Chapter 96: Moral Reasoning

A spike of alarm sends Red’s pulse thudding through his ears as Rei turns to fully face him, then offers a respectful nod. He stares at her across the short hallway between the central corridor and where she’s standing in front of his door, and all he can think to say is, “Hi.”

“Hello, Red.” She’s no longer dressed in the elegant kimonos she used to, instead wearing a formal suit that, combined with the pokebelt at her waist, makes her look more severe and professional. Despite that, a pair of colorful kanzashi still accessorize her hairbun. “It’s good to see you again.”

“Uh… yeah.” Is it? “What are you doing here?”

She raises a brow. “Sabrina didn’t tell you?”

He blinks, then takes out his phone and checks his messages. There is indeed one from the Gym Leader:

I’ve informed Giovanni, who wants to speak with you. He’s sending a familiar face to bring you to the meeting; after Rei left my school she began working for him. Don’t be alarmed, and let me know when you’re back.

“Yeah, she did.” Red didn’t wonder much about what happened to Rei after she left, mostly just relieved that she didn’t get a renegade brand. “How did you…?”

“End up working for Leader Giovanni? Sens… Sabrina recommended me.”

“Huh.” I notice that I am confused. “And you’ve been happy with that? I thought you’d want to continue your psychic studies.”

“I’ve found other ways to do so. What I really wanted was to learn Sabrina’s secret, as I told you.”

“Right.” Red remembers that day clearly, when they were walking toward the gym together to propose the idea of merging with people who entered the cafeteria. The way she so casually admitted it to him, someone she’d previously admitted to not trusting. “So… does that mean you have?”

Rei just smiles. “Are you ready to go?”

Fair enough. “Uh, give me a minute.” He walks past her to enter his room (feeling a little awkward about closing the door behind him without inviting her in) and quickly changes into warmer clothes, still thinking about the last time he saw Rei. She seemed willing to accept her fate so long as she got to talk to Sabrina before leaving the school, and if Sabrina actually recommended she work for Giovanni… well, it seems Rei’s trust in her was rewarded even more than he originally thought. It’s one thing to forgive someone for working against you, but to then recommend them to a prestigious job?

He notices his confusion again, and wonders what Rei might have offered for a chance to learn her secret, and what it has to do with the Viridian Leader.

Maybe he’s about to find out.

Red grabs his pokebelt and snaps it on before rejoining her. “So, where are we headed?” he asks as he locks the door behind him.

“I know you can do free teleportation now, do you have a strong enough memory in Viridian?”

He thinks of his rooftop meeting with Donovan. “I think so.”

“Good.” She heads for the elevators, and he follows. “Congratulations, by the way, on that and the indoor teleportation.”

He glances at her. “So you believe I did it?”

“From what I remember, the pursuit of knowledge was as close to a sacred value as you hold. Unless you’ve changed radically since I left, I don’t believe you’d lie about something like that.”

“Uh, no. I wouldn’t. Thanks.” As they enter the elevator it starts to really sink in that Rei is here, beside him. Instead of what happened afterward, he flashes back to the look she gave him when she realized that he had outed her, so calm and accepting, only to turn pale with fear as Tetsuo accused her of being a renegade… “Rei, listen—”

“It’s alright,” the blonde says, voice and face serene as ever. “I told you before that you were free to tell the others, and you still kept my intentions private until my actions spurred you to share them. I can’t say the resulting house arrest was a pleasant experience, with what was hanging over me…” She trails off, for a moment, before taking a breath. “But I was mostly confident that if I made my case, after such an extreme act, Sabrina would listen. I hold no grudge against you; in a way you were my backup plan.”

“I… what?”

“If I approached her directly, she might have just denied everything. My hope was that her discovering that I was willing to tell someone else about my suspicions would make her too worried about what else I might have told others, who I would have even more reason to trust than you.”

He can’t help but stare at her as the elevator doors reopen. “That’s… really manipulative.” A coal of anger starts to burn in his chest when he thinks of how much he agonized over whether he should tell the others…

“Do you hold a grudge against me? If you didn’t before, does this change things?”

“I…” They’re walking on the roof, now, and could really stop at any point to teleport. So he stands still to consider the question, searching his feelings for nearly a minute. She doesn’t rush him, though her outfit doesn’t seem particularly suited to the cold.

What did Rei do to him, really, that he should be angry with her? She didn’t lie, even if she didn’t tell the whole truth. She put him in an awkward position, but not out of malice, and if asked ahead of time whether he would want to know something true even if it makes him uncomfortable he would have said yes. So in the end…

“I guess I don’t. Even knowing this. Though,” he admits after a moment’s further thought. “That may be because of leftover guilt.”

“Or maybe you just lack the confidence to hold a grudge. Have you ever?”

Red thinks of Blue, and the months he spent angry with him. “Yes.”

“Truly? Someone’s apologized to you for a harm they’ve done, and you refused to forgive them?”

Red blinks. “Is that… what a grudge has to be?”

“It’s the only way I know to differentiate it from feelings of justified anger, though some grudges may be justified as well. I suppose it depends how sincere the apology is, or how unforgivable the harm.”

Red eyes her, unsure where she’s going with this. “You haven’t apologized.”

“And you haven’t expressed anger. In any case, we’re allies now, so I’m glad to hear you don’t hold any ill will. If an apology would help, then I’m sorry I disrupted your exeggcute experiment.”

Allies? Red supposes it’s true, given the risk to all psychics, but he feels like she means more. Wait, does she even know about that? How much did Sabrina or Giovanni tell her? “Just for that?”

“I assumed you would want sincerity.”

This has been a weird day, and it’s probably going to get weirder, so Red decides to just nod. As he said, he can’t bring himself to feel angry with her anyway. “Apology accepted. I still managed to learn a lot from it, in any case.”

“I would be happy to hear more about it, sometime, as well as other ways your powers have developed. Are you ready?”

“Yes.” He unclips his abra’s ball and summons it. “We’re going to Viridian Gym?”

“Have you been there before?”

“No, but I can teleport to the roof of the southern Trainer House.”

“I’ll meet you there, then. Our final destination is in the city, but not the Gym.”

With that she summons her kadabra and teleports away. It takes Red a minute to feel through his memory of those moments when he met Donovan’s skarmory. It’s difficult at first because his remembered fear gets in the way of communicating the safety his abra needs to teleport, but eventually he can concentrate enough on the triumph and safety he felt afterward that…

…and with a brief wrenching sensation, they’re suddenly there.

Red looks around and finds himself alone on the trainer house roof, admiring the city for a moment. Back when he first became able to teleport, it took him a while to get used to how awesome it was to be able to instantly travel to another city, and after his first free teleportation he’s been too focused on reproducing it to enjoy the ability. Now, however, knowing he has a few minutes at least until Rei meets him here, he closes his eyes again, focusing…

And a moment later he can smell the ocean. He opens his eyes to find himself at the Pallet Beach, just a fifteen minute walk from his old home. The piers are still being repaired after the incident, and the water line is higher than it used to be, but the boardwalk is the same, and he’s still filled with nostalgia as he looks around and takes in the sights and smells. After a moment he returns his abra and makes his way toward a colorful stall along the winding path that divides the shrubs and grass to the north from the sand dunes.

