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Hi there guys, Disclaimer: I do not own pokémon, but thank you to the creators for giving us a world with which to play with.
Pokemon: Spectre is a side project of mine started for fun. It is an Adventure/ Mystery/ Action poke-fic about:
This prologue chapter follows Dr Abery Ciddan, the character indirectly responsible for the events that happen in the main story. It is a chunky 6k words or so as I like to be detailed.
I will be releasing chapters 1 and 2 soon, and Im currently working on chapter 3 (the 4th entry) which should be finished within a a few days.
Leave comments if any, and I hope you enjoy!
PS. There are no warnings as of right now. My aim is to keep the writing Kid/ Teen/ Youth friendly.
+ Forgive the formatting if at all bothersome. These websites don't seem to emulate the ideal docx formatting.
Trial and error. That's what it took. That was the tenet and bitter truth of any life worth living.
The study of pokémon required a rare caliber of mind. Delving into the topic from a purely analytical angle would not yield anything truly worth remembering. Only when the icy heart of level-headed analysis was infused with the spontaneous flame of inspiration, would one be primed to make a breakthrough in the matter.
Spry and young Abery Ciddan believed he had found that still quiet and elusive mental twilight zone right between crazy genius and steadfast rationality when from some nethersome part of his awareness was birthed the idea of folding reality itself. Or rather, unfolding it.
As dramatic and absurd as it sounded to the ears, there was real hope for Dr Ciddan, who observed pokémon doing the impossible morning, noon, and night. How could the water turtle pokémon, Squirtle, eject gallons of water from its mouth repeatedly to attack and not suffer dehydrating consequences? How could the avian pokémon, Pidgeotto, shatter boulders and hew trees with wings as hard as steel?
These examples were but the least of them, but even a single viewing of such… wonder… would be fuel enough to the keen minds who sought to make a change in the world. The creatures were beyond current comprehension, and their submissiveness to humanity's hand mystified the doctor immensely. Rather than conquer the earth, they had instead lifted his own mortally frail race of men to inconceivable heights. Indeed, without pokémon, man might still have been living within the darkness of caves.
"Sentient tools," Dr Ciddan often said in reference to the creatures. "They seek guidance. A master. They strive towards the human vision."
The years passed, and the majority of his days were spent with no considerable progress towards this end, though not for lack of trying. The idea, seemingly out of the clear blue, had rooted itself so deeply that Dr Ciddan didn't know the kind of man he would be without it.
"You're still here? I swear it, Abery… Ob-sessed," had said one of his numerous colleagues early on in his career. The first time he had been told something like that, it had delighted him.
"Good," Mr Ciddan had said to himself when he was alone again. "That's what keeps it all going. Obsession." To him, there was no question whether or not he was on the right path. All his doubt had given way to a wild but tempered conviction. Victory was but a matter of when.
Dr Ciddan, though not unkind, did not have many friends. He was a duty-bound recluse and had grown increasingly wary of small talk due to one of his personal theories that whenever two beings interacted, there was an even exchange of essential essence. Engaging in unrestricted socializing would therefore, like a leech, drain the life-blood of his golden child.
The wisest thing he ever did was to keep the aim a secret. He knew how it would be received by his peers and scientific community at large, and reputation was not something one should throw to the wind. He made excuses for his extensive research habits, often claiming he was on commission for journals or magazines, and the living he made in his profession was nothing to scoff at. Thanks to the sparing use of time or money on frivolities, his bank balance piled and grew so that when at last he felt that continuing with his employment would offer little benefit, he found no issues in setting up his own live-in laboratory in the little-known town of Beumar, an hour's train ride south from Goldenrod City.
Four years later, at the ripe age of thirty-six, Dr Abery Ciddan made his first breakthrough. Words could not describe his elation. He had not wasted his time. For a total of thirty-three seconds, he had seen, touched, and even walked around what he later came to call the 'Tracing Space'. He had uncovered the first fold.
With repeated experiments, he extended the duration of his crossings with little regard to his personal safety or means of return. The Tracing Space, however, always did spit him back out. In the beginning, he would often lose consciousness momentarily before finding himself standing in his laboratory like a sleep-walking catatonic.
"Do you regret it?" his own mother had once asked over the phone. "Aren't you lonely?"
Dr Ciddan gave a little huff. "Children have never been my forte, mother. I wish you'd stop asking this, honestly."
"Oh, but Abery… what'll become of you? Unmarried and childless… no one to survive us… it's a pity. Your father may not say it, but he wants grandchildren too."
He sighed heavily.
"I'm sorry to rattle on and on, but we worry about you."
"There's no need for that whatsoever. I'm a little worn from work, but in honest truth, mother, I've never felt better."
His mother hummed skeptically over the line. "What's that little job you're doing again? Pokémon breeding, was it?"
Abery laughed at the sly ways in which she managed to shoe-horn the topic of women or reproduction into virtually any discussion. "No, mother, I'm not breeding pokémon," he had replied. "It's general research. Nothing you'd care too much about."
And before she could come up with some other way to remind him of his childlessness, he humored her and nipped the topic in the bud. "But yes mother, perhaps I shall in the future. I'm not against it, I just need a little more time."
"Don't give me hope, Abery. By the time you're ready, your father and I will be groaning in our graves. Just get on with it."
He didn't get on with it. There was next to no time for a wife, and even less for children. He barely had time for the very pokémon helpers that had made his progress possible - a suite of twelve psychically gifted creatures that had been bought or borrowed, each for a specific move or ability that made it a valuable member of his laboratory. It was with their combined and diligent efforts that Dr Ciddan had made his breakthrough.
He kept them inside their pokéballs, only letting them out when their talents were needed, or for the occasional meal. They were eager workers and gave him little trouble, as though they could sense his conviction and were all too willing match his expectations.
Almost every evening, as dusk began to set in, he would lock himself in his laboratory and lay himself down on his recliner, after which he would enter a state of hypnosis. His helper, Drowzee, was especially adept at this. The pokémon was a beautiful rarity. An albino hatched from a wild egg, with pearly white skin that grew darker on the lower half of its body, and long, ebony, slightly hoof-shaped feet. Its eyes, with irises the color of coal, did not seem affected by its albinism, which was probably for the best, lest it appear as some unsettlingly demonic entity.
Out of all his helpers, Drowzee's Hypnosis felt the cleanest. He found that the same move, performed by different pokémon, could have varying 'flavors'. His other helper, Mr Mime's for example, always induced in him an uncomfortable sense of vertigo at the start, and a dizziness afterwards.
He gradually learned which helpers were best suited for what and designed a chain-link of action for each stage of experiment. He would put a different team to work after each day to keep them well-rested and on all up to speed. The approach had worked tremendously well, and he gradually found himself mastering the art of entering and prolonging his stay in the Tracing Space.
To enter the Tracing Space, the first step was to shut down 'anchoring' forces produced by one's own brain. The brain yearned for linearity and continuity of events. Dr Ciddan surmised that shutting down these forces might be possible on one's own, but he had never done it without a helper's aid.
