I don't mind a bit of exposition here and there
Arc II, The Plate of Time
Chapter Twenty-Five:
The Rationale of Living
Aurelio's apartment was meticulously clean and smelled like sandalwood. It was on the seventh story of an old-fashioned building near the outskirts of the city, far from the university. When he had opened the door, Aurelio himself was clean shaven and well dressed, looking as professional as he had when he was teaching only with another set of clothes. He beckoned me in and quietly closed the door behind us.
"Do you spend much time in here?" I asked.
"Not really," he responded. He headed towards the kitchen. Despite the aesthetic atmosphere, seemingly meant for a romantic dinner, he was reheating fast food for himself. The fact that he was in his socks added to the hilarity. "Most of my time is used for travelling or for running around Rustboro. Every now and then, I'll send in a maid to wipe up the dust. I've gone eight months without sleeping here. I've even rented out the living space before."
I wandered over to a photo in the living room. "I like it," I remarked.
The photo was of Aurelio as child. He was proudly displaying his project in his science class. Even in the blurry corners of the frame, I could see the vague hints of language too developed for someone of his age. The photo to the left showed him and his parents. Alcott, though he still looked stern, was smiling, and his wife had a gentle eye and an intelligent, knowing face.
"Is this Josie?" I asked, holding up a third photo.
The pair were around fifteen years old. She was wearing a huge, aquamarine dress that sparkled and flared out around her waist. Aurelio was wearing formal black attire, and was profusely blushing.
"She asked me to her prom," said Aurelio absentmindedly, using plasticware to eat his food. He leaned against the counter, one foot on the cabinets. "I didn't want to go. I was way too embarrassed, but my mom made me. I was the worst date ever. I brought a book and just ended up reading on the pavilion outside."
I snickered beneath my breath. "She looks beautiful."
"She did," he agreed. "I can't believe she put up with me all of those years."
"You aren't insufferable," I said, prudently watching him as he strolled across the living room and onto the couch. My throat tightened when his shirt rode up a little bit to expose a thin sliver of skin right above his beltline.
"Thanks, Arceus," he said, laughing with his mouth full. "You aren't totally unbearable either."
We fell into an awkward silence.
"I never apologized for my actions," I said. The sound of cars in the streets filled the lull. "I promised to you that I would return, and I didn't. I disappeared without warning and left you behind. You would have never done the same to me, and for that I'm sorry."
Aurelio finished his dinner and put the plate onto the coffee table. He remained sitting forward, arms crossed upon his lap. "What happened after you left?"
Tremendous fear rose from the pit of my stomach. "I went to the crystal mountain," I said. "The excavation site was abandoned, just like we thought. And I met Luce in the catacombs. He—" I paused, swallowing. "He cracked the Plate of Space. With his bare hands. The surface is broken, and now it is more fragile than ever. I am too weak to repair the damage."
Alarmed, Aurelio sat up straighter. "But no mortal could do that."
"He is no mortal," I said sharply. "No more mortal than I am. And that's why I needed to keep my distance. He could have taken a fragment of my life back then. I feared what he might have done to you."
He stared at me, as innocent as always. "You don't need to worry about that," he said, an iron fierceness unlike anything I've ever seen before entering his eyes. "Whatever it takes to get your Plates into safe hands, I will help you. No matter what."
"Thank you," I said, my fears temporarily alleviated. With him there, I felt like I could accomplish anything. "The Plate of Time — I have to get it too. Before the Antebureau does."
"The Antebureau!" exclaimed Aurelio, as if he had just remembered. "I went to Devon a few weeks ago. Grimmwolfe is gone. Just completely disappeared. His office was cleared out shortly after the boat incident, which Mr. Stone attributed to some rogue trainer and a wild Pokémon. Nobody has heard from Grimmwolfe since then."
My ears were ringing. "What could he be doing?"
"Who knows? Something shady, whatever it is."
"Then we must hurry," I said. "The Plate of Time is—" I stopped. "What?"
He was smiling. "We," he repeated.
"Of course 'we,' who else—"
"Carry on," said Aurelio, leaning back into the sofa with his arms spread along the top. "We must hurry, and what else?"
