It takes ten minutes for Red to notice he’s going about things all wrong.
What’s more concerning is that after realizing that, he can’t get himself to stop.
His foot bounces against the floor as his thoughts keep jumping to solutions. Hypotheses to suggest, experiments to run, ideas to research, crosscheck, pare down. It’s not until he’s pacing around his room that he realizes he needs to calm himself, and meditates to take a step back from his thoughts and examine them as they stream by, breath by breath.
The pressure to solve this feels immense. It wouldn’t just be an (almost) novel and groundbreaking discovery, it would also give him the credibility he needs to have more time with Sabrina, and to set more lesson goals with everyone.
But he’s not going to do that by just mass guessing, and that’s really all he’s done so far. Giovanni often points out on his blog that people shouldn’t commit all their resources to finding solutions until they have reason to be confident they understand the problem, and that’s something Red completely lacks.
If a non-psychic were to ask him to explain why it’s such a big deal that someone could have part of their mind think/feel something while the rest doesn’t, he’s not sure he could do it. He feels like he understands why it’s so bizarre, but “feels like” isn’t good enough, it’s following intuition, not knowledge, and while intuition can be valuable, it can also be misleading when not trained on good data. He doesn’t actually know why it’s so impossible, it just seems like it should be because that’s what he’s used to expecting from minds; a singular intention or thought process, with any internal conflict being apparent to psychic senses as internal conflict or dissonance.
He could do more research on the topic now, try to better understand brains and thoughts and minds and partitions (no, maybe not partitions, that would still be jumping to conclusions), but he feels too antsy to do something that passive.
As he continues to focus on his breathing, continues to examine the thoughts that come by and let them go with his exhalations, he starts to notice a pattern in what he’s worried about. It’s not just that he wants to solve the problem; what he keeps imagining are the others not listening to his ideas, or outright dismissing his feedback or participation. He knows it’s likely exaggerated, but he can see how the pressure to get this right comes in part from his social concerns.
Well, he did decide to focus on those too, didn’t he? Maybe he should try that first.
Red opens his eyes, then rises and goes to slip his feet into some sandals at the door before he makes his way to Rei’s apartment, gaze down. He isn’t used to being in a group with a hierarchy, and the more he thinks about it the more he dislikes it. He didn’t mind so much back at Pallet Labs, because it was clear there that he was subordinate and why. He wanted the adults to like him, but it was easy to get their approval and friendship; he just did whatever menial tasks they needed help on, happy to absorb all the knowledge he could along the way.
Compared to having to worry about and navigate the social politics among the other students, Red finds himself missing the equal footing he was on with Blue and Leaf, even if the memories with Blue are bittersweet. He knows Blue’s new traveling group will have a hierarchy, he felt it in those days when he went to train with them at the gym; those with more badges had more status, with Blue at the top despite only having two, and Red somehow just below him despite having none. Even with his privileged position it had felt strange, and he’s glad to be out of it, even if he can admit to himself that he sometimes misses the battling and camaraderie.
For Sabrina’s students, the hierarchy is less clear. Rei and Rowan seem the most respected, but they don’t seem to get along, and Daniel is often at odds with Satori and Jason, who Red feels are the most distant from everyone but Rei, including each other. And Tatsumaki is just… there, fairly respected but not interested in anyone. As for Red, he feels like he might have the best chance befriending Rowan or Daniel, but he doesn’t particularly like Daniel, and the most valuable friend he could make would likely be Rei. It makes him feel slimy, thinking of things that way, but he reminds himself that this doesn’t mean he’s not going to try befriending the others too, and he’s definitely not going to pretend to like her if he has no reason to.
Red steps in front of her door and takes a breath, patting down his hair and checking his clothes one last time, then drops his mental shields and knocks.
The probe comes immediately. Rei tests his mental presence, and upon finding it unprotected, merges for a moment to fully sample his mood before withdrawing.
“Enter.”
Red opens the door to Rei’s apartment, which is sparsely furnished but comfortable looking, with a pair of huge beanbags taking center stage. Rei is on one of them, sitting lotus position in what looks like silk shirt and pants that seem much more comfortable than her kimono, but still elegant and expensive, with a stylized xatu embroidered on them.
“Yes?”
“Hello. I’m sorry to bother you, but I was hoping you’d have a moment to talk?”
“I hope this isn’t related to Sensei’s assignment.”
“No, nothing like that. Well, a little related, but we agreed not to discuss the issue itself.”
She nods, then gestures with an open palm. “Please, sit.”
Red walks over to the beanbag across from her, and sinks into its warm cover. “Thank you.”
“What’s on your mind?”
As if she hadn’t just checked. Red has gotten good enough at controlling his thoughts and purposefully redirecting them that he no longer worries about others reading secrets he has, which means that on occasion he’s willing to engage in “open communication,” where psychics leave their shields down so their conversation partner can sense whatever genuine emotions they want to show or thoughts they want to share. It’s occasionally broken up by shields coming up, or sudden flashes to a meticulously remembered image or song, but this is understood as an integral part of retaining some privacy, and the social norm is to not assume that the person is being dishonest in those moments.
It’s almost like learning a second language, but not one that’s mutually exclusive. Any non-psychic listening would think they’re just talking in unown, but would miss all the mental communication overlaying the spoken words and threading the silences between.
Normally it would be hard to voice what’s on Red’s mind without him worrying about sounding antagonistic, or petulant, or paranoid. But with his mind unshielded, he trusts that Rei can “hear” more than the words he speaks. “I’ve only been here about a month and a half,” he says, letting his emotions of uncertainty and curiosity and good intentions stay clear at the surface of his thoughts. “And I’ve never been in a setting like this before. So I know I might be jumping to conclusions. But I just thought I’d check whether you dislike me, in case I did something wrong?”
A hint of fear and hurt at the end makes it hard to keep his gaze on hers, and his shields down. He sees her own surprise, quickly schooled, and feels the tentative touch of her mind become more firm, reading both his anxiety and sincerity.
She takes a breath, then slowly lets it out. “I did not intend to be rude, and apologize if I have been,” she says with such careful tact that Red’s worry doesn’t decrease. “But I suppose it’s fair to say that I don’t particularly have an interest in speaking to you, or spending time with you.”
Despite having suspected as much, Red still feels hurt by hearing her say it, and has to remind himself that he’s being stupid, and obviously she has no particular reason to feel friendly or interested in him. “Oh. Okay.”
“But that’s not what you asked,” she continues, still meeting Red’s gaze and sending out a brief projection of apology. “Not wishing to befriend someone is different from disliking them, and it’s also fair to say that I disrespect you.”