He waits in the short line behind a young woman with a growlithe at her side, its red coat covered with a yellow jacket that declares it an emotional support pokemon. Her hand never leaves its fur as she steps forward and orders a drink in a hesitant tone, and once they’re both gone and Red orders a hot chocolate, he summons Pikachu. The two walk over to a bench, and he spends a minute petting and playing with his pokemon’s ears before just sipping his drink and looking around again, noting all the things that have changed since he was last here with his mom and dad.

It doesn’t hurt as much as it used to, thinking about it. He wonders if it’s the partitions keeping him from feeling the grief, and after a note of reassurance from his unpartitioned self, lets them drop.

The world shifts, but not by much. The memories grow edges, but not sharp ones. He thinks of riding on his dad’s shoulders while walking toward his smiling mom, and finally feels… okay.

Not great. But instead of the debilitating emptiness of a hole in his chest, his sadness feels less sharp, and mixed with a bittersweet joy.

Red takes a deep breath, then lets it out, deciding to keep his partitions down for a while longer, just getting used to being in full control of himself again after his brief but intense chat with Sabrina. In a way he’s enjoying the fruits of months of private, lonely labor.

If a year ago someone had offered him the ability to think about two things at once, he would have promised virtually anything as payment. Being “awake” behind his partition every day, riding around in his own head as his partitioned self interacts with the world, isn’t quite that… but it’s nearly as good. He doesn’t think as quickly or as efficiently, for one thing, and the two “threads” can’t communicate with each other particularly well when the partition is up. He also gets bored fairly easily, with nothing to read or do besides think and revisit his memories, and ends up spending a number of hours each day just coasting along with his partitioned self, almost like playing a full-body sim that he has restricted control over.

So, nearly as good… and good enough, for what he needed. Enough to let him spend hundreds of hours over the past couple months processing his memories, his life, his feelings, without interrupting his day to day life. Enough to better understand his grief, both over his dad and Aiko, and the differences between them.

The most important difference is that he has more today than he had when he lost his dad. Tomio Verres represented one of the three pillars holding up Young Red’s reality, and what Red finally realized after his grief over Aiko reopened the same wound is that the pillar was more than Tomio himself, both as an individual and in his role as Red’s father. It meant more than just safety either.

The pillar was confidence that the world made sense. It was the bedrock belief that the world was understandable, that danger in it could be studied, planned for, and warded against. When it fell, when even his father’s seemingly endless font of knowledge and preparation and strength wasn’t enough, it showed him that no one’s was, that the world was intrinsically a random and dangerous place, and that his mother or Blue or the Professor or even all of Pallet Town could disappear next, and that there was nothing anyone could do about it.

The counterswing he went through was entirely too strong an update, given that it resulted in him essentially giving up on learning or doing anything ever again. Once his partition unknowingly developed, and he started attending sessions with Dr. Seward that helped keep the worst of it at bay, he had space to think again. It was easier to regain an interest in the world, and his passion to learn everything he could about not just pokemon but everything could be seen as, in part, a desire to avoid having the same thing happen again.

Red runs his fingers through Pikachu’s fur as he sips his chocolate and thinks over the structure of his life now. He has more pillars, for one thing, and though few are as thick and sturdy, the multitude of them make for a more robust structure. Thinking of losing his mom, or Professor Oak, or Blue or Leaf, or his other friends and mentors, all make his stomach clench and his breath come shorter… but the world would keep spinning, and there would still be more to it. His desire to know the world wouldn’t be any less. His curiosity over pokemon, how they work, where they come from, wouldn’t disappear. His passion to understand his own mind, how it works, how it fails and how to improve it, wouldn’t feel any less important. If anything it might get stronger.

All these pillars might wobble or crack if enough of the other supporting structures in his life changed. But the weight would resettle again, over time.

Unfortunately, realizing all this doesn’t help him understand whether he swung too far after accepting Professor Oak’s offer, particularly since one of those new pillars is what’s being shaken now. What would his younger self say if he knew that his need to understand and learn more about how reality works might cause all psychics to be shunned from society? No more trusting them for determining renegade guilt, no more psychic trainers with their unique abilities and flexible traveling, no more psychic doctors…

If young Red had reason to believe it, he might well have turned down Professor Oak’s offer.

And Red knows—or rather, he feels—that that can’t be the right answer either. Whatever the consequences, he rebels at the very idea that wanting to learn more about the world, for any reason, is wrong.

But it scares him. The thought of facing Giovanni, of owning up to what he’s done, of being told by the Leader what the consequences would be, feels more frightening than anything he’s ever done in his life, dulled by the passing of time as they’ve been.

And in part that’s because he knows that the Viridian Gym Leader wouldn’t say something thoughtlessly or without due confidence. If Giovanni says he has crippled psychics throughout society, turned people against them, made them unlikely to ever be trusted as trainers again, or worse…

He takes a deep breath, rubs Pikachu’s head, and sips his hot chocolate again, guiding his attention to the taste of it spreading over his tongue and the feel of his pokemon’s fur. The grief and sadness over Dad and Aiko may never fully leave him, but he has finally managed to come to terms with them. In one sense it’s too bad he’s just replaced them with another crisis, but in another way it’s just in time. He’ll need to spend more time moving forward as his whole self, and the lessons he’s learned along the way to reaching this point are the same ones that he has to use to keep himself from falling apart again.

So he enjoys his hot chocolate, for a minute, and practices relaxing his pulse each time a spike of stress sets his heart to pounding, grounding himself in the flow of breathing the familiar scents in… and out. In… and out.

When he feels more stable, he swaps Pikachu for Abra and teleports back to Viridian. Even knowing it will happen, he marvels over the fact that the flimsy thermos cup and the hot chocolate in it came with him, and spends his elevator trip down thinking over the obscure and convoluted rules of teleportation, and whether the others are working on testing his hypothesis yet… until that train of thought is soured by recognizing how proving indoor teleportation might just make things worse. Would psychics not be allowed into people’s homes anymore if people knew there are some who can teleport through walls? Should he tell Sabrina and the others to stop trying to prove it?

No, Sabrina’s thought about that already, surely. But she didn’t know about the perfect lying or sakki then… for all he knows she’s already told the others to hold off on their tests.

The lingering taste of chocolate is suddenly cloying, and he tosses the cup in a nearby trashcan. He wants to stomp his foot and scream over the unfairness of it all, and is tempted to bring his partitions back up, but instead he just closes his eyes and focuses on what he’s feeling, trying to get a better handle on why the thought of calling Sabrina and telling her they shouldn’t test his hypothesis makes him feel so conflicted.

Cold air against his skin… the press of the ground against his feet through his shoes… his hair brushing his forehead… and a vague, wriggling cloud in his torso, somewhere between his stomach and his heart. When he asks himself if it’s on his side or against him, neither feels quite right. He tries speaking out loud, muttering some prompts under his breath as he stuffs his hands in his pockets to keep them warm.

“I don’t want to set people against psychics.”

He feels the words resonate, but not in a strong sense.

“I don’t want people to get hurt.”

Same reaction, maybe even a little more faint.

“I don’t want people to be scared of me?”

No reaction. He says it again, surprised, and tries deliberately imagining people’s frightened reactions, but it still doesn’t feel like that’s where the source of his worry is. Maybe that’s because there hasn’t yet been some huge outcry over his announcement, though maybe if they see a psychic teleporting into buildings, feel it’s more real, that would change.