After a helper hypnotized him and negated these forces, it would have to maintain the move for as long as possible, whilst another helper emitted psychic frequencies to rouse the doctor's awareness from its hypnotized state. At this stage, the doctor began to experience note-worthy phenomena, such as the ability to see the room with his eyes closed and a feeling of detachment from his body.
On the third stage, a third helper would emit delta-theta wave frequencies commonly associated with sleep and dreaming. It was the good doctor's belief that dreams would play a vital role in his quest of unfoldment. In this stage, the scenery would change, sometimes into places he recognized and other times into spaces so barren and empty, that one might think themselves dead.
On the fourth and final stage, a fourth helper would act as the anchor by emulating frequencies produced in the doctor's brain during his normal waking hours and directing the finely tuned 'dummy waves' back to him during his altered state. This would fix the doctor's mind to this dream netherworld, and through some unknown mechanism, the doctor would find himself in an identical body, though free from any thirst, hunger, or pain. The dream scenery and environment also collapsed and reduced itself to the familiar dwellings of his laboratory, but he could always tell the difference because everything appeared to glow with a faint blue-grayish light that was most visible from the corners of his eyes.
It was as close as a human could come to being a living ghost.
The Tracing Space was incredibly stable and surprisingly tangible. He could open doors and sit on chairs and even taste food and drink. The first few times had been confined to the laboratory, simply due to how short these trips lasted, but eventually, he began to wander off outside.
The world was usually uninhabited, with no sign of people or his pokémon helpers. He had several times attempted to release his helpers from their pokéballs, but it would always result in odd phenomena occurring, such as light bursting forth from the pokéball, and remaining as an unresponsive blob or puddle of light on the ground. Bizarre and beyond his understanding. Machinery too, seldom functioned well, whirring and whining as if it lacked some vital component or power source. It left him with little more to do than to simply observe and tinker around with whatever appealed to him at any given time.
Whenever he returned to the real world, he would find his on-duty helpers tired and spent, so repeated same-day experiment was limited.
For another three years he continued to explore the Tracing Space, trying to map what little he could on foot, committing the layout to memory, bit by bit, and hastily recording what he had seen to paper as soon as he returned.
It was also around this time that he had started to notice a nebulous presence following him around in the Tracing Space. Malicious or not, he could not tell, but he pondered the possibility of whether or not it could be some ghost-type pokémon finding his crossings amusing.
"Do you notice anything strange when I cross over?" he had asked his helper, Ralts, who could only reply in a series of soft and broken high-pitched whines that reminded him of twinkling stars.
They said high level trainers could understand pokémon and engage in meaningful conversations, but Dr Ciddan was no such thing, and he didn't understand a word. He did however believe that judging by Ralts' reaction, there was something to the mysterious presence. He continued his work, making notes of any recurrences of the presence, and soon found a disturbingly worrying pattern.
"Now, for some reason, whenever you're involved, there is a recurrence." He had addressed another helper, Jynx, once he was sure of the correlation. The pokémon had been used primarily for the anchoring phase of a crossing, but it could hypnotize almost as smoothly as Drowzee.
"We are going to run a quick check," he told Jynx. "So I need you to hold still for a moment."
This particular pokémon species was known for the continual, rhythmic swaying of its hips, and though it was capable of voicing human-sounding speech, it was still incomprehensible.
The doctor scanned Jynx with a hand gadget he had purchased for this very reason. When the gadget beeped, he checked the small screen and licked his lips nervously.
"Ho-kay…" he said in momentary relief when he read: ProTeknic, STT Microchip
Jynx had been a rescue pokémon, and microchipping was standard procedure for all vulnerable and trainer-less domestic pokémon. Dr Ciddan knew little of Jynx's past associations, or why it had been considered vulnerable, but the pokémon had been under the care of his previous employer, which had quite easily handed custody over to the doctor with some slight convincing on the latter's part. ProTeknic, moreover, was a widely known pokémon-centered tech company. It set off no alarm in the doctor's mind.
Beep-plip! Beep-plip! The scanner went off again, this time near the top of Jynx's head and Dr Ciddan frowned. A sudden hot flush of nerves made beads of sweat form near his eyebrows. He took a gander at the screen, and it read: Unknown, relay comms.
"There it is!" he said gruffly. "Relay comms…"
The doctor stared at the Jynx with growing skepticism. "No, surely not…" He put the scanner down and went to wash his face in the small cubicle washroom of his laboratory. "Relay comms…" he repeated to himself a few times. When he turned back to Jynx, the creature's waist had already resumed its signature wiggle, and it eyed him with unpretentious and guileless eyes. It voiced an 'oouh' and an 'aah?' and the doctor guessed at its meaning.
"It's nothing. Return," he said, pointing and reabsorbing it back into its pokéball. He got a sinking feeling in his gut that waxed and waned throughout the day, and he scanned Jynx another three times, all at separate and random times, when feelings of paranoia crept through him. The scanner read the same each time.
He looked over the scanner's manual to read the glossary on screen outputs, knowing well enough what 'relay comms' meant, but needing to make sure regardless.
Relay comms --> Relay communications
Inside Jynx's head was a data relaying device.
The doctor only needed to make one call to find out why something would be fitted with relay communications.
"Just to be clear," the scanner's manufacturer helpline assistant said over the phone. "Many pokémon microchips have relay communication capacities. It's not something you should worry about…"
"What about the location? Why is it in its skull?" Dr Ciddan eagerly hoped to quell that increasingly nagging feeling in his gut.
"Oh, it's inside the skull, is it? Well, that is rare, brain-chips are experimental… Are you sure it's not just sub-dermal?"
"What kind of data would brain-chips record?" Dr Ciddan said, ignoring the assistant's question.
"Well, the ones I know of could store anything from wave-state to rudimentary concepts. Coded of course…"
"What does that mean? – 'rudimentary concepts'…"
"Sure, it means the pokémon might think of say… 'box', and the chip have parsed that thought as 'cube', and then store that code in its memory." When Dr Ciddan did not immediately reply, the helpline assistant offered further explanation. "Whoever reads that data might get a very rough idea of what the pokémon was thinking about at a particular time…"
Dr Ciddan was speechless.
"Obviously, it can't relay complex thoughts with any sure measure of accuracy…"
"… I see…" The conversation had left a bad taste in his mouth. "Thanks for the help."
"Of course. If at all you decide you don't want the chip, you could always have it destroyed. It wouldn't hurt the pokémon, it's a special localized EMP that fries the microcircuitry. Renders it totally useless."
It was a small consolation for the doctor, who immediately took the suggestion to heart.
That night, on the cusp of sleep, a troubling thought sprang to his attention, and he jerked out of bed. "Rudimentary concepts, huh?"
He scrambled around for a notebook and pen and began to draw some basic 2D shapes.
"Triangle, square, circle… we have a rectangle… a pentagon, a hexagon…" He muttered the name of each shape as he sketched it. When he felt he had most of them, he hunched over the paper, fiddling with the pen as his mind worked.
