.
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The Bronze Brick
.
This time Cypress wandered round to the back parts of the laboratory where the newer and lower rooms joined it. Here Bronze was surprised by a stablelike smell and a medley of growls, grunts and pipings: all the signs, in fact, of a considerable Pokemon zoo. At first he did not understand, but presently he remembered that an immense program of life-cycle study and postmortem vivisection, freed at last from Red Tape and from niggling economy, was one of the plans of the Science Program and Cypress's pet project.
Bronze had not been particularly interested and had thought vaguely of mundane rats, rabbits, and an occasional dog. The confused noises from within suggested something very different. As he stood there a loud melancholy howl arose and then, as if it had set the key, all manner of trumpetings, bayings, screams, laughter even, which shuddered and protested for a moment and then died away into mutterings and playful whines. Bronze had no scruples about vivisection. What the noise meant to him was the greatness and grandiosity of this whole undertaking from which, apparently, he was likely to be excluded. There were all sorts of things in there: thousands of units worth of living Pokemon, which the Association could afford to cut up like paper on the mere chance of some interesting discovery. The enclosure was pleasant enough for the Pokemon, and Cypress had taken care of them, but the noise was disagreeable and Bronze moved away.
"One moment, Bronze," said Cypress. "Before I give you this Pokedex, it is so important to be perfectly clear what we are doing. You are no doubt aware that in certain senses of the words it would be most unfortunate to speak of my offering anyone a Pokedex. You must not imagine for a moment that I hold any kind of autocratic position, nor, on the other hand, that the relation between my own sphere of influence and the powers (I am speaking of their temporary powers, you understand) of the Association or those of the Chairman himself are defined by any hard and fast system of what one might call a constitutional, or even a constitutive, character. It was always understood that your cooperation with the government would be entirely acceptable if it was for research purposes only."
He went on. "You surely know that there are many Pokedex Holders who, on receiving their Pokedex, were rather lax in their scientific duties. These considered themselves completely private persons and went on adventures as they chose or got caught up in them. The devices themselves were given out willy-nilly to whoever twinkled in the regional professor's eye, hurled into the hands of some talented youngster. The presence of the Association in this affair is a symptom of that past behavior, I'm afraid. Pokedex Holders often get into terrible trouble, and the Chairman wants it to stop."
"Perhaps they do not go off having quests because they want to, but because they must," said Bronze. "Arceus makes the hands of the small move the world while the great look away."
"Egad, Bronze, let's have a discussion," said Cypress. "It's hard for an Arcean and a materialist to look at each other without winking. We are two augurs. I am going to make a confession to you. I have a philosophy of my own."
"And you are right," replied Bronze. "As one makes one's philosophy, so one lies on it. You are on the bed of purple, professor."
"Then let us be good fellows!" Cypress said.
"Devils even," said Bronze. "Sir, can you give me my Pokedex?"
"Alright," said Cypress, and he gave the box to Bronze. "Polish it every so often, whenever it begins to dim in luster. If you lose it or it suffers damages, you will pay for it. Though in that case, with my support, I do not see any difficulty in amending the financial side of the repairs. Your salary will be dependent on the high position that you end up occupying because of the merit you display. I envisage it as being very well-off. You will find that with a Pokedex, all sorts of questions resolve themselves with the greatest of ease. There won't be a contract or any of that vulgarity. Go on, open it up!"
Bronze found a rectangular piece of red plaz with a single screen. It could fit comfortably in his hand and back pockets. "The newer models are smaller," said Bronze. "Not like the huge monsters that Red and the others got from Oak twenty years back."
"Even those have been brought up to date," said Cypress. "And none too soon. We all have a greater need for swifter, more precise, and more streamlined scientific development as we get closer and closer, step by step, tactical retreat by groundbreaking advancement, to eradicating the scourges of disease, poverty, and other afflictions. Sooner or later, Man will triumph over Nature, and then our Golden Age will come. Let there be no mistake as to my meaning: I am not confounding what is called "political opinions" with the grand aspiration for progress, with the sublime humanism, patriotic, democratic, humane, which in our day should be the very foundation of every generous intellect."
"Very noble goals," said Bronze. "That's not what we Arceans think, though."
"I declare to you," continued Cypress, "that the Arceans are no rascals. I have all the Arcean philosophers in my library gilded on the edges."
"Like yourself, Professor," interposed Bronze. "I wonder what you think of the other regional heads."
"I hate Rowan," said Cypress. "He is an ideologist, a declaimer, and a revolutionist, a believer in Arceus at bottom, and more bigoted than myself. Sycamore made sport of Juniper, and he was wrong, for Juniper's evolutionary theories prove that God is useless. A drop of vinegar in a spoonful of flour paste supplies the necessary chemical reaction. Suppose the drop to be larger and the spoonful bigger; you have the world. Man is the eel, forming in some warm little pool a few billion years ago. Then what is the good of the Eternal Father? The Arceus hypothesis tires me, Bronze. It is good for nothing but to produce shallow people, whose reasoning is hollow. Down with that great All, which torments me! Hurrah for Zero which leaves me in peace! Between you and me, and in order to empty my sack, and make confession to my own gods, as it behooves me to do, I will admit to you that I have good sense. I am not enthusiastic over your Arceus, who preaches renunciation and sacrifice to the last extremity. 'Tis the counsel of an avaricious Being to beggars. Renunciation; why? Sacrifice; to what end? I do not see one Pokemon immolating himself for the happiness of another Pokemon. Let us stick to nature, then. We are at the top; let us have a superior philosophy. What is the advantage of being at the top, if one sees no further than the end of other people's noses? Let us live merrily. Life is all. That man has another future elsewhere, on high, below, anywhere, I don't believe; not one single word of it.
"Ah! Sacrifice and renunciation are recommended to me; I must take heed to everything I do; I must cudgel my brains over good and evil, over the just and the unjust, over the moral and immoral. Why? Because I shall have to render an account of my actions. When? After death. What a fine dream! After my death it will be a very clever person who can catch me. Have a handful of dust seized by a shadow-hand, if you can. Let us tell the truth, we who are initiated, and who have raised the veil of religion: there is no such thing as either good or evil; there is vegetation. Let us seek the real. Let us get to the bottom of it. Let us go into it thoroughly. What the deuce! Let us go to the bottom of it! We must scent out the truth; dig in the earth for it, and seize it. Then it gives you exquisite joys. Then you grow strong, and you laugh. I am square on the bottom, I am. Immortality, Bronze, is a chance, a waiting for dead men's shoes.