He’s not sure what else to ask, for a moment, and then imagines making the call again, feels the cloud expand, the wiggling sensation strengthen.

Red swallows, and whispers, “I don’t want to stop the research.”

The cloud “tightens,” turns into a ball of lead in his stomach, and he knows that’s it. He doesn’t want to give up on knowing if his hypothesis is right, doesn’t want to give up on whatever other secrets might come from this discovery. Proving the distinction between telekinetic and telepathic powers? Better understanding the Lavender ghost’s abilities?

And he’s already claimed to have done it. If he gives up now, people will think he’s a liar… or someone else will discover it anyway, and keep it secret.

He’s still mulling over how reasonable this is when a car pulls up to the sidewalk with Rei inside. Red enters beside her, and she inputs a new address that sends the car back onto the street.

Despite her sitting quietly, Red’s thoughts are derailed by her presence, old curiosities returning (and acting as a welcome distraction). “So what do you do, these days?”

“I’m afraid I can’t say much about my work for Giovanni.”

So much for allies. “But you’re still interested in research, right? Or, I mean, developing your abilities?”

She smiles slightly. “I am, yes. And part of my work gives me the opportunity to do so.”

“Anything interesting you’d be free to share?”

“Screening,” she says, and shrugs. “I have a talent for beating psychic shields, and I’ve been training it further.”

Red remembers her desire to sneak through the Saffron Gym Second and Third’s shields, and how Tetsuo dismissed this as expected. “Who have you been testing yourself against?”

“Some other Viridian Gym members. Outside of Saffron, this city has the most psychics in the Indigo League.”

Red knew that thanks to the networking he did for his research, but… “Are they a challenge, for you?” Most psychic trainers don’t spend as much time developing their abilities as non-trainers.

“Some are. Perhaps you’ll meet them.”

The car leaves the city proper and enters the suburbs to the east, more and more space growing around each building until they’re passing some of the larger homes surrounded by rolling green hills on every side. The car turns toward one, and follows a winding path up a hill, past the perimeter sensors, and to the front of a three story manor built in the traditional style. Once the car parks, they step out and up the patio steps, passing a pair of people trimming the hedges on either side. Red almost fails to register them, gazing up at the house in a mix of worry and anticipation, but for the fact that their belts have ultra balls and they don’t register to his psydar, which is when he belatedly realizes he’s been taken to Giovanni’s private home.

He sends his senses out further and finds a few others spread out through the building, but sees no one else as Rei leads him down a hall and up some stairs. Eventually she stops at some double doors and silently gestures him past. Red takes a breath, then walks past her and opens the doors.

The room feels like a blend of Professor Oak’s home and lab offices, with a dark but colorful patterned rug, and round, cushy brown seats, but mostly unadorned walls and much of the room taken up by various computers and a couple different replicators. A single portrait is hung on the far wall, and when Red gets closer he sees with some surprise that it looks like a real painting.

Within the frame is a mature woman with short grey curls, dressed in an elegant kimono and just enough jewelry to make her look rich without seeming ostentatious. The painting itself seems like enough for that; the background makes it clear that the portrait is modern, being set in the current room, which must have been quite an expense considering its size and how much easier a photo would have been. The woman’s gaze is piercing, mouth set in a grim line, as if impatient for the artist to finish their work.

She also bears a resemblance to the man below it; the Viridian Gym Leader is seated in the same functional leather chair as the one in the painting, though it’s set behind an open leg desk made of some dark wood. The other similarity is the cream-furred persian lounging at their feet; it’s hard to tell its age, but thanks to pokeball tech it could be the exact same one. Red wonders if the woman is Giovanni’s mother, or perhaps grandmother, and notes his own surprise. The Leader doesn’t seem like a particularly sentimental person, and while Red’s never heard anything about his family other than that they were old money, in retrospect that makes it more curious how absent they’ve been in the public eye.

“It’s an honor to meet you, Leader,” Red says once he’s standing before the desk. “Properly, I mean.”

“I’d hoped it would happen sooner rather than later.” Giovanni gestures to one of the two chairs in front of his desk, and Red sits, finding the seat as comfortable as it looks. “I meant to speak with you more after the event in Lavender, but as usual something got in the way. I believe we have briefly spoken before, however.”

“Right, when I was in Viridian Forest.” Red sent him a thank you message for that the next day, but hadn’t gotten a response, and wondered if he’d even remember it. It’s hard not to fanboy and start babbling about how much he admires Giovanni, but the intimidation he feels from speaking with the Leader so privately helps keep him in check, along with the knowledge of what they’re here to discuss. “So… um. How much do you know? I mean, what can I do for you?”

“You’re wondering why I invited you here after you already told Sabrina everything. It’s an understandable worry, but in case it helps you relax, it’s not because I intend to interrogate you. If you could lie to her, you could lie to anyone.”

Giovanni’s smile is faint and wry, but Red feels himself relax a little. He’d also been wondering, briefly, if he’ll feel anyone try to skim his surface thoughts or emotions like Leaf accused Giovanni of doing to her, but even aside from the point just made, it would be stupid to try that on a trained psychic.

Unless the ability to merge with someone without them feeling it is another secret psychic technique that’s been carefully concealed from the public.

Red can hardly argue with that possibility, and resolves to keep his shield up. “So… what did you want to talk about?”

“A number of things, starting with…” Giovanni turns back to his monitor and drags the mouse around for a moment, clicking, then rotates the screen toward Red, who sees…

A breathtaking sight. Low quality as it is, the view of the earth from space, or rather a portion of the southern hemisphere from what must be a satellite in moderately high orbit, makes Red forget where he is for a moment, lost in the whirls of cloud over ocean and the peeks of brown and green land beneath them. It’s a sight that always fills him with wonder, an engrossing sense that there’s so much more to the world than what he’s seen, a tantalizing reminder of all the unexplored places and undiscovered pokemon still waiting beyond the reach of civilization.

He almost misses the thin, wavy line above the nearest cloud, dismissing it at first as a hair on the screen or an artifact of the photographing process. When he recognizes what it is, for a moment he feels a surge of horror until he remembers that the distance to the camera is what’s making it look so relatively large; according to the reports Rayquaza’s body is longer than any other pokemon’s, but not visible-from-space long.

“When…?”

“Three weeks ago. There are only a few hundred satellites with cameras in orbit, many of them less than a decade old and each immensely valuable to all sorts of different goals and projects. But since the incident, for the first time in history each one of them, controlled by regions all over the world, have been coordinating on this one task. We needed to know where it went, and whether what happened in Hoenn is really over. It hasn’t been spotted below cloud cover since then, however, and seems content to just… float around in the upper atmosphere. Perhaps that’s where it’s been all this time, but we’re still hoping to learn more about it, particularly in case it’s been permanently re-awakened in some sense that we haven’t yet seen.”

Red wonders why he hasn’t heard about this, then realizes the connection. “This is being kept private?”

“As best we can. It was considered… better, for morale, that people move on with their lives rather than stay in fear of death dropping from the sky at any moment.” Giovanni shrugs, tilting the monitor back toward himself and staring at it for a moment. “More than they already do, at least.”

Red can see the argument for that, but… “But you don’t believe that. That’s what you were warning about, in your speech. What comes next.”