Red blinks at her, says “Oh,” and then just sits there a moment, absorbing that. He’d planned for her to say something about him that bothers her, but it still feels disorienting hearing her put it so bluntly. He realizes that despite considering it as a possibility, he hadn’t actually expected it, and he struggles not to hide his sudden inner turmoil behind a shield. “Why?” he finally asks.
“You feel fake,” Rei says, voice and face still calm. “It’s hard to trust those who use a partition to lock away a part of themselves. It’s like talking to someone wearing a mask, except the mask is real, and they may have any number of them they can put on at any time. I do not believe Leader Sabrina was referring to you or Rowan when she mentioned a psychic who could evince false emotions, but I cannot completely dismiss the possibility.”
Red’s throat is dry. “I don’t… I didn’t choose this,” he whispers, stung by the unfairness of it even as part of him feels guilty. Past Red is definitely going to throw this in his face the next time they “chat.”
“Intention has little to do with it.” Rei shrugs, and he senses her regret. “Perhaps my opinion of you will change, when you have more control. In any case, it isn’t personal. As I indicated, I feel similarly about Rowan, who molds his mind intentionally.”
Red hesitates a moment. “I can bring my partition down, if you want to talk to…” He can’t say the real me. It doesn’t feel true, and would just be confirming Past Red’s perspective. “Me without it.”
“I see little point in that,” she says, apologetic. “Since you would not keep it down. It would be like speaking with someone else entirely.”
Red resists the urge to slump in his beanbag, knowing he’s radiating disappointment and closing himself off as he sighs and nods. “Well. Thank you for your honesty.”
“Of course. I do hope you resolve the issue soon.” Rei tilts her head slightly, considering him. “If I may ask… why do you want to be my friend?”
Red blinks. He hadn’t expected her to ask that, and he’s glad his shield is up so that none of the immediate thoughts come to mind. But he can’t keep it up while he answers if he wants to be taken fully honestly…
He thinks it over a moment, everything he knows about her as compared to the other psychics, and to his surprise actually thinks of something genuine. He lets his shield drop. “Other than the social benefits, you read Giovanni’s blog, and are one of the few others I know who actually tries to put the ideas there into practice. It would be nice to talk about it with someone…” again. His shield comes up as his thoughts turn suddenly to Aiko.
Rei smiles slightly. “Well, that seems a reasonable request. Perhaps we could, after Sabrina’s assignment.”
Red takes it as the dismissal it is, and says goodbye. He walks down the hall without really thinking for a bit, replaying what happened in his mind and wondering if there was something else he should have said. Eventually he’s back at his door, and only then remembers he planned to visit the others.
Tatsumaki and Daniel aren’t home when he knocks, so he goes down a floor to see Satori. There’s silence for a moment after he knocks, and once again he feels his peer mentally touch his thoughts before the door opens. Satori is dressed as she was at the meeting, her torracat padding around her skirt, its tail brushing her waist. Both look at him inquisitively, their heads cocked to the side at the same angle.
He quickly redirects his thoughts from the disquiet of the image.
“Hey!” She’s not inviting him in like Rei was. Maybe he should just cut to the chase. “So I was thinking, if we’re all going to be working together on this project, maybe we should get to know each other better? I don’t feel like I’ve got many friends here, and I would like more. Do you want to hang out a bit? I’m happy to do anything, or just chat while you go about your business, if it’s not private.”
Saying the words makes him feel anxious, and he does nothing to hide that feeling. He’s used to feeling excluded from the other kids at school, to feeling different, but it was easy not to let that bother him while he had Blue to hang out with. This is the first time he can remember that he’s actually come out and asked someone to be his friend. It makes him feel like a kid again, and he’s sure he appears even younger to Satori, whose closeness in age feels all the more significant suddenly.
Satori shakes her head. “I’m sorry, I’m trying to finish a project with my pokemon, and find other people distracting.” She closes the door before he can respond, and without lowering her shield to express any regret or other emotional signal.
Red sighs, then moves on. He supposes it’s nice that she even answered, considering how much she generally keeps to herself and sensed his intentions through the door…
When he knocks on Rowan’s door and gets a muffled “Busy!” in response, he moves on without much regret. Rowan seems nice enough, but he often feels slightly off, making Red question his memory of who he interacted with before meeting the “new” Rowan, and ah yep that’s what Rei meant…
Red tries to think of something to talk about on the way to Jason’s, something they wouldn’t normally talk about during their lessons, since that clearly hasn’t helped. So far Jason has been trying to learn to mimic different mental states while Red attempts to get as good at detecting and deciphering emotions as Jason, and so far they haven’t had much success.
Or any, really. Their sessions have all ended in quiet frustration for both as they seem to keep talking past each other while trying to explain what they did in their own terms. Red tried being as precise and clear as he could, like “imagine that mental state and anchor it in your memory through what your body feels,” while Jason spoke through metaphor and symbolism, such as “follow the echo my emotions are leaving in the astral realm” which didn’t really mean anything to Red, no matter how much he tried to pin down what an “echo” is or feels like, or what the “astral realm” is. He’s wanted to ask the others if they find their lessons with Jason more productive, but worried he would seem incompetent or like he’s badmouthing his peer.
So clearly he needs another topic to focus on, and after a moment he finds one. Like Satori, Jason is a pokemon trainer in addition to a psychic. Maybe they could discuss that. He specializes in ghost pokemon, which Red thinks he would find interesting enough to talk about.
When he knocks on the door he doesn’t sense any mental probe from Jason, and the medium answers his door with a cautious look on his face, dressed in the same clothes as earlier in the day. “Hello. Did you come about our assignment?”
“No.” Red smiles, trying not to let his earlier failure color his attitude. “I was just hoping to talk for a bit, if you’re free.”
“I was just finishing a cleansing ritual.”
“Oh.” Red only has a vague idea of what that is; some spiritual practice to ensure an environment or person is free of negativity? He’s not sure if Jason is saying that the ritual is already finished, or if Red had interrupted. “I can come back later?”
He steps back, preparing to leave, but Jason’s frown stops him. “Are you projecting your emotions on purpose?”
Red blinks, then checks. His mind still isn’t shielded, but… “I don’t think I’m projecting them at all?”
“Ah.” Jason’s hand finds his prayer beads and moves over them as he sighs. “I suppose the ritual wasn’t working anyway, then.”
Red is about to ask how he would know if it had, then stops himself and focuses on his curiosity. “What do you sense?” he asks instead.
“It feels like you’re hurt and anxious,” Jason says matter-of-factly. “It confused me because you were smiling when I opened the door, so I thought you were trying to project those feelings to alert me that you need help.”