"What a charming promise! Trust to it, if you like! What a fine lot Adam has! We are souls, and we shall be angels, with blue wings on our shoulder-blades. Do come to my assistance: is it not the Hisuians who say that the blessed shall travel from star to star? Very well. We shall be the grasshoppers of the stars. And then, besides, we shall see Arceus. Ta, ta, ta! What twaddle all these paradises are! Arceus is a nonsensical monster. I would not say that in the assembly, egad! But I may whisper it among friends. To sacrifice the world for paradise is to let slip the prey for the shadow. Be the dupe of the infinite! I'm not such a fool. I am a naught. I call myself Jonathan Rowell Cypress, professor. Did I exist before my birth? No. Shall I exist after death? No. What am I? A little dust collected in an organism. What am I to do on this earth? The choice rests with me: suffer or enjoy. Whither will suffering lead me?
"To nothingness; but I shall have suffered. Whither will enjoyment lead me? To nothingness; but I shall have enjoyed myself. My choice is made. One must eat or be eaten. I shall eat. It is better to be the tooth than the grass. Such is my wisdom. After which, go whither I push thee, the grave-digger is there; the Pantheon for some of us: all falls into the great hole. End. Finis. Total liquidation. This is the vanishing-point. Death is death, believe me. I laugh at the idea of there being any one who has anything to tell me on that subject. Fables of nurses; bugaboo for children; Arceus for men. No; our tomorrow is the night. Beyond the tomb there is nothing but equal nothingness. You have been a saint, you have been a sinner; it makes no difference. That is the truth. Then live your life, above all things. Make use of your I while you have it. In truth, Bronze, I tell you that I have a philosophy of my own, and I have my philosophers. I don't let myself be taken in with that nonsense. Of course, there must be something for those who are down; for the barefooted beggars, knife-grinders, and miserable wretches. Legends, chimeras, the soul, immortality, paradise, the stars, are provided for them to swallow. They gobble it down. They spread it on their dry bread. He who has nothing else has the good Arceus, God. That is the least he can have. I oppose no objection to that; but I reserve Cypress for myself. The good Arceus is good for the populace."
Bronze clapped his hands. "That's talking!" he exclaimed. "What an excellent and really marvelous thing is this materialism! Not everyone who wants it can have it. Ah! When one does have it, one is no longer a dupe, one does not stupidly allow one's self to be exiled like a convert, nor stoned like a martyr, nor burned alive like any number of Arceans. Those who have succeeded in procuring this admirable materialism have the joy of feeling themselves irresponsible, and of thinking that they can devour everything without uneasiness; places, positions, dignities, power, whether well or ill-acquired, lucrative recantations, useful treacheries, savory capitulations of conscience, and that they shall enter the tomb with their digestion accomplished. How agreeable that is! I do not say that with reference to you, Cypress. Nevertheless, it is impossible for me to refrain from congratulating you. You great scientists have, so you say, a philosophy of your own, and for yourselves, which is exquisite, refined, accessible to the rich alone, good for all sauces, and which seasons the voluptuousness of life admirably. This philosophy has been extracted from the depths, and unearthed by special seekers. But you are good-natured princes, and you do not think it a bad thing that belief in the good God should constitute the philosophy of the people, very much as the 'goose stuffed with chestnuts' is the 'truffled turkey' of the poor. You have also told me of your reasoning for your appetites concerning women."
"Woman," resumed Cypress; "distrust her. Woe to him who yields himself to the unstable heart of woman! Woman is perfidious and disingenuous. She detests the serpent from professional jealousy. The serpent is the shop over the way! Bronze, a second piece of advice: do not marry; marriage is a graft; it takes well or ill; avoid that risk. But bah! What am I saying? I am wasting my words. Girls are incurable on the subject of marriage, and all that we wise men can say will not prevent the dress-makers and the shoe-stitchers from dreaming of husbands studded with diamonds."
"Those very words the serpent would say," said Bronze.
They both laughed. Know, dear reader, that Cypress was lying concerning his materialism. He was, in actuality, very spiritual, as far as that can go, and believed in the afterlife. Why, you ask? That will be made known later. But keep in mind that he was not sincere about much that he said, though in the cup he drank from many lies were mixed with many half-truths. It would never be drawn from his lips.
Cypress gave a smile of fatherly overindulgence. "I have here a Poke Ball," he said, reaching into a pocket, "which has inside of it, you will see, a Charmander. It has never had a trainer, though I have bred it for such arrangements as battle. You may care to train with it at your leisure. If you are satisfied, then you may leave."
"A Charmander?" Bronze took the Poke Ball and looked into the plaz covering. There it was: a little orange sprite, dipped in brumous shadow, suspended like an etherized fly in its little dwelling-place. It was suddenly precious to Bronze, like a little child. The reptiloid face was almost reckoned to an infant. The boy's face expressed the sum total of surprise it is possible to have by seeing something you have seen before. He wondered where the Pokemon's mother and father were. Perhaps they were in the holding zoo, a few steps away? Or had they already died, ravaged by the slow decays of captivity, to have their still corpses poked and prodded by many groping instruments in the white-gloved hands of some nameless cadre of amoral Men? He would never know.
"This is the first time I've really owned a Pokemon," said Bronze. "Now, don't misunderstand me, professor. My father has given me several rentals to practice with. My plans require some battling skill, you know. But what about it!" He affixed the Poke Ball to a magnetic strip on his belt. "You're a fascinating fellow, Cypress. A very fascinating fellow."
"For my station, no," said Cypress. "I am the median among learned Men. It is you who are unique. Most could not defend their faith against the groundspring of words I poured forth. Bland and cold to a luminant mind such as yours, they seemed. Well said, Bronze! Well said! You might even be a religious reformer, (though I cannot see you behind a pulpit) if you were not to be a politician. Go on and meet your parents. I have duties to attend."
"I'm sorry to delay you, sir," said Bronze, "but about Jake? There is no good my looking at the form of agreement until that question is settled. I should feel compelled to refuse any position which did not involve working side by side with him."
"There will be only one Rorian Pokedex Holder," said Cypress, "yet that does not mean you cannot travel with whomever you wish. Bring that other boy along, if it is your heart's desire. So! Philosophy and theosophy and hedonism and go-your-own-way-ism. This whole tale opens up a very interesting question about which I should like to have a quite informal and confidential chat with you on some future occasion. For the moment, Bronze, do not regard anything I have said as final. If you cared to call on me tomorrow, I will perhaps give you some more advice."
Bronze, feeling that he had accomplished enough in one talk, left the room. Apparently Cypress really did like him and was willing to pay a high price with the Association to keep him. He came out of the laboratory and found his parents waiting for him on the green lawn with Jake.
...
