Pokémon NEO-A-LIFE

[K_S]

Hi , here for the last gasp of week one. Tango mentioned this fic, so i thought i'd say hi via review and a warm welcome to the forum.


Aww our first white collar crime story. And non-trainer centric. Sounds like a blast. Lets see how it goes.

Chapter 1: White Paper
-Cassandra-​

Who was I? I was a faceless employee in the Celadon City branch of some company you’d never heard of that sold widgets to another company you’d never heard of. I’d have stated my job title, but to state your employment like that involves some degree of identification, and I did not identify myself with them

Love how smart she is. Going independent in a tight nit world like this screams ambition. But it also cuts off the perks of portfolio and networking. Still the distancing between swlf and corperate identity is a gutsy one that i think most of your okder readers are definitly going to grasp.

I personally like the fact that she's being so careful about it too

. I am not an “accounts receivable representative.” I am a researcher on artificial Pokemon.

This is what I repeated to myself as I came home from another uninspiring day at work. The view of my studio apartment was hardly a balm to the soul. The corner of my workdesk was occupied by a used cup of ramen, broth droplets solidified into a cloudy paste. The white refrigerator in the corner froze everything I stored on the top shelf. My tower of folders had toppled and the papers fanned out by the leg of the desk.

Instead of dealing with any of this, I tiptoed over the pool of notes into my office chair and began copying my annotations from Stolringer’s “Problematic Methodologies in Porygon Protein Synthesis” into my text editor. I’d gotten this copy from Saffron University’s library, the school where I’d been a researcher working on Castform generation. It was only a few years ago that I was in a lab working with the lead of the Castform project before our project was declared obsolete and budget cuts eliminated our department

I wouldnt count her as a failure as she was cut off from resources from higher powers (aka money bags). Thats chance not error.

. I couldn’t justify paying Saffron rents anymore, but I had no plans to return to Ecruteak, city of conservatism and stagnation. Celadon rents were more affordable, and I could at least bike to Saffron to borrow books from their library.

I finished copying my annotations and posted them to my blog. Just because I couldn’t research in a university didn’t mean I couldn’t research at all, right? It was amazing how many people cared about it. “Porygon Revival” was the leading blog on documenting the original Porygon project. But perhaps it shouldn’t have surprised me, for Porygon had a unique allure. Other artificial Pokemon, once generated, were no different from any other Pokemon. Porygon alone could be connected to a source, be de-synthesized and re-synthesized elsewhere, and even execute commands in virtual space. It was this trait - decompositionality, we called it - that eluded us enthusiasts.

My lips cracked from thirst. I pulled out a near frozen bottle of soda pop from the fridge, and cracked it open. It was in some horrid state between slushie and liquid, but I drank it anyway. It didn’t taste good, but it was a welcome sensory novelty. Thirst quenched, I checked the comments on the blog. The regulars were here, posting links to journals I didn’t know, correcting my errors, and, most importantly, there was Antoine, the man who had one-sidedly declared himself my rival. I propped my chin on my hand to see what he’d written today.

“When are you going to stop this nonsense? Artificial Pokemon generation is extremely dangerous. We barely know anything about how Pokemon physiology works and you continue to have the gall to try your hand. You’ve learned nothing from the failures of the Aether foundation. Porygon’s extensibility is not a toy.”

Love how the trolls just make her sink her claws in deeper. She will pwrsue this potential spawning of a legendary be hung...

He’d left one hundred such comments on my blog. This one was concise - he would often leave page-long screeds on decision theory and how artificial Pokemon synthesis was objectively foolish. I felt flattered, really, that he thought I had the know-how to create a Pokemon that could destroy the world. For just a moment, I felt I wasn’t a failure from some backwater town trying to edge my way into a world that clearly didn’t want me.

Having finished the comments, I turned to my emails. I rarely got any, but today there was one bolded title.

