My mother used to write pulp science fiction: the kind of cheap space westerns you could pick up at dime stores, read once for a quick thrill, and then completely forget about.
As a boy, I enjoyed her Choose Your Adventure stories the most. If you made all the right choices, you'd be rewarded with knowledge beyond your wildest dreams, or be able to stop a mad scientist from pushing the button to a doomsday device, or rescue a peaceful alien tourist from being dissected by shady government researchers. Sometimes I'd intentionally fail, just to see what kind of devious scenarios she'd invent. The good endings made me feel good, but I read those things for all the entertaining ways my decisions could go horribly wrong.
None of her work ever won a Pulitzer. In fact, one well respected sci-fi author dropped her name as an example of why people would never take the genre seriously. He called her "kitsch incarnate" and a "peddler of mindless pulp." That didn't deter her. So long as people kept buying her pulp, she'd keep writing it.
It's even how she met my father. He used to be her biggest fan.
When I was little, she wrote all the time. I even have a couple of children's books dedicated to me, not that I'd ever tell Mars or Jupiter that. I think you're the only person I told. You smiled and asked me what the titles were.
By the time I was six, my mother's writing became a little more popular. My father pushed her to try a few new things, so she did. She even managed to guest-write a couple of episodes for television. I don't think she managed to reach Twilight Zone levels of success, but she tape-recorded the first time her episode of The Outer Limits aired. I have that episode memorized from start to finish: every frame, every word, every action. To her, that video meant more than a Pulitzer.
Shortly afterward, she plateaued. My father pressured her to keep writing, offering her suggestions and ideas on where to take her stories when she got stuck. In his own way, he thought he was helping. She didn't see it that way.
Her depression was so bad that she began to suspect that everyone, myself included, only valued her for her writing. She feared that if she stopped contributing entertainment for others, our love for her would wither up and die. Then she'd have nothing but her empire of pulp to keep her company.
As she continued to climb her way out of her creative rut, her behavior turned more robotic. All she'd say to him was "yes, dear," and "of course." She rarely left the house. All I ever saw her do was sit at her desk and type for hours on end. Her fingers hit the keys so fast that it sounded like gravel hitting a trash can lid or the firing of an automatic weapon. Most days, she wouldn't even bother to get out of her pajamas or leave the house.
The quality of her work had gone down, but she made up for it in quantity. Just as soon as you bought one book, she'd have two or three new ones out by the end of the month. She cranked those stories out so quickly that people accused her of hiring a ghost writer.
That's because my father had a formula for what he liked to read and insisted my mother use it. "To best optimize your potential," he said.
She'd written enough to know what people wanted to read about and regurgitated the same tropes, plots, and even characters. Some were more popular than others, but she turned quite a profit. Even after she'd long since burned out and all the joy was sucked out of her words, the pulp still got peddled.
By the time I turned eight, my parents were divorced. My mother and I moved to Sinnoh three years later, after my father died.
I'm now as old as my father. I'm not a parent, nor have I ever been married. I haven't even found time for romance, nor do I intend to pursue it. I think that kind of relationship would distract me from reaching my full potential.
By the time I started high school, my mother found her second wind. After experiencing years of burnout and writing to a formula rather than trusting her instincts, she wrote something for fun again. She never found the nerve to take that novel to a publisher, but she was proud of it.
I read it. It's the best thing she's ever written.
I wonder if enough time has passed for me to show the world what I can do outside of your shadow. Just as I promised the Champion twelve years ago, Team Galactic began conducting research on alternate energy sources. It's finally paid off.
Several uninhabited areas have been repurposed into solar farms. We have enough clean energy to power the entire region, as well as the barrier islands. During my last trip to Floaroma Town, I saw some of our wind turbines in the distance.
In my last metrics review with Jupiter, we were able to study well over a decade's worth of data. The carbon emission stats speak for themselves. The region is cleaning up. We're gathering contracts left and right.
Mossdeep Space Center in Hoenn has even given us the contract to build their next space probe. There's speculation that there may be signs of life beneath the icy surface of Europa. We're going to be part of that. Everyone is very excited.
You're actually the second person I told. Considering how much I've shared about my personal life this year, I think you can venture to guess who I called first.
She's proud, but she's still convinced that I'm leading a cult rather than a corporation.