Hawai Region.
Q: Can I go back to my old home and be a human again?
A: Due to the intricacies of human-to-Pokémon transmutation, it's unfortunately a one-way street, as you agreed you understood when you filled out your application to the Harmony Project. The forfeiture of all your old life's property to various charities was also fully covered in the paperwork you signed when you were formally invited to join us. Besides that, only a few nations currently afford a human level of rights to Pokémon. But on the bright side, this means you'll be able to focus all your energy on cultivating a new, better society and never think about the complications and troubles of your old life ever again. How exciting!
Your Guide to the Harmony Project, Chapter 1: Quick Questions and Answers
I winced when I realized that even if I didn't tell the Angelos, they'd find out: Either from word of mouth, or as society inexorably declined. Already I could see it in my mind, minor inconveniences and slights between Pokémon turning into prejudices, factions starting to form, disputes starting to boil over, hatred and desperation and hardship leading to violence just as surely as it always had for humanity—
I jumped as I heard an elderly voice clearing its throat. I turned my head slowly and winced as my eyes met brilliant, silvery light. Grandpa Frederick Angelo was standing next to me with the end of his tail held in one paw, holding it like a lantern.
"Diogenes saw you go running out the door. Said it looked like you were talkin' to someone." His eyes caught mine, even though I was still shielding them somewhat from his tail-flame. "And you look like you just saw a dead body," he sighed. "You going to tell me what's going on?"
"I…" I hesitated, looking away, but I could still feel Gramps's eyes on me as he waited for me to answer. "I got a message from Professor Lily Mangrove," I said quietly, capitulating. "She contacted me through that... psychic power she has. Said that Dad's not coming over tonight."
"That's all?" He furrowed, doubt written all over his face behind his spectacles. I swallowed and shook my head. "Your dad's not gotten himself hurt or something, has he?" He pressed, concern clear in his voice.
"He's fine," I answered quickly.
"Bad news elsewhere on the island? Bad enough that he had to intervene and stop it?"
I nodded, looking down. "Not much to stop at this point. Someone's dead."
Gramps nodded, his expression unchanging, though his tail-flame dimmed to half its normal size. "Did Lily give you any instructions about what to do?"
"I…" I stammered, thinking back. "No, she didn't."
"What a dirtbag," grumbled the Charmander.
"Er?" The change in his tone took me by surprise; I looked him right in the eye.
"Got nothing good to say about a grown woman who just dumps on some kid and ruins his evening and leaves him to stew in the dark," Gramps muttered. "Shove the circumstances. If she tries to go poking around in your head and talking to you again, you make her apologize for that, you hear me, Seb?"
I nodded silently. At least my eyes were adjusting to the ferocious white light of his flame.
"So what happened? Was somebody murdered or something?"
"Suicide," I replied, regretting it as I remembered what had happened to one of Frederick's sons. The Charmander's eyes went distant and he looked down at the ground, his flame waning until it was the size of a small candle's.
Gramps didn't reply, and we sat in silence for a couple minutes, until words snuck out of my lips: "It's not working." The Charmander still said nothing, and I spoke again after a moment, my mouth seemingly moving on its own: "The Harmony Project is starting to fail."
"The hell it is, boy." Gramps's response surprised me, as did the sparks rising from his tail-tip when I looked at him. "I'm not going to let it," he muttered. "I'd figured there was something better I could be doing with myself. Well, I've got something to work on now."
"Er?"
"Lucinda was talking to me in the kitchen, bein' all emotional because it's finally gotten through her skull that my dementia's cured. That I've got at least another eighty healthy years added to my life. She's happy as anything, of course, but with her all grown up and married and able to take care of herself, I'd had no idea what to do with my life." He managed a faint smile and a chuckle. "Neither had the Professors, heh. Pages on pages of those stupid Qs and As in practically any book you crack open and the authors had never once thought about the plight of the once-elderly on this island."
"So… what are you going to be doing now?" I asked him.
"Take the future of the Hawai Region into my own hands," he replied calmly. "Much as one 81-year-old Charmander can, anyway. One of the worst things about the Harmony Project is that your stepdad and his buddies have no guidelines whatsoever as to what to do if anything ever goes wrong."
He paused, and I caught a flash of light from his growing tail-flame, as something occurred to him, and that tiny smile returned. "That's also one of the best things about the Harmony Project, given that when something did go wrong, the Professors all just went runnin' around like headless chickens. I don't want people like that in charge," he said, then the smile vanished. "Trouble is, someone does have to be in charge, and I've not seen anybody stepping up."
"Are you going to try and… start running things, Mr. Frederick? In New Molokai?" I asked.
"If I have to, Sebastian. If I have to. You remember what happened in the pumphouse, when the water went out and almost everybody just sat in their homes and waited for the problem to fix itself. I don't like that about these people; they're too soft and passive. But no, I'm not planning to take over the town or anything. Going to start small. Just a neighborhood patrol of sorts, if even that. Go around and talk to people, figure out what problems they're havin', help solve 'em. Set an example for people to follow." He looked at me suddenly, and I realized that his flame had regained all of its former size and strength. "And I'm going to want your help, Sebastian, if you're willing."
I nodded my acceptance before thinking about what I was doing; Gramps did have that same quality as his daughter. "W-wait, me? What am I supposed to do?" I asked.
"Nothing you need any hard skills for. Just come with me when I'm out and about, so I'm not alone and I look like more capable of making a difference. And keep projecting that calm demeanor; it should help people relax and open up about what's botherin' 'em. I'll coach you on that. It's a good attitude for a guy as big as you to have, on and off the job."
"Alright." I nodded, but found myself hesitating. "You… think this'll work? That it'll be enough to keep everything from just… falling apart?"
"We'll cross that bridge when we get to it, Seb. Whether it's enough right now has nothing to do with the objective.. For now, we're going to start trying to make people's lives a bit better, learning about anything that's been wrong around town. And most importantly, we're not going to just curl up in the dark and wait for everything to crumble." He added with a mutter, "unlike that good-for-nothing Lily." Then he spoke up. "So let's be formal about this, Seb. You with me?" He extended a paw.
I stared at Grandpa Frederick for a long moment. Behind him, his tail blazed like a torch, but the light neither flickered nor wavered; it shone as steady as an electric bulb. One thing I had learned about Charmanders was that their emotions were never a secret as long as you could read their flames, and Gramps's flame showed not the faintest hint of uncertainty.
Around the Charmander, against the brilliance of his silver flame, the night was black as pitch — my eyes had adjusted to the point I couldn't see anything else anymore.
I reached out my hand to him.