Sender: NEO A-LIFE
Topic: Porygon White Paper
Body:
Dear Cassandra,
Your research on the Porygon project is truly astonishing. You’ve made incredible progress on reconstructing the details.
My name is Emily LeVant, and I am the founder of NEO-A-LIFE. We’re a startup that focuses on Porygon generation. I’m looking for a researcher who knows their Porygon stuff, and you seem like you fit the bill. We have access to documents you may find intriguing. I have attached, for your eyes only, a snippet of the original Porygon white paper. This is the intellectual property of NEO-A-LIFE. Do not upload this anywhere.
I’d like to meet with you to discuss the possibility of you joining our team. I will be in Celadon City for the weekend.
Yours,
Emily

I ran the attachment through the antivirus. No hits.

My... inner computer nerd is dying. Theres so many other tests you should use to check... but i'll leave my vermersitude obsession on the back shelf.

Opening. “Towards the first virtual Pokemon: Porygon. Authors: Anisha Abad, James McClinton, Marcello Garcia. We present here a novel method for creating the world’s first decompositional artificial Pokemon, named Porygon. Using this method, Porygon is able to both keep a physical form and move in the digital world…”

My hands felt numb. There was no way this could be it. And yet, it seemed to be. The authors were legitimate; I’d read about most of them beforehand. I’d never seen this abstract, and what they described made sense, but without the methods, it wasn’t entirely clear. It was inconceivable. Who was Emily, and was she seriously pitching me to join her company?

I looked them up on the internet. Emily herself was apparently related to the head of a prestigious mining company in Hoenn. Her headshot on the website for NEO-A-LIFE showed a woman of small stature with glossy black hair, pink cheeks, and a big smile. She seemed… adorable? Anyone can start a company, but she seemed a little sweet-looking to be a startup founder.

Snorts. Those are the dangerous ones. They commit crimes, look innocent, and you feel guilty for blaming them...

Its a perfect workaround stratagy.

There wasn’t as much on NEO-A-LIFE. Just about everything on the company seemed to be made by Emily herself. A slick webpage with stock images of skyscrapers taking up half the page, bold font saying “Pokemon. Reimagined,” “The world is dynamic. Your Pokemon should be, too,” and more vague copy that didn’t really say anything but sure sounded enticing. “Using decompositional biology and identity-preserving eigenstructures, NEO-A-LIFE delivers scalable solutions at an affordable price.”

It was weird. It was obviously weird. Okay, maybe it was a real startup, but who just emails people out of the blue asking them to join their company? Or is this normal?

It can happen if youre outstanding in certian internet domains... but nine times out of ten its schmuck bait. Wonder whixh way this will tumble?

I’d never been part of the corporate world. I forsook money to make a difference (although I ended up not doing that, either). Maybe I was the one who didn’t get it.

My heart raced and I had to get up and pace from one corner of this room to the other. I wove around the backpack and folders scattered carelessly across the floor, occasionally brushing my ankle against them. It couldn’t be real. It was too perfect. But it seemed like the real Porygon white paper. Where did she get that? How could I read the rest of it?

A familiar pressure pulsed in my temples. I grabbed the Pokeball I always kept in the bowl and headed out for fresh air. I let Magnezone out of his ball. I saw his silhouette in white before his features became clearer, and he rotated his magnets in happiness at seeing me.

“Nice to see you too,” I said. “Wanna go for a walk with me? I need to clear my head.”

Aww she's got a Magnezone rubber ducky (tech geek term, basically shes using her mag' as a vent device) how fitting

Magnezone made his affirmative sound, and I raced him to the ground floor down the stairs. He won, of course, because he can just float down, but it’s a habit we established, and it got the blood pumping. I emerged from the stairwell to see him at the exit, screws tightening and loosening in anticipation.

“Oh, you won again!” I said in mock horror. “How will I ever catch up to you?” I scratched my ear. “Let’s take a walk to the department store.”

