Chapter 137: Interlude XXIV – Omens
“Say again, Red, I couldn’t hear you, over.” Looker’s leg bounces beneath the desk, fist white around the base of the microphone as he tries to keep his breathing calm and level. “Red, come in, over!”
He counts fifteen seconds before he presses the button again. “Bill, Red, anyone, come in, over,” then no outlet for the adrenaline, nothing to do with all the fear and anger that’s flooding through him.
The last thing Red transmitted sounded like he said he was okay, but then something about Rowan. If he was okay, though, he’d answer the radio… and he did not sound okay.
Looker already sent Red’s security team to Bill’s, though without the ability to swap their teleporters it would take them hours to get there. He could go himself, get there in half the time…
“Lookr. Cmin.”
Looker’s eyes close. “Bill.” He sounds… drunk. Or dying. “What’s your status? Over.”
“Stats… status is, shit’s fucked. Ov. Over.”
His hand hurts, and he forces his white-knuckle grip around the microphone stand to relax. “Verres?” Don’t say dead. “Over.”
“Breathin’. Twitchin’. Didwa… Hmph. Did. What. I could. Workn on get… getting things back up. Over.”
“You alright?”
“Dunno. Brain feels like spoon spun through it.”
Looker waits, feeling his heart pounding in his throat. “Bill?”
“What? Oh. Over.”
“I’ve already sent agents and medical. What else do you need?”
“Need m’fukkin laback… lab back… one minute, need both hands a sec…”
Looker waits, mind racing through contingencies that would have to be enacted if Red is seriously injured, let alone if he dies. He takes a moment to check the other frequencies; the radio console can listen to ten stations at a time, but he’s trying to listen in on anyone out there who’s talking, and he’s found over a dozen different sources coordinating via radio.
He does a full sweep of them to ensure there’s nothing more he can be doing to coordinate defense at the various labs as he waits for Bill to respond, wondering whether the scientist would last long enough for help to arrive…
“Sabrina,” Bill finally says. “Get her here. Need my brain back. Red too. Over.”
Looker’s mouth tightens. He doesn’t trust Sabrina, more so than most in Kanto leadership, but… “I will. Agatha too.” He should have remembered to do that earlier, Red said if something happened to him, psychically, she would be best…
“Good. Great. That’s it, then. Over’n’out.”
“Wait, Bill! What happened to Rowan? Verres mentioned him. Over.”
Silence, long enough that Looker worries Bill might have swapped frequencies as soon as he finished talking, until…
“He’s dead. Gotta go. Over and out.”
Looker still has more questions—how long would it take for the net to come back? Why had Rowan gone to Bill’s lab?—but lets him go. Some muscles along his back relax, and he slowly straightens in his chair, then leans back, letting as much of the tension as he can leak out of the rest of him.
Bill has been incredibly helpful in tracking and countering Rocket. Too helpful, really; Looker doesn’t trust it, coming from a notorious misanthrope who’s relatively free with his money but miserly with his time.
But he thinks he understands the man, to some degree. And if he did what Looker thinks he did, while the enemy was disabled by whatever damage he sustained battling Red…
Well, nice as it would have been to question Rowan, Looker understands. Bill isn’t dark, and with help hours away, the risk that the psychic madman would recover while Verres was still down was too great. Or maybe he’s wrong, and Rowan did die from his battle with Red.
Either way, het hopes Verres doesn’t take it too hard… assuming he recovers in the first place, and with his mind intact.
Looker lets out a breath, then checks the radio frequencies again before clipping one tuned to Bill’s frequency to his belt. He gets up and jogs to the cubicles. “Alain.”
“Here, Boss.”
“Draft something for Mei and Sue, send it out as soon as the net’s up again. I want them on double-duty standby as soon as they’re back.”
“Yessir, on it.”
Looker crosses the item off his mental list. Both agents are roughly Red’s height and build, and can pass as him if wearing his uniform and helmet. The next concern is…
Perry is already standing and looking expectantly at him, having heard the order to Alain and deduced he’d be needed too.
“Start working on a narrative for today that downplays Red’s involvement.”
“Effort, or impact?”
“Impact. He went to a number of places, word will get out. More heroics to put to his name is fine. What we need is a simple and boring answer for how he ends the day.” Fuck, it’s not even lunch time yet… “Once the story breaks, it’s going to get full coverage, and the fewer interview requests we have to deflect, the better.”
“Got it. Witnesses?”
“Just Bill, and he’ll keep quiet.”
“Makes it a bit easier, but what about his friends?”
“I’ll deal with them.” And his mother… Shit, his headache is coming back. “Eventually. For now, we focus on getting as many people safely through today.” He heads back to the radio station. “It’s going to be a long one.”
He swims upstream against a raging river of memories, struggling to tell which are his, to tell who he even is. Contradictions batter him from every direction, rapids that threaten to drown him in meaningless noise, smash him against stones of confusion… and at the end, a roaring drop into oblivion.
