the_fast_reader
Overanalyzing Pokemon for 20 years
- 545
- Posts
- 4
- Years
- Age 30
- Italy
- Seen Jul 4, 2023
This is a little writing exercise I thought about while looking at the Meta Journey thread, and it's basically going to describe whatever adventure I get inspired to write about my character according to what happens in that thread, so I'm going to consider it a chaptered fic.
This is also the first piece of fan fiction I've written in English, so I'm open to suggestions on how to get better. I had a lot of fun writing it.
-------------------------------------
The Pokeball came in a pretty unremarkable black box, like the ones you would use to store a little ring or bracelet in. Looking at it, Rebecca "Becca" could hardly believe that inside was the culmination of what she had worked for the last five years of her life.
Five years of university. Six months of apprenticeship writing documentation and fixing bugs for software that was a mishmash of 20 years of code thrown on top of each other held together by hopes, prayers and probably tears.
Countless hours of paperwork and countless letters (not even e-mails, the director of Silph Spa was pretty old school after all) where she declared that Silph Spa was not to be held accountable for what she was going to do with the software and that every legal ramification would fall exclusively on her. That she had no intention of using the licensed software for anything illegal and countless other little things.
All of that for the little red Pokeball that sat on her desk and most importantly what was inside: her first Pokemon.
But not any Pokemon, it was an untouched, brand new Porygon.
No updates, no weird mods, it was pretty much what in software development was called a vanilla version. And now it was hers, to study and develop and maybe program like she wanted.
Getting a Porygon was not easy: the code wasn't exactly given around willy-nilly, it was protected by the most secure anti piracy software on the market, and the Silph corporation didn't give their code to someone without a good reason. Even if Porygon 2 was it's vastly superior version, a Porygon's code, as crude and basic as it was for today's standards, was still invaluable. You couldn't get a Porygon2 without it at after all, and both had the capability of doing a lot of harm in the hands of someone with the wrong intention.
After a couple of minutes of silently staring at the box with Silph's logo on the side, Rebecca finally decided to open it and pulled out the Pokeball. Ok. She could do this.
She pressed the button on the Pokeball and watched as the flash of white light materialized in the shape of the artificial Pokemon on her desk.
The Porygon opened it's little eyes, and, like a computer booting up, looked to take some time to get it's bearings.
"System online" it announced in an artificial, computerised voice. It sounded suspiciously similar to the one used in the Pokedex, now that she thought about it.
They probably used the same voice sample.
"Booting up operating system..."
"Testing legs drivers..."
The little triangular shaped legs wiggled.
"Complete"
"Testing optics..."
The eyes lit up with various colors, the eyes focusing and moving around the room.
"Complete"
"Required system admin login for voice command recognition"
The Pokemon suddenly turned towards her, and Rebecca realized that it was talking to her.
System admin...? Oh! Was it talking about the account she had to set up?
Rebecca blushed slightly at the thought: she had no idea the Pokemon would ask her about her credentials so she had used an old email that was a bit... embarassing.
"Er... um... email is [email protected]" she said at last.
The Pokemon was silent for a moment, processing the information. Was it getting used to recognizing her voice?
"Email confirmed. Password required"
"Um..." she hesitated.
"Wrong password. 3 chances remaining before locking the account down"
Oh no, not that.
"kittyluxray90X" she answered quickly before the Pokemon could interpret any other sound as a wrong password. What would happen if it locked her out? Would it not listen to her?
Better not to find out.
The Pokemon fell silent again for a moment, then suddenly bopped his head up and down.
"Login successful. Welcome Adrenalinegirlyolo. This unit is now configured to answer your commands only."
Rebecca cringed a bit, still embarrassed even she really had no reason to. I mean, it was her Pokemon, it's not like it was going to judge her for her questionable account name choices.
Hopefully.
"Will you call me like that every time?"
The Porygon focused it's eyes on her, the little black pupil expanding a bit.
"This unit requires a username to identity owners voice pattern, preferred settings and other configurations."
"Configurations?"
"The Pokemon Trainer League labels these configurations as "moves". List known moves?"
Ooooh right. Pokemon moves. Rebecca always found it a bit amusing that all those programmers that created Porygon found it necessary to program in it the capability to learn moves and battle other Pokemons. In his own way, it made sense. Fighting and constantly growing was an important part of what made Pokemon what they were.
Without it, Porygon would have just been a fancy robot instead of a Pokemon.
She was looking forward to seeing what it could do. Oh, and maybe she could catch some other Pokemon and study how the two interacted! Would other Pokemon notice that something was different about it? Would they treat it like any other Pokemon? Would bigger Pokemon see it as prey...?
And now that she thought about it, she really had to stop calling it "it". It felt wrong, and many people nicknamed their Pokemon after all.
The Porygon was still looking at her, and she realized it was still waiting for an answer.
Ok. Um, a bit awkward.
"... No, not right now."
She was not really sure how advanced the voice recognition was. Real Pokemon could understand complex commands and words the more time they spent with their trainers, but she had no idea how many words were in it's vocabulary and how many sentences it could actually understand.
Until now it was probably answering based on simple keywords associated with common questions and commands.
"Can I give you a nickname?"
The Porygon took a couple seconds to process the query.
"This unit can be configured to answer to any name not exceeding 20 characters"
Wow, she actually could! Sweet, now she only had to find a cool name...
"Swear words are forbidden, along with name of other Pokemon to avoid confusion."
Those Silph programmers really thought about everything, didn't they?
That was fine, she had the perfect name ready after all.