"Your Pokemon is beautiful," said Lily. The Charmander had been sent out to the grass and had been surveying Bronze with a modest cordiality, in which one could have distinguished, possibly, that humility which is so fitting when one is in the ownership of another.
"Yes," said Robert. Then to the Charmander: "You will grow strong. Obey your trainer and love him. Fear nothing and remember Arceus."
Presently, they left the road beyond the laboratory and went over across the grass and among trees and finally came to rest in a sort of little grassy bay with a fir thicket on one side and a group of beeches on the other. There were wet cobwebs and a rich autumnal smell all round them. Then all four sat together in the back of Lily's car and there was some unstrapping of baskets, and then sandwiches and a little flask of sherry and finally hot chocolate. Jake was beginning to enjoy himself.
"Now!" Bronze said, sitting next to the Charmander. It seemed tame, though it held Bronze's eye far longer than any other Pokemon he had yet seen. "This Pokemon reminds me of a story I once heard, of the Hisuian kind."
"Let's hear it," said Robert. "We've got all day, or till eight."
"Alexandros was the name of Adaman the Great's father," began Bronze. "He was a tamer of wild Pokemon in the North; for there were many at that time in the land. He captured a white Rapidash and it grew quickly to a horse strong, and fair, and proud. No man could tame it. When Alexandros dared to mount it, it bore him away, and at last threw him, and Alexandros' head struck a rock, and so he died. He was then only two and forty years old, and his son a youth of sixteen.
"Adaman vowed that he would avenge his father. He hunted long for the Rapidash, and at last he caught sight of him; and his companions expected that he would try to come within bowshot and kill him. But when they drew near, Adaman stood up and called in a loud voice: 'Come hither, Mansbane, and get a new name!' To their wonder the Rapidash looked towards Adaman, and came and stood before him, and Adaman said: 'Snowhoof I name you. You loved your freedom, and I do not blame you for that. But now you owe me a great weregild, and you shall surrender your freedom to me until your life's end.'
"Then Adaman mounted him, and Snowhoof submitted; and Adaman rode him home without bit or bridle, and he rode him in like fashion ever after. The Rapidash understood all that men said, though he would allow no man but Adaman to mount him. It was upon Snowhoof that Adaman rode to the Battle of the Lake of Rage, for that Pokemon proved as long-lived as Hisuian Men, and so were his descendants. These were the Free Rapidash of Easternesse, who would bear no one but the Lord of the Diamond Clan or his sons. Men said of them that the Lord of Life, who is called Xerneas, must have brought their sire from East over the Sea."
"What a tale," said Lily. "This Pokemon will grow to be a mighty dragon, such that once crawled about, taking what they wished and slaying whatever heroes opposed them. Taming Pokemon is like taming a thunderbolt. Bronze, what will you name it?"
"Nothing," said Bronze. "Charmander it will be forever. Let us come to an understanding why. It will be confused in battle when facing another Pokemon, you say. Not with the training I will give it. There are many other Pokemon named Charmander, you say. Yes, and for good reason. Do you wonder why most nations have the same names for Pokemon? It is no accident. Their names, and the sounds they make, are memories of the first language spoken before Time, before the ruin of Babel. It was a language that had a meaning inherent to itself, not begotten by human tradition, however long. Uxie herself crafted it out of the mind of the Original One. Therefore there is a reason that this being that is now entrusted to me is called by history a Charmander, and Arceus has his purpose, even though we cannot see it. As I learn to love Charmander so will I learn to love Arceus more."
"If you are thinking of battles," said Robert, "then why not have one now? This Charmander is green as green can be, so they say. I want to see how you'll be able to handle it. A future Champion must be master over man and Pokemon, if the Plan is to work."
It has not been mentioned that a great part of the Plan was for Bronze to compete in and win the First Rorian Pokemon League. I will first say that he never became Champion, though the Plan still succeeded. Now for the League. Being the first of its kind, the turnout was reported to be heavy. Trainers of fortune and selfsame mercenaries and other bravados were journeying over the old trade paths to whatever city the Association had constructed a Gym (eight of them) within. The Chairman previous to the current Chairman had laid much of the path for the League and traveled abroad managing diplomacy with the Rorian folk, but was now an invalid who could not travel much at all and was also out of office. There were also eight Gym Leaders, Rorians of the native blood, and they were all remarkable in their own way: or at least that was said. The Champion and Elite Four were not as of yet revealed to the public, so not to spoil the novelty till the Tournament, though Bronze had heard whispers.
He knew that the wife of the old Chairman was a curious woman in her way; a friend of the great native Arcean mystic on Crescent Island called the Sura. And that's the point about the League's unpopularity. The Sura had reason to believe, or thought he had reason to believe, that a great danger was hanging over the human race. And just before the end of the confirmation process for the League's funding, just before he disappeared, he became convinced that the end would actually come because of the Pokemon League. If he is dead or not, none know. Some think he is alive, others otherwise. But his prophecy stirred up many rebellious elements against the progressive factions of the Association; these rebels were mostly old-time Rorians who fought and bled in the war against the Terramists and would not see their sovereignty peddled to soft and rich tourists from overseas. The Association said it was about patriotism, but nobody believed that this was the cause for the League, and so its unpopularity steadily increased.
It was this League and the relative lack of any concessions around it that caused our current Chairman to be so maligned. He did not, perhaps, deserve it. On a purely administrative ground he would be considered competent in better days. On a moral judgment, he was better than most. But he was poor at dealing with Rorians. The fact is that the Chairman displeased them. This was perhaps because the Rorians hated luxury. This Chairman was foreign, surrounded in his offices by beautiful clocks and beautiful women and beautiful carpets and beautiful liveries. The Rorians thought these were great trouble in officials. The Chairman paid little attention to these superfluities, the people and civil servants crying incessantly in his ears: "There are people who are hungry! There are people who are cold! There are poor people! There are poor people!"
Let us remark, by the way, that Bronze thought the hatred of luxury was not an intelligent hatred. This hatred would involve the hatred of the arts. Nevertheless, Bronze was convinced, in the behavior of public officials, that luxury is wrong, except in connection with representations and ceremonies. It seems to reveal habits which have very little that is charitable or very serving about them. An opulent accountant is a contradiction unless he is corrupt or ungenerous. The lord must keep close to the poor. Now, can one come in contact incessantly night and day with all this distress, all these misfortunes, and this poverty, without having about one's own person a little of that misery, like the dust of labor? Is it possible to imagine a man near a brazier who is not warm? Can one imagine a workman who is working near a furnace, and who has neither a singed hair, nor blackened nails, nor a drop of sweat, nor a speck of ashes on his face? The first proof of charity in the politician, in the elected one, especially, is poverty.