…[name]… [NAME]!…
He tries to answer, and feels himself thrash harder instead, gasping for air(?) as more memories sweep through him, glimpses of bright days and dark nights, lit offices and dark labs, of blood and eyes and trees and colors—
…calm… rest… calm…
The voice is familiar, but names are impossible to hold onto and faces blur into each other. It’s all he can do to grasp for his own, to feel it trembling in his grip as he swims, tantalizing the tip of his tongue as he tries to speak…
“He’s biting his tongue!”
“Sedation, 10ml.”
The hospital room feels too bright as Jason withdraws his mind from Red’s and opens his eyes, just in time to see the nurse carefully spraying his friend’s nose with a mild sedative. It takes a couple breaths for Red’s face to relax, and the nurse wipes the remaining liquid from around his lips, then dries the sheen of sweat from the rest of his face.
Jason’s heart is pounding from the shared experience of the merger, and he closes his eyes as he breathes deep. His fingers rotate the beads around his neck, each engraved symbol helping him shift from one mental state to the next. Once he feels calm again, he opens his eyes and finds the others in the room watching him expectantly; Dr. Zhang, a nurse, and Laura (who’s expectation is mixed with anxiety and fear that he’s shielding against quite hard, out of both politeness and self defense).
“No major changes,” he says, heart sinking into his stomach. “I’m sorry. Consciousness still means overwhelm. Slowly but surely.”
Beside Laura is Dr. Zhang, who immediately agreed to help with Red’s treatment when Interpol asked for whoever has the most familiarity with him. He looks at Red’s vitals with a mild frown, then makes some notes.
“The peak was a little lower, a little slower,” he says as he writes. “Three seconds, but it’s still something.”
“Three seconds,” Laura murmurs, one hand around Red’s where it rests on his chest. “That’s… good, right? Better?”
“Possibly.” Dr. Zhang stops writing and massages his temple, then seems to become self-conscious about it and drops his hand with a sigh. “From thirty seconds to nearly a minute could be a form of very slow progress. It’s also possible some form of degradation is taking place, and the slowdown is a symptom of broader failures.”
Everyone turns back toward Jason, who shifts in his seat and tries to recall what he experienced in the merger. “It’s… not clearly worse, since yesterday. He’s still in there, still responsive. He gets close to remembering himself, but—”
a flash of the raging memories, the grinding roar of sights and noise and sensations, a roar that almost seems sentient, hungry
Jason’s fingers move three beads over, reflexively finding the pattern that tilts his mind into a pattern of sharp contrasts. Suddenly all the temperature differences throughout his body feel more stark, his fingertips and nose freezing while his chest burns, but the flashback dissipates, and a moment later he lets out a breath he’d sucked in earlier.
Red would probably ask him why that particular mental motion worked to get him through that particular mental state, and Jason might have tried to explain the illegible intuitions that connect sharpness and polarity as antitheses to chaos. Red might get a thoughtful look on his face, and nod, then argue that something like weight or grounding would make more sense to him, and Jason would admit that this makes sense to him too, but isn’t how it works, for his mind at least.
The whole conversation flashes by in a matter of seconds, almost like Jason has a tulpa of Red himself. But it’s just a detailed mental model, one borne from hundreds of conversations over the past year, and it makes his heart ache and flutter with fear that they’re losing his friend.
That he’s losing him. Unable to help him. Powerless.
“But,” he finally continues. “I can’t say for sure he is not being harmed, in the meantime.”
Laura closes her eyes, turning back toward Red and stroking his hair with her free hand. “Harmed how?”
“I cannot be sure. The taint has subsided again after Elite Agatha’s visit, but there is still some, and I can only make marginal progress myself.”
They work by rotation, never more than six hours at a time. Agatha claimed seven slots throughout the upcoming week as her limit, one per same day. Jason was assigned three, and the look Agatha gave him when she did so dissuaded him from asking for more. The rest of the week, Dr. Zhang is assisted by other mediums who can help Red integrate the flood of memories and regain some sense of order in his mind; Sabrina is the only psychic that is familiar enough with Red’s mind and has learned enough from Jason to be helpful.
The first two days after the attacks, Jason believed Red would awaken when his partitions reformed and healed. But now four have passed, and they still haven’t regenerated the way they did after Lavender. It’s too soon to believe they’ve broken permanently, not while there’s still the alien influence seeping through his mind, but in the meantime Red is finally processing everything that was behind the hundreds of partitions he made, large and small, to use his special abilities. It’s Dr. Zhang’s belief that this would take anywhere between weeks to months of slow integration through day to day life for most people, even without the added damage from his battle with Rowan; whether the current process will end up slower or faster is anyone’s guess.
Jason can only hope that the level of suffering Red is enduring points to “faster.” The doctors are confident that he’s not enduring any lasting physical damage from his condition so far, but even world experts in mental health, the psychic ones flown into Kanto specifically to collaborate, have few examples to compare with, and none directly similar.