"Now…" he mouthed. "I'm thinking of a house…"
He drew a new square, then a tringle on top of it. Then a small vertical rectangle on the bottom half of the square. "This is a house…"
"Now I'm thinking of a pen…" He drew a long horizontal rectangle, and then added a tiny triangle on one end. It could be either a pen or a pencil, but that distinction was insignificant at this point. The doctor was sure then that items and environments could be visually represented using the most basic of shapes. But what about words? He found that creating words using shapes was less intuitive, but he made no assumptions about the microchip's capacities. He quickly grabbed Jynx's pokéball and brought the pokémon out.
"Jynx, what is this?" He, in big letters, wrote the word 'PEN' on a blank piece of paper and held it out for the pokémon to see.
Jynx stared at the paper, shoulders bobbing slightly, but gave no indication of understanding. It took some edge off the doctor's nerves. "You can't read… That's good."
But that doesn't mean that the microchip can't…
No, but if it's basing its output on what the creature is thinking then it's only sending out gibberish.
That's assuming there isn't someone on the other end of that relay who can make sense of it. One man's gibberish is another man's scripture…
The doctor paced back and forth with his hands behind him, and eyes fixed on the floor.
"Blast…"
Hehehe… You see my point, don't you…
The little devil on his shoulder relished at his turmoil. So, the very next morning, Dr Ciddan took Jynx to a capable clinic and had both microchips destroyed for good measure. He knew ProTeknic's status microchip was harmless and could be useful, but he decided to take no chances.
Shouldn't you have found out where it's transmitting to?
Dr Ciddan froze momentarily, then shook his head slowly, laughing at himself. And now you think of this?
He sighed. "I need a holiday."
When he was back in his lab, a great and heavy fog of dejection hung in the air about him. It was as if he had been riding the biggest wave of his life for the last seven years, and it had finally breached the shoreline without so much as a crash, but rather depleted and drained of momentum. The mere possibility that his life's work could be in somebody else's hands disheartened him to no end.
In no less than two days, he packed his bags and all his research, and took a trip to his native region of Hoenn to visit his parents, who received him with arms wide open. Seeing them older but healthy pleased Dr Ciddan, who was reminded how important it was to have loved ones with whom to share time with. That said, he refrained from mentioning the truth of his research, preferring instead to talk about and engage in the mundanities of life such as the latest news, trying new food recipes, leisurely evening strolls, and watching films together with a bottle of good wine. Whatever depression he had felt before had faded in little more than a week.
He organized a three-day trip to the famed Mt Chimney, paying for all expenses, much to his parents' pleasure.
"Imagine if you had brought a lady with you," his mother had said, and the two men chuckled. "It'd be perfect, I wouldn't ask for more."
"Don't listen to her, you've done well son," his father said with a pat on the back.
On the third day, the three of them went on a final stroll around the foot of the volcanic mountain, greeting other tourists and occasionally putting out their hands to collect the perpetually and gently falling ash.
Abery Ciddan watched the embery mouth of the mountain, softly billowing puffy clouds of smoke and ash that rose up to the heavens before eventually coming back down to his very palms. He experienced great lucidity.
"That's how it works…" he muttered to himself.
It was then that he recovered.
His golden child had awakened in him once more, and that afternoon, on the train back to his parents' home, he felt an urge to dive back into his research.
Not many days later, he bid them farewell, embracing them both with an affection he didn't know he had in him. In his heart, he gave them the credit for regaining his passion and renewing his drive.
"Oh, but must you go so soon?" his mother lamented.
"It's been two weeks, Lynn, he's got more important things to be doing."
Abery shook his father's hand. "Don't worry, mother, I will make it a thing to visit more. This little holiday has been splendid, and we should do things like this more often."
"Aww, Abery…" his mother had tears in her eyes.
"And I will try for a lady… though I'm not sure who will have me."
"Bah!" his mother chuckled, waving the comment away as her son kissed her forehead.
With their goodbyes said, Dr Ciddan made his way back to Johto, to his laboratory home in Beumar Town, content and ready to begin anew. He spared some thought to his pokémon helpers, who had spent the entirety of the two weeks inside their pokéballs and packed in his suitcase. Pokémon could spend staggeringly long times in their pokéballs with no ill effects, but subjecting a creature to such an existence was heavily frowned upon. Still, two weeks was not particularly cruel, if a tad neglectful, but in his light bout of depression, Dr Ciddan had not desired to be reminded of anything to do with his research.
Now though, he looked forward to seeing them, but he would make sure it was within the familiar surroundings of his laboratory.
He reached Beumar Town in the late hours of the afternoon, when sun-drenched little town was gently radiating all the heat it had absorbed throughout the day. Excitement tightened round his stomach and his feet picked up the pace. The suitcase rattled behind him on the narrow and paved roads that wound throughout the town. He could not wait to unpack, brew a strong coffee, and prepare for his next crossing.
He arrived at his lab some ten minutes later and unlocked the front door, pushing it open with a shove of his foot. He was taken aback when a cool breeze of air greeted him. Had he left the fridge open?
He slowly put his bag down by the doorway and rolled the suitcase next to it. He flicked on the lights…
Ransacked.
His lab had been ransacked.
The folders on his table had been splayed out and any papers inside had been taken out and left in a shoddy mess. The shelves too had been rummaged through, with a few decorative porcelain pokéballs either smashed on the floor, or in places they shouldn't be. Dr Ciddan ambled through with caution, eyes scanning every nook and cranny of the room.
His trusty recliner was on the ground and on its side, seams torn open and sagging.
After a good five minutes examining the room, he stepped outside, feeling a mixed bag emotions.
A mad, cackling laugh came over him and he folded on his belly, clutching at his knees to support himself. It seemed ridiculous to him that someone would go to such lengths. Void of his research, his laboratory held little of value, unless you were looking for a cheap and quick buck… but no, any items that could be sold had been recklessly handled and left behind. It quickly occurred to the doctor that the looter was looking for something else, and he had a good idea what.
"That only points to its importance," he said, swelling with an odd sense of pride. "Trying to steal this from me? … never!" His absence and safeguarding of his research, he saw as providence. He took it as a sign that a higher power wanted his work to continue, and like a burglar in his own house, he dug through his belongings, picking only what might be of use, and packed his bags once more. He couldn't stomach the thought of spending the night amongst a thief's leftovers.
He didn't tell his parents what had happened. He didn't want to spoil the pleasant note of their holiday had left.
Hopping from motel to motel became his life for a while, spending weeks at a time in each, and though he still had considerable funds, his wealth was not limitless. He eventually found himself having to budget his money carefully.
"I'm going to need a new job…"
In some irony, the lies he used to tell his colleagues and bosses became a reality. He found himself taking assignments for research corporations and news outlets hiring freelancers, begrudgingly grateful for the new in-flow of money, but slightly bitter about the time and attention the assignments demanded of him.
One day, whilst out in town, a clerk from the motel he was staying at called his phone and informed him of having a 'visitor'. Baffled and curious, he headed back, only to find a well-dressed man in a suit, leaning idly on the reception counter. The man saw the doctor approaching and smiled welcomingly, but something was amiss.
"Hi," the man said in greeting. He was tall and relatively young, a decade or so younger than the doctor. His black hair was neatly combed to one side. "Doctor Abery Ciddan?"
"…Yes?"
The man offered his hand and Dr Ciddan took it with slight hesitation.