“Huh.” Red detected no mental merger at all, but this isn’t the first time Jason has shown that he can pick up complex and deep emotions from simple proximity, just the first time Jason is treating it as something out of his control.
He was hoping to avoid any discussion too similar to those in their lessons, but this doesn’t feel like something he can just ignore, and… maybe in a more casual setting like this, if he just stays open minded and curious, he can learn more about Jason’s perspective. “And your cleansing ritual is supposed to help keep you from feeling that?”
Jason nods. “It doesn’t always work, of course. Sometimes I do it wrong, or my spirit is too open to others. I’ll have to try again.”
“Can I… is it okay if I observe it?” He keeps his thoughts focused on his curiosity and interest in learning more about Jason’s views (and abilities, but he believes the two are linked so same thing (he wonders briefly if Jason feels any dissonance in him over that bit of rationalization, then focuses on the curiosity again)).
Jason looks surprised, and fidgets in place for so long that Red is about to apologize when he opens the door and steps back. Red enters to find a simple apartment much like his own, though with a strong smell of jasmine incense coming from a small shrine in the corner. The plumbing must have been done special, because beside it there’s a basin of running water flowing from the mouth of a small stone gyarados.
The whole thing is small as a bathroom sink, and Jason folds his legs beneath him to sit in front of it while Red sits on the floor to the side to observe.
“So,” Red says, as he watches Jason take the long wooden ladle in his right hand and dip it in the water. “I just came to talk because I realized we haven’t really spoken much outside of classes. I guess I got the impression you didn’t like me, and wanted to make sure that wasn’t just my insecurity speaking.”
Jason doesn’t respond, and simply pours the water over his left hand, then switches the ladle to it and pours some over his right, then switches again and pours into his cupped left. He brings the water up to his lips, then lifts the ladle so the remaining water pours down the handle and into the basin, and sets it face-down.
Red realizes he should probably have waited for the ritual to finish before saying anything, and just stays silent as Jason lifts a censer and moves it around himself. One hand stays on his prayerbeads, fingers moving from one to the next, and the other brings the censer first over his stomach, then his heart, then his throat, then his forehead, taking a deep breath of the incense each time. On the last exhale he puts the censer down and sits in stillness, eyes closed.
Red watches the medium’s face, the only motion of his body the steady rise and fall of his chest, and wonders what’s going on in his head. He knows better than to check in the middle of something like this, but the curiosity itches at him.
He never felt particularly comfortable with religious practices, but ever since he started learning to use his powers, and particularly practicing meditation, he began to see them differently. Even without any spiritual component, his own “rituals” to ground himself, or reflect on his internal state, or to execute a particular mental motion, are all useful to him, and result in real, tangible differences. And he knows how powerful placebos can be; maybe a lot of what Jason is capable of that Red isn’t genuinely comes from his different beliefs, or the meaning he ascribes to things like his clothing and prayers.
Red would like to think that any thoughts someone can have, however they have them, can be reasoned through and understood and shared by others. He would like to think that this applies to psychic powers too; that is why they’re all here teaching each other, after all, despite the fairly strong evidence of hard limits to what different psychics are capable of. But within those limits, he feels wistful regret at the idea that his method of thinking, as useful as it is to him, may forever keep him locked out of the kinds of insights and abilities that those like Jason have.
Until he remembers that he can just copy Jason’s mental state while he’s engaging in spiritual practice, if he really wants to understand it.
Red feels a creeping unease, and quickly brings his shield up. He’s never tried copying a mental state that was so fundamentally other. The closest thing was Leaf’s views on pokemon, and from what he remembers of the feeling, it was transformative. He can’t even say for sure that it didn’t permanently affect his views, though part of that is likely just entangled with his feelings for Leaf.
Still, does he want to risk some permanent change to his thinking that’s so… superstitious? What if some of it stays with him?
He tries to convince himself that it’s a silly concern, and that believing something temporarily, no matter how wrong it may turn out, doesn’t lead to bad epistemics. Hell, that happens all the time to him and his epistemics are great! Mostly, anyway.
But what if it’s more fundamental? What if it leads to the growth of certain neuron patterns that will make faith-based beliefs feel more justified?
Red shakes the thought away. He needs to talk to others before trying it, obviously. His ability to copy mental states isn’t entirely unique, there have been others with somewhat similar abilities that might be able to indicate probable outcomes. Maybe he can-
Jason’s eyes open, and he stretches slightly, rotating his shoulders with a sigh. “You’re shielding, right?”
“Yes.”
“Would it be okay to bring it down?”
Red takes a moment to refocus his thoughts, then does so. “Done.”
Jason closes his eyes, then opens them and nods. “Thank you. It worked.” He stands. “Can I get you something to drink?”
“No, I’m f… actually, black tea would be good, if you have it?”
“I do.”
A few minutes later they’re facing each other on the couch, tea in one cup and juice in the other. Jason looks calm, but there’s something about his body language that makes Red feel like he’s nervous. One hand keeps twitching up from his cup, then returning to it, as if aborting impulses to touch his prayer beads.
Red tries to think of how to fill a silence that quickly feels awkward. He’s just about to repeat what he said earlier when Jason clears his throat.
“I do not think it was just insecurity,” Jason says, gaze down. “But I wouldn’t say I dislike you. It’s just that your way of thinking often feels painful for me.”
Red blinks, opens his mouth, closes it. He hadn’t expected that. “Painful as in… physically, or emotionally, or…?”
Jason shrugs. “To be honest, I don’t always understand the difference. When people say physical pain, they seem to mean the result of being physically harmed. But if you describe emotional pain, there’s often a physical component, isn’t there?”
Red considers that, and feels an ache in his chest as he thinks of Aiko, or how much he wants to spend more time with Leaf, or the painful mix of anger and… something, that comes from thinking of Blue.
“Yeah,” he says after a moment. “I can see that. So… there’s a physical component to it, but it’s also tied to some emotional reaction?”
“That’s the closest I can come to explaining it.” Jason sips his juice. “It’s not just you though, I feel this way pretty often. I’ve been told it’s part of being a medium.” He shrugs. “I don’t know if that’s true.”
Red shifts in his seat. “Do you have any specific examples of what I’ve thought that felt harmful to your psychic senses?”
“They were not often thoughts themselves, more the underlying… perspective. And I don’t know that they are actually ‘psychic’ senses,” Jason says. “Elite Agatha said that what I do—what we do—it’s related to what psychics do, but distinct.”
“In what way?”
Jason gives him an appraising look, as if deciding how candid to be. “My connection is to the soul, not just the mind. But you don’t believe in souls.”