From what Jason knows, Interpol—or specifically, Looker—is doing everything in his power to improve Red’s chances. He’s grateful for that, but given what’s waiting for Red when he recovers, and the expectations that will continue to be put on him… expectations that led to this…
Part of him worries he’s just preparing Red for more pain. Healing him so he can endure more injury.
“I know you’re doing the best you can,” Laura says, voice low. She’s still stroking Red’s hair, gaze never straying far from his face for long. “Thank you, Jason.”
He bows his head, throat closing briefly as water builds behind his eyes. He wishes, uselessly, that he could at least know if the work he did with Red weeks ago, their preparation for his facing Rowan, bore fruit. To know if it at least helped minimize this damage… or if it made things worse.
“He would do the same for me,” is all Jason says.
Laura’s hand squeezes Red’s again, briefly, and then she turns back to Dr. Zhang. “You’ll try again today?”
“In a few hours. I want to give him some time to rest, and Jason some more time to work.”
Laura nods and rises. “I’m going to try to nap. If Leaf comes by, tell her to wake me, would you?”
“Of course,” Jason says, then rises as well. It was a bit uncomfortable, the first time she’d hugged him, but not unwelcome, and after she does so again and leaves, he takes her seat beside Red’s head, watching his face.
“Should we delay his lunch?” the nurse asks.
“No, let’s stick to the schedule,” Dr. Zhang says, running a hand through his hair. His demeanor has changed, after Laura left—some of the professionalism has relaxed, his own tiredness and worry filling the gaps left. He turns to Jason. “I have another consult call, but message if you need me.”
“I will, thank you, Doctor.” It’s strange seeing Dr. Zhang so often and in such a different context, after only a handful of professional, private meetings at his office in the school over the past few years.
Dr. Zhang leaves, and then it’s just Jason, Red, and the nurse. She moves efficiently around the room, checking Red’s vitals and documenting a request the doctor made for another brain scan. She’s always been here when Jason was, and he wonders if it’s coincidence or if she’s the only nurse Looker trusts with Red. She’s not Kantonian, so it’s possible she works for interpol directly, but surely there must be others that take turns on shift…
He shakes himself, refocusing on the unpleasant task ahead. The distortion in Red’s thoughts isn’t fundamentally different from the kind that often lingers from too much surreality exposure. The difference is the… flavor.
Each type of Ghost pokemon Jason has ever encountered affects the senses in a way that’s unique to their species. Not just the usual things people consider part of their sensorium, or even the psychic ones; encountering a new Ghost for the first time can make someone aware of senses they didn’t realize they had, or distinguish parts of senses that seemed intrinsically linked, like the ability to perceive color and light. When Jason first merged with a drifloon, he began to smell height, and would feel unbalanced by the scent of grass, vertigo from things that smelled acidic.
But what Red is experiencing is more than just synesthesia, or even a compounding of multiple such sensory issues. Along with the flood of memories and identities, there’s something… cannibalistic in the interactions.
Jason takes a breath and grounds himself, then merges with Red again. It’s easier when he’s in a deep sleep; his mind isn’t as active, which means there are fewer sensations and thoughts and feelings crashing into each other at once. Jason shares the brief memory of home Red is dreaming of, a semi-loop of him looking over the clothes he’d take with him on his journey. He has many of these, of course, memories of lying in bed reading books or writing in his journal or pacing as he chattis with Blue by phone, a set of impressions he often used to teleport to a location that wasn’t actually his home. Jason could either stabilize the memory, make it more permanent by connecting it to others, or cut those connections and let it fade.
Connecting it to others is risky, as unpredictable things have happened even beyond what normally might when doing something like this. And it’s not a vital memory so Jason does what he can to gently cut it loose, let it fade, let the pattern of neurons change and get repurposed for different things…
…only for the memory to get “eaten” by another, a glimpse of flying over some forest. Jason doesn’t know if it’s Red’s memory or one of Rowan’s, but as it merges with the glimpse of home the whole landscape changes: trees become cascading tiles of hardwood with carpet leaves, a celestial lamp hangs where the sun should be, and the horizon gets covered with wallpaper that stretches up to the sky.
The emotional signals of both memories start to blend as well, and Jason has to be more forceful to keep Red from getting, however marginally, a sense that the forest is his home, or something even more bizarre, like a lingering longing for an alien world… but before he can finish, that combined memory gets absorbed into another one, just the sensation of a deep belly laugh, of laughing so hard his/Red’s/Rowan’s stomach hurt, and Jason quickly pulls out of the merger before that combination leads to something even more bizarre.
He sits with his own mind for a moment, altering between different states to ensure he’s calibrated to his own body and memories and moods, free of any taint. Afterward he shifts into a mental state of detached observation to every detail of the moment, of infinite smallness and vastness contained as one experience, and projects that to Red as strongly as he can.