"Well met, sir. Do you have a moment?" The man gestured at the motel patio, where several tables and benches had been put out for the residents to use at their leisure.
The doctor did not move a step. "What's this about?"
The man smiled momentarily and nodded. "Apologies for the abruptness, doctor. I understand you've been looking for work?"
Dr Ciddan's mind raced, desperately trying to peg the man into a category. He had strong suspicions, but at this point, they were impossible to verify.
"I have work," Dr Ciddan replied. "And plenty of it. Who told you so?"
"Oh?" The man's face was painted surprised. Whether it was genuine or not was hard to determine.
"Well, now you have more options. I've been sent to deliver a proposition…"
The doctor crossed his arms and shifted the weight on his feet. "Of what sort?"
"If you have a few minutes, I could explain it in detail." The man gestured at the patio again. "Shall we?"
The two sat down opposite each other.
"Would you like a drink?"
Dr Ciddan brusquely shrugged and raised both hands before letting them drop on the table. He was growing impatient. "I would like to hear this proposition. I have much to be doing, and I'm not too fond of idle talk."
The man showed his palms in apology, then laced his fingers together in front of him. "I will be straight to the point then."
Dr Ciddan nodded in approval.
"I'm here on my superior's behalf, offering a permanent position as Director of Research."
Dr Ciddan frowned and scratched his neck. "Director of Research? …"
An executive position, the highest point one could climb in their researching careers. The doctor was in disbelief. "Right… but researching what?"
"You will make more in a month than most do in year. Along with access to all facilities and other benefit schemes…"
Dr Ciddan would be lying if he said it didn't sound tempting, but he still needed to know what and why.
"What research would I be directing?"
The man leaned slightly back on the bench, adjusting himself. He eyed the doctor with a look that said: 'brace yourself'.
"Don't be alarmed when I say this, please…"
Dr Ciddan tasted his mouth and gulped involuntarily.
"It is your very own research, doctor."
Abery Ciddan started from the table. "It's you…" he muttered. He knew it.
The man defensively put his hands up again, remaining seated and poised. "If you'll allow me, it can all be explained."
Dr Ciddan pointed a finger at him, slowly wagging it up and down. "You broke into my home…"
The man shook his head. "That was not me, doctor. I am the correction."
The doctor was silent, memorizing as many details about the man as possible.
"If you want to know why your property was broken into, please sit and let's discuss this properly."
When the doctor didn't sit but didn't leave either, the man continued.
"I'm sure you became aware of a certain implant on a pokémon of yours? A Smoochum I gather… though there is reason to believe that it's a Jynx by now."
"That was from you wasn't it…" Dr Ciddan said rhetorically with a glare. He had no reason to be amicable.
"Again, not I specifically, but the organization I represent, yes."
"Organization?" the doctor scoffed. "Organizations follow the law! Thieves cannot claim any sort of officiality!" He stamped his index finger on the table.
"Please doctor, you'd be surprised at the amount of corporate theft that goes on. Everybody does it. If you had climbed a little higher in your profession, you'd be more than just privy to it."
The doctor considered the man's words before replying. "I am not a corporation. This is private intellectual property…"
The man pursed his lips and shrugged. "So it may be. How the Smoochum ended up in your possession is not known to us. These sort of pokémon are normally industry seeds, large corporations and the like." He caressed his hands together briefly and opened his mouth to speak but stopped. He gave the doctor a questioning look. "It is a Jynx now, is it not?"
The doctor did not answer. He felt ill at ease and wanted nothing more than to see the back of the man.
"What's your name, and who do you work for?"
The man let his palms rest on the table with a clear look of disappointment on his face. "If you don't intend to work with us, I see no reason to reveal that." He drummed his fingers on the table momentarily.
"You know," he continued. "I'd have thought you would catch on quickly."
"Catch on quickly to what?" the doctor replied, seething with indignation.
"There a few answers to that… This is the most pleasant: …" The man paused to glance at the doctor and their eyes met. "Your work is far too big for one man. You need a team, and all the equipment and facilities available at your disposal if you want to make a real difference. How long have you been at it? A decade or so? As it stands, you will grow old and die before you bring your knowledge to the world."
The doctor shook his head. "What if this is not meant for the world? What if it's my own private hobby? Why should I share it with strangers?"
The man nodded pensively. "The work is already in hands that aren't your own. Not all of it, of course, but a good enough amount to begin working with."
Dr Ciddan cursed his Jynx, though he was almost certain that the pokémon had also been in the dark about it. A psychic type for crying out loud... How could it not tell it had a darned machine in its head?
"And in fact, believe it or not, we had teams working on similar projects long before we got wind of you."
That surprised the doctor, for he admittedly suffered from the frequent and recurring idea that he might be the only person on the earth that had seen what he had seen.
"Do you even know what my aim is, Mr …?"
"Just 'mister' is fine." The man lifted a leg over the bench, sitting with one on either side. He looked ready to leave. "I can't say I do, but I will tell you the aim of the team you could be directing…" He spoke like a clever hawker.
"To learn what makes Pokémon tick. Their biology in particular; how it's so capable of holding and channeling their terrific power."
He stood from the bench, finally. "Is this not a researcher's dream?
"They didn't need to send me. They could have sent the goons to slap you around and empty your bags. Kidnapping has also been on the table for some time. But none of those options compare to having the man himself on the task. You are the one most intimate with your work. You have the greatest understanding of it. It is only natural that they'd want you by their side."
The man dusted his suit off. "However, if you refuse, I'm sure they'll do without. Another person will come along and become as intimate with it as you have been… Perhaps more."
The doctor had had enough. "Oh, wonderful! And they are more than welcome to try. Go ahead. By all means."
A crafty smile flashed over the man's face, and the doctor saw it then. There you are, you fiend. I see through you.
"By all means, then…"
Dr Ciddan made a mockery of a smile. "By all means."
Abery Ciddan became a fugitive, moving through Johto like a rodent in a maze, somehow managing to elude the unknown organization's grasp. He continued working on his research, though mostly in a theoretical capacity due to a gut feeling that his crossings into the Tracing Space could ping his pursuers as to his whereabouts. That said, he could not make real progress without experimentation, so and he made it his protocol to change locations after every couple of crossings, by which time the nebulous presence seemed to make appearance in that ghost-like world.
The police could not be involved for he had not identified the man or his organization, and for his own reluctance to answer any questions or provide his personal data. Rather, the doctor gave his pokémon helpers the added task of creating and maintaining a psychic firewall of sorts, surrounding himself in a psychic net of detection to alert him to any physical or extrasensory prying eyes, of which he was sure his pursuers might employ.
He was unable to keep the promise he had made to his parents, deciding it would not do if any harm came to them, or if he was forced to choose between his loved ones or his life's work.
But you can have both… Why keep running like a fool?
"Why is it you're always alone? Where's the nicer one?" Dr Ciddan spoke to himself often, addressing the increasingly vocal devil on his shoulder.
He left. It's just you and me. And between you and me… you're better off joining them. You'd have a legion of underlings, and your mommy and daddy could really live it up on your fat new salary…
The doctor shook his head like he had tasted a bitter lemon. "Enough." He would not work with criminals.