The Leader’s lips curl in a slight smile. “Hard as this may be to believe, I am not as confident as I may often appear. I try, in fact, to only act as confidently as I feel. Any more or less would be deception of one sort or another, and while deception can be useful, in this case… I genuinely do not know. Perhaps a reprieve from fear will allow people to better recover and rebuild. You and your friends’ efforts, for example, have turned my words into more of a reality than I’d dared hope at the time. But perhaps that absence of fear will lead to complacency, sooner or later.” He clicks on his mouse again, then folds his hands and turns his full attention back to Red. “You see the problem.”

Red does. “Sometimes secrets are kept because we’re not sure if the truth will cause more harm.” It’s a relief to get more confirmation that, while he can’t know for sure if his secrecy was the right choice, he at least doesn’t know for sure that it was the wrong one either. “So how do we tell which one is which? Isn’t the default inaction going to bias us toward secrecy? Especially if it comes at a cost to ourselves?”

Giovanni’s smile doesn’t grow, but it does seem a bit warmer. “I see why Sabrina trusts you, and I’m glad you trusted her.” His smile fades as he steeples his fingers and sighs, and Red suddenly realizes something a bit alarming. From what Leaf described, and what Red saw at the Lavender meeting, the Gym Leader is constantly reading and responding to messages through his phone. Having Giovanni’s full attention adds even more pressure and import to a conversation Red already thought was maxed out on both. “That is to say, you’re asking the right questions. I wish I had better answers. I’ll pose another question to you in return: if there is something that will do much good, but carries some risk, should you do it?”

“Uh… that’s what trainers do every day, isn’t it?”

“Indeed. But what if the risk is to others?”

Ah, right. Psychic research that might get all psychics driven out of society, for example… He feels a renewed stab of guilt. “I guess it depends on how much risk, and how much good. Leaf clearly feels that what she’s doing is the most value that the sakki can do—”

“Hold that thought. The name, you chose it?”

“Oh. Uh, no, Blue did. There was actually a lot of argument about what it should be called, but the first applications were seen in battle, so…”

Giovanni nods. “It’s certainly… intimidating. But for the purpose of reducing people’s fear of it as much as possible, why not pick another?”

Red blinks. He hasn’t even considered renaming the sakki… but it makes sense. “Do you have a suggestion?”

“You don’t want it named after yourself, I take it?”

“I… guess that depends on how it’s perceived? But of course I can’t know that ahead of time…” Red shakes his head, feeling more regret than he feels comfortable with. “Better not. It’s not like my name is famous enough to help it be less scary.”

Giovanni nods. “The work Miss Juniper is doing with it seems promising, if we can connect it to that instead of battling. Though the technique is psychic in origin, its mass-produced state will make its most common occurrence and association the capability of releasing pokemon back into the wild… something to do with ‘freedom’ or ‘instinct’ seems appropriate.” He sees Red’s smile, and raises a brow. “Yes?”

“Nothing, just… one of the suggestions when people were talking about it was ‘ultra instinct.'” Giovanni doesn’t seem to get the reference, and Red feels heat creep up his neck. “Not that I think we should call it that… um… nothing really comes to mind.”

Giovanni nods. “Something to think about. I apologize for the interruption; you were saying, about risk and value?”

It takes Red a second to remember through his embarrassment. “Right. Leaf would probably say, if it works to help people safely release pokemon, it might be worth the suspicion it puts psychics under. But… she doesn’t know about the ability to lie, which would also keep psychics from being cleared in suspicious circumstances.” He lets out a slow breath. “I guess if it leads to her ultimate vision coming true, and most wild pokemon actually become tame… then that would be worth it. The amount of lives it would save…” He thinks of Dad, and Aiko, and the boy in Viridian whose name he’s already forgotten. “Even if it leads to psychics being unable to become trainers anymore or something, it’s hard to imagine that leading to more death or suffering for people, not to mention the pokemon themselves.”

“You say ‘if.’ But many things are possible, and—”

“Rational beliefs are based on what’s probable,” Red finishes, and shares a brief smile with the Gym Leader. “I’m not really a math person, but even if I was I’m not sure how I’d calculate the odds of her plan working against the risks. It’s not like she’s inventing, like, a megapotion or something that is guaranteed to save lives if only she can get the formula right.”

“Let us take some straw examples, then. I presume you would balk at sending one person in to save nine if there was a less than 10% chance of success?”

Red stares at Giovanni, trying to decide if he made that comparison in ignorance or not. The Gym Leader’s expression hasn’t changed at all, and after a moment Red wonders if it matters. It’s an important question, and the presumption is correct, as he proved with his own actions. “Yes,” Red says quietly.

Giovanni nods. “Is 11% enough, then?”

“I… on paper, yes.” Red’s heart is beating faster, and he feels Aiko’s shirt slip from his fingers as she pulls away from him…

Focus. He uses his partition, just a little, and takes a deep breath, grounding himself. “Yes, it makes sense to take that risk if there was a way to know the numbers that precisely.” When trying to put a number on his past self’s confidence that he couldn’t save Aiko and the others, it had been much worse. But then, he was deliberately grading himself harshly, knowing he had no real experience in recognizing when a building might collapse due to earthquakes and fire. “But I wouldn’t force anyone to do it.”

“Ah, but would you agree to the risk if there was a chance of collateral damage?”

Red blinks. “What do you… like, on top of the risk to the person doing the saving?”

“No, perhaps the person doing the saving is at risk, but at no higher a rate than others who would normally not be in danger. So let us suppose that if nothing is done, the nine will die, and if something is done, the nine will likely die, but may not, and the one who must act to try and save them has an 89% chance of costing someone their life in the attempt, evenly distributed among all people in the city.”

“That’s… harder. I get that in some situations you can’t really ask permission, and… I mean, if it’s a risk to everyone then what do you do if even one person says no? There’s no way Rangers could function if every rescue attempt they made with any risk at all to others couldn’t be done.” He hesitates. “Though… 89% is really high.”

“How low does it need to be, before the risk is acceptable?”

“I’m not sure.” He tries to think it through. “To be clear, whether there’s collateral damage is only dependent on whether they try to save the nine, but those dice are rolled independently?”

“Correct. It is not a guarantee that nine lives will be saved, only a near guarantee that an additional person will lose their life if the attempt is made, and a guarantee that nine lives will be lost if no attempt is made. If you want the full odds, it would be a slightly more than 1% chance that both the nine are saved and no collateral life is lost, and a slightly less than 80% chance that both the nine lives are lost and the collateral life is lost if the attempt is made.”

“And a roughly 10% chance that either the nine die but the one doesn’t, or the one dies but the nine don’t.” He sighs. “It’s still worthwhile, on paper, but even if each person in a city has a low chance of being the unlucky one, it may be unreasonable to ask them to be okay with the risk, for such a low chance of saving the nine… there would be externalities, like, people would be afraid of rangers and scared of cooperating with them out of worry that being more involved increases their own chance of death, whether that’s true or not…” Red rubs his temples, not wanting to admit defeat but not wanting to babble and waste the Leader’s time. “I… don’t know.”

He feels like he’s failing an important test, an opportunity to prove himself… but Giovanni simply nods. “There aren’t always easy answers. Let me propose another alteration: what if no one in the city is safe?”

“You mean… instead of putting one person at risk to save nine… anyone can be one of the nine? I’m not sure how that… hm. I guess no one would feel ‘safe’ even if the chance wasn’t taken… so now there’s an 11 percent chance that only one person dies, and people might feel more okay to risk the 80% chance of one additional death, since it’s unlikely to be them, while the reduction from nine to one death feels more likely to save them… Yeah, I guess… that does change things.”