He senses it when the fused memories break apart, then dissolve into the general flow of Red’s unconscious mind. He hopes that laughter wasn’t part of a core memory, that it was one of Rowan’s that bled into Red… but either way, he’s fairly sure he did a bit of good, purged a bit of the taint.
Most importantly, he hopes he modeled the proper response well enough that Red’s subconscious is doing what he always does; learning how to steal the mindset and use it himself.
Jason finally opens his eyes and is surprised to see that the quality of the sunlight has shifted slightly. He’s also surprised that the nurse is watching him, and is about to speak when she asks, “That seemed like a pretty intense one. Can I get you anything?”
He shakes his head reflexively before pausing to consider. “Some juice, if there’s any?”
“Of course.” She goes to the small fridge in the corner, brings him a colorful pouch with a straw to poke through it. “I can get a different flavor, if you’d like.”
“No, this is good.” He takes a moment to pierce the plastic and start drinking, the flood of cool sweetness making him feel marginally more alert and present. “Thank you… Marin, was it?”
“Yes. And it’s no problem.” She smiles. “We’re both here to help him get better. That makes us colleagues.”
He smiles back. “I hadn’t considered that. Beside Dr. Zhang, I feel out of my depth.”
“But you’re healing him, aren’t you? In a way Dr. Zhang can’t?”
“That’s… not an inaccurate way to put it, I suppose. It’s more that I know how to help Red’s mind deal with the things that would damage it. I can help him heal himself better, so to speak. But my training was not on the precise parameters of what a ‘healthy’ brain looks or feels like. I can’t read Red’s overall mental health the way the doctor can, and don’t know if I could recognize all the ways things that just seem like parts of his psychology are early signs of a growing problem.” He drinks more juice, then realizes he’s finished it. Marin is already getting him another. “Thank you, again.”
“You’re welcome.” She sits on the chair beside Red’s bed and picks up a tablet from the table beside her. “I think I get the distinction you’re making, but it sounds like you’re downplaying what you’re doing. I know psychic doctors take on some risk, when their patient has interacted with ghosts, and I expect what you’re doing is even more fraught. If you need anything, at any time, please let me know.”
“I will. Are you… the only nurse attending to him?”
“No, we’re on a rotation. But it is mostly me, yeah.” She smiles. “I get by with less rest than most.”
“Well, I appreciate the assistance.” He hesitates a moment, thinking of what she said about being colleagues. He aspired to be a healer, of a sort, but never imagined working in a hospital. There were too many other identities that coincided with the concept, for him; an explorer of minds that can see clearly what others cannot. A student and emissary to the unknown, guiding the curious or alien to a place of mutual understanding.
But his concept of a medium feels out of place, here. The interpol medical quarters are especially sterile, with its plain white tiles and white walls. A few potted plants and the wide window with its mountain view are the only concessions to any sort of aesthetics, while the rest of it makes him feel somewhat dead inside, and he wonders if Marin feels anything like it. “If I may ask…”
“Yes?”
“Do you mind music, while you work? I didn’t bring earphones.”
“Depends on the music, but I think I can tune out anything I don’t like.”
“And… incense?”
“Oh, that’s not allowed here… unless it would be helpful for him? Or you?”
“Both, I believe.” Jason smiles apologetically. “I was taught that our environment is an integral part of our mindset. That we can turn inward or shrink our attention to exclude it, but that openness and integration are easier, and provide more energy.”
She starts tapping at her tablet. “I’ll let the doctor know about the incense. You can go ahead with the music, in the meantime.”
“Thank you.” He takes his phone out and finds a particular playlist, then starts the music. The first slow, stringed notes that play almost immediately shift his mental state and he sinks into the soothing sounds, letting his mindset shift more into the identity he was contemplating earlier.
Healer… Explorer… Student… Guide…
After a minute he merges with Red again, fingers gently clasped around his friend’s.
Professor Oak’s first press event after the destruction of the lab is bigger than any Pallet Town has seen, aside from when the lab was first built. All the hotels fill up quickly, and though a lot of the journalists elect to just stay in Viridian and drive over in the afternoon. A podium is placed right between the sign welcoming people to the lab’s courtyard and the ruins of the building itself; the sign is untouched save for a wedge of twisted metal that was propelled into it hard enough to split the L in Welcome in two. Zoey wonders if the Professor ordered it left there for the visual effect, already predicting that there would be cameras here eventually.
There were journalists here before, of course; a small contingent of media who collaborated with the lab and Zoey was the first.
It took nearly 36 hours after the net first went down throughout Kanto for it to start up again, and it was a piecemeal process that took another few days before the last town was reconnected.
That town was Pallet, something that was only noticed by a few people after the fact. Zoey sensed a story and started looking into it immediately, knowing it was what she had been waiting for; every journalist and blogger would be talking about the unown going wild around the world, and some sharper ones she knew would be investigating what caused the net to go down, but she had a hunch there was something more. A deeper story beneath the obvious ones, not a conspiracy (though she didn’t rule that out), but a thread that went somewhere… darker.