Suit yourself. And the devil would keep quiet for some time.
But never for too long.
Pokemon: Spectre is a side project of mine started for fun. It is an Adventure/ Mystery/ Action poke-fic about:
This prologue chapter follows Dr Abery Ciddan, the character indirectly responsible for the events that happen in the main story. It is a chunky 6k words or so as I like to be detailed.
I will be releasing chapters 1 and 2 soon, and Im currently working on chapter 3 (the 4th entry) which should be finished within a a few days.
Leave comments if any, and I hope you enjoy!
PS. There are no warnings as of right now. My aim is to keep the writing Kid/ Teen/ Youth friendly.
+ Forgive the formatting if at all bothersome. These websites don't seem to emulate the ideal docx formatting.
PROLOGUE
DON'T STOP DREAMING
The study of pokémon required a rare caliber of mind. Delving into the topic from a purely analytical angle would not yield anything truly worth remembering. Only when the icy heart of level-headed analysis was infused with the spontaneous flame of inspiration, would one be primed to make a breakthrough in the matter.
Spry and young Abery Ciddan believed he had found that still quiet and elusive mental twilight zone right between crazy genius and steadfast rationality when from some nethersome part of his awareness was birthed the idea of folding reality itself. Or rather, unfolding it.
As dramatic and absurd as it sounded to the ears, there was real hope for Dr Ciddan, who observed pokémon doing the impossible morning, noon, and night. How could the water turtle pokémon, Squirtle, eject gallons of water from its mouth repeatedly to attack and not suffer dehydrating consequences? How could the avian pokémon, Pidgeotto, shatter boulders and hew trees with wings as hard as steel?
These examples were but the least of them, but even a single viewing of such… wonder… would be fuel enough to the keen minds who sought to make a change in the world. The creatures were beyond current comprehension, and their submissiveness to humanity's hand mystified the doctor immensely. Rather than conquer the earth, they had instead lifted his own mortally frail race of men to inconceivable heights. Indeed, without pokémon, man might still have been living within the darkness of caves.
"Sentient tools," Dr Ciddan often said in reference to the creatures. "They seek guidance. A master. They strive towards the human vision."
The years passed, and the majority of his days were spent with no considerable progress towards this end, though not for lack of trying. The idea, seemingly out of the clear blue, had rooted itself so deeply that Dr Ciddan didn't know the kind of man he would be without it.
"You're still here? I swear it, Abery… Ob-sessed," had said one of his numerous colleagues early on in his career. The first time he had been told something like that, it had delighted him.
"Good," Mr Ciddan had said to himself when he was alone again. "That's what keeps it all going. Obsession." To him, there was no question whether or not he was on the right path. All his doubt had given way to a wild but tempered conviction. Victory was but a matter of when.
Dr Ciddan, though not unkind, did not have many friends. He was a duty-bound recluse and had grown increasingly wary of small talk due to one of his personal theories that whenever two beings interacted, there was an even exchange of essential essence. Engaging in unrestricted socializing would therefore, like a leech, drain the life-blood of his golden child.
The wisest thing he ever did was to keep the aim a secret. He knew how it would be received by his peers and scientific community at large, and reputation was not something one should throw to the wind. He made excuses for his extensive research habits, often claiming he was on commission for journals or magazines, and the living he made in his profession was nothing to scoff at. Thanks to the sparing use of time or money on frivolities, his bank balance piled and grew so that when at last he felt that continuing with his employment would offer little benefit, he found no issues in setting up his own live-in laboratory in the little-known town of Beumar, an hour's train ride south from Goldenrod City.
Four years later, at the ripe age of thirty-six, Dr Abery Ciddan made his first breakthrough. Words could not describe his elation. He had not wasted his time. For a total of thirty-three seconds, he had seen, touched, and even walked around what he later came to call the 'Tracing Space'. He had uncovered the first fold.
With repeated experiments, he extended the duration of his crossings with little regard to his personal safety or means of return. The Tracing Space, however, always did spit him back out. In the beginning, he would often lose consciousness momentarily before finding himself standing in his laboratory like a sleep-walking catatonic.
"Do you regret it?" his own mother had once asked over the phone. "Aren't you lonely?"
Dr Ciddan gave a little huff. "Children have never been my forte, mother. I wish you'd stop asking this, honestly."
"Oh, but Abery… what'll become of you? Unmarried and childless… no one to survive us… it's a pity. Your father may not say it, but he wants grandchildren too."
He sighed heavily.
"I'm sorry to rattle on and on, but we worry about you."
"There's no need for that whatsoever. I'm a little worn from work, but in honest truth, mother, I've never felt better."
His mother hummed skeptically over the line. "What's that little job you're doing again? Pokémon breeding, was it?"
Abery laughed at the sly ways in which she managed to shoe-horn the topic of women or reproduction into virtually any discussion. "No, mother, I'm not breeding pokémon," he had replied. "It's general research. Nothing you'd care too much about."
And before she could come up with some other way to remind him of his childlessness, he humored her and nipped the topic in the bud. "But yes mother, perhaps I shall in the future. I'm not against it, I just need a little more time."
"Don't give me hope, Abery. By the time you're ready, your father and I will be groaning in our graves. Just get on with it."
He didn't get on with it. There was next to no time for a wife, and even less for children. He barely had time for the very pokémon helpers that had made his progress possible - a suite of twelve psychically gifted creatures that had been bought or borrowed, each for a specific move or ability that made it a valuable member of his laboratory. It was with their combined and diligent efforts that Dr Ciddan had made his breakthrough.
He kept them inside their pokéballs, only letting them out when their talents were needed, or for the occasional meal. They were eager workers and gave him little trouble, as though they could sense his conviction and were all too willing match his expectations.
Almost every evening, as dusk began to set in, he would lock himself in his laboratory and lay himself down on his recliner, after which he would enter a state of hypnosis. His helper, Drowzee, was especially adept at this. The pokémon was a beautiful rarity. An albino hatched from a wild egg, with pearly white skin that grew darker on the lower half of its body, and long, ebony, slightly hoof-shaped feet. Its eyes, with irises the color of coal, did not seem affected by its albinism, which was probably for the best, lest it appear as some unsettlingly demonic entity.
Out of all his helpers, Drowzee's Hypnosis felt the cleanest. He found that the same move, performed by different pokémon, could have varying 'flavors'. His other helper, Mr Mime's for example, always induced in him an uncomfortable sense of vertigo at the start, and a dizziness afterwards.
He gradually learned which helpers were best suited for what and designed a chain-link of action for each stage of experiment. He would put a different team to work after each day to keep them well-rested and on all up to speed. The approach had worked tremendously well, and he gradually found himself mastering the art of entering and prolonging his stay in the Tracing Space.
To enter the Tracing Space, the first step was to shut down 'anchoring' forces produced by one's own brain. The brain yearned for linearity and continuity of events. Dr Ciddan surmised that shutting down these forces might be possible on one's own, but he had never done it without a helper's aid.
After a helper hypnotized him and negated these forces, it would have to maintain the move for as long as possible, whilst another helper emitted psychic frequencies to rouse the doctor's awareness from its hypnotized state. At this stage, the doctor began to experience note-worthy phenomena, such as the ability to see the room with his eyes closed and a feeling of detachment from his body.