It was cloudy out, but I didn't mind. Harsh sunlight would reflect off Magnezone and I didn’t think to bring my sunglasses.

“Okay, so Magnezone, I need you to hear me out. I got this email from some lady who’s starting a company. Normally I wouldn’t pay attention to it, but she has the original Porygon white paper. And you know how much I want to make a Porygon.”

Magnezone buzzed.

“This company, it looks like it’s real. But I don’t know about this. Like, do you really think that I should meet up with her? What if she’s crazy?”

Magnezone made another sound. I wished he had a human understanding of the world. I felt his judgment would be fantastic. But his world was not my world. He’d been my companion since he was just a little Magnemite, and I would always talk to him when I needed a sounding board. He didn’t fully understand; I once caught him falling asleep when I explained the complexities of academic funding politics. But whether he got it or not, he was still my buddy, and it felt good to share these things with him.

My lips cracked again - apparently soda pop didn’t really quench your thirst. We finally arrived at the Celadon department store, and I headed to the water fountain by the side of the building. “So,” I asked between gulps, “should I do it?”

Magnezone stared at me with his unblinking red eye. I wiped the water on my chin off with the back of my hand. It was not fair to expect Magnezone to make such a decision for me. His world was electromagnetism, battle, floating, not major career decisions in your late twenties. Still, I wished he could talk to me like those Rotom talk to humans in Alola.

I stopped, stepped away from the water fountain, and closed my eyes. Pros of meeting with Emily - I’d get to learn more about this mysterious Porygon white paper. Con - she could be a serial killer (epistemic status: unlikely) or a weirdo (possible?). Pros of not meeting with Emily - I’d get to stay home. Cons - I would never know what’s in that paper.

My teeth chewed the inside of my mouth. “I can’t spend the rest of my life not knowing what the deal with this paper is. I’m going to set up a meeting with her.”

Did curiousity kill the cast, well this cast member/ cat, only follow up reading will tell!

He seemed pleased with this, though for what reason I could not say. I loved his joy anyway.

I prompted him to enter his Pokeball before entering the department store - he was a little too big to have floating around in cramped spaces. I bought some of his favorite Poke Puffs and felt his Pokeball rattle as I passed through the automatic doors. I tapped the ball twice to let him know it’s safe to come out. He wriggled in anticipation and I tossed him his cupcakes. He ate them in his inscrutable way as we returned home in the setting sun’s light. All I could think of was what I was going to write:

“Dear Emily, I’m interested. How about this Saturday at 3:00 PM at the cafe by the department store?”

Overall this work is a wonderful, and incredibly real feeling, slice of life drama in a real 'mon world backdrop. I loved Cassandra's bond with her 'zone, theres a ton of unspoken story there, as well as to how she got here in a gen sense.

What made her not journey, what was the social fall out, ect... and thats actually a good thing since theres future chaptwrs to hopefully answer some of that and describe her dwscent into the madcap world of artificial mon spawning.

Thanks for sharing.

 

[Spiteful Murkrow]

Heya, came back for more of this story since I liked what I saw of the first chapter, but felt like I needed to bite off and chew a bit more to see where things were going and form an opinion about things, so I’m here for the next two chapters to see where Cassandra and her saga trying to make custom Digimon drinky birds goes:

Chapter 2

Spoiler: Line-by-Line

-Emily-​

OwO

What’s this?

It was 3:15PM, and my interviewee was late. I figured she’d be punctual since she said she lived close, and yet I was alone at this fashionable cafe with a room temperature latte. I checked my phone and caught a message from her:

Cassandra: Sorry, got caught up in something, I am on my way!

inb4 her Magnezone accidentally fried her computer or something like that.

Nothing to do but wait. I slipped the phone back into my purse and decided to start on the coffee. I tugged back the cuffs on my blazer - I really did need to get it tailored - and took a sip. Lukewarm, yet delicious. The roast was neither too acidic nor too bitter, and the ratio of coffee to milk was divine. Saffron may have been the center of technological investment, but Celadon remained the best city for food.