That’s what her job often feels like; looking around, seeing strings tucked into corners or hidden in the things people say… or carefully don’t say. Tugging on those strings, seeing if they’re worth following. Maybe finding something mildly embarrassing or understandably private, but hopefully discovering something worth spreading publicly. Corruption, racketeering, maybe a personal scandal, if it informs trustworthiness.
Most are just a hunch, of course. Maybe the infrastructure around Pallet was just damaged worse than elsewhere. But she knew the hunch paid off within a day of arriving; the town was in a sort of quasi-lockdown, all pokedexes and PCs being checked for signs of some sort of contaminant. She poked around, of course, but all they would say is that something went wrong at Pallet Labs because of the pokedex servers.
People who had actually been there were keeping their silence, which only convinced her more that there was something interesting about the shocking destruction of the lab. Something beyond them having been doing unown research in secret.
So she started drafting an article with most of the core details missing, an article she knew might never get finished, either because the secret being kept turned out to be nothing, or because she just never gets to the bottom of it. The leaders of various unown labs have avoided speaking to the press directly, simply stating that investigations into the nature of the unown phenomenon were still ongoing, or some variation of that. The net has all sorts of ideas floating around about whether the unown incident was sufficient explanation for the Kanto Blackout (as other regions were calling it) or if there was something more going on (Rocket was, of course, everyone’s first guess, but if Kanto was trying to save face by denying that Rocket did such damage to its infrastructure, it would be easy for Rocket to claim credit, and they haven’t).
When Professor Oak finally announced a press conference to share what they knew… well, people were ready to listen to someone with authority.
Which is why Zoey had stayed in the first place, aside from some trips to visit various labs that were affected. Maybe it’s just a coincidence that the blackout happened in the one region where Rocket is known to be operating. Maybe the truth lies in a different pairing of evidence.
The crowd is large, with reporters from every major news station in the region, most of the ones from Johto, and twice again the same number from the combined presence of those from other regions. Zoey knows almost everyone here except a handful of people from far-off regions, and smiles as she sees her X in the crowd, then sidles in the opposite direction so she doesn’t spot her back just yet. She’s going to want to say hi and catch up, but not until after.
Instead she studies the ruins of Pallet Lab while the reporters around her continue to chatter. The various camera crews are getting plenty of footage, some of it live, some recording so they have something visual to show anyone who might get bored of just watching the Professor talk, whenever he shows up.
No, probably not just to avoid people getting bored. In this case, the visual would add some powerful emphasis.
The skeleton of the structure is still there, though with some bones bent, broken, or missing. The rubble of the ceiling and walls are all most people could make out in the photos that initially shocked the region, but they’ve since been cleared away and cleaned up. Zoey knows the rest of it isn’t salvageable, and a full renovation will be done before they start rebuilding, but in this halfway state, with scorch marks all around the frame that used to hold up the beautiful glass front of the building, the sense of tragedy is stark.
Zoey isn’t immune to that feeling. Professor Oak had been the star pride of Kanto when she was growing up, and while he’s always been a grandstander, she’s never heard anything in her many conversations with people over the years to indicate that he had some less savory personality under his public one. He has his detractors, like anyone with power or status. But none are personal. Pallet Labs, and the pokedex system Oak and Sonezaki pioneered for collective, citizen-research, is one of those things Kantonians could all genuinely be proud of, given how many of them were or knew a trainer somewhere who could claim to have contributed. For many it’s a symbol of their journeys, the name stamped in the corner of their younger self’s most prized possession.
They’ll rebuild it, no doubt. But it’s being treated as a bad omen, and Zoey understands why.
The random chatter around Zoey hushes, and she turns to see the van approaching from town. It parks near the podium, and Professor Oak steps out first, followed by Drs. Gao, Madi, Siles, and Hato flanking him. Conspicuously missing is Dr. Amara, who was killed in the incident. When the arrivals line up to flank the Professor, they keep a gap between Madi and Siles.
The group is somber, and dress in black beneath their white coats. The Professor nods to a few people in the crowd, then steps up to the podium and its mic, turning it on before leaning against his folded arms.
Every camera is pointed at him, now, and a few of the people who were filming the remains of the lab are just finishing up their switch to a stationary setup. The Professor waits for them, seeming unperturbed, and then clears his throat. Zoey is close enough to see how tired he looks, and her hand scribbles rapidly on her notepad to catch each phrase that comes to mind for later.
“Good afternoon. Thank you all for coming. I know you all have questions. I’ll take them at the end.
“My first statement is about what we lost.
“My second statement is about what happened all around Kanto, and beyond, eleven days ago.
“My third statement is about what happens next.”
“The total dead from the unown incident is only numbered in the hundreds. 244, to be exact. I say only because we’ve all heard worse. Many of us have *lived* through worse. But I don’t want us to be so numb to the true impact of this number. Here at Pallet, we lost nine of the brightest, most creative, most kind people I’ve ever had the privilege of working with…”
The names wash over Zoey, some only vaguely familiar. Science wasn’t her field, and she didn’t follow or cover Pallet Labs unless there was some political angle. Professor Oak mentions something personal about each of the dead staff members, and Zoey is surprised to learn that one of the ranchers was killed as well. The monsters had been closer to escaping containment than she thought.