On the third stage, a third helper would emit delta-theta wave frequencies commonly associated with sleep and dreaming. It was the good doctor's belief that dreams would play a vital role in his quest of unfoldment. In this stage, the scenery would change, sometimes into places he recognized and other times into spaces so barren and empty, that one might think themselves dead.
On the fourth and final stage, a fourth helper would act as the anchor by emulating frequencies produced in the doctor's brain during his normal waking hours and directing the finely tuned 'dummy waves' back to him during his altered state. This would fix the doctor's mind to this dream netherworld, and through some unknown mechanism, the doctor would find himself in an identical body, though free from any thirst, hunger, or pain. The dream scenery and environment also collapsed and reduced itself to the familiar dwellings of his laboratory, but he could always tell the difference because everything appeared to glow with a faint blue-grayish light that was most visible from the corners of his eyes.
It was as close as a human could come to being a living ghost.
The Tracing Space was incredibly stable and surprisingly tangible. He could open doors and sit on chairs and even taste food and drink. The first few times had been confined to the laboratory, simply due to how short these trips lasted, but eventually, he began to wander off outside.
The world was usually uninhabited, with no sign of people or his pokémon helpers. He had several times attempted to release his helpers from their pokéballs, but it would always result in odd phenomena occurring, such as light bursting forth from the pokéball, and remaining as an unresponsive blob or puddle of light on the ground. Bizarre and beyond his understanding. Machinery too, seldom functioned well, whirring and whining as if it lacked some vital component or power source. It left him with little more to do than to simply observe and tinker around with whatever appealed to him at any given time.
Whenever he returned to the real world, he would find his on-duty helpers tired and spent, so repeated same-day experiment was limited.
For another three years he continued to explore the Tracing Space, trying to map what little he could on foot, committing the layout to memory, bit by bit, and hastily recording what he had seen to paper as soon as he returned.
It was also around this time that he had started to notice a nebulous presence following him around in the Tracing Space. Malicious or not, he could not tell, but he pondered the possibility of whether or not it could be some ghost-type pokémon finding his crossings amusing.
"Do you notice anything strange when I cross over?" he had asked his helper, Ralts, who could only reply in a series of soft and broken high-pitched whines that reminded him of twinkling stars.
They said high level trainers could understand pokémon and engage in meaningful conversations, but Dr Ciddan was no such thing, and he didn't understand a word. He did however believe that judging by Ralts' reaction, there was something to the mysterious presence. He continued his work, making notes of any recurrences of the presence, and soon found a disturbingly worrying pattern.
"Now, for some reason, whenever you're involved, there is a recurrence." He had addressed another helper, Jynx, once he was sure of the correlation. The pokémon had been used primarily for the anchoring phase of a crossing, but it could hypnotize almost as smoothly as Drowzee.
"We are going to run a quick check," he told Jynx. "So I need you to hold still for a moment."
This particular pokémon species was known for the continual, rhythmic swaying of its hips, and though it was capable of voicing human-sounding speech, it was still incomprehensible.
The doctor scanned Jynx with a hand gadget he had purchased for this very reason. When the gadget beeped, he checked the small screen and licked his lips nervously.
"Ho-kay…" he said in momentary relief when he read: ProTeknic, STT Microchip
Jynx had been a rescue pokémon, and microchipping was standard procedure for all vulnerable and trainer-less domestic pokémon. Dr Ciddan knew little of Jynx's past associations, or why it had been considered vulnerable, but the pokémon had been under the care of his previous employer, which had quite easily handed custody over to the doctor with some slight convincing on the latter's part. ProTeknic, moreover, was a widely known pokémon-centered tech company. It set off no alarm in the doctor's mind.
Beep-plip! Beep-plip! The scanner went off again, this time near the top of Jynx's head and Dr Ciddan frowned. A sudden hot flush of nerves made beads of sweat form near his eyebrows. He took a gander at the screen, and it read: Unknown, relay comms.
"There it is!" he said gruffly. "Relay comms…"
The doctor stared at the Jynx with growing skepticism. "No, surely not…" He put the scanner down and went to wash his face in the small cubicle washroom of his laboratory. "Relay comms…" he repeated to himself a few times. When he turned back to Jynx, the creature's waist had already resumed its signature wiggle, and it eyed him with unpretentious and guileless eyes. It voiced an 'oouh' and an 'aah?' and the doctor guessed at its meaning.
"It's nothing. Return," he said, pointing and reabsorbing it back into its pokéball. He got a sinking feeling in his gut that waxed and waned throughout the day, and he scanned Jynx another three times, all at separate and random times, when feelings of paranoia crept through him. The scanner read the same each time.
He looked over the scanner's manual to read the glossary on screen outputs, knowing well enough what 'relay comms' meant, but needing to make sure regardless.
Relay comms --> Relay communications
Inside Jynx's head was a data relaying device.
The doctor only needed to make one call to find out why something would be fitted with relay communications.
"Just to be clear," the scanner's manufacturer helpline assistant said over the phone. "Many pokémon microchips have relay communication capacities. It's not something you should worry about…"
"What about the location? Why is it in its skull?" Dr Ciddan eagerly hoped to quell that increasingly nagging feeling in his gut.
"Oh, it's inside the skull, is it? Well, that is rare, brain-chips are experimental… Are you sure it's not just sub-dermal?"
"What kind of data would brain-chips record?" Dr Ciddan said, ignoring the assistant's question.
"Well, the ones I know of could store anything from wave-state to rudimentary concepts. Coded of course…"
"What does that mean? – 'rudimentary concepts'…"
"Sure, it means the pokémon might think of say… 'box', and the chip have parsed that thought as 'cube', and then store that code in its memory." When Dr Ciddan did not immediately reply, the helpline assistant offered further explanation. "Whoever reads that data might get a very rough idea of what the pokémon was thinking about at a particular time…"
Dr Ciddan was speechless.
"Obviously, it can't relay complex thoughts with any sure measure of accuracy…"
"… I see…" The conversation had left a bad taste in his mouth. "Thanks for the help."
"Of course. If at all you decide you don't want the chip, you could always have it destroyed. It wouldn't hurt the pokémon, it's a special localized EMP that fries the microcircuitry. Renders it totally useless."
It was a small consolation for the doctor, who immediately took the suggestion to heart.
That night, on the cusp of sleep, a troubling thought sprang to his attention, and he jerked out of bed. "Rudimentary concepts, huh?"
He scrambled around for a notebook and pen and began to draw some basic 2D shapes.
"Triangle, square, circle… we have a rectangle… a pentagon, a hexagon…" He muttered the name of each shape as he sketched it. When he felt he had most of them, he hunched over the paper, fiddling with the pen as his mind worked.
"Now…" he mouthed. "I'm thinking of a house…"
He drew a new square, then a tringle on top of it. Then a small vertical rectangle on the bottom half of the square. "This is a house…"
"Now I'm thinking of a pen…" He drew a long horizontal rectangle, and then added a tiny triangle on one end. It could be either a pen or a pencil, but that distinction was insignificant at this point. The doctor was sure then that items and environments could be visually represented using the most basic of shapes. But what about words? He found that creating words using shapes was less intuitive, but he made no assumptions about the microchip's capacities. He quickly grabbed Jynx's pokéball and brought the pokémon out.