Jason still hasn’t uncovered his own emotions during the conversation, so Red isn’t sure how to take the statement, and he feels himself struggling not to respond in a challenging way. Is Jason trying to bait him into an argument, or just expecting one? He came here to be friendly, dammit!
“No, I don’t,” he finally says, speaking slowly. “I haven’t seen any evidence of it that can’t be explained by other things.” He’d resolved to stay curious, so that’s what he focuses on. “But I’ve never talked about it with a medium before. What makes you so sure?”
Jason blinks, gaze meeting Red’s for a moment before dropping again as he sips his drink. “Have you interacted with any Ghost pokemon?”
“No, but I was hit with a Ghost attack from a spinarak, once.” Even after all this time Red still occasionally feels a shadow of the pain and disorientation, though it’s not enough to really distract him.
Jason is shaking his head. “You need to be in their presence to understand.”
“You’re talking about surrealism.”
“I am. What do you know about it?”
Red recalls his research in Viridian Forest, after he caught his spinarak. “People often compare it to Pressure, though that just seems confusing, since it’s not as personalized or powerful, and only really affects you if you’re interacting with ghosts in some way rather than being around them.” And having recently experienced Pressure for himself, it’s hard not to dismiss anything else for not being as bad. “Common symptoms are headaches, disorientation, distrust of senses, all of which quickly goes away once their thoughts aren’t focused on the ghost anymore. It’s part of what makes it harder for non-psychic trainers to deal with ghosts, since it doesn’t seem to be worse for psychics and we’re already used to directing and focusing our thoughts and attention.”
Jason smiles slightly. “It sounds so simple, put like that. As I said, you need to experience it yourself to understand, which is another reason people often compare it to Pressure. But what do you make of surrealism, even having never experienced it? Doesn’t it mark such pokemon as different, in some way?”
Red shrugs. “Sure, and I think it’s significant.” It’s one of the main reasons he categorized Ghost as a substance over descriptive type: there’s clearly something fundamentally different about them. “But significant in what way is the question. It’s something we don’t understand, but that doesn’t mean we should jump to conclusions about its origin, or what it means about reality itself.”
“Hmm.” Jason slowly turns his cup in his hands, then sips from it. “I agree.”
Red blinks. “You do?”
“Yes. It makes sense, from your perspective, to be skeptical. I don’t believe as I do because I have answers to all the questions you’re carefully not asking. But my experiences are enough to point me along the way, and my faith acts as a bridge for the rest, to explain those experiences and overcome that skepticism.”
It sounds like the medium is using “faith” to mean the same thing Red would call a “theory.” It’s the first time he’s heard someone frame it that way… but scientific theories can be falsified, they contain specific claims about cause and effect that could be proven wrong. They’re not just an explanation that makes sense of phenomena, they allow people to make predictions about future ones.
He has to remind himself again that he’s not here to argue epistemics, but just learn more about his peer’s perspective. “By experiences, you mean your connection to Ghost pokemon,” Red guesses. “Did you really train one without a pokeball?”
“I didn’t train it,” Jason says, seeming a bit embarrassed by the myth of himself. “Only established a mental connection, without it attacking me. We formed what I would call a familiarity, if not a friendship.”
“That’s amazing. I mean with any wild pokemon, but with a Ghost in particular. How did you do it?”
Jason drinks as he considers the question, though surely he’s been asked it many times before. “I came to Kanto when I was about your age. I always wanted to be a trainer, but I already knew I was gifted, and my family considered that a stronger trait to explore, a more meaningful path. They hired a mentor for me to explore my gift, but I was still fascinated by pokemon, in understanding their thoughts and feelings. Lavender Town is a small, spiritual community, not particularly known for its trainers. I couldn’t find one to teach me, and while I could buy a pokeball and dex, there was no safe place I could reliably find pokemon that I would be able to travel to alone.”
“Except Lavender Tower,” Red says, smiling slightly.
“Except Lavender Tower,” Jason agrees. “The Rangers there ensure no wild Ghosts harm visitors or escape into the town proper, but there are often a few lurking somewhere inside, and it was easy to find them with my inner eye. After I experienced surreality for myself, sensed their strange minds, I became obsessed with Ghost pokemon in specific. There seemed a depth of mystery and meaning in their ‘otherness’ that I wanted to understand. I spent months being frustrated as they resisted my attempts to interact with them in a meaningful way, and even my psychic training did not help. Eventually I realized that perhaps I was the problem. That all of us are, that our view of them is what causes the tension in us, the disorientation, the pain. After all, they seem unharmed by interacting with us. Who was I to impose my flawed, human perceptions on them?”
Red slowly nods. “So you played with different perspectives until you found one that helped.”
Jason raises his brow. “No. I began studying religious beliefs, read the accounts of those like Elite Agatha and Leader Matsuba, and began practicing rituals to better connect with the spiritual world. And eventually I was able to look upon them without difficulty, and merge with them without tainting my spirit.”
“Huh.” Red drinks his tea and tries to accept the statements at face value, the mildly bitter flavor somehow calming. “But not everyone can do that, right? It’s also related to your abilities as a medium?”
“Ah, yes, I’m not claiming any unique piety or spiritual virtue. My gift enabled the connection in the first place.”
Red nods. Ultimately, there are three probabilities that he finds most likely. The first is that what Jason can do is semi-unique to him, whether it’s because of his connection to the “spirit world” or because he has a unique element in his psychic powers. The second is that the changes Jason underwent in his spiritual journey, the wisdom he gained, are just a perspective shift that could be learned, a lens to see the world through that could be put on and taken off. And the third is that his connection to Ghost pokemon and/or ability to sense deep emotions is something that operates on a level beyond intellectual understanding, something fundamental to the way he forms beliefs.
Maybe his own perspective would shed some light on it. “And what advice would you give, then, about Ghosts for those that don’t have your gift or faith?”
“The same as what I believe for myself. That we must resist our attempts to rationally understand them.” Jason shrugs. “More generally, that the very belief that we can truly understand anything is an illusion, though a useful one for our time in the material plane. But Ghosts are windows into something beyond the material, and so it is not useful to try and decipher them rationally.”
Red’s mouth twists to the side, torn between the multiple strong objections that rise up. And though it brings with it a flash of anger and sadness, Blue’s voice is clear in his head; Who cares if it sounds logical? If it works, it works.
And of course he’s right. Understanding the actual mechanism at work is important so he doesn’t believe extraneous things that are wrong, but if there’s a link between Jason’s epistemics and the outcome, Red has to be able to include that evidence in his theories, no matter how much it clashes with his own epistemics. It could be as simple as Leaf’s pure love of pokemon keeping abra from fleeing, but if it’s something deeper…
“I would like to learn more about your beliefs,” Red says. “And maybe even try to mimic your perspective psychically, eventually, if that’s alright with you.”