“…and finally, Dr. Amara Singh, our head of informatics. Amara was a friend from my early life, one of the few who wasn’t a trainer herself. She’s someone who shined bright from across the world, who I invited here to join in the exciting progress I had planned for Kanto. She worked closely with Bill and I on the pokedex system, and worked every day on new advances, new efficiencies. She loved things that grew, ensuring there was a plant in every room of the lab. She made this region her home, and is survived by her husband, two children, three grandchildren. I will miss her dearly, as will the rest of the lab and town.
Professor Oak pauses, letting the silence breathe. It goes on for longer than Zoey expected, and she watches Oak for any signs of emotionality. His gaze has dropped to the podium, but he has no notes that she can saw.
The professor finally looks up and says, “Last of course, there’s the lab.” Another pause, again for longer than Zoey expected. He doesn’t turn to look at the remains, even as a few people with cameras swivel to take it in. Most of the cameras have turned back to him by the time he finally speaks again. “I’ve only recently begun talks with our insurance and funders to determine specifics, but I am confident that one way or another, we will rebuild it. As a structure, as a place for experimentation and learning, Pallet Labs will return.”
Check into insurance. Probably not a huge story, but a potentially interesting one. If they determine that Professor Oak choosing to destroy the lab himself, even for some greater good, violates the policy… well, confidence notwithstanding, he doubts the lab’s funders would be happy about that. She wonders how much of Oak’s own minor fortune he’d be willing to tap into; from what she remembers, he donates to a number of scientific endeavors, but never ones he’s involved in. He also tried hard to ensure that the lab wasn’t funded by just one or two people, to avoid being the appearance (or reality) of being beholden to anyone… even his friends, like Bill Sonezaki.
“But I wanted to take a moment to emphasize that the lab was more than a building. We can replace the building, and the knowledge it contained. We have offsite backups for eventualities as unlikely as this, and whatever wasn’t backed up… well, the great thing about truth is that you can’t lose it forever. If you discover something real about reality, you can always rediscover it… or someone else can. But the incident still interrupted dozens of current, important research projects, some involving pokemon that took months or years to raise and train. Those are months and years that all of us will have to live without knowledge that might just be a curiosity… or might save someone’s life.” His gaze sweeps the crowd. “That loss matters. It’s not abstract. In a finite system, which all our lives are, you only get to exist at the same time as a certain amount of new discoveries, and for all of us, not just here in Kanto but around the world, that number has gone down.”
Emphasizing value of his work, Zoey notes. She might not make a thing out of it—she even agrees with him. But she would be surprised if the funders were happy to write a blank check to rebuild the lab, either… not unless he’s going to announce that they’ve found a way to ensure there’s no repeat risk of all this happening again. Speaking of which, he should be transitioning right about n—
“Which brings us to what caused all these losses, as best I understand it.” Bingo. The professor’s tone has shifted to a more straightforward, just-the-facts recitation, losing most of the emotion it contained before. Even given that, he holds everyone’s attention with his obvious, continued presence, the hard to quantify “aliveness” he brings to what’s, admittedly, a captivating topic even on repeat. “Wild unown were corralled and contained within various research labs for study of spontaneous biogenesis. Having never shown any hostility, this was deemed acceptably safe by the League. It was believed that even if unown began to demonstrate the ability to create pokemon, a controlled environment, constant monitoring, and defensive measures would be enough to contain them.
“This was, obviously, false, but for unexpected reasons. Months ago, a psychic by the name of Rowan Dunkirk went searching for wild unown after receiving the dream warning of some alien, malevolent being using the unown for some goal that, approximately stated, would result in our world’s destruction. My understanding is that when Leader Sabrina released the video asking for assistance from anyone who might help locating him, it was only known that he was not in his right mind, and had made vague threats, possibly warnings, of this coming calamity.
“It is believed now by Leader Sabrina and others who helped find and stop Rowan that he played some part in priming the unown in various labs for antagonism. This is still speculative, as Rowan was killed before he could be questioned and there are no witnesses that place him at any of the labs when the unown began acting aberrantly. There are, however, a number of pieces of evidence that someone tampered with the memories and security footage at various labs, including those here in Kanto.
“All this would have resulted in many lost lives and destruction on its own. What took everyone by surprise was the introduction of the so-called ‘glitchmon.’ It’s an apt name; these monsters cannot currently be safely contained within pokeball tech, and can corrupt any device that attempts to store its information. Unlike similar digitally originated pokemon, like the porygon prototype, they appear to remain active and agentic as simple information, and take energy and physical form from whatever device contains that information, along with other objects nearby.