I mean, it’s also got game dev offices chilling there, so it’s not as if there’s no tech to be found in Celadon there. Though the ‘best city for food’ probably explains a few things about that tea sidequest in FRLG.

What I was doing - waiting for someone I'd cold-emailed to show up - was admittedly a little nuts. The fact that she agreed to do this was full on coconuts. I had been firing off emails to potential collaborators, but most of them got no response or polite dismissals. One person informed me that I was “stuck in the past” for wanting to continue the “failed paradigm” of Porygon research.

Cassandra was an intriguing deviation from the norm - years and years of obsessive posting on Porygon, trying to piece together the original paradigm. I’d spent hours reading her blog, until I got all the way back to the first post she made. It felt like a dream come true - someone invested in Porygon, with lab experience, and living in Celadon, to boot.

Would recommend hacking up Emily’s paragraph into two here and tweaking the wording slightly.

The dream was still a quarter of an hour late. I checked my phone again to see if there was any response. I looked up from the ‘no new notifications’ screen to take a sip of my coffee when I saw a woman with a frizz halo and bagged out chinos hovering over my table.

“Hey, are you Emily?”

I felt awkward trying to finish drinking my coffee and talking at the same time. Her gaze hung on me as I finished swallowing. “Yes, Emily LeVant. You must be Cassandra.”

Okay, yeah, Magnezone totally electrocuted something in her apartment, I can already tell.

“Yeah, I’m Cassandra,” she said, and she stuck her hand out, still standing. I shook her hand and was surprised at how firm her grip was. Was this a power play, or did she not realize this was over the top? “I’m sorry I’m late.” She took a chair across from me. “I don’t live far from here, so I got a little too confident about how quickly I could get here.”

There was no photo of her on her site, yet she didn’t look how I expected. Her chestnut brown hair was gathered in a ponytail, sneaking out and curling behind her ears. Most noticeable about her were her eyes, which seemed to focus on me as if I were the most interesting person in the world. I felt like a bug under a microscope.

Huh. Guess I misunderstood what was meant by “frizz halo” there. Though I find it interesting that Emily is a lot less skeptical about Cassandra than the other way around.

“I’m glad you could make it,” I said. “I’m really excited to talk to you about this. I’ve read your blog top to bottom.”

“Seriously? I’m happy to hear that!” The comment had rosied her cheeks. “I’ve been interested in Porygon for basically my entire life. I don’t even really understand how anyone can not be obsessed with Porygon. We synthesized a Pokemon. In the 90s. This should have been a revolution!”

So what was the thing that killed Porygon’s momentum anyways? Seizure-related lawsuits?

“Trust me, I’ve heard it all. When the Porygon2 project didn’t even make it into space, it killed investor interest in custom synthetic Pokemon.”

Ahhhh. Yeah, that would do it there…

Cassandra giggled awkwardly. “There’s this guy on my blog who’s constantly telling me that my research is going to lead to some Type:Null-like disaster. Dude, it’s Porygon. It’s such a mild Pokemon!” She looked at my empty mug of coffee. “Oh yeah, do you mind if I order something?”

Again, let’s not even get into how if we take Porygon’s game behavior at face value, that it’s dangerously close to being able to create a Gray Goo scenario if Porygon instances don’t die faster than they can lay eggs for new ones.

“Not at all,” I said, and she promptly placed an order, coming back with a number. I couldn’t tell what her gimmick was. Chatty, unprofessionally dressed, and unpunctual. Perhaps some kind of wunderkind cosplay?

No, this is just your archetypical amateur developer. ^^;

[ ]

“So,” she said, “I would love to hear more about this Porygon white paper you messaged me about.”

I tapped the handle of my mug. [ ]

“Before we get into that, I want to talk to you about this venture I want to build. I think it will help you understand.”