“You believe it’s my perspective, then, as Leader Sabrina does, and not my gift?”
“Maybe it’s both,” Red admits. “But it’s worth a try, and we’ve been having trouble during our lessons anyway, so I think better understanding your perspective could help with that too. Or at least, I’ve felt like we’ve had trouble?”
Jason nods, and finally brings his shield down for a moment, just long enough to signal a mirror of Red’s relief that it hadn’t just been him. “Alright. How would you like to begin?”
Red shrugs. “You’re the expert here. I’ll do whatever you think is best.”
“I would never claim to be an expert.”
“Relative to me, I mean.”
“Still, the word has… baggage. As I said before, it was not through understanding but the release of the need to understand that I finally found connection.”
Red is about to argue that it’s just a semantic point, and that all “expertise” means in this context is the person who has accomplished the thing being discussed, but then he imagines someone calling him an expert on mirroring mental states and kind of gets Jason’s point. “You’re right, word choice can influence perspectives. So as we are both seeking humility together, what would be the first step toward recognizing the need to be humbled at all?” He hopes that made sense.
Jason spins his cup again, face thoughtful, then brings it to his lips and tilts it back, draining it and standing. “Experiences are more important than words. If you’ve never encountered a Ghost before, then experiencing surrealism for the first time might be best. We can go to the roof, and I’ll summon my pokemon there.”
Red swallows his sudden nervousness along with a mouthful of tea. The things he’s read about surreality don’t seem quite as harmless as a moment ago. But it wasn’t so long ago that he overcame fear of a different pokemon on a different roof, and this wouldn’t be worse than what Donovan’s skarmory could have done to him.
Red remembers the discomfort of the spinarak’s attack again, and feels a thread of fear. Probably. “Yeah, alright.”
The medium goes to put his cup in the sink, then slips his sandals on while Red finishes his tea. Once Jason retrieves his pokebelt and ties it on, they make their way to the rooftop, which is fairly small but only has a small number of spots taken up for registered teleportation, namely those of the students and Sabrina.
The sun is setting, but there’s still enough light to illuminate the city. The city, as far as most Kantonians see it; the biggest and most populous, home to both its most prestigious pokemon contest hall as well as the world famous Silph Corporation. It’s a culturally powerful place that he’s just starting to consider a “home” of sorts, and he draws some strength from the sight of it in the day’s last golden light, like nothing truly bad can happen to him while he’s standing here atop the shining city.
He recognizes how silly that feeling is, especially since he was just worrying about downloading superstitious wetware from Jason, and has to check his rationale for doing this again before he turns to his fellow psychic and nods. “Ready when you are.”
“Alright. I’m going to summon a gastly. Pull back your mental senses.”
And now he feels less ready. “Okay. Uh. I could also go downstairs and get my gas mask, or should I stay upwind of it, or…?”
“No, there isn’t enough wind to affect it, and as long as you can’t smell it you won’t be harmed. Just stay at least an arm’s length from the visible parts.” With that, the medium braces his arm and says, “Go, Gastly.”
The pokeball snaps open and a blinding flash of light leaps forth… but unlike with most pokemon, it doesn’t coalesce into a sensible shape. Instead the afterimage behind Red’s lids when he blinks appear to be a wide, irregular cloud.
What takes its place a millisecond later is about half as big, at least as far as he can see; a purple discoloration in the air that hangs about six feet above the rooftop. Only the center of it is opaque enough that he can’t see through it, and from within that purple mass he sees a dark orb with—
—two gleaming white voids—
—the glint of… fangs(?)—
—Red blinks, then blinks again, trying to get used to what he’s seeing. In videos, gastly appear to just be a black ball surrounded by thick purple gas, with wide, solid white and somewhat disembodied “eyes” over a pink pocket that holds what looks like two sharp canines, just floating in the blackness of the orb. But without the abstraction of simple images, his mind is struggling to make sense of what’s in front of him, which is… very much not that.
Except what else could it be? He closes his eyes, imagining the slightly cartoonish mental image of a gastly that he has in his memory, then opens them to see… something else, something that he can only vaguely recognize as having the same features as the mental image he was holding onto a moment ago. If he hadn’t known what they’re “supposed” to look like, he wonders if he would even make this much sense out of it.
After a handful of heartbeats, his gaze flinches away, the disorientation fading once he’s not looking directly at it. He has to swallow, throat dry, before he says, “All ghost pokemon are like this?” He reminds himself to be on the lookout for a headache or any other symptoms.
“In their own ways,” Jason says, pokeball still in hand. “The ones that possess some physical object are easier to perceive, but those with the gift can still see through to what they really are.”
“And what is that?” Red asks. He glances back at the gastly and feels a chill go down his spine. From the corner of his eye it had seemed like the black sphere’s “eyes” were staring aimlessly into the distance, but as soon as he looked at it, its gaze locked with his. Is that the surrealism? Has it already started?
“The spirits of pokemon.” Jason says as Red starts to shift his head from side to side, experimenting. Its “eyes” (he can’t even think of them with that word without a sense of skepticism) stay locked on his perfectly as he moves and when he looks away, its features return to vague impressions. “Instead of moving beyond our world after death, a ghost is a spirit that has imprinted onto things in it, such as a candle or doll, or in gastly’s case, the decomposing gasses emitted by corpses.”
Unfalsifiable, Red immediately thinks. Spontaneous pokemon genesis occurs in other places, labeling the ones that appear near dead bodies ‘Ghosts’ does nothing to distinguish whether that’s true from a world where their origin is any different from something like a magnemite.
But he’s here to learn about Jason’s perspective, not argue against it. It takes Red a moment to word his response through how unnerved he is by the gastly, even after looking away. “I’ve heard that hypothesis,” Red says. “But I don’t understand what differentiates it from one you’d consider false.”
“Such as?”
“Well, I’ve actually thought a lot about pokemon origins,” Red says, glancing at the gastly again, then away. It’s difficult, like the dark sphere is a black hole whose gravity is pulling at his attention, but not physically, just from simple fascination, or maybe a mix of fascination and fear, like leaning over the edge of a building despite knowing the sight will scare you. The call of the void, he’s heard it called, and that’s what the gastly looks like, a void in the world—
“Red?”
Red blinks. “Sorry, I… what was I saying?”
“Pokemon origins. Do you want me to withdraw it?”
