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The Cepheid’s Shadow
Project Delta & Surge
It was weeks later. Bill had not seen his cottage since the day they took him.
“Soooooo…" Bill's face sunk into his palm. "Some human criminals too big for their muscle bands decided that we’re just... rungs on their yardstick. Step on us to get to the next level. They think it's alright to just kidnap folks. And then force them to figure out their little math problems? Thinking they need
me, like astronomers need a shadow to find their precious little lights.”
Bill was thinking out loud to Magnemite, who was one of three magnemite that he met here, while trapped in a building filled with suspicious microbiology laboratories and offices. The magnemite were assisting him while he was ‘away from home,’ along with several other chaperones.
He asked Magnemite to help him craft some sketches of the reason they were all there: a little collection of cells floating in a bright yellow tube. The yolk-like blob was called Subject Delta.
The sketches were not necessarily required research; after all, the facility was equipped with the most advanced machinery, documentation, and photography tools known to humankind, even while the torn remains of infographic posters and signage hung like a warning on the walls.
As Magnemite held a pencil for the first time between shaking magnets, Bill described Delta’s sloughed-off cells while gazing through a microscope.
But, if given the opportunity, Bill could rattle on endlessly. “You’re doing wonderfully, darling!” He pat Magnemite on the head, who angrily jerked their pencil away from the paper and started erasing. “You know, even though I never got very good at it, I always loved doodling those little graphics from the textbooks at school, you know, like the little diagrams of cells, and DNA, molecules...” He twirled one of his tight, glimmering black curls. “And then like the macro-scale things,” he said dreamily. “Things like, like, spectroscopic maps of super galaxy clusters and, like, early universe structures. You know?”
Magnemite’s eye was straining to follow the painstaking strokes of their pencil.
Bill sighed. “I was trying to imagine the… Unimaginable. Minute and colossal objects of the universe. Through their perspective, maybe.”
Magnemite’s magnets were unwieldy and large for the setting, but the pencil wobbled on, slowly casting lines.
Bill started proudly, “I certainly would never have worked on a
human’s biogenetic research of pokemon voluntarily.” He suddenly felt rather disappointed, sulking over the microscope; “Hmm.”
Another voice announced itself from the other side of Subject Delta’s workbench. “Instead of hoping for the happiness of just your pokemon…”
Bill groaned, reciting in return: “
‘Wish for the happiness of all pokemon.’”
He had a doctorate partner in this forbidden biotechnological endeavor.
It was the renowned Dr. Oyèrónkẹ́ Fuji.
Bill and most of the world knew about the doctor’s biotechnology research during the Pokerus-11 pandemic, serving as a primary consultant to several world champions and saving millions of lives. Before that, Dr. Fuji was already well enough famous for developing efficient methods of measuring wind and the destruction it creates, one of those measures being the Fuji Scale. They were also a prominent figure among many pokemon communities for their compassionate activism. Bill built upon much of their work when he was in school, and when he was developing the PCS.
Thick ribbons of smoke pushed around the lab, bleeding off in tendrils toward the walls. Fuji was a broad, tall silhouette against the smoke, two hovering moon eyes glinting. They rarely removed the rotom-possessed goggles from their twice-broken nose.
Bill receded from the syrupy smoke and adjusted his face mask. Smog gathered into three clumps, churning and glowing over the room. It was Gastly - three that liked to follow Fuji around - using all the compacted power and gasses of hundreds of corpses to curl up into a ball and hide in a corner for 23 hours a day.
He had not figured out if Fuji and the gastly were being forced into this project or if they were here of their own accord. They worked as if their lives depended on it.
Bill was not sure he could like the doctor by the most basic of qualifications; they were rude, a poor listener, and did not seem to care that no one was ever on their page. However, by the nature of their situation, the scientists shared conversation, and some of their own terrible secrets that shuffled to the surface.
Fuji walked around the workbench, approaching Bill and Magnemite. Behind Fuji, an electabuzz stood with their arms crossed at the end of the table. They were both in their Physical Containment level 3 -
PC3 - equipment, which included the black lab gowns covering their bodies, gloves, and a full face mask. Fuji had long locs tied and wrapped on the top of their head. Electabuzz’s yellow antennae reached just past Bill’s 4-foot height. They always grumbled as they moved, electricity crumpling in waves between muscle. They escorted Bill, woke him up, watched him eat, and sometimes poked their nose around Bill's things in the suite or labs.
Fuji glanced back at Electabuzz. Then they sighed, addressing Bill. “Would you please change the radio to something… else?” They strained a smile.
“Why, sure, doctor.” Bill turned his power chair towards the computer monitor. He activated it by looking at a specific point and blinking twice. Then, he started navigating the screen menu using more eye movements and blinks. “What else can I do for you while I’m being HELD HERE AGAINST MY WILL?”
The laboratory fell silent except for the stream of news and the buzz of machines.
A few awkward seconds, and the radio shut off. It was replaced with bird sounds.
“Amaaaaazing, thank you,” chimed Fuji as they turned around and walked away with Electabuzz. “Oh,” they stopped. “Fletchling. Correct?”
Recordings of fletchling chirped over the speakers.
Bill replied, “...Yup.”
Although he acted annoyed by Fuji’s request, the birdsong was a lot easier on his head than the news.