I think that it probably makes sense to give a bit more detail about the way that Cassandra is reacting here and the thoughts going through Emily’s head about how everything’s going at the moment.

She nodded, and I took a deep breath. Pitch time. “So, I’m sure you know what makes Porygon special among artificial Pokemon. The fact that we can upload its consciousness, have it work in the digital world, and then come back to a physical form…”

“Decompositionality, yes,” she said, a little impatiently.

“Exactly,” I said. “Porygon is much more flexible than any other artificial Pokemon. We only began to explore this functionality with Conversion. But I think we can go further. We can make Porygon with custom typings, stats, moves. Porygon can be something that we build for your use case in particular. Instead of having to go through the hassle of dealing with Pokemon breeders, why not just get what you need, right away?”

Wait a minute… isn’t this basically like two steps removed from the way all those Mirage Pokémon in that one anime special worked?

Cassandra watched me as I spoke, her eyes never leaving mine. I found it hard to tell if I was reaching her.

“So, your goal is to make custom Porygon? And sell them?”

“Yes. We at NEO-A-LIFE want to create Porygon for specialized applications. Rescue teams, security guards, industrial settings, you name it. We could have a ghost/dark Porygon for a security team and built in data-monitoring to improve security routines. We could have Porygon with particular move combinations that no organic Pokemon could have. We’re targeting institutions that need to work with Pokemon at massive scales.”

I mean, that does sound pretty nifty. And not far removed from that one protean “Pokémon that tracks its trainer’s attributes” or whatever that was allegedly being played around with internally at Game Freak according to leaks earlier this year.

She nodded slowly, her gaze loosely hanging over her coffee cup. “I never really considered joining a company, but … it’s interesting… I mean, I think that the issue with the Porygon project and space was just that they didn’t realize what they had on their hands. There was this big ambition about sending Porygon to space and when it didn’t work out, instead of pivoting, it’s like everyone lost their imagination and stopped using it entirely.”

[ ]

“‘Oh, artificial Pokemon aren’t really useful.’ It’s nonsense, but the paradigm just lost steam. I think… making it more about customization could be a good idea.” Her eyes snapped back. “But without knowing how to make Porygon, I’m not sure we can move forward with this.”

I feel that Cassandra’s dialogue is long enough that it’s probably worth dividing into two and dropping something in between the two halves. Though I have to wonder if the reason why Porygon flamed out was because of just how much money it took to make the first one. Since a number of R&D projects IRL ultimately wind up faltering and not making it over the finish line because they stumble at the part where they need to figure out how to actually make their product affordably enough to be commercially viable.

Still focused on the white paper. That obsessive focus wasn’t just for the blog. “Of course, without access to the source code, we can’t make any Porygon and our project’s dead in the water. That’s why getting this made NEO-A-LIFE possible.”

I opened the binder I had placed on the table and turned it to Cassandra. She read intently, and I could tell there was no point in trying to talk to her as she scanned the paper. I waited, though not for long; she read quickly. She finished the first two pages and turned back to me.

Oh, so they’re basically attempting to rewrite the source code for Porygon to make a new batch. Or at least I think that’s the implication there.

“I’ve never seen anything like this before. How did you get this?”

“I did a lot of research on people who worked on the original Porygon project. One of them was willing to send me a copy of this. He was very passionate about continuing research on Porygon, but he told me his days of science were over. He wanted us to carry the torch.”

Cassandra curled her lips inward. [ ]

“We don’t have the source code, do we?”

I smiled. “Actually, that was another one of his parting gifts. We have the source code. What we need is someone who knows how to interpret it, and how to work a lab. We need someone who can create new Porygon. Someone like you.”

Well then. Though I’m unsure whether or not it makes more sense to talk about ‘interpreting’ source code versus ‘analyzing’ or ‘documenting’ it. Since if you have the source code and a suitable compiler and IDE, you can look at it just fine. But you won’t necessarily be able to make heads or tails of it in the absence of documentation explaining what does what in it.