I squinted at him. "The Plate is hidden in a place which even I cannot immediately locate," I continued slowly. "Long ago, I entrusted it to the gears of time. It floats between timelines, the recent past and the ancient past even further behind, from owner to owner."
"What sort of owners?"
"They never know exactly what it is that they're carrying, so the naive kind," I explained. For good demonstration, I summoned the Plate of Space, cutting my fingers across the air as Luce had done. In Aurelio's living room, a glowing tear in space opened. From there, I withdrew the Plate. It floated near my shoulders. "You know what you're looking at."
"Of course I do," he said. He tilted his head. "Although, it doesn't quite look like I imagined."
"To me, the Plates appear in their true forms." Thin as glass, reflective, and rectangular. When I softly tapped its surface, its surface glowered a deeper, richer purple and it sang a whistling tune, signaling that its powers were at the ready. "But you're seeing a necklace. Perhaps something bigger, like a book. Something small and insignificant. Forgettable, but too important to let go."
The Plate's surface cast a violet shimmer in his eyes. It illuminated the apartment.
"It looks like a magnificent pen," said Aurelio. "You're right. It's very small, but if I found that pen in my possession, I would never think once about tossing it, nor would I question how it came to me. I would even use it. Incredible."
"The Plate of Time does the same." I put away the Plate and closed the portal. The apartment once again became dark, only lit by the dim lighting from the kitchen. "It passes to people at random. I can begin to detect it if I search for its light. The Plates and I share a connection. The only problem is that my options in seeking it out are limited."
"How so?"
"The Plate of Time changes ownership nearly every twenty-four hours," I said. "Sometimes sooner, sometimes later. Time and space are relative. For every measurement of time that passes, no matter how small, a separate dimension is created. I can use the Plate of Space to enter these alternate dimensions."
"I knew that," said Aurelio, although he still looked mindblown. "That was an entire two years of research by itself just to understand. But whatever exists in that moment won't be stuck in that smallest measurement of time though. That dimension would branch off, creating an alternate, non-canonical dimension. Everything that happens from the split second that you choose to appear will become a separate existence. Have you ever done that?"
Somewhere, in a non-canonical timeline parallel to ours, Adam had never returned to the mortal plane. He had remained in the immortal dimension, far removed from the normal laws of the universe. Aurelio would have never existed. In that timeline, without present existence of its entity above gods, would eventually blink out and cease to exist.
I would never shame Adam's name by playing games with his existence.
But I would have to do the same with others, for the sake of retrieving the Plate of Time.
"I've done it millennia ago," I said. "But whatever dimensions I created have faded into nothingness by now. Our timeline is the only active one, as of right now. Once you and I use the Plate of Space to enter that alternate dimension, we will be allowing the continuation of a lie."
"Well, don't phrase it like that…"
"Isn't it, though?" I asked. The howling wind caught my attention, for another winter storm had come over Mauville. Melting snow streaked the windowpane to Aurelio's balcony. "Imagine being a man in Hoenn, one hundred years ago. Suddenly I — Arceus — choose to randomly appear in the very split second that your first child is born. Your timeline has now branched off. From that point on, every experience that you ever share with your family is different from the canonical story. If it is not the truth, is it a lie?"
Aurelio thought about that for a long moment.
"The truth is what you feel," he said. "How do I know that I'm canonical?"
"If you don't take my word for it, I suppose you wouldn't."
"Well, it feels real to me," said Aurelio. His eyes floated over to the photos on the bookshelves, then finally settled on me. "I feel alive. I was pretty hungry earlier, but now I'm full. I was sleepy, and now I'm wide awake. I wanted to be with you. You showed up when I was teaching a class. We're together now. We're going on an adventure. That's the truest recollection of memories I can give. Isn't that close enough to living?"
My gaze softened. "I guess so."
Aurelio was the kind of human who ran. He took risks, he laughed, he learned. He loved. From his birth, he had started sprinting to the finish line, as fast as he could, so that he might experience the sensation of infiniteness.
It was painfully beautiful.
Something in my stuck heart moved me. "Aurelio?"
"Hmm?"
"...I believe that I love you."
End of Chapter Twenty-Five