We will hear more about the Chairman later. Soon we will meet him. But Bronze was in a moment of party spirit, and he was ready for a battle. This shadow of passions in the moment was moving him to violence. "I will fight Jake," said Bronze. "Father, lend him your Unfezant, would you? We need an even match."
It is worth telling the custom for Pokemon battles in Roria since it is different than in other regions. Firstly the challenger would say their lineage and titles, along with whatever grievance they had, before standing apart and having their Pokemon fight for them. It was considered bad form to attack the human trainer, but at times it was tolerated and the eyes of the mediators passed it over if favor was not on the side of the assailed. The winner would take the lands and precious things of the loser, along with their women, though this was seldom done in later days. The family of the defeated was left with very little at all. Now only money was given, save in the east of Roria where the old law still was practiced. The loser was also strongly expected, if not commanded, to care for the opponent's injured Pokemon along with their own.
Bronze had already fought many battles with loaned Pokemon. The Charmander was young and tender but the boy was not. There was a club on the west side of the town where men could fight. He brawled with Alolans and Kalosi, foreigners, eastern Rorians, and Men so evil and wretched and foul that spoke in dirty tongues, so whenever the boy stood over his defeated foe, fists clenched, their Pokemon languishing on the besmirched arena floor, he felt as though he had won victory and delightful vengeance for the human race itself.
...
Bronze and Jake got up and walked to an open space where, hopefully, no fires or devastation would start in case of some stray blast of fire or sorcery. They bowed to each other and had great fun speaking of their honors. Jake cried that he was of the House of Albans, descended from the sorcerer-clans of old, and he fought for his honor. Bronze said that he was of the House of Tercano, the heir to the Chiefdom of Logaria-in-exile, and many other titles besides, though Jake did not know what they meant.
Charmander was seized with a distinct shiver as it saw the opponent against it. Bronze recognized the august and touching features presented by the face of a little being set to battle with a greater one. The Pokemon under his command knew that its pride was teetering on the brink of abyss. The impressive profile of the Unfezant was undoubtedly older and stronger, a potency different, than the small Charmander. Bronze, plainly, did not think he would win, though he would certainly try. Unfezant was more robust, but Bronze's training was more skilled and bitter than Jake's.
The first blow went to Jake. The bird began to play some song of power and drowned both the coughing within and the harsher noises without the monotonously ill-tempered chirp, the shuffling of wings, and the vibrating shocks coming from its beak so strong that with which heavy loads could be flung from time to time. It was the move Supersonic. The soil curled and shook, moving little plumes of the stuff above the green grass and causing Charmander to tumble like a cast stone.
But the blow had, as Jake feared, not properly confused Charmander, and then came fire and embers and smoke like incense from a censer issuing from Charmander's mouth and nostrils as it righted itself. Like most dragons, (save for the great cold-drakes) Charmander had two small holes at the back of its throat where the fire-gland was; these gaps were called fire-holes. The young Pokemon's fire was colder than its ancestors in magical antiquity long ago, and its smoke lacier and greyer, but Unfezant, against the burning flames of its foe, wavered. It believed that before its seniority no impish whelp would dare ruffle its feathers, nor scorch its precious fur, nor darken its plumage.
Bronze cried to charge. Unfezant was still wracked with a soft shivering that Jake did not know how to master. Like a red-hot iron bullet Charmander came at a run, looking for a moment like a brave little brute, and tore at its enemy with its claws. They did not pierce flesh, but they did rend feathers and chip beaks so that there was pain. Under its down the Unfezant grew pale. It was not as supremely confident as before. Now the fire of Charmander was preying upon its very body, the grass was becoming blackened, and the little lizard was, as biology and design had made it, a perfect organic furnace. There was a good deal of tussle in this, and pecks here and there whenever Jake commanded it, but he had been supremely overconfident and so lost the victory.
Unfezant did not faint. It surrendered. With unscrupulous politeness it bowed its neck and gave Charmander the battle. This defeat made the Unfezant dream for a while of revenge and brilliant pay-backs and achievements that would one day befall the Charmander and boy that snubbed it. If it was ever cruel again it would be to inferiors. The real reason for its loss was that it was not trying and Charmander was. The little dragon had worn itself out; if the Unfezant had not been so tender then certainly it would have won a war of fatigue.
Bronze laughed and sang a few staves:
...
"Celebi brings Charmander to Hades' domain, and others with him.
The human herd weeps and laments,
And Celebi keeps them on her horse, bound by its hoods,
The wind of valor, the bird of beauty.
And as if he had not been trodden by Celebi's foot,
Charmander, fearless, gazes at the horsewoman!
'I am Charmander, Celebi, I do not succumb to the years.
You touched me, yet you did not sense me on the marble threshing floors, did you?
I am the invincible soul of Charizard's kin,
I brought the fire of the dragons to Roria.
I do not perish in Tartarus, I only withdraw there to rest.
I reappear in life and awake nations!'"
...
Let us learn the meaning of that old lay. It is held true by the wise that Pokemon, when they die, do not go to Arceus but are rather sent to Celebi to be re-housed and re-born in a new body. So is their fate tied to the world and everything that happens with it; also they will not face judgment till the End. Men are appointed to die once and then face condemnation; not so with the other race belonging to the Children of Arceus. (The Children of Arceus are Men and Pokemon, the Followers and Firstborn.) The meaning of this boast, the truimph of a deathless fighter, can be guessed accordingly. Celebi is also the warden and psychopomp of the dead.
"You are brave," said Bronze, holding Charmander in his arms. "Because of this I will honor you forever." The Pokemon stared into his eyes with profound attention and also an animal fondness. Pokemon love is different from human love and can sometimes be mistaken for brutality.
"I daresay you've won," said Jake. "That Charmander is good at manhandling. You don't imagine I didn't notice that."
According to Jake's thought this was the point after the battle at which he should have begun to take a strong line by speaking of his own skill. But he did not feel the same now that he was in defeat. Bronze had always treated him with careful cushioning and Jake had always felt that Bronze disliked his commentary. This had not made him dislike Bronze. It had only made him uneasily talkative in Bronze's presence and anxious to please. Vindictiveness was by no means one of Jake's vices, unlike the Pokemon he had commanded. For Jake liked to be liked.
"You fought well, friend," said Bronze. "But I was in need of everything, and you had it. You should have tried harder."
"We haven't so much time to waste, you know," said Lily. "Robert, you tell me that Cypress is already complaining that women's minds are less accessible. And according to his own metapsychology, or whatever you call the jargon, that means he thinks we're already falling under the influence of the other side."
"Right," said Robert. He looked at Bronze and then said: "He wouldn't be able to make atheistic converts of us, Bronze. You know that he wants to. He believes that he has made inroads and the preachers are changing our minds."