"Jynx, what is this?" He, in big letters, wrote the word 'PEN' on a blank piece of paper and held it out for the pokémon to see.
Jynx stared at the paper, shoulders bobbing slightly, but gave no indication of understanding. It took some edge off the doctor's nerves. "You can't read… That's good."
But that doesn't mean that the microchip can't…
No, but if it's basing its output on what the creature is thinking then it's only sending out gibberish.
That's assuming there isn't someone on the other end of that relay who can make sense of it. One man's gibberish is another man's scripture…
The doctor paced back and forth with his hands behind him, and eyes fixed on the floor.
"Blast…"
Hehehe… You see my point, don't you…
The little devil on his shoulder relished at his turmoil. So, the very next morning, Dr Ciddan took Jynx to a capable clinic and had both microchips destroyed for good measure. He knew ProTeknic's status microchip was harmless and could be useful, but he decided to take no chances.
Shouldn't you have found out where it's transmitting to?
Dr Ciddan froze momentarily, then shook his head slowly, laughing at himself. And now you think of this?
He sighed. "I need a holiday."
When he was back in his lab, a great and heavy fog of dejection hung in the air about him. It was as if he had been riding the biggest wave of his life for the last seven years, and it had finally breached the shoreline without so much as a crash, but rather depleted and drained of momentum. The mere possibility that his life's work could be in somebody else's hands disheartened him to no end.
In no less than two days, he packed his bags and all his research, and took a trip to his native region of Hoenn to visit his parents, who received him with arms wide open. Seeing them older but healthy pleased Dr Ciddan, who was reminded how important it was to have loved ones with whom to share time with. That said, he refrained from mentioning the truth of his research, preferring instead to talk about and engage in the mundanities of life such as the latest news, trying new food recipes, leisurely evening strolls, and watching films together with a bottle of good wine. Whatever depression he had felt before had faded in little more than a week.
He organized a three-day trip to the famed Mt Chimney, paying for all expenses, much to his parents' pleasure.
"Imagine if you had brought a lady with you," his mother had said, and the two men chuckled. "It'd be perfect, I wouldn't ask for more."
"Don't listen to her, you've done well son," his father said with a pat on the back.
On the third day, the three of them went on a final stroll around the foot of the volcanic mountain, greeting other tourists and occasionally putting out their hands to collect the perpetually and gently falling ash.
Abery Ciddan watched the embery mouth of the mountain, softly billowing puffy clouds of smoke and ash that rose up to the heavens before eventually coming back down to his very palms. He experienced great lucidity.
"That's how it works…" he muttered to himself.
It was then that he recovered.
His golden child had awakened in him once more, and that afternoon, on the train back to his parents' home, he felt an urge to dive back into his research.
Not many days later, he bid them farewell, embracing them both with an affection he didn't know he had in him. In his heart, he gave them the credit for regaining his passion and renewing his drive.
"Oh, but must you go so soon?" his mother lamented.
"It's been two weeks, Lynn, he's got more important things to be doing."
Abery shook his father's hand. "Don't worry, mother, I will make it a thing to visit more. This little holiday has been splendid, and we should do things like this more often."
"Aww, Abery…" his mother had tears in her eyes.
"And I will try for a lady… though I'm not sure who will have me."
"Bah!" his mother chuckled, waving the comment away as her son kissed her forehead.
With their goodbyes said, Dr Ciddan made his way back to Johto, to his laboratory home in Beumar Town, content and ready to begin anew. He spared some thought to his pokémon helpers, who had spent the entirety of the two weeks inside their pokéballs and packed in his suitcase. Pokémon could spend staggeringly long times in their pokéballs with no ill effects, but subjecting a creature to such an existence was heavily frowned upon. Still, two weeks was not particularly cruel, if a tad neglectful, but in his light bout of depression, Dr Ciddan had not desired to be reminded of anything to do with his research.
Now though, he looked forward to seeing them, but he would make sure it was within the familiar surroundings of his laboratory.
He reached Beumar Town in the late hours of the afternoon, when sun-drenched little town was gently radiating all the heat it had absorbed throughout the day. Excitement tightened round his stomach and his feet picked up the pace. The suitcase rattled behind him on the narrow and paved roads that wound throughout the town. He could not wait to unpack, brew a strong coffee, and prepare for his next crossing.
He arrived at his lab some ten minutes later and unlocked the front door, pushing it open with a shove of his foot. He was taken aback when a cool breeze of air greeted him. Had he left the fridge open?
He slowly put his bag down by the doorway and rolled the suitcase next to it. He flicked on the lights…
Ransacked.
His lab had been ransacked.
The folders on his table had been splayed out and any papers inside had been taken out and left in a shoddy mess. The shelves too had been rummaged through, with a few decorative porcelain pokéballs either smashed on the floor, or in places they shouldn't be. Dr Ciddan ambled through with caution, eyes scanning every nook and cranny of the room.
His trusty recliner was on the ground and on its side, seams torn open and sagging.
After a good five minutes examining the room, he stepped outside, feeling a mixed bag emotions.
A mad, cackling laugh came over him and he folded on his belly, clutching at his knees to support himself. It seemed ridiculous to him that someone would go to such lengths. Void of his research, his laboratory held little of value, unless you were looking for a cheap and quick buck… but no, any items that could be sold had been recklessly handled and left behind. It quickly occurred to the doctor that the looter was looking for something else, and he had a good idea what.
"That only points to its importance," he said, swelling with an odd sense of pride. "Trying to steal this from me? … never!" His absence and safeguarding of his research, he saw as providence. He took it as a sign that a higher power wanted his work to continue, and like a burglar in his own house, he dug through his belongings, picking only what might be of use, and packed his bags once more. He couldn't stomach the thought of spending the night amongst a thief's leftovers.
He didn't tell his parents what had happened. He didn't want to spoil the pleasant note of their holiday had left.
Hopping from motel to motel became his life for a while, spending weeks at a time in each, and though he still had considerable funds, his wealth was not limitless. He eventually found himself having to budget his money carefully.
"I'm going to need a new job…"
In some irony, the lies he used to tell his colleagues and bosses became a reality. He found himself taking assignments for research corporations and news outlets hiring freelancers, begrudgingly grateful for the new in-flow of money, but slightly bitter about the time and attention the assignments demanded of him.
One day, whilst out in town, a clerk from the motel he was staying at called his phone and informed him of having a 'visitor'. Baffled and curious, he headed back, only to find a well-dressed man in a suit, leaning idly on the reception counter. The man saw the doctor approaching and smiled welcomingly, but something was amiss.
"Hi," the man said in greeting. He was tall and relatively young, a decade or so younger than the doctor. His black hair was neatly combed to one side. "Doctor Abery Ciddan?"
"…Yes?"
The man offered his hand and Dr Ciddan took it with slight hesitation.
"Well met, sir. Do you have a moment?" The man gestured at the motel patio, where several tables and benches had been put out for the residents to use at their leisure.