“This ability to corrupt objects and travel digitally is why Bill Sonezaki used an emergency measure that he had permission from the government to use for just such a circumstance.”
Zoey raises a brow. The reporters around her are too professional to murmur amongst themselves mid-interview, but she catches plenty of exchanged looks. Sonezaki did that? Unilaterally? Even given government permission? Responsibility? It would have been a hell of a story. The fact that he had this ability in secret for months or years makes her itch to get to work on digging into the original story that led to him having that decision.
“It is also why I was forced to destroy our lab,” Professor Oak continues, not giving them time to absorb that particular shock. “It became clear we could not contain the glitchmon that had taken residence in the pokedex servers after a researcher at Cinnabar caught one of the glitchmon and attempted to scan it. He died shortly after.”
She jots down a quick Cinnabar glitchmon name? Surely the family has been informed by now. The list of those killed in Cinnabar isn’t public, but it’s not hard to find if you look; not mentioning which of them did it is another thread to tug at.
“Even despite my grief and my fear, I admit that a part of me is excited that these things exist.” Professor Oak shrugs. “It’s been my nature for as long as I can remember. When I was young, wonder and awe and a desire to understand drove me throughout my journey. Understanding is the solution to fear. I truly believe that, and it’s why I resisted calls for a moratorium on unown research. Even now, both my inner scientist and my inner warrior take these ‘glitchmon’ as a challenge… but it’s a challenge I don’t believe should be faced the same way we’ve faced it so far, cautious though we believed we were being.
“My final statement, for today, is on the future. Labs around the world were not prepared both for the sudden appearance of wild pokemon and the unown clouds turning hostile. Because it took place so early in the morning, some lost their entire on-duty staff, leaving it up to local trainers, rangers, and gyms to contain the outbreaks. I’m sure that safer protocols can and will be designed for future unown cloud study.
“But that is not where the real danger lies. So far, and luckily, the glitchmon have only appeared in Cinnabar and, due to the pokedex upload, Pallet. But that luck may not hold out, even with Rowan Donkirk’s death. They represent a threat unlike any we’ve faced since the invention of the pokeball, a threat that we are not, currently, prepared for. It is not enough to simply educate everyone in avoiding attempts to capture them, while defending against them through normal battles; we do not yet know if they have to be captured and scanned to spread through the net. We do not know what alternate forms and abilities new ones may possess, which may make them even harder to contain than the ditto. All of which is why I’ve reversed my position on unown studies, and believe there should be a temporary moratorium on live unown research, until we can better ensure the safety of the region, and world beyond.”
There it is. Zoey can already imagine the online commentary that some live-viewers are no doubt typing furiously into forums or blogs. Insistence that he’s too biased by the friends he lost, by the loss of his lab… but the Professor is in an obvious double bind. Either he doesn’t emphasize the personal loss and seems heartless, or does and seems manipulative and biased.
“It is my fervent hope that, if Indigo takes this approach, other regions will follow suit. I know the temptation to pursue new research as well as anyone, and the potential gains from confirmation of unown originated pokemon genesis are massive. But we live in an interconnected world, quite literally, and any region who tempts fate would risk corruption spreading not just through their own region, but others as well. Recklessness here could cripple the greatest force for collective knowledge and coordination our world has known as regions begin silo’ing their networks from each other.”
Threats to silo dexnet from any region doing unown research, Zoey writes. Preapproved by Indigo? They would be pissed by the attempt to influence interregiononal politics, if not…
“The loss of knowledge can be akin to the loss of life and prosperity. Every day a new breakthrough in potion tech is delayed, hundreds may die. We should all take the delay of progress seriously… but we should also not risk everything else for as much speed as possible. We must measure the potential risk as well, risk to people just as real as those relying on progress… and risk to the knowledge they can also help create. Thank you for your time. I’ll now take questions.”
The crowd explodes, hands and voices getting raised over each other. Zoey simply sticks her hand up and patiently waits, then checks what the locals are doing and feels relieved that they’re acting the same. Some speakers try to be fair, some go for those they know will have easy questions, some go for the noisiest, most frantic people hoping to calm them down, and others reward good behavior. She’s hoping Oak is the latter, and the locals aren’t banking on him calling on them just by familiarity.
Her patience is rewarded. First a question about whether Pallet was doing its own unown research, which Oak denies, then a question on the cost of rebuilding, a question about safety measures for the dex, a question on how Oak or others would learn enough to ensure safety from glitchmon (a good question, though the answer is an unsatisfying “That’s yet to be determined.”) until eventually the other reporters start to catch on, but by then Oak has already made eye contact with her, and calls on her next.
“Zoey Palmer, unaffiliated. Thank you for your thoughts today, Professor. My question is, what was Red Verres’s involvement with the incident?”
The Professor stares at her for an extra blink too long. “He assisted with the defense of the lab, as well as Cinnabar’s.”
“That’s all?” she asks before he can call on someone else. “My sources say he was involved from the start, and teleported to warn a nearby ranger outpost shortly after the net went down.”
He’s quick enough to answer, this time. “I believe Bill must have informed Interpol, who sent him to help.”
“Yet he was also at the Cinnabar Lab after the unown started showing the odd behavior that proved to be precursor to their attack. I’ve tried reaching out to their lab’s head, to Mr. Sonezaki, to Interpol, and to Mr. Verres himself for comment so as to create a more thorough timeline, but without success.”
“I haven’t spoken to Red recently,” the professor says, and to his credit he doesn’t add in anything about how he was grieving too much to ask, true thought it might have been, simply turning from her to point to another reporter.
Zoey jots down a few more notes, then pays half attention to the rest of the questions and answers, mind already wondering how she would find Red Verres given he, or Interpol, clearly don’t want him speaking to the press. He hasn’t posted anything online since the incident either, and while he reportedly showed up to help deal with a Tier 2 near Saffron last week, she couldn’t find anyone who spoke to him there.
She hopes he’s not dead. She’d understand if it was being hidden, if he was, and might choose not to publish if it emboldens Rocket… but her extra-private source implied that he was at Cinnabar after the unown began to act strangely but before the attacks started. If there’s some connection between him and Sabrina’s student, Rowan, it might be more than coincidence… and if he caused the unown incident, along with or instead of Rowan, the public deserves to know what Interpol’s anti-Rocket weapon is really capable of.
They watch the news together, over meals. There were tense conversations, between, as they discussed what it would all mean. What, if anything, could be done now. Whether the danger is passed.
They try to have lighter days as well. Walks through nature, listening to music while playing with the pokemon, playing games. Still, the stresses of society reach them.
Professor Oak’s press conference heralded waves of panic and wild speculation. The “glitchmon” have become the primary story of the unown incident, not just locally but around the world. It was easy for most people to ignore the threat of the ditto, given they were contained on Cinnabar. But this was global change, potentially a global threat.
Still, the threat has only manifested in Kanto so far. Elsewhere, the unown’s “awakening,” as it was being called, led to some deaths, but also showed their ability to create new pokemon… an ability that many regions were already turning into a reliable method for reviving fossils.
Those who believed the dreams portended doom see this as an acceleration toward the end times, protesting the dangers of such research both in the nearterm and far. With the arrival of monsters that (supposedly) can weaponize the pokedex system back against humans, the destruction of the lab that birthed that technology feels more than symbolic. Internet alarmists insist it’s the end of the dex era as everyone awaits some sign that future iterations of the technology will be safer if glitchmon appear again.
Fuji has privately wondered as much himself. Mazda has other worries; horror and fear, over the new behavior by the unown. Anger and despair, over the way other regions have not heeded the warnings. Worry, over the fate of the boy.
Fuji doesn’t try to dissuade them from seeking him out again. The danger is obvious, but the sense of obligation is compelling… from both of them, of a sort, if Fuji extends the gratitude he feels toward the boy’s mother. But it’s not his life or freedom that would be at risk, and they don’t necessarily know that Red Verres is hurt. Perhaps there is some other explanation for the boy’s absence from any media since his potential battle.
“You’re sure he faced Rowan?” Fuji asks, when Mazda brings up the desire again.
No, Mazda says. Not sure. But given the scope of what happened…
Fuji nods, and they tune in to the news again that night to listen to Champion Lance announce the results of Indigo’s discussions with foreign regions.
“Despite our best efforts to explain the danger, unown research will continue abroad,” the Champion said. “Given this, Sinnoh has said they would not ban their researchers from further study of pokemon genesis, and Hoenn has indicated that they believe Wally has a solution to the risk of the glitchmon. To maintain our position as one of the world’s leading regions for research, Indigo will lift its moratorium on wild unown study, after proper safety measures are enacted…”
Mazda’s tail lashes, and Fuji feels worry gnaw at his stomach. He reaches to turn off the stream, but Mazda lifts an arm to stop him.
“…including a partnership with Silph Corporation, to accelerate the completion of their Master Ball technology, improved to be capable of rendering even the glitchmon safely contained.”
Fuji feels his stomach clench. He knew the project would continue, that sooner or later the ball would be completed…
You said it was created for me.
Grief and regret, grinding his heart between them. He finishes pausing the stream, blocking off the Champion’s answers to some interregional politics question. “Yes. Not exclusively… they wanted them for the Stormbirds, first. But yes, I understood what the specs they added into it were for. A particular precaution, against particularly strong minds. Against telekinesis. I might have said it truly was meant to cover every circumstance, every eventuality… but given the collaboration between Silph and Giovanni, I think it was meant to be the ultimate backup measure.” He turns to Mazda, whose tail has gone completely still. Rigid. “What will you do?”
Mazda is silent, for a moment… and then rises from their seat, towering over Fuji as they stare at Champion Lance’s image on the monitor.
I have hidden long enough. They did not heed the dreams. They did not learn from the unown. Perhaps… a more direct approach is needed.