“From the way you reasoned, it seems it only changes things because it changes how people are likely to decide for themselves. But would you make this decision for them, if it was up to you instead of them?”

Red thinks it over, and after a moment identifies the hesitation he feels. “Would they know it was me?” He hates himself for asking, but it feels relevant to the reason he’s here.

“Yes,” Giovanni says, and while his voice is as confident and strong as ever, his gaze is sympathetic. “Each time nine people die, some portion of the city might blame you for not taking the risk. When an extra person dies, all their families might hate you for taking the risk that killed their loved one, wondering whether they were the tenth. And while people might celebrate those rare occasions where only one person dies, or the even rarer full victory, the gratitude would be impersonal. No one will know for a fact that you saved them or their loved ones, only understand in a vague way that their lives had been in some minimal danger.”

Red’s heart is beating faster again as he thinks of Mr. Sakai. In a way, Red is really very lucky that Aiko’s father is the way he is. If he had been more… present… if he had a stronger reaction, blamed Red… it might well have shattered him completely.

“It is a difficult decision,” Giovanni continues, voice slightly quieter. “And the margins are awfully low… over a hundred iterations of this, the choice to take the risk each time would save roughly ten people over simply standing back and letting the nine die each time. If nine hundred people are going to die over the years anyway, would ten lives saved matter so much? Especially if it might cause people to hate you?”

Red clenches his hands, staring down at the floor as he thinks of what he told Leaf their first night together. That each death isn’t just a single event, that they send cracks throughout families, friend circles, communities. Depending on who it is, a single death can ripple out through the years, leaving kids lying in bed and staring up at the ceiling all day, spouses crying into their arms at the dining room table when they think their child is asleep…

“Yes,” Red whispers. “They would matter. It would be… worth it.”

Giovanni is silent for a moment. When Red glances up, the Gym Leader’s gaze is on his own hands, still steepled. “So I believe as well. For good or ill, the thought of just standing aside… it is not in me.” His gaze rises to Red’s. “Nor is it, I think, in you.”

Red’s heart clenches, suddenly feeling he’s misrepresented himself, that Giovanni didn’t know… “I… no, I… in Vermilion, my friend was…”

“I know what happened to Miss Sakai and Mr. Riley. It was a small part of a rather exhaustive post-incident debrief, but it’s not every day that a Second dies, and Leader Surge was understandably distraught.”

Red has trouble imagining the tall, muscular Unovan that way, but he knows that’s stupid of him. Even Giovanni probably cries now and then, as hard as it is to imagine. “Oh.”

“You weren’t blamed, if that’s what you’re thinking. ”

It hadn’t been, but his next breath still comes a little easier. “That’s a relief to hear. But then, why do you think I wouldn’t…?”

“I could mention your style of thinking and argument, but in truth it’s your actions that speak the loudest. Not just your other activities during the storm, which I looked into after you arrived at the cafe to become Sabrina’s apprentice, but something from even further back. Can you guess what it is?”

Red thinks back over his journey, a little bewildered. Could it be something he did in Viridian Forest, or on Mt. Moon? But no, that’s just more of the same and less impressive than the night of the storm…

Giovanni’s lips quirk. “If it helps, I’m cheating, just a little.”

Cheating? He thinks of Leaf’s accusation again, and feels a moment of panic—can his mind be read through his shield and without him noticing, then none of his secrets are safe—until he remembers that he already revealed all his secrets.

But that’s not quite true, is it? Or rather, he didn’t reveal everyone’s secrets.

Red feels his eyes widen, and Giovanni nods and reaches out to activate the holo-phone on his desk. “Call Masaki S.” There’s a brief ringing as the projectors light up and display a hovering sphere with the symbol of a phone on it, which rapidly shifts to a nearly-full hologram of Bill’s head. Red can only see the back of it, or at least most of the back of it; the hologram fades to a bluish fuzz for the actual back of his head and shoulders.

Bill appears to be looking down at something, shoulders moving in such a way that Red can imagine his arms busy typing, which makes sense given that he can faintly hear the clacking of keys. “What’s up, G?”

G?

“Hello, Sonezaki. We have a guest; say hello, Mr. Verres.”

Bill looks up at Giovanni, then around, and finally turns; the base of the projector rotates with him so that the camera is pointed up at Red, who realizes Bill can see him through his eye screen.

“H-hello, Bill.”

“Red, hey. You’re getting looped in, huh?”

The words slow the shock that had still been spreading through Red as he wondered how Giovanni knew about Bill’s secret, instead revealing the obvious. He hadn’t known through Red, but through Bill.

“I… uh…”

“Figured you might be eventually. By the way, don’t even think about porting indoors here uninvited, if you can really do it. I’ve got security systems, you know?”

The words are said mildly, even carelessly, but Red feels his neck flush. “I won’t! I would never—”

“Yeah, yeah. You know there are bets on whether you really figured it out? I’m going to make bank on you being right, which would be nice if not for the fact that I expect I’ll have to spend more than that rebuilding my lab if someone invents a material that blocks it. I was tempted to work on it myself but thankfully I don’t let people walk around here, let alone psychics, and there are others who are going to be motivated to figure it out, and I’ve got more important shit to do. Speaking of which, what’s the call for?” he asks as he turns back to Giovanni, not giving Red time to respond to the stream of new revelations and thoughts.

“I just wanted to confirm that, as far as you know, Red still hasn’t revealed your work on human capture.”

“Yep, not a bit of it’s shown up anywhere online, not even rumors. And that’s a bit surprising given all the rumors there are about me, or the team of people pretending to be me, or the mental upload I supposedly did after dying years ago, or whatever. Far as I know he hasn’t breathed a word, unless it’s in those written journals of his, which would be the safe way to do it, but I’m not sure he’s that sneaky. Also he still lacks any motive.”

“Thank you. I’ll let you continue your work.”

“Late- wait, there was something I… Eva, any memo for G? Right! You still owe me that schematic.”

The Gym Leader’s lips purse slightly, though Red can’t tell if it’s amusement or irritation “I’m working on it.”

“I’m sure you are, but a timeline would be nice.”

“Six months at the most, on pain of a donation to the DS.”

“Ha, that’ll do it. Cool, later then.”

The hologram vanishes, and Red is left blinking and full of questions. He settles on the last one. “DS?”

“Disciples of the Storm. A cult that worships the Stormbringers.” The disgust in his voice is dry, but pronounced.

Red has vaguely heard of them; apparently their numbers have swelled beyond Kanto after the Hoenn Incident, new branches reviving worship not just there but in various other regions, whether they have weather affecting legendaries or not. The “storm” is metaphorical for some, apparently. “Why would you—oh! A deterrent for future you?”

“Quite a powerful one. I’ve found donations to good causes less motivating as a punishment to myself; it’s too easy to think, well, the money is going to a good cause, and so my failure feels less punishing.”

Red is still working through the implications of Giovanni knowing about Bill’s research, and now he’s additionally surprised by the knowledge that the Gym Leader needs to make these sorts of deals with himself at all. He always seems so driven, so iron-willed… “Who else knows?”

“A few others among the rich and powerful. Does that surprise you?”