The doctor did not move a step. "What's this about?"
The man smiled momentarily and nodded. "Apologies for the abruptness, doctor. I understand you've been looking for work?"
Dr Ciddan's mind raced, desperately trying to peg the man into a category. He had strong suspicions, but at this point, they were impossible to verify.
"I have work," Dr Ciddan replied. "And plenty of it. Who told you so?"
"Oh?" The man's face was painted surprised. Whether it was genuine or not was hard to determine.
"Well, now you have more options. I've been sent to deliver a proposition…"
The doctor crossed his arms and shifted the weight on his feet. "Of what sort?"
"If you have a few minutes, I could explain it in detail." The man gestured at the patio again. "Shall we?"
The two sat down opposite each other.
"Would you like a drink?"
Dr Ciddan brusquely shrugged and raised both hands before letting them drop on the table. He was growing impatient. "I would like to hear this proposition. I have much to be doing, and I'm not too fond of idle talk."
The man showed his palms in apology, then laced his fingers together in front of him. "I will be straight to the point then."
Dr Ciddan nodded in approval.
"I'm here on my superior's behalf, offering a permanent position as Director of Research."
Dr Ciddan frowned and scratched his neck. "Director of Research? …"
An executive position, the highest point one could climb in their researching careers. The doctor was in disbelief. "Right… but researching what?"
"You will make more in a month than most do in year. Along with access to all facilities and other benefit schemes…"
Dr Ciddan would be lying if he said it didn't sound tempting, but he still needed to know what and why.
"What research would I be directing?"
The man leaned slightly back on the bench, adjusting himself. He eyed the doctor with a look that said: 'brace yourself'.
"Don't be alarmed when I say this, please…"
Dr Ciddan tasted his mouth and gulped involuntarily.
"It is your very own research, doctor."
Abery Ciddan started from the table. "It's you…" he muttered. He knew it.
The man defensively put his hands up again, remaining seated and poised. "If you'll allow me, it can all be explained."
Dr Ciddan pointed a finger at him, slowly wagging it up and down. "You broke into my home…"
The man shook his head. "That was not me, doctor. I am the correction."
The doctor was silent, memorizing as many details about the man as possible.
"If you want to know why your property was broken into, please sit and let's discuss this properly."
When the doctor didn't sit but didn't leave either, the man continued.
"I'm sure you became aware of a certain implant on a pokémon of yours? A Smoochum I gather… though there is reason to believe that it's a Jynx by now."
"That was from you wasn't it…" Dr Ciddan said rhetorically with a glare. He had no reason to be amicable.
"Again, not I specifically, but the organization I represent, yes."
"Organization?" the doctor scoffed. "Organizations follow the law! Thieves cannot claim any sort of officiality!" He stamped his index finger on the table.
"Please doctor, you'd be surprised at the amount of corporate theft that goes on. Everybody does it. If you had climbed a little higher in your profession, you'd be more than just privy to it."
The doctor considered the man's words before replying. "I am not a corporation. This is private intellectual property…"
The man pursed his lips and shrugged. "So it may be. How the Smoochum ended up in your possession is not known to us. These sort of pokémon are normally industry seeds, large corporations and the like." He caressed his hands together briefly and opened his mouth to speak but stopped. He gave the doctor a questioning look. "It is a Jynx now, is it not?"
The doctor did not answer. He felt ill at ease and wanted nothing more than to see the back of the man.
"What's your name, and who do you work for?"
The man let his palms rest on the table with a clear look of disappointment on his face. "If you don't intend to work with us, I see no reason to reveal that." He drummed his fingers on the table momentarily.
"You know," he continued. "I'd have thought you would catch on quickly."
"Catch on quickly to what?" the doctor replied, seething with indignation.
"There a few answers to that… This is the most pleasant: …" The man paused to glance at the doctor and their eyes met. "Your work is far too big for one man. You need a team, and all the equipment and facilities available at your disposal if you want to make a real difference. How long have you been at it? A decade or so? As it stands, you will grow old and die before you bring your knowledge to the world."
The doctor shook his head. "What if this is not meant for the world? What if it's my own private hobby? Why should I share it with strangers?"
The man nodded pensively. "The work is already in hands that aren't your own. Not all of it, of course, but a good enough amount to begin working with."
Dr Ciddan cursed his Jynx, though he was almost certain that the pokémon had also been in the dark about it. A psychic type for crying out loud... How could it not tell it had a darned machine in its head?
"And in fact, believe it or not, we had teams working on similar projects long before we got wind of you."
That surprised the doctor, for he admittedly suffered from the frequent and recurring idea that he might be the only person on the earth that had seen what he had seen.
"Do you even know what my aim is, Mr …?"
"Just 'mister' is fine." The man lifted a leg over the bench, sitting with one on either side. He looked ready to leave. "I can't say I do, but I will tell you the aim of the team you could be directing…" He spoke like a clever hawker.
"To learn what makes Pokémon tick. Their biology in particular; how it's so capable of holding and channeling their terrific power."
He stood from the bench, finally. "Is this not a researcher's dream?
"They didn't need to send me. They could have sent the goons to slap you around and empty your bags. Kidnapping has also been on the table for some time. But none of those options compare to having the man himself on the task. You are the one most intimate with your work. You have the greatest understanding of it. It is only natural that they'd want you by their side."
The man dusted his suit off. "However, if you refuse, I'm sure they'll do without. Another person will come along and become as intimate with it as you have been… Perhaps more."
The doctor had had enough. "Oh, wonderful! And they are more than welcome to try. Go ahead. By all means."
A crafty smile flashed over the man's face, and the doctor saw it then. There you are, you fiend. I see through you.
"By all means, then…"
Dr Ciddan made a mockery of a smile. "By all means."
Abery Ciddan became a fugitive, moving through Johto like a rodent in a maze, somehow managing to elude the unknown organization's grasp. He continued working on his research, though mostly in a theoretical capacity due to a gut feeling that his crossings into the Tracing Space could ping his pursuers as to his whereabouts. That said, he could not make real progress without experimentation, so and he made it his protocol to change locations after every couple of crossings, by which time the nebulous presence seemed to make appearance in that ghost-like world.
The police could not be involved for he had not identified the man or his organization, and for his own reluctance to answer any questions or provide his personal data. Rather, the doctor gave his pokémon helpers the added task of creating and maintaining a psychic firewall of sorts, surrounding himself in a psychic net of detection to alert him to any physical or extrasensory prying eyes, of which he was sure his pursuers might employ.
He was unable to keep the promise he had made to his parents, deciding it would not do if any harm came to them, or if he was forced to choose between his loved ones or his life's work.
But you can have both… Why keep running like a fool?
"Why is it you're always alone? Where's the nicer one?" Dr Ciddan spoke to himself often, addressing the increasingly vocal devil on his shoulder.
He left. It's just you and me. And between you and me… you're better off joining them. You'd have a legion of underlings, and your mommy and daddy could really live it up on your fat new salary…
The doctor shook his head like he had tasted a bitter lemon. "Enough." He would not work with criminals.
Suit yourself. And the devil would keep quiet for some time.
But never for too long.
***