"Come now," said Lily, "the gift!"
"Exactly. The moment has arrived," replied Robert. "The hour for giving my son a surprise has struck. He is victorious in battle and can command his Pokemon. Jake, could you wait for us a moment? There are some medicines for Unfezant in the glove box for you to use."
Jake left to the car with Unfezant. "So, what is this gift?" said Bronze, looking at his parents resolutely.
"It begins with a kiss on the brow," said Lily. Gravely she bestowed her love on Bronze, and then stood aside as Robert came near with a token he had produced form his pocket.
…
"This is the gift," he said. There in his outreached and splayed hand was a brick, or a brick-shaped something. It was about two inches lengthwise and an inch wide. It had the color of bronze; indeed, it seemed to be forged from the stuff. It was smooth and polished so that it glittered, and the reflected sunlight was like bright argent on its surface. There was a little string of twine attached to the brick so that it could be worn around the neck. Bronze seriously believed for an instant that it was a piece of jewelry from Lily's accessory drawer.
Bronze took it by the string. The brick was warm to his hand, and he swore it grew dimmer, almost shrinking in size. Not really, though, because the dimensions were still the same; but there was a specter of shrunkenness about it. It was fair and glinted with a lustrous sheen. Bronze thought that it looked altogether precious. But still he thought that something was wrong with the brick and this feeling encompassed him hideously. Ancestral impulses in his body that were in many ways wiser than his mind directed his hands to cast it away
Hide the Brick, fool! Bronze recalled the dream. He wrapped his fist around the little thing; no doubt his meditations on the earlier portent that came with his sleep and the slight and sudden horror of touching the brick were changing his face noticeably. "Oh, don't be alarmed," said Lily. "This pretty little thing showed up at the dig one day. It was all amid a huge chunk of some quartzite. We thought to give it to you as a far-well offering, of sorts."
"Once I polished it up we found that it has some strange properties," said Robert. "The spontaneous cooling and heating you doubtless have observed. It's also heavier than a piece of bronze that size should be. We don't even know if it is bronze, at least not by scientific methods. None of the instruments we used could break off even a sliver. And watch! Bronze, would you have Charmander make a fire?"
At Bronze's command a small blaze ignited, sticking to the ground like flaming pitch. Robert took the brick and cast it into the fire. Bronze gave a cry. Soon Robert stamped out the embers and took the brick in his hand.
"It's quite cool," said Robert. "This small fire has not even heated it up. Larger ones would not do any otherwise. I would even say there's a little magic to it, frightfully strong magic, mind you, for this day and age." When he returned it to Bronze the string had crumbled in the fire so that the boy could not wear it.
"Keep it as a memory of us," said Lily. "Whenever you despair on the road and foes attack and torment you, look at this and remember all that you love. It will be a light in dark places."
"Only this charge we lay on you," said Robert. "You are not to cast it aside, not lightly, and never to give it to any other. Lily's dream alone has commanded that."
Then leaning in close he whispered: "You know that the Enemy desires it. I don't know why. Keep it secret and safe. All his thought is bent on it, and sooner or later, later if it can be helped, you will find one of his servants trying to take the brick. Do not let them!"
"Who is the Enemy?" whispered Bronze. "What am I looking for?"
"Nothing but a phantom," said Robert. "Something frightful and unknown, a foe to scare you and keep you on your toes. No doubt there will be wicked men you will have to face. If I was to give you advice, be wary of those that look fair but feel foul."
"And that's the gift!" said Lily. "Now, off you go! There's no more time for you to waste, not that everything is in order. Be ready to leave."
Bronze did return to his house for the purpose of leaving it. He was to fight in the League, as we have said; he was packing for the long journey ahead, and he was now a Pokedex Holder.
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Eclipse Alliance Applied Solutions Headquarters
New Institute for Co-ordinated Experimentation, or N.I.C.E, Eclipse research division
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Men called him the Hood. It was a name that breathed death on the human race and sucked all joy. Not despite this but because of this, the terrible gravitation sucked and tugged and fascinated his slaves toward him. He was one of those calculating and possibly omnicidal enemies of humanity that dimly occurred from time to time through the eras, accompanied by a genius intellect, an impeccably immaculate conscience, and an irrational disposition in favor of military operation.
The approval of one's own conscience is a very beady draught: and especially for those who are not accustomed to it. The Hood was skilled at getting men drunk on it. Within two minutes after falling under his sway a servant would pass from the first involuntary sense of liberation to a conscious attitude of courage, and thence into unrestrained heroics. The picture of the Hood as hero and martyr, as a Christ of sorts, still coolly playing his hand even in the enemy's kitchen, rose up before the initiates promising that it could blot out forever those other, and unendurable pictures of themselves which had haunted them for the last few hours of conversation.
It wasn't everyone, after all, who could have resisted an invitation like the Hood's once they really knew what he was doing. An invitation that beckoned you right across the frontiers of human life into something that people had been trying to find since the beginning of the world…a touch on that infinitely secret cord that was the real nerve of all history. How it would have attracted many kinds of Men at once!
The immediate environment associated with this dark director was something like a study. There was a desk, several telephones, bookshelves along the walls, and a cold and blackened plasma-fire grate. Behind the desk was a window that looked out onto a room many times larger than a football field. Down in that cavernous space were machines to produce industrial resin, slides of durasteel sheet-iron to be welded together, orange dye and threading for uniforms, soldered steel, and weapons. Several thousand were down there, toiling, toiling, wholly voluntarily.
The use of underground space for industry and several new production techniques that the Hood had introduced had effected a revolution. This very small change had, in fact, prodigiously reduced the cost of the raw material, which had rendered it possible in the first place, to raise the price of manufacture, a benefit to the organization; in the second place, to improve the workmanship, an advantage to the consumer (the manufacturers); in the third place, to sell at a lower price to interested buyers, while trebling the profit, which was a benefit to the manufacturer. That manufacturer was the Eclipse Alliance, and the Hood was the human face of that organization.
Let us come to an understanding of what that human face looked like. The Hood was tall enough to frighten. He wore one long cape and named-for hood that would have been dandified if their presence was not so deathly frightening. His voice was serious, like a watchdog. When he laughed, which was rare and his laugh was terrible to behold, his thin lips parted to reveal not only his teeth, perfect and white, but his gums, and around his nose formed many creases like on the muzzle of a wild beast. His brow was not visible; it disappeared beneath his hood: his eyes were not visible, since they were lost under his hood, his chin was not visible, for it was plunged in his hood-clasp: his hands were not visible; they were covered by black gloves; and his Poke Balls were not visible; he carried them under his cloak. There were telltale bulges here and there to mark their positions. But when the occasion presented itself, there was suddenly seen to emerge from all this shadow, as from an ambuscade, a face strange to see, revelatory to a few and shocking to more. He rarely ever did this in private and never in public.