She was trying to stay composed, but she was blinking a lot.

“That’s… wow. That’s amazing. You have the source code… but why do you need me? I’m not the only person who’s worked in artificial Pokemon synthesis,” she said. She wasn’t hooked yet, but she was looking for a reason to be. [ ]

“You’re right. If you want someone to generate Castform, you can easily go to the Hoenn weather institute. But I’m not looking for Castform. I’m not looking for someone who breeds Porygon. I’m looking for a person who is passionate about synthesizing Porygon, who knows everything about it, and has the skills to bring it to life. The number of people meeting my requirements is quite small. You are part of that number.”

I feel as if it would make sense to bring up something from Emily’s perspective about how Cassandra just needs a little extra push or something like that.

[ ]
“What exactly do you want me to do? As part of this NEO-A-LIFE.”

“I want you to be my technical lead. You will be in charge of a team of scientists tasked with making the Porygon we need. You will receive equity in the company.”

Translation: you’re going to work cray-cray hours and earn peanuts in the way of actual pay in the hopes that this startup makes it long enough to get to an IPO.

[ ]

“Where is the money? I mean, how are we going to get the money?”

I liked that ‘we’. “I don’t know if you know my father. Michael LeVant. He runs a successful resource extraction company in Hoenn. My two older brothers work with him. I wanted to go my own way. He’s funding our research and development. Once we get a viable product, it’s off to the races.”

I feel like it probably makes sense to show off Cassandra’s reaction there, since I assume that she’s intended to be a bit skeptical at the moment here.

I waited with bated breath. She seemed to be weighing the options. “I… this sounds really interesting. But I don’t know if I’m ready to join a startup. It wasn’t in my plans…”

“What else have you got going on?”

Silence. “Well, I’m working as an… accounts receivable representative at…” She trailed off.

Wow, she realized in live-time just how terrible and unimpressive her job sounded while getting the words out, huh?

[ ]

“Think about it. I’ve already got lab space rented out in Saffron.”

“Saffron?” Her eyes bugged. “No way, I can’t afford that. You don’t seriously expect me to commute there every day? I mean, I bike there every now and then to check out the library, but it’d kill my legs.”

[ ]

“You can room with me,” I blurted. “Just temporarily. You can sleep in a room in the lab. Startup life isn’t always glamorous, but we have options.”

[ ]

“Look,” I reached across the table, “Cassandra, this is going to be big. There are massive inefficiencies in the current Pokemon breeding paradigm. Everyone’s so focused on battling that nobody thinks about the institutional applications. I believe that Porygon can change the world. Do you?”

A few more spots where I feel it would be worth touching a bit more on how the characters are reacting and what’s going through Emily’s head here. Though does that mean that NEO-A-LIFE will eventually wind up making those Poryphones that are around in Masters? /s

Our eyes locked, and the world seemed to go still for a second before she broke gaze. “I will think about it.”

I pulled back. “Of course. It’s a big decision. I hope you’ll think it over carefully.” I pulled out a business card - one of a few I had - and handed it over for her. She read it. [ ]

“Well, thanks for waiting for me,” she said. Her eyes flicked to the binder. “I can’t get a copy of that, can I…?”

“It’s property of NEO-A-LIFE.”

I mean, really, Cassandra. What on earth were you expecting there?

She puffed out her nose a little. “Mmm, I see. Well, thank you anyway. I’ll sleep on it.” She waved awkwardly before walking away.

I waited for her to leave before I went to the counter and ordered a big mug of coffee and banana nut bread. I sat back down and took out my list of leads. If Cassandra didn’t join, I didn’t have a lot of options. I tapped my fingers on the walnut furniture, surprisingly tasteful for a cafe in a department store. She’ll join - she has to. This project couldn’t end before it even began.

Cassandra’s going to come back in about 10 minutes and accept the position, isn’t she?