“No, I’m fine.” He turns his body solidly toward Jason. “Right. So… if I’m understanding your beliefs correctly, magnemite could be spirits of pokemon that attach themselves to metal objects too, right? But they’re not Ghost pokemon.”
Jason shrugs. “There are many potential answers. I am a spiritualist, but find no religious doctrine more convincing than all others. I have heard that everything has a spirit, even inanimate objects, and some things may attain enough spiritual energy to become living things. Perhaps the gods are still active in the world and decide by their own whims, or perhaps there are rules they have written to guide such events in their absence that we may one day deduce. But the unnatural sensation evoked by surrealism makes it clear that only Ghost pokemon are the spirits of the already departed, rather than new souls like any others we encounter.”
“I feel like you’re…” Red stops himself. “Sorry. I’m confused. My brain is insisting that maybe it’s the substance that’s inhabited that matters. Like… imagine a world where ‘Ghost pokemon are spirits of dead pokemon’ wasn’t true. What would you expect to see different in that world, that couldn’t be explained by the ‘spirit of candles’ or ‘poison gas’ also attaining enough energy to become living beings, for example?”
Jason is quiet a moment, and Red lets him think, looking back at the gastly for a minute to try to get a handle on the way it looks. He wants to try using his powers on it to see what its mind is like, but he’s still having trouble getting his mind to see its parts as distinct things, and he should probably do that first.
Suddenly Red sees the Gastly’s “mouth” open, and calling the slimy, squirming thing that briefly comes out a “tongue” doesn’t even occur to him until after it’s back inside the sphere and he can retroactively process what he saw. He raises a hand to wipe some sweat from his forehead, even though it’s rather cool outside with fall well underway. He knows it’s from exposure to the gastly, which…
…is it getting closer?
Red suddenly realizes he can smell it, a sickly sweet, cloying scent, and panic blooms in his chest as he quickly takes a step back—
“Red, look at me,” a voice demands, and Red snaps his gaze around to Jason, who has stepped to the side so that Red can’t see the gastly in his peripheral. The medium looks calm despite suddenly sounding like an entirely different person, his whole stance feels different as he holds Red’s gaze with his own. But it’s nothing overt; Jason’s hands are folded in front of him, his shoulders are relaxed. It’s Red’s perception that has changed, his need for something stable and reassuring.
“Everything is fine,” Jason says, calm but firm, like he’s talking to a skittish ponyta. “You’re experiencing the first stage of surreality. Just focus on me, and breathe.”
Red does as he instructs, despite his confusion. The literature said that surreality would manifest as something minor at first, like a headache or increased pulse or sweating… right, he was sweating. How did he forget that symptom? No, he didn’t forget it, he recognized it as it was happening, but then the panic hit and he couldn’t connect the dots.
“Better?” Jason asks after a moment, watching him steadily.
Red nods. He feels back in control of his thoughts, though there’s a part of him that’s still thinking about the gastly, hovering just out of sight, and wondering if it’s creeping closer. “Yes, thanks. Even expecting it, it’s like it went straight to my automatic reflexes.” He steels himself, then turns his head to look at the gastly. Still far away.
“I’m not sure what I would see different,” Jason says, drawing Red’s attention back to him. Not sure what…? Oh, right, about different worlds. “I guess if it weren’t true, then I would expect there to be nothing uniform between the different Ghost pokemon compared to other pokemon that are not Ghost types. A candle and a cloud of gas have no similarity to justify belief that both should evoke surrealism.”
“But that uniqueness is what we use to classify Ghosts,” Red says. “It feels tautological to say that because they have this unique attribute, they must share this unique origin that we identify through this attribute. Especially when we don’t even know what the origin of other pokemon without that attribute is.”
“Then what is your answer? What would you expect to see in a world where Ghost pokemon are borne of dead spirits, rather than by the same process as other pokemon?”
“Weeeell,” Red says, dragging the word out as he organizes his thoughts. “First off, wouldn’t we see an infinite variety of Ghost pokemon? And wouldn’t their different species be more widespread? We don’t have any phantump here in Kanto, but we have plenty of woods and forests. If we just put a pile of screws and magnets around some pokemon graveyards, what would you expect to eventually see? Ghost magnemite, or ‘regular’ ones?”
The medium is quiet again as he thinks, and Red resists the urge to look at the gastly again. “I believe I see your point,” Jason finally says, speaking slowly. “Perhaps… magnemite are the spirits of pokemon as well, and their natures have been changed by the objects they bound to. Rotom at least are examples of ghost pokemon whose nature changes while inhabiting different ‘bodies.’ Though…” Jason frowns. “It’s not a strong example, given that even though they can leave those bodies behind and inhabit new ones, we have never seen any other Ghost pokemon do such a thing, and of course Rotom are limited to electronic devices that do not mimic any other known electric pokemon.”
Huh. Red hadn’t expected the medium to refute his own argument so well. He begins to grow hopeful about the conversation. “Right, as you pointed out, there’s no consistent pattern between what Ghost pokemon are embodied as. Cloth, candles, gas, plants, clay, metal… I mean, spiritomb is just a rock, right? The glowing face it creates isn’t tangible.”
“That’s correct, it’s the keystone that contains the pokemon’s various spirits.”
“So they’re all different substances, and then there are also pokemon like jellicent and oricorio and decidueye, which are living creatures. Or do those pokemon not feel the same to be around?” If they don’t cause surrealism, they probably shouldn’t qualify as Ghost types in the first place…
“No, they do, though it’s even less strong than Ghosts that inhabit objects,” Jason says. “Here, let me show you one of those… Gastly, return!” The beam of light spreads not from the gastly’s dark core, but from somewhere on the edge of the visible cloud around it, pulling it away in a mass of red light. “Go, Lampent!”
The sky is starting to darken, but Red can still make out the twisted black lantern that appears a few feet above the ground, its core illuminated by a bright blue flame. Red prepares himself for more surrealism, but… it looks totally normal.
Except for the fact that it’s clearly suspended in midair for no reason. Red knows it’s a pokemon, intellectually, but the way it looks like a simple object makes it hard to square with the fact that it’s definitely not supposed to be doing that. And then there are the yellow glowing eyes on the round, clear “glass” of its body, but those are only unsettling if he looks at them too long.
“Huh. Yeah, this is less extreme. Instead of doubting my whole perception of it there’s just this one thing I’m fixating on. Which is weird, since there are other pokemon that float that don’t make me feel like this…” He walks a few steps to the side, then back, gaze on the lampent. The effect is a little worse as he changes his reference frame and the lantern stays suspended exactly where it is, making it seem slightly unreal, like a hologram or computer graphic overlaid onto reality…
“Oh, there’s the headache.” He quickly looks back at Jason and the pressure at his temples starts to fade. “So you were right, it’s hard to understand how different Ghosts are without experiencing surrealism for myself. But the degree is different enough that I feel like this could be a different thing entirely, if I didn’t know already to start out thinking both are Ghosts.”