This man was composed of three very simple and three very good sentiments, comparatively; but he rendered them bad, by dint of exaggerating them, love for order, love for authority, and love for love; and in his eyes, murder, robbery, all crimes, are only forms of rebellion. His whole life hung on these two words: order and suffering. He had introduced a straight line into what is the most crooked thing in the world; he possessed the conscience of his usefulness, the religion of his functions, and he was a spy as other men are priests. Woe to the man who fell into his hands! He would have arrested his own father, if the latter had escaped from the prisons, and would have denounced his mother, if she had returned from the grave. And he would have done it with that sort of inward satisfaction which is conferred by virtue. It was an implacable duty of his to re-order the world into the shaping of the higher powers, a pitiless thing lying in wait, a serious honesty, the marble torturer, brutality and the brutal know it.
It is sometimes said that this man was not evil, but rather pragmatic, doing terrible things for some high and ultimate purposes. They are wrong. He was almost wholly evil by this point and degenerated further into unredeemable rubbish by another. In the moment that he is shown at he is the closest possible to absolute destruction as is possible and to still have some of the image of Logos within his mind. Evil was not evil in his thought and the actions that made demonic deeds real were to him very good. In his mind, values are now mere natural phenomena. Judgments of value are to be produced in society as parts of biological conditioning. Whatever "good" there is will be the product, not the motive, of certain deeds. The Hood was emancipated from that "good". Stepping outside of Arceus, he had stepped into the void. It is one more part of Nature which he had conquered. The ultimate springs of human action are no longer, for him, something given. He has surrendered like electricity; it is the function of the gods to decide the fate of Men. I will be generous. He was not an evil man. He was not really a man, in the old sense, at all.
The Hood was talking to a man who was nearly as bad as he was. Less bad, because he was following orders and not making up fresh sin. This other man was named Eric and he was kneeling. His appearance is not important presently; I will tell it later.
"I am the last person, Eric, to interfere with your private pleasures," said the Hood, "but I wish for restraint in this operation. Once you take them, get out quickly and back to this site. Any stay, even for a few minutes longer, and you may find a whole headquarters of the False One. They would round up your whole gang."
"But is it a suitable occasion for torture?" asked Eric.
"I do not think," said the Hood, "that I or the Great Djinn could be induced to regard torture as the only possible miscarriage. Once the slightest resistance on this man or woman's part develops, it is not, in my opinion, reasonable to expect success by the method you have historically employed, using cigarettes. As you are aware, I always deplore anything that is not perfectly humane; but that is quite consistent with the position that if more drastic expedients have to be used then they must be used thoroughly. Moderate pain, such as any ordinary degree of endurance can resist, is always a mistake. It is no true kindness to the prisoner. The more scientific and, may I add, more civilized facilities for coercive examination which we have placed at your disposal here, might have been successful. Serums and certain Pokemon, along with hacksaws and thumbscrews. I am not speaking officially, Admin Eric, and I would not in any sense attempt to anticipate the reactions of the real Head of this organization, the Djinn. But I should not be doing my duty if I failed to remind you that complaints from that quarter have already been made (though not, of course, minuted) as to you? Your tendency to allow a certain, ah, emotional excitement in the disciplinary or remedial side of your work to distract you from the demands of policy."
"You won't find anyone who can do the job so well as me unless they can get some kick out of it," said Eric sulkily. "Anyway, what does the Great Djinn want me for, anyway? I've been standing here all morning and I might be allowed some breakfast. I'm feeling sick."
"The path of duty, Admin," said the Hood, "can never be an easy one. You will not forget that punctuality is one of the points on which emphasis has sometimes been laid. And if you are sick, go to Emrett. He will give you some X54 at once."
"Emrett is in southern Roria," said Eric. "And it was only a momentary spell."
Eric gathered that for Emrett, the Alliance's second-in-command, the philosophical and scientific side of the organization was the really important side. It existed to relieve the ordinary executive of what might be called all sanitary cases, a category which ranged from vaccination to charges of unnatural vice, from which, as had pointed out, it was only a step to bringing in all cases of blackmail to their liking. As regards to crime in general, they had already popularised in the press the idea that the Eclipse Alliance, being a scientific and humanitarian organization, should be allowed to experiment pretty largely in the hope of discovering how far humane, remedial treatment could be substituted for the old notion of "retributive or "vindictive" punishment.
That was where a lot of legal Red Tape stood in their way. "But there are only two news organizations we don't control," said Emrett once, "and we'll smash them. You've got to get the ordinary man into the state in which he says 'Sadism' automatically when he hears the word 'Punishment.' And then one would have victory." Eric did not immediately follow this. But Emrett pointed out that what had hampered every police force: up to date was precisely the idea of deserved punishment. For desert was always finite: you could do so much to the criminal and no more. Remedial treatment, on the other hand, need to have no fixed limit; it could go on till it had effected a cure, and those who were carrying it out would decide when that was, And if the cure were humane and desirable, how much more prevention? Soon anyone who had ever been in the hands of the police at all would come under the control of the Eclipse Alliance; in the end, every citizen, "And that's where you and I come in, Sonny," Emrett had added, tapping Eric's chest with his forefinger. "There's no distinction in the long run between our work and sociology. The real thing is that this time we're going to get science applied to social problems and backed by the whole force of the state, just as war has been backed by the whole force of the state in the past. One hopes, of course, that it'll find out more than the old free-lance science did; but what's certain is that it can do more. You and I've got to work hand in hand."
This had brought Eric back to his doubts, when he first joined, as to whether he was really being given a job at a reputable organization, and, if so, what it was. The Hood had warned him that Emrett was a dangerous man. "There are three people you want to be very cautious about," he said. "One is me, one is my master, and the last is old Emrett." But he had laughed at his fears in general. "You're in all right, Admin," he said. "Only don't be too particular about what exactly you've got to do. You'll find out as it comes along. Emrett doesn't like people who try to pin him down. There's no good saying you've come here to do this and you won't do that. The game's too fast just at present for that sort of thing. You've got to make yourself useful. And don't believe everything you're told."
"Am I being judged, my lord?" said Eric to the Hood, returning to the present.