The coffee and bread arrived, both steaming hot. The bread was so moist I could easily carve a chunk off with my spoon. It tasted as sweet as it smelled, though the crust was a touch burnt. At least Cassandra picked a decent place. My overgrown gel manicure caught my eye as I tapped the mug; it could use a touch-up too. Thankfully Cassandra didn’t seem like the type to get caught up on appearances. Then again, that would be a problem if I really brought her on board. She would definitely need to be polished before I showed her to any investors…

Not sure if this is exactly a good sign there given that Emily’s already talking about changing the way that Cassandra presents herself before others.

With the mug emptied of its contents, I stopped to consider my next move. The coffee shop was full of customers, several of whom had their Pokemon out, and I decided to join them. I released Clefable, who materialized on the chair next to me.

“Clefable!” she chimed, looking at the leftovers of my banana nut bread.

“You can have it if you like, glutton.” She took it in her little paws, sat down, and carefully began eating. She looked comically disproportionate in the human-sized chair with her stumpy legs.

Oh, so Emily’s Clefable does this on a regular basis, huh? :p

[ ]

“I’m staying in Celadon for one more day,” I explained. “It would be more convenient that way if Cassandra decides to hop on board.” I checked my phone on a hunch, but nothing from her. “If nothing else, we can get some shopping done. I need to freshen up my shoe collection a little. And you’d look adorable with a satin ribbon, wouldn’t you?”

I think that it probably makes sense to have some sort of interaction between Clefable and Emily before Emily speaks up, e.x. if Clefable is shooting a puzzled look at her or something like that.

Her eyes lit up, as I knew they would - Clefable’s vanity outmatched mine. “Finish up your snack and we’ll have a little budget-friendly shopping spree. If things work out, we’re going to have to keep tightening our belts.”

Small typo there.

Clefable narrowed her eyes at me, but there was no arguing the point. She wasn’t paying rent - she didn’t even understand the concept. I’d probably pout too if all my housing were taken care of. Well, this was the first time I’d had to actually pay rent; daddy always took care of that sort of thing. I saw why the general population was so stressed all the time.

She swallowed the last of the dessert and stood up, excited to browse the stands. We headed to a trendy store for Pokemon accessories. The selection of ribbons was much nicer than anything else they had at Saffron - colors, materials, trims. I spotted a gorgeous magenta ribbon in a smooth finish - genuine silk. It would make a striking contrast to Clefable’s bubblegum pink fur. But real silk was expensive and a hassle to clean. Clefable looked cute and played mean; she’d tear through this in nothing. I put the spool back on its hook.

I mean, I buy it given that positioning-wise, Celadon’s a bit closer to Shibuya than Saffron is. Yes, yes, I know that it’s closer still to Setagaya.

Clefable found an emerald green ribbon in a nylon - a tasteful and durable choice. “You want this one?” I asked. She nods, placing it behind her ear to show where she wanted to wear it. I purchased it and checked my watch. It was late. My shoe shopping spree would have to wait for another day.

Well, that’s one way to stick to a budget. Though I wonder just how late in the day her meeting with Cassandra was, since this sure didn’t feel like a lot of time had passed.

<><><>

I returned to the cheap hotel room I’ve paid for. Minimum amenities. I kicked my shoes off on the bed, and I checked my phone again. Nothing. I took a shower, changed into my pajamas. Clefable’s ball was on the headstand, next to the alarm clock and next to my head. I wished we could have had the chance to battle in Celadon. She was a scrappy fighter. She’d make a hell of a negotiator. Maybe that’s what she was in her previous life.

I feel like there’s enough of a jump in time and place that it probably would’ve been worth considering making this a separate scene, especially since we very abruptly leave the department store from the last chapter.

I tucked myself into bed, and reached to turn the phone vibration off when it buzzed.

I unlocked it. One message.

Cassandra: It’s Cass. I’m in.

Wow, that was fast there.