“A little. It seems like the more people know the secret, the harder it would be to keep.” And Bill seemed adamant that anyone else knowing would put the project, not to mention himself, at risk… why would others deserve to be stored upon their death, and not Red’s mother?

Probably because they’re helping fund or research it.

Giovanni, meanwhile, is once again giving him a wry smile. “You might be surprised how big a secret can be kept, if everyone involved has aligned interests and sufficient motivation. A higher purpose can be a powerful thing, and for those unmoved by such, selfishness is often sufficient. Granted, extreme measures are often necessary; Bill’s ability to police virtual communication, or rather his assistant’s, is invaluable in ensuring certain people don’t heed the very human desires to confide in their loved ones or boast to improve their status. Still, there’s always a chance of disaster. Like all things, it’s a matter of balancing risk with reward.”

“But… how do you know others don’t also have the technology, and use it less ethically?” It’s one thing for Bill to create his own safety measures, but Red reminds himself that there’s a reason the research has been banned so far.

“We don’t.” Giovanni shrugs. “All I know is that some things are too important to do recklessly, and should be stopped when that recklessness is identified, while others of importance carry risk inherently. But which is which… you see? It’s the same problem, just worded another way. How many lives could we save, if we solve this particular problem? Should we still take the safest route? How many must be at stake to take riskier ones?”

“I get it,” Red says, voice low. “And because I didn’t tell anyone about Bill’s tech… you decided I could be trusted?”

“I decided it was safe to let you know that you are not, in fact, the first person to discover something potentially destabilizing about our society who decided to keep it secret,” Giovanni says. “Whether research is done in secrecy because of stigma attached to the methodology, or because of the potential outcome, it would be absurd to believe that all the things which would benefit society also happen to be things that are publicly acceptable.”

Red stares at the desk for a moment, thinking through the Leader’s words. It’s hard not to find truth in them, but… Trusting some people to make these calculations and take these risks only makes sense in theory. In reality, people do things for selfish reasons, and it would be foolish to assume that everyone is like Bill and Giovanni. “And if there are psychics influencing people’s thoughts? Or research that was doing more harm than good, or might lead to discoveries that would be used unethically? Who decides if that’s worth revealing to the public or not?”

“Those of us who know,” Giovanni says, palms out to the sides as if it’s the simplest thing. “Any one of us can blow the whistle if we believe the world should know.”

Of course. Red didn’t consider that, though it’s the most obvious answer in retrospect, and makes him feel better the more he considers it.

It also, however, drives home the fact that he’s now part of a real conspiracy. It’s not a psychic conspiracy, since people like Giovanni and Bill know, but he’s not sure Leaf would feel too reassured by that. Giovanni is dark and Bill isolates himself from the world, so he doesn’t really have to worry about someone making him enjoy hummus. Which isn’t to say they don’t have other reasons to worry about that sort of thing, but it’s not likely to feel as immediate a worry for them as it is to others. Anyone else in the conspiracy may be similarly shielded.

On the one hand that feels like it might make them more objective, but on the other it also might make them underestimate the risk. Their priorities are different, and while he trusts people like Giovanni to have good ones, that’s not the same thing as having the best ones, or the “right” ones.

“You’re still troubled.”

“Yes, Sir. I understand that he’s not psychic or dark, so the risk of him leaking info to a psychic is too high, but… does that mean there are no plans to tell Professor Oak? How long should I expect to keep secrets from him? Not Bill’s, I mean mine.”

It strikes an off chord in Red that the Professor would be excluded from knowledge like this. Not just because he knows the Professor would love to know it, and not just because he knows the Professor would feel hurt that he didn’t tell him. The truth is that he trusts Professor Oak, and his mother as well, to do what’s right.

Giovanni sighs. “Believe me, Red, when I say that I have deeply regretted not being able to recruit Sam to help with some of these problems, or at least to hear his thoughts on them. But the security risk is just too great; he spends much of his time meeting people around the region, and is too much in the spotlight for any major change in behavior to go unnoticed.”

“Right. That makes sense, but what about certain rangers or police? In Saffron I was helping look for more renegades hiding in the city, and while I don’t think there are any there, there’s no telling how many other secret labs there might be, doing research that people feel so protective of they’ll use renegades to keep it secret.” He wondered if some of the missing researchers his mom has been investigating would be found among the dead there, either held against their will or hired by whoever was running the lab, but if so he hasn’t heard about it.

Giovanni simply nods. “I do in fact plan to let the right people in law enforcement know. As for your friends, Blue and Leaf… do you trust them enough to share this?”

“I do,” he says, relieved that Giovanni isn’t asking him to keep it from them, too. “Though I’m not sure if Blue would be okay with not telling the Professor, and Leaf isn’t dark or psychic…” He rubs his face, feeling lost again.

The day Red reported Rei, he hid in the bathroom to try to reason out what he should do and invoked his internal models of the people he respected and trusted… and they gave him good advice. He did it again a few other times, and each time it felt like it helped, even if just to reassure him that his lack of confidence in what he should do was understandable and that making a mistake would be okay.

But while he was preparing for all this from behind his partition, as Partitioned Red went about his normal life, he found the mental models of others fell silent. Whether because the stakes are so big, or because his actions are too unlike any other he’s done before or can remember others doing, or something else, it seems he’s just utterly unable to model their reactions.

He never realized how much he depended on those inner models until they’ve gone so silent. Even thinking about abstract principles or guidelines they’ve reminded him of before, like be prepared or ask for help felt inapplicable or limited to what he’s already done.

The thought of what his parents, mentors or friends would say in a situation like this is just too inherently unthinkable. Maybe because he imagines they would find the idea of him doing what he did unthinkable. And that felt worse than even condemnation.

His thoughts trail off as he remembers Maria, and what happened under the casino. “I… forgot, there’s someone else… when I told Sabrina that some of the trainers traveling with Blue know about sakki, I forgot to mention that one of them knows what I did under the Casino.”

Giovanni’s eyes narrow, but he doesn’t respond. Red’s stomach starts to do flips and somersaults as the silence stretches out, the Gym Leader’s expression revealing nothing of his thoughts. One hand reaches down to scratch his persian’s back, causing its tail to curl and sway, and he gazes distantly past the wall to their side with a slight crease between his brow. It strikes Red, suddenly, that the room has no windows. Not that all rooms need them, but he always imagined rich people setting up their offices in rooms with good views whenever possible.

Red finally feels like he has to speak, but when he opens his mouth Giovanni holds up a finger and Red keeps his silence. It takes another tense minute before the Gym Leader stirs.

“I can’t guess which of the girls it might be, and so doubt any others could without more information. The police who interviewed them might, but they haven’t raised any flags that I’m aware of. Who is it?”

“Maria.”

“Hm. The quiet one with the hat, yes? She seems to have held the secret so far. Well enough that I think it will keep, for now.” He resettles in his seat. “Back to your friends. It’s understandable to feel conflicted, even guilty, for not sharing things with them. I feel it often myself, when keeping things from my fellow Leaders.”

Red’s curiosity kindles. “Do you… do that often? I mean, is it always about dangerous research, or…?”

It takes a moment for Red to realize how presumptuous he’s being, but Giovanni just smiles. “One thing I can share is that there is a project I attempted that might have defeated the Stormbringers. It required me to keep a number of connected scientific discoveries secret, as I didn’t trust others with them.”