Jason nods. “Your mundane senses are more easily fooled. Use your inner eye.”
Red scratches his neck, curiosity more than a match for his nervousness. “That would be okay?”
“Just don’t merge. You’ll understand why.”
Red nods and closes his eyes, wanting to focus as much as possible on what his “inner eye” senses. His range and precision have expanded over the past weeks, and he immediately becomes aware of not just the gale of emotions in front of him, but also Jason’s watchful and expectant mind, and Rei’s unshielded focus, and Rowan’s shifting mood as he sets up and brings down partitions in some exercise or experiment, and Satori’s mind as it interacts with both her swellow and torracat at the same time, and the less Red focuses on that disorienting jumble the better…
Good thing he has a gale of emotions in front of him to focus on.
It’s like standing in a crowded room, except it’s all coming from one single mind. The lampent feels unlike any other pokemon or human Red has encountered, its emotions more alien than even Bug pokemon.
Red is still relatively new to deciphering emotions without a merge, but he recognizes desire burning off the lampent like a bonfire sheds heat. There’s no question in Red’s mind of what he’s feeling, it wants something, and it wants it badly. He’s never felt anything so strong coming from a pokemon, the closest were fear from abra and when he was merged with Charmeleon and projected sakki…
“It’s hungry,” Red says, opening his eyes and taking an involuntary step back as he withdraws his mind again. As soon as he says the word, he identifies the feeling in himself, or at least as close an equivalent as he can understand. He feels his stomach rumble and twist. Is it projecting onto him? “No, starving… why…”
“It had a caterpie recently,” Jason says. “But it’s never enough.”
Red expects the hunger to fade once he brings his shield up, but it doesn’t. Both arms are pressed over his stomach now, and he sucks in a breath, tries to meditate on the feeling, dissolve it, but it feels real, like he needs to find food now or his limbs will start to shake…
Then Jason is in front of him, wooden beads looped around the fingers of one hand as he passes it over Red’s head. Red feels the medium’s mind brushing his through his shield, Jason doesn’t try to merge. Instead the feeling of hunger starts to dwindle in time with the scrubbing motion of his hand around Red’s chest, until he abruptly feels fine.
It all took place in the space of a few heartbeats, and Red slowly straightens. “You felt things like that?” Red asks, letting out a shuddering breath as he eases his arms down and looks back at the lampent. “For months?”
“I had some help. My psychic teacher knew, of course, from the emotional residue that would be left on me, which you experienced. She taught me how to manage it, as all gifted trainers of Ghost pokemon must, but it wasn’t until I began walking a more spiritual path that truly cleansing it became a possibility.” He tucks the wooden beads away in a pocket. “And by enduring it more, I found my own ability to detect emotions improving, though…” He shrugs. “It was no longer always intentional, or always accurate.”
“Then maybe that’s what happened,” Red says, pulse finally slowing down as he breathes in and out. “Everyone talks about how Ghosts twist our powers and turn them against us, maybe yours have changed permanently to better sync with them.”
“Perhaps,” Jason says. “But I don’t believe all mediums have gone through the same things. If that’s a viable path, would you try it?”
Red frowns, considering a moment. “Not sure. I’d have to know more about the side effects. But in the meantime, I still want to try adopting your perspective.”
Jason nods and withdraws the lampent, which relaxes something in Red he hadn’t realized was tense. “My perspective is to simply remind myself of what I do not understand. It is a genuine humility that only feels forced insofar as it fights natural instinct to create explanations for things, to grasp at facts we have heard and knowledge we believe we have. Knowledge that, upon further examination, is revealed to be just symbols between minds to imperfectly share disparate shards of reality.”
Uh oh. They’re back at deep sounding phrases that Red can’t quite parse. “Alright… so what should I do to help fight those instincts?”
Jason shrugs. “Remind yourself of what you do not know. Do not accept your mind’s attempts to insist otherwise. When you truly realize how complex all this is,” he opens his hands out to the sides, “It seems trivial to not also realize how impossible understanding it is.”
Red frowns slightly as he grapples with such a fundamentally different ideology. Sure, the world is complex, from the mind boggling vastness of space to the alien world of subatomic particles, but impossible to understand? No. There’s humility, and then there’s surrendering to ignorance, and he can’t accept that. It’s not a conscious choice; he just knows it, as surely as he knows his name.
But a scientist should be willing to embrace uncertainty, and philosophically he knows there are few things he can really be sure are true besides that he exists and is conscious… so maybe he can reach some understanding of the same “fundamental humility,” with effort.
“I’ll consider that,” Red says after a moment, and bows. “Thank you for your time, and patience with me.”
Jason bows back. “Thank you for your vulnerability, and your trust.”
Red stays on the roof after and watches the sun set over Mt. Silver, thinking about what he experienced and the goal he set out to accomplish. He isn’t sure if he made a friend, but it feels like progress at least. Now he should try talking to Rowan too, or get to work on Sabrina’s assignment.
Instead his mind keeps turning back to what Jason said. The medium seemed so certain that they can’t understand anything, and it bothers him the more he thinks of it.
Part of him wants to go back down to his apartment and knock on Jason’s door, show him, like, a simple algebra equation, or do some basic physics experiment.
He doesn’t understand why it’s so important to him that Jason see the flaw in his perspective, as stated at least. Maybe it’s more nuanced in his head, but Red can’t help feeling that the older boy is wrong and needs to know why, even if in the meantime…
…in the meantime, he can interact with Ghost pokemon without surrealism while Red can’t. And he was able to argue against his own ideas, so he’s clearly not lacking basic reasoning abilities either. So whose perspective is actually more useful? Or maybe both are useful in their own ways…
Remind yourself of what you do not know. Do not accept your mind’s attempts to insist otherwise…
He sees the wisdom in that, so maybe it’s not as far a step from recognizing the value of humility to what Jason has accomplished, without quite swinging as far on the actual epistemics.
Red watches the last sliver of gold light fade behind the mountain, and twilight cloaks the city. He shivers at the sudden chill, and abruptly feels sure that there’s a gastly behind him. Floating toward him, ready to envelop his head, ready to open its mouth and bring out that “tongue”—
Red spins and sees nothing but the empty rooftop, and lets out his breath in something more than a sigh. Great, now he’s going to be jumpy about that for a while too…
“Red?”