There's a recurring theme in the Pokedex entries for Porygon2 that it was somehow planned to go into space. Obviously one should take Pokedex entries with a grain of salt, but it would actually make sense that a Pokemon like Porygon(2) would be meant for space. It has no need to breathe or eat, for one. Some of the entries suggest that Porygon2 was prepared to go into space, but most of them say it say failed.

I pulled up Porygon2’s BP page and… huh, interesting there. Though if you wanted to sprinkle in a specific callout to why Porygon2 apparently failed for its intended purpose, you might find this ‘dex entry handy:

Even though it doesn't die in the vacuum of space, it can't move around very well in zero gravity. - Ultra Moon

Some food for thought anyways.

Emily awkwardly waiting in a cute Celadon cafe to interview some rando on the internet. Incredible life decisions on display here.

Truly a good omen for how this startup is going to wind up being run.

Chapter 3

Spoiler: Line-by-Line

-Emily-​

Oh hey, we’re following Emily’s perspective again. Guess we’ll see how things wind up going from here, since I admittedly was expecting things to toggle back to Cassandra here.

Everything happened so quickly, yet it felt like we’d been living like this for years. Cassandra informed me that she was ready to join the company “because working on Porygon is the chance of a lifetime.” Her landlord was alright with subleasing, and we were lucky that an aspiring gym trainee desperately wanted a place not far from Celadon's gym. The only real furniture she had were bookshelves, a desk, and a bed frame. Even with that, it was too much for us to lift on our own, and so we hired the Machoke Moving Company to help us out.

Ah yes, rooming with someone that you’ve met for all of 30 minutes for the sake of your startup. If nothing else, you can’t say that Emily isn’t daring about the way she runs NEO-A-LIFE.

They made fast work of packing and unloading in the Saffron office. Her new home would be a spare room in the lab, her office/bedroom. Not too different from my own sleeping arrangement. Once the Machoke had left, she ripped open the boxes to try to bring order back to this new place. Her books were in complete disarray - we had to pack them so quickly that we couldn’t preserve the meticulous shelf order she’d come up with.

Whelp, that’s one workday lost there.

It must have been crazy for her. This was what I had wanted, and yet it was objectively insane. We barely knew each other beyond a shared passion for Porygon and now we lived under the same roof. We needed something to mark this occasion, a ritual - something I had already planned, of course. The mini-fridge in the empty main room was stocked for just this occasion.

So what’s the over/under of them eventually getting a barrel full of Atomic Fireball candies sometime around the first crunch period? /s

I walked into her office/bedroom, my hands cradling a cool bottle of prosecco. “Hey, think you can take a break? We've worked pretty hard today. We should have a little drink.”

She was trying to figure out where to shelve “Principles of Pokemon Linguistics” and “Magnemite: A Concise Introduction,” her blue eyes scanning the haphazardly stuffed brown bookcase for a meaningful slot.

I take it that that prototype translator rotting in Devon Corp’s basement must’ve gotten impressively far into development given that there’s out and out academic literature devoted to the study of Pokémon language.

“Sounds good,” she mumbled. “Just give me a minute, I don’t remember if I put these together under ‘social science’ or if the Magnemite one goes under ‘pop history’...”

I bit my lip. Turned out the whole twitchy neurotic thing wasn’t an act to look like a crazed genius. I suppressed a sigh and said, “c’mon, there’s nothing urgent about getting these books in order. Magnemite can wait until tomorrow, can’t it?”

Sure is a good thing you committed to staying under the same roof with Cassandra for the foreseeable future, huh?

She rested her head against her inclined pointer finger, which in turn bent back to a ferocious degree. “You’re right. Magnemite can wait.” She lifted herself off the floor and clapped her hands together. “We should celebrate! I mean, I’m here, I made it!” She laughed nervously. “Quit my job…”

“And good riddance, I say. You’re wasted as an office worker. One day we are going to be the ones hiring accounts receivable representatives