"Judged?" said the Hood. "I've never judged anything in my life, to the best of my knowledge, except at a flower show. It's all a question of taste. You came here because you thought it had something to do with science. Now that you find it's something more like a political conspiracy, you don't go home. If you had wanted to join a conspiracy, then this is your choice. This organization all depends on what a man likes. If you are in the lower ranks and a good citizen then it's quite fun to work for us and the benefits are enormous in public life. If you belong to the higher-ups, like you and me, then you have to learn to love the company of monsters and genetic eunuchs and mad priests and that sorcerer Emrett (his grandmother would have boxed his ears if she was still alive). Of course, there's nothing left to be said."
"But are we winning, my lord?" said Eric.
"Winning!" laughed the Hood. "Winning or losing! Those are two views. There are a dozen views about everything until you know the answer. Then there's never more than one. But that isn't always true. You'll do yourself no good by thinking about the really grand plan. But I suppose that we are advancing. We already have a great deal of control over Roria. Not enough to say that we've occupied and conquered it, though we're getting near to that point. We control the police, the judiciary, the charities, the electrical system, the elections, and the bloody plumbing in most metropolitan districts. Have you heard of a man called Jonathan Rowell Cypress? I've listened to him and read his books. lThe things he says the Association does are actually what we do. No time to give men different opinions to think about! It's always a Left-or-Right thing. We can do nearly anything we want. A minority religion doesn't like one book or publication? Destroy it. Burn it all. Fire is bright and fire is clean."
"The two targets," said Eric, slowly. "They have a son. I've heard from Harry that he has a Pokedex. I saw a picture of him but I can't remember his name. I also heard that he was different. Different how?"
"Bronze Tercano?" said the Hood. He sat down and assumed a drawling speech now that the demands of policy and reprimand were fulfilled. "Here or there, a boy like him is bound to occur. We have a record of his family. We've watched them carefully. Heredity and environment are funny things. You can't rid yourselves of all the odd ducks in just a few years. The home environment can undo a lot you try to do at school; he doesn't even go to the public ones. That's why we've made the legislature lower the kindergarten age year after year until now we're almost snatching them from the cradle. We had some false alarms on them, certainly. Bronze has a mixed record; antisocial. He's a time bomb. The family has been feeding his subconscious, I'm sure, from what I saw of his school record. He didn't want to know how a thing was done, but why. That can be embarrassing. You ask Why to a lot of things and you wind up very unhappy indeed, if you keep at it.
"Luckily, queer ones like him don't happen often, with us controlling the school curriculum. We know how to nip most of them in the bud, early. You can't build a house without nails and wood. If you don't want a house built, hide the nails and wood. If you don't want a man unhappy politically, don't give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none. Let him forget there is such a thing as war. If the Government is inefficient, top-heavy, and tax-mad, better it be all those than people worry over it. Rorians still do but we shut them up. Peace, Eric. Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of regional capitals or how much corn Unova grew last year. Cram them full of noncombustible data, chock them so damned full of 'facts' they feel stuffed, but absolutely 'brilliant' with information. Then they'll feel they're thinking, they'll get a sense of motion without moving. And they'll be happy, because facts of that sort don't change. Don't give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy. Any man who can take a TV wall apart and put it back together again, and most men can nowadays, is happier than any man who tries to slide-rule, measure, and equate the universe, which just won't be measured or equated without making man feel bestial and lonely. I know, I've tried it; to hell with it. So bring on your clubs and parties, your acrobats and magicians, your dare-devils, jet cars, motorcycle helicopters, your sex and heroin, and more of everything to do with automatic reflex. If the drama is bad, if the film says nothing, if the play is hollow, sting me with the drug, loudly. I'll think I'm responding to the play, when it's only a tactile reaction to vibration. But I don't care. I just like solid entertainment."
"Well," said Eric, "take the lid off!" He examined his eternal matchbox, the lid of which said GUARANTEED: ONE BILLION LIGHTS IN THIS IGNITER, and began to strike the chemical match abstractedly, blow out, strike, blow out, strike, speak a few words, blow out. He looked at the flame. He blew, he looked at the smoke. "When will I be leaving with the brute squad?"
"Tomorrow," said the Hood. He watched Eric puff his pipe. "Every Eclipse Admin, sooner or later, hits this. They only need understanding, to know how the wheels run. Need to know the history of our profession, and how things are going to end. Emrett doesn't feed it to rookies like he used to. A shame. I'll let you in on some more."
The Hood took a full minute to settle himself in and think back for what he wanted to say. "When did it all start, you ask, this organization of ours, how did it come about, where, when? Well, I'd say it really got started around about a thing fourteen or so years ago called the Second Rocket War. That was when old Giovanni was still hopping about, using Deoxys to find his son Silver. The Pokedex Holders, most of them, were turned into stone statues by the end of it. Unfortunately, they didn't stay that way. My master will say Team Eclipse was founded earlier. The fact is we didn't get along well until Team Plasma came along with their doctrine of Pokemon liberation. That allowed our teachings to have mass. We had something to feed to the common man: the oppression of the Association, charity, love for Pokemon, humanism, all that controlled propaganda.
"I and Emrett and the Great Djinn have gotten us on top in the shadow world. We control the Association's operations, if not the Association itself. School is shortened, discipline relaxed, philosophies, histories, and languages dropped, grammar and spelling gradually neglected, and finally almost completely ignored. Life is immediate, the job counts, and pleasure lies all about after work. Why learn anything save pressing buttons, pulling switches, fitting nuts and bolts? The zipper displaces the button and a man lacks just that much time to think while dressing at dawn, a philosophical hour, and thus a melancholy hour.
"More sports for everyone, group spirit, fun, and you don't have to think, eh? Organize and organize and super organize super-super sports. More cartoons in books. More pictures. The mind drinks less and less. Impatience. Highways full of crowds going somewhere, somewhere, somewhere, nowhere. The gasoline refugee! Towns turn into motels, people in nomadic surges from place to place, following the moon tides, living tonight in the room where you slept this noon and I the night before.
"Now let's take up the minorities in our civilization, shall we? Bigger the population, the more minorities. Don't step on the toes of the dog-lovers, the cat-lovers, doctors, lawyers, merchants, chiefs, Arceans, Pokephiles, remnant Logarians, second-generation Kantorim, Unovans, Sinnoians, Rorians, Alolans, Oblivians, people from Orre or Kalos. The people in this book, this play, and this TV serial are not meant to represent any actual painters, cartographers, or mechanics anywhere. The bigger your market, Eric, the less you handle controversy, remember that! All the minor-minor-minorities with their navels to be kept clean. Authors, full of evil thoughts, lock up your typewriters. They did. Magazines became a nice blend of vanilla tapioca. Books, so the damned snobbish critics said, were dishwater. No wonder books stopped selling as much, the critics said. But the public, knowing what it wanted, spinning happily, let the comic-books survive. And the three-dimensional sex-magazines, of course. Now it is only the intellectual elite who read often. There you have it, Eric. That's what has been going on for the past ten years or so, all because of the three of us, (me, the spirit, and Emrett) tampering with the world."