Even now, Red feels a flare of indignation at the idea of keeping novel research private, especially given the potential scope of the discoveries if they made the Leader believe they could stop a legendary pokemon. It takes him a moment to remember how hypocritical he’s being, and by the time he does Giovanni has already registered his reflexive outrage.

“I know this flies in the face of your deepest values, and I have to admit that the project backfired… but not as badly as it could have, and I still believe I was right to keep the discoveries secret.”

“But how could you know that was the right call? There’s no way to know what millions of other researchers and trainers might be able to do with something you discover… if the discoverers of pokeball tech had kept it secret, we might all still be in the dark ages!”

“A solid point, but the counter-example is experiments for human storage. The risk of misusing technology is bad enough, but combined with the risk of causing new research to be banned and handed to criminal elements makes it seem obvious to me that some discoveries are better kept secret, for a while at least.”

“How long is a while?” Red says, worry doing more to tone down his indignation than his conscious attempts. He considers just shutting down his emotions to have the conversation rationally, but knows better; without his emotions he wouldn’t care as much about the things he really cares about to investigate them properly, and once the feelings returned they would clash all the more with whatever he thought without them.

“I honestly don’t know,” Giovanni says, and leans back in his seat, gaze distant. “The world has become too attached to the status quo. Humanity was so weary of losing lives just to reach a relatively safe stability that, upon reaching it, it has turned timid. Rather than risk losing what we’ve gained, we look away from the cost to keep our slow and steady growth, and tell ourselves it will inevitably lead to a better world. The current rate of death and suffering is not accepted because we think it is correct, but because it is safer and more convenient to us than the alternatives.”

“What alternatives?”

“For one, the way we send our children out on journeys, somewhat prepared but unguarded. Why do you think we do that, instead of sending an adult with each?”

“I asked my dad that, when I was younger… I mean, I asked him if he would be coming with me when I became a trainer. He said he would do his best to prepare me, but that I would have to rely on my friends and myself, and that the rangers were out there to help in emergencies…” Red remembers feeling afraid, when he asked, and then reassured, and even excited. The idea of being away from home, adventuring with friends… he’d heard so many stories of people like Professor Oak and Giovanni himself doing the same thing. “Now I know it’s also from a lack of available trainers. There just aren’t enough people available to guard every group starting out in their journeys.”

“And did you ever consider whether that might itself be solved, if we take extra care for a generation or two and reduce the rate of new trainers but increase our population? Cede some territory to the pokemon that would encroach in that time, retreat from a few towns, and focus on retaking them later?”

“I… no.” It’s odd, now that it’s pointed out to him, how much he took for granted that trainers should start young. Even now some part of him rebels at the idea of having been thought incapable of going on his journey with Blue and Leaf without an adult watching.

Survivorship bias. Quite literally. “So… you’re saying society is focused too much on traditions?”

“Not just tradition for its own sake. It’s focused on maintaining a way of life that is nearly a paradise compared to what my grandparents experienced, and thus rejects any risk of losing it, even if it means literally feeding some portion of our children and siblings and parents to monsters.”

Red rubs his face again, feeling unprepared to argue this. He knows he can’t win a debate with Giovanni, a third of everything he knows feels like it came from him. But the twisty felt-sense in his stomach is hard to ignore, particularly since he knows what it means, or something like it. It’s how he felt when he thought of Rei’s plans to learn Sabrina’s secrets.

“I think it’s hard to predict what will happen with new research,” Red says, picking his words carefully. “So I don’t want to blame someone for getting a decision wrong, one way or the other. I don’t think I can tell someone if they’re choosing right or not, but if you don’t trust society as a whole to make the choice, then… it feels like society has no reason to cooperate with you? Bill can afford to live in his secluded home and focus on research because society as a whole is protecting him and creating things he needs. He’s definitely contributing back, maybe more than anyone else, but… it feels wrong to benefit from the group’s efforts while secretly undermining the agreements that make the group function.”

Giovanni is quiet for another minute, and Red starts to worry again that he’s said the wrong thing. What if Giovanni thinks he’s having second thoughts about reporting Bill’s secret?

Red reminds himself that this is the man who wrote about how curiosity should never be penalized, and how asking questions should never be taken as an indication of beliefs.

Unless, of course, that’s just how he wants to be seen in public. If he’s willing to break some principles, why think he won’t break them all?

But no, people can have values opposed to public laws. It took people of personal principle to stand up to the laws requiring all city inhabitants to follow any orders by Leaders and develop the civil branch of government.

“Another fair point,” Giovanni finally says. “But it does not change my lack of trust in the public’s ability to choose the path of least harm.”

Red latches onto that last phrase and rifles through his memory. “I know you’ve written about this, that reducing total harm and maximizing good as best we can is the ultimate moral imperative, but… isn’t that the sort of reasoning that leads some people to become renegades? We need certain unbreakable rules, right? How do you decide which to follow?”

“It depends what you mean by ‘unbreakable rule.’ For deontologists this is how all moral structure is built, whether the rules are from society or divinity or some inherent logic they believe leads to the most consistently moral world. By contrast, someone who follows virtue ethics has only their own internal moral compass as a guide, and determines what they must never do by the virtues they endorse… but neither can give particularly compelling arguments for why some laws or virtues should trump others.” Giovanni shrugs. “Personally, I’ve found that when you dig deep enough, all the most widely followed moral systems are ultimately not just consequentialist, but utilitarian. Even a religious deontologist, when pressed, will insist that their rules are those that will maximize well-being and minimize suffering, if only on a spiritual level or in another plane of existence. Both they and virtue ethicists are simply establishing shortcuts to guide them to what they believe will lead to the best world, particularly if everyone follows the same methods… and I find the idea of taking shortcuts in moral reasoning lazy at best and cowardly at worst.”

Did he basically just admit that he doesn’t see anything wrong with going renegade?

No, he just said that he would determine if it was wrong on his own, in each situation. After all, if Indigo went to war with another region the label would basically just be determined by whom you were using your pokemon to attack. Red distantly remembers reading about protests that occurred back when Surge became Leader, as some considered those who fight in wars to be little better than renegades.

“I don’t know if I could live like that,” Red admits. “It’s been exhausting trying to constantly determine if I’ve been doing the right thing on just a handful of occasions over the past year. Doing it with everything… don’t you worry about being wrong?”

“Of course, but one hopes the same can be said of any conscientious deontologist or virtue ethicist. It can be tiring to constantly wonder what truly constitutes the ‘most good’ and the ‘least harm,’ and when I was younger I struggled with decision paralysis many times. But I have learned to allow myself to be human; I reserve most of my deliberation for decisions that are the most important, and acknowledge that I will make mistakes. I commit to learn from them and update my understanding, so that I can do better. I do not see how the other moral systems, whether rigid or similarly flexible, are superior in any way other than convenience, and in maintaining a desirable status quo rather than risking change to it.”

It’s Red’s turn to quietly think for a minute as he tries to process what he’s heard. He’s not sure why he’s trying so hard not to be convinced; in essence what he wanted was to be told he’s done the right thing. But this feels like something more, a swing that might be too far.

But rather than acting as an authority, Giovanni is instead telling him not to accept someone telling him he did the right thing, even Giovanni. To instead think for himself and make his own determination.

But is accepting that argument itself just trusting an authority figure in another way? Especially if he’s already made this decision beforehand?