Red yelps as he spins to find Tatsumaki on the roof with an abra. She withdraws her pokemon and steps off the teleporting platform, frowning at him. “What’s gotten into you?”
“Nothing,” he says, breathing deep to slow his racing heart. “I just… met my first Ghost pokemon and… I guess it left an impression.”
“Yeah, they’ll do that.” She looks around. “It wasn’t a wild was it?”
“No, Jason’s. I wanted to know what it was like.”
“Good to get it out of the way in a safe place I guess.” She sticks her hands in the pockets of her collared dress. “So, got any ideas about sensei’s assignment yet?”
Red hesitates. “We’re not supposed to discuss it yet…”
“Whatever,” she says with a roll of her eyes, and heads for the door.
Red stares after her a moment, then blinks. “Wait! If you want, we can talk about other things—”
“Nope,” she says, and mentally opens the door ahead of her, then swings it shut after passing through.
Red sighs and heads for the door himself. He doesn’t know if he should have just said yes, but he’ll have to have something better before he tries befriending her again.
A quick check confirms that Rowan is still messing with his partitions. Red is fairly confident Rowan will have one of the more promising ideas in the meeting tomorrow. He wonders if Rowan himself feels any pressure over that expectation.
Daniel still isn’t back, so Red goes to his room, sits at his desk, and takes out his notebook so he can try to decipher the problem again.
Brains. Minds. Hiding thoughts and emotions under others.
How?
Red stares at the paper, rapidly tapping both ends of his pencil against the desk as he shifts it between his fingers.
Don’t spend resources searching for an answer until you’re justifiably confident you understand the question.
It seems trivial to not also realize how impossible understanding it is.
Red wonders what Jason would say to Leader Giovanni. What the Leader would say to him. When it comes to the mind, it’s true enough that currently there’s no real understanding it. Red isn’t going to solve the question of consciousness in (he checks the time) five hours. But he could at least check how confident he should be that he understands the question.
Red’s pencil moves to the page. He’ll start with what he knows… Thoughts are patterns of neurons firing in a specific order and shape. Feelings are experiences… of physical sensation… His pencil slows as he frowns. What are emotions, really? He could write something down, something that sounds right, like emotions are certain neurotransmitters and the felt effects they have on the body, but is that a useful definition? How does psychic power hide or sense neurotransmitters, let alone the feelings associated with particularly complex emotions?
He realizes that if he’s satisfied with that answer, he would just be “accepting his mind’s attempt to insist he understands something he doesn’t,” and decides to drill down to basics. What is a brain? A collection of billions of neurons, tens of billions, which encode sensory experiences and process thoughts and send commands through the nervous system by chemicals and electrical impulses.
Where do the impulses come from?
He doesn’t know.
Are all emotions from neurotransmitters, or are some purely in the brain, if that even makes sense?
Maybe it doesn’t. Especially since he just thought of another problem, maybe more fundamental…
What is a mind? A self-reflective emergent property of the processes of the brain, which experiences feelings and memories and desires as fuzzy, indistinct things that are somehow independent of the absoluteness of the brain. (Why are minds so fuzzy?) There’s some inherent disconnect between what the mind is aware of and what the brain does and stores. Optical illusions are strong examples of this, as is the idea of a subconscious, or waking from a dream with just an emotional reaction but no memory of what happened… Self-awareness likely comes somewhere between the top-down predictions that are being made constantly but that we’re unaware of and the bottom-up observations of reality…
Red stops and puts his pencil down, staring at the sheet a moment.
Sure, brains are probably the most complex thing in the universe, and may be the only thing literally impossible to understand given that the thing it’s trying to fully understand is itself, and if it were good enough to do that it would just become even more complex.
But Red would have guessed he could have answered more about brains if asked. Now all he can think of are irrelevant factors that don’t actually explain how it works…
…and he suddenly feels an inkling of something different, in his mind. A new track being laid, maybe even the start of a new perspective. He’d thought of space as mind bogglingly vast before, but really, everything is so complex that it boggles his mind to think about them in sufficient detail.
Is this what Jason meant? Is he touching the same frame of mind, at least a little?
Red flips to a new page and decides to try testing what he really understands about something basic. Not math basic, but… well, maybe, actually, especially if even basic things are mysteries to him when he looks deep enough.
What’s a comparison to what Sabrina’s asked them to do that’s not about psychic phenomena? Some other “impossible” problem, like… if someone told him there was a plant that grows without water, and asked him to figure out how, would he be able to? He’s not even sure how bizarre that might be compared to the perfect shield, but whatever, he’ll try it.
What does he actually know about what plants need to grow? He could say “photosynthesis” and haltingly describe how light contains energy (is energy) and certain wavelengths can be harnessed by certain plant cells, all wavelengths but green, actually… wait, do flower petals do photosynthesis? Doesn’t matter, so without nutrients from water, plants get some from light… wait, nutrients? Is that right? How would light have nutrients in it, nutrients are just a word that means the useful molecules and atoms for a certain life form. That stuff must be gotten from soil… but there are some plants that grow in water and off sunlight… is there carbon in water? No wait, duh, the air, they get carbon from the air… somehow… okay he just realized he has no idea how plants breathe, and again, what’s the light for? Energy? Instead of using sugar, their cells absorb energy from lightwaves and use it to extract and repurpose the nutrients (useful molecules) they need from the air, water, and maybe ground?
That… sounds right. So a plant that grows without water must be getting enough of the nutrients they need from the air and maybe ground. If there are absolutely fundamental nutrients in water, then maybe there’s a lot of moisture in the air and that’s how they get it. If the question is specifying there’s no moisture around at all then he would say that… the plant must somehow be able to build itself from other materials besides the ones normal plants need from water.
After a minute of thought, he nods. That would be his hypothesis. Maybe it wouldn’t even be a plant, anatomically, maybe it would just look like one, or be some unique cross between a plant and fungus, or something. Of course, his understanding of how plants work could be flawed in some way. It’s been a while since he learned plant biology, and if he’s wrong in any single belief, then the whole hypothesis could be way off, might not even make any sense.
He realizes that the moment before has passed. He’s no longer as uncertain about what he knows, and the idea of the world itself as bizarre and unknowable has faded somewhat as he feels more like, as little as he understands, there’s still a way to understanding, a path that he could follow.
But maybe that’s an illusion too, of sorts, if he keeps “boggling” at things enough to get down to the atomic and subatomic level, where reality seems to genuinely stop making sense to brains that evolved on such a different scale.
Red smiles slightly and turns the page to start again with something else. He’s not sure if he’s on the right track to the exact mental state Jason lives in, but he’s glimpsed what might be a lens of his own, and that’s worth pursuing too.