"But why?" said Eric. "You said you would tell me how it would end."
"I did," said the Hood. "Have you ever heard the Great Djinn? Of course you have! He's a spirit. I have now to inform you that there are similar organisms above the level of animal life. When I say, 'above,' I am not speaking biologically. The structure of the spirit, so far as we know it, is of extreme simplicity. When I say that it is above the animal level, I mean that it is more permanent, disposes of more energy, and has greater intelligence. The New Agers call them guiding spirits. The Arceans call them demons or angels or Elohim. I call them gods. The Great Djinn is who I take my orders from. It's a top-down dictum. The real plan is control, reshaping, and finally, annihilation. I will explain.
"In order to understand fully what Man's power over Nature, and therefore the power of some men over other men, (with us at top) really means, we must picture the human race extended in time from the date of its emergence to that of its extinction. Each generation exercises power over its successors: and each, in so far as it modifies the environment bequeathed to it and rebels against tradition, resists and limits the power of its predecessors. This modifies the picture which is sometimes painted of a progressive emancipation from tradition and a progressive control of natural processes resulting in a continual increase of human power. In reality, of course, if any one age really attains, by eugenics and scientific education, the power to make its descendants what it pleases, all men who live after it are the patients of that power.
"They are weaker, not stronger: for though we may have put wonderful machines in their hands we have pre-ordained how they are to use them. And if, as is almost certain, the age which had thus attained maximum power over posterity were also the age most emancipated from tradition, it would be engaged in reducing the power of its predecessors almost as drastically as that of its successors. And we must also remember that, quite apart from this, the later a generation comes, the nearer it lives to that date at which the species becomes extinct, the less power it will have in the forward direction, because its subjects will be so few. There is therefore no question of a power vested in the race as a whole steadily growing as long as the race survives. The last men, far from being the heirs of power, will be of all men most subject to the dead hand of the great planners and conditioners and will themselves exercise the least power upon the future.
"The real picture is that of one dominant age, let us suppose the hundredth century from the Incarnation of Arceus, which resists all previous ages most successfully and dominates all subsequent ages most irresistibly, and thus is the real master of the human species. But then within this master generation (itself an infinitesimal minority of the species) the power will be exercised by a minority smaller still. Man's conquest of Nature, if the dreams of some scientific planners are realized, means the rule of a few hundred men over billions upon billions of men. There neither is nor can be any simple increase of power on Man's side. Each new power won by man is a power over man as well. Each advance leaves him weaker as well as stronger. In every victory, besides being the general who triumphs, he is also the prisoner who follows the triumphal car."
"I don't understand a word you said," said Eric dully.
The Hood walked to his desk. "You aren't supposed to. Remember how you were told not to believe everything you hear? Everything I just said was rubbish. But it also might not be. You already know that we have no dogma. Anything goes as long as you serve the Djinn. I must be getting to work. The lecture's over. I hope I've clarified things. The important thing for you to remember, Eric, is we're the Happiness Boys, the Dixie Duo, you and I and the others. We stand against the small tide of those who want to make everyone unhappy with conflicting theory and thought. We have our fingers in the dike. Hold steady. Don't let the torrent of melancholy and drear philosophy drown our world. We depend on you. I don't think you realize how important you are, we are, to our increasingly happy world as it is soon to stand. The great majority of the human race can be educated only in the sense of being given knowledge: they cannot be trained into the total objectivity of mind which is now necessary. They will always remain animals, looking at the world through the haze of their subjective reactions. Even if they could, the day for a large population has passed. It has served its function by acting as a kind of cocoon for Technocratic and Objective Man."
"But what about the Great Djinn?" said Eric. "Where is he?"
"He can be many places at once," said the Hood. "A while ago, perhaps twenty centuries back, he suffered a terrible injury. He is getting stronger, and his spirit has lost none of its former potency, but he cannot yet take visible and physical form as so to enjoy the aftereffects of direct terrorism. The real fun, he has told me, is that now he can make materialism and atheists out of Men where before he could not. Once he shows himself that the illusion will end and they will become pagans and not skeptics; at least, not yet."
"So he's been waiting an awful long time for us to come around," said Eric.
"Not waiting. He never has that experience. You and I are conscious of waiting, because we have a body that grows tired or restless, and therefore a sense of cumulative duration. Also we can distinguish duties and spare time and therefore have a conception of leisure. It is not like that with him. He has been here all this time, but you can no more call it waiting than you can call the whole of his existence waiting. You might as well say that a tree in a wood was waiting, or the sunlight waiting on the side of a hill. He can think and emote about one thing for millions of years. And then, if circumstances change, he can change immediately and begin thinking about the new topic, the way gravity can hold a rock in place for ages and then roll it down a mountain one day."
"That cleared up a few things," said Eric. "Is this why we are taking those two archeologists? Did they find something?"
"We are not yet certain," said the Hood. "We think they found two things. The Great Djinn wants them, oh, how he wants them. There is no use in trying to win them over. The two are firmly on the False One's side. Better to take them from His hands while we still can."
"The False One?" said Eric. "I thought we weren't religious here."
"Good God, man, we are extremely religious!" cried the Hood. "Don't you know that we worship the gods and the Great Djinn? I certainly do. What, do you think we are rebelling against a god that doesn't exist? Then what defeated the Great Djinn? Did he weaken himself to prove a point? If so, was it against a deity that has no power because He is void? No. Arceus is as real as your own self. The difference between us and the Arceans is that we know He can be beaten. And that's what we're going to do: control humanity, take them from His power, and then take this world and wipe the slate clean. We will make a new one. It is not in our interest, Eric, to wholly control the present state of creation, as we are already advancing swiftly toward. We are only doing it because the Great Djinn says it is necessary to bring in the new creation. We are going to win because we are superior to all the other organizations that the Great Djinn used.
"All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. Team Plasma and Team Flare came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?"
"Yes," said Eric. "We know what we are doing. The Great Djinn knows what he is doing. Slowly but surely we will remake the world in his image. Arceus will be forgotten. But we still need to overcome the last hurdles, the last resistance. Who can stop us?"
"Perhaps all our enemies could, if they united now and recognized the danger," said the Hood. "But they will not. The Pokedex Holders will see their doom at the end, and they will fight, but all the enemies they faced before were too stupid to survive. We are not and they do not know how to face us. All that I have told you is our real ideology, the ideology of progressive control, not the drivel we tell the public. Good day, Eric. You best be getting ready."
Eric bowed and left the room.