Rebecca smiled a bit.
"Then from now on, your name will be..."
It was a great name, from one of the greates minds of the past, practically the father of computers and artificial intelligence.
"Turing"
This is also the first piece of fan fiction I've written in English, so I'm open to suggestions on how to get better. I had a lot of fun writing it.
-------------------------------------
The Pokeball came in a pretty unremarkable black box, like the ones you would use to store a little ring or bracelet in. Looking at it, Rebecca "Becca" could hardly believe that inside was the culmination of what she had worked for the last five years of her life.
Five years of university. Six months of apprenticeship writing documentation and fixing bugs for software that was a mishmash of 20 years of code thrown on top of each other held together by hopes, prayers and probably tears.
Countless hours of paperwork and countless letters (not even e-mails, the director of Silph Spa was pretty old school after all) where she declared that Silph Spa was not to be held accountable for what she was going to do with the software and that every legal ramification would fall exclusively on her. That she had no intention of using the licensed software for anything illegal and countless other little things.
All of that for the little red Pokeball that sat on her desk and most importantly what was inside: her first Pokemon.
But not any Pokemon, it was an untouched, brand new Porygon.
No updates, no weird mods, it was pretty much what in software development was called a vanilla version. And now it was hers, to study and develop and maybe program like she wanted.
Getting a Porygon was not easy: the code wasn't exactly given around willy-nilly, it was protected by the most secure anti piracy software on the market, and the Silph corporation didn't give their code to someone without a good reason. Even if Porygon 2 was it's vastly superior version, a Porygon's code, as crude and basic as it was for today's standards, was still invaluable. You couldn't get a Porygon2 without it at after all, and both had the capability of doing a lot of harm in the hands of someone with the wrong intention.
After a couple of minutes of silently staring at the box with Silph's logo on the side, Rebecca finally decided to open it and pulled out the Pokeball. Ok. She could do this.
She pressed the button on the Pokeball and watched as the flash of white light materialized in the shape of the artificial Pokemon on her desk.
The Porygon opened it's little eyes, and, like a computer booting up, looked to take some time to get it's bearings.
"System online" it announced in an artificial, computerised voice. It sounded suspiciously similar to the one used in the Pokedex, now that she thought about it.
They probably used the same voice sample.
"Booting up operating system..."
"Testing legs drivers..."
The little triangular shaped legs wiggled.
"Complete"
"Testing optics..."
The eyes lit up with various colors, the eyes focusing and moving around the room.
"Complete"
"Required system admin login for voice command recognition"
The Pokemon suddenly turned towards her, and Rebecca realized that it was talking to her.
System admin...? Oh! Was it talking about the account she had to set up?
Rebecca blushed slightly at the thought: she had no idea the Pokemon would ask her about her credentials so she had used an old email that was a bit... embarassing.
"Er... um... email is [email protected]" she said at last.
The Pokemon was silent for a moment, processing the information. Was it getting used to recognizing her voice?
"Email confirmed. Password required"
"Um..." she hesitated.
"Wrong password. 3 chances remaining before locking the account down"
Oh no, not that.
"kittyluxray90X" she answered quickly before the Pokemon could interpret any other sound as a wrong password. What would happen if it locked her out? Would it not listen to her?
Better not to find out.
The Pokemon fell silent again for a moment, then suddenly bopped his head up and down.
"Login successful. Welcome Adrenalinegirlyolo. This unit is now configured to answer your commands only."
Rebecca cringed a bit, still embarrassed even she really had no reason to. I mean, it was her Pokemon, it's not like it was going to judge her for her questionable account name choices.
Hopefully.
"Will you call me like that every time?"
The Porygon focused it's eyes on her, the little black pupil expanding a bit.
"This unit requires a username to identity owners voice pattern, preferred settings and other configurations."
"Configurations?"
"The Pokemon Trainer League labels these configurations as "moves". List known moves?"
Ooooh right. Pokemon moves. Rebecca always found it a bit amusing that all those programmers that created Porygon found it necessary to program in it the capability to learn moves and battle other Pokemons. In his own way, it made sense. Fighting and constantly growing was an important part of what made Pokemon what they were.
Without it, Porygon would have just been a fancy robot instead of a Pokemon.
She was looking forward to seeing what it could do. Oh, and maybe she could catch some other Pokemon and study how the two interacted! Would other Pokemon notice that something was different about it? Would they treat it like any other Pokemon? Would bigger Pokemon see it as prey...?
And now that she thought about it, she really had to stop calling it "it". It felt wrong, and many people nicknamed their Pokemon after all.
The Porygon was still looking at her, and she realized it was still waiting for an answer.
Ok. Um, a bit awkward.
"... No, not right now."
She was not really sure how advanced the voice recognition was. Real Pokemon could understand complex commands and words the more time they spent with their trainers, but she had no idea how many words were in it's vocabulary and how many sentences it could actually understand.
Until now it was probably answering based on simple keywords associated with common questions and commands.
"Can I give you a nickname?"
The Porygon took a couple seconds to process the query.
"This unit can be configured to answer to any name not exceeding 20 characters"
Wow, she actually could! Sweet, now she only had to find a cool name...
"Swear words are forbidden, along with name of other Pokemon to avoid confusion."
Those Silph programmers really thought about everything, didn't they?
That was fine, she had the perfect name ready after all.
Rebecca smiled a bit.
"Then from now on, your name will be..."
It was a great name, from one of the greates minds of the past, practically the father of computers and artificial intelligence.
"Turing"