This is ridiculous. If he told us to just accept his word that it was okay, we’d definitely be doubting that too.

Red acknowledges this, and also knows that Giovanni has been pushing for people to take on moral responsibility for their actions for years, and so is not just tailoring his response to Red’s situation. Still, this is the first time Red has felt so unsure about what that actually means, and if he ultimately can’t trust himself to make the decision… how can he trust himself to know that he can’t?

The thought threatens to send him into another spiral of meta-doubt, so he takes a deep breath and does his best to put the thought aside as he reaches for his curiosity, finds it, and wraps it around himself like a cloak. As long as he stays curious, stays open to learning, he believes he can move forward.

Where does this philosophy potentially break down? Where has it broken down for him? Or better yet…

“Is there anything you’ve seen or heard of that made you doubt this model?” he asks as he returns his gaze to the leader sitting patiently in front of him. The thought that he’s taking up a lot of Giovanni’s valuable time occurs, and he quickly reminds himself that the Leader asked him to come and could end the conversation whenever he wants. “Or a situation you’ve thought of that you’re still struggling to reach a decision on, even allowing yourself to make mistakes?”

“Of course. One thing that must be said for deontology and virtue ethics is that they make coordination problems much easier, assuming you can trust the other person to follow their code or virtues.”

“So… you’ve had trouble coordinating with other consequentialists?”

“I have, but notably less, I think, than two opposing deontologists would, or even two virtue ethicists with different virtues, though I’m less sure about the latter.”

“I think I get it, but… can you give an example?”

“I would prefer to keep such dealings private, but I can provide an impersonal one.” Giovanni holds up two hands, palms up. “The leaders of the two renegade groups in Hoenn faced their own coordination dilemma. Both knew that the other was researching a mythical pokemon that they believed could be revived. They had a commitment to leave each other alone, but it was dependent on both sides agreeing not to actually revive those pokemon. However, once they discovered how to, both also didn’t want to leave the means lying around for anyone else to take… and didn’t fully trust the other to honor the agreement. They hid how far along their research and efforts were from even their own teams, as they knew any apparent effort to secure their discoveries would be seen as defection from the ultimate agreement and invite retaliation.”

Red listens in rapt fascination, wondering why the motives and actions of the two renegade groups are still largely a mystery to the public if Leaders already know this much. “Why didn’t they just reach out to…” He trails off as the realization hits him. “If they contacted the League or Rangers about their enemy, the other side would have done the same.”

“And both would have been hunted down rather than listened to, as they had already defected from the overarching rules of society.”

“But it still would have stopped the incident! I can understand not wanting to destroy your research even if you know it can lead to a catastrophe, and can even understand not trusting it to the public… but if their calculation led to the incident, it’s hard to imagine a worse outcome!”

Even as he says it he knows it’s not true, and Giovanni raises a brow. “I believe your imagination is now supplying you with many counterexamples. As I said, this seems to me a failure of consequentialist thinking, when two people with power individually believe they are doing the right thing and have no common rule or virtue to turn to. It’s hard to know how close to true catastrophe we really came… but we did survive. Had someone else found the means to summon Groudon, would they have joined the effort to subdue it once they lost control? If the Hoenn League had the power of such pokemon at their apparent command, do we know they wouldn’t attempt to use it against a neighbor? Hard to imagine, perhaps, of those we know and trust… but they will one day be replaced, and sooner or later someone else might have seen them as weapons for war.”

Red takes another minute to process this before Giovanni speaks again. “Now I present the question back to you: is there any truth you could learn about the origin of species that would make you hide it?”

Red blinks at the sudden turn in the conversation, and tries to imagine that scenario. What comes to mind is the reaction in Pewter, after Leaf’s article came out. What if he learned something so shocking to people that they violently rejected it, or it caused some regions to go to war with each other? It seems bizarre to him, but he knows better than to assume that no one would have a strong reaction over a big enough truth.

“I’m not sure. I want to know it for my own sake, and think the world would be better off with the knowledge. There’s no telling what we might learn along the way, or how such a deep truth might affect our technology or training habits… I think something that fundamental might help us learn enough to be really safe from pokemon, even the legendaries.”

“So you believe it could, in fact, save the world.”

Red feels heat creep up his neck, but he knows Giovanni isn’t making fun of him. “I do.”

“Then nothing would persuade you not to release that discovery?”

“It… depends on how dangerous the knowledge turns out to be? I think all knowledge will, eventually, be spread, and should be. We never know when some scientific discovery may be necessary to save the world from some catastrophe or another, or how someone else might build on a discovery to make more. If someone learned how pokemon species come about, we could find out how legendaries come about, which could lead to some key to defeating them… but someone else might create their own legendaries that are even stronger, and don’t have the same weaknesses.”

“So if the potential for destruction is too high, compared to ways to help humanity fight or subdue pokemon…”

Red reluctantly nods. “Then… yeah, I might keep it secret. Also, if Leaf gets her way, or Blue gets his… maybe it won’t be as necessary, and it would just be knowledge for its own sake.”

Giovanni nods, and Red finally feels like he has, at last, passed some sort of test.

So why does he feel so hollow?

“There are projects that I’m working on that you may be able to assist with,” Giovanni says, confirming Red’s suspicion. “And I believe you would benefit from them as well, if you are interested. You would, unfortunately, have to commit to secrecy about anything you learn unless cleared by others first.”

Red wants to ask how Giovanni can trust such a commitment, since Red might change his mind at any time if he thinks it would do more good, but then remembers his earlier comment about how anyone in the conspiracies can just speak out if they wanted to. “I… can I think about it?”

“Of course. I know you’ll be busy for the near future, in any case, and I’ll have to factor your new revelations into my plans as I decide how to safely disseminate the information and come up with a plan for eventual public knowledge.”

Red feels such immense relief at the Leader’s words that he sags back against his seat. There’s fear, too, and he wants to ask how Giovanni will go about it, wants to be more reassured… but he doesn’t want to seem as insecure as he is, and it’s enough to know that someone else, someone older and wiser and with good intentions, is handling it. “Thank you.”

“The gratitude is mutual. I know that, unlike your friends, you would prefer a less public life if it meant you could pursue your quest for knowledge, and respect you immensely, not just for keeping the secrets as well as you have, given your values, but for putting your desires aside to do what’s right, even if it costs you everything. I for one hope that it does not, and that you can someday enjoy the life of research you desire.”

Red feels his cheeks warm at the effusive praise, and looks up at Giovanni. “What would you do, if you could? I mean, if you didn’t have to be…” He gestures vaguely around, meaning not just the office but the city and region beyond. “All this?”

Giovanni’s brow rises, and his gaze falls to his persian as he reaches down to scratch it again. The large cat begins to purr, and for a minute the deep, rhythmic thrum is the only sound in the room.

“I wonder that myself, sometimes,” Giovanni finally says. “What I would be in a world at peace. A world where the wilds have been charted and tamed, where every god has been captured or killed, where people can live as long as they’d like. I’m not sure I have a good answer, but… I think, in another life, I might have been an explorer.”

Red smiles, imagining it for a moment before his confusion hits. “But if all the wilderness is charted…?”

“Oh, I think there will always be more to explore, don’t you?” Giovanni smiles. “After all, if pokemon really do come from another world… who’s to say we couldn’t reach it ourselves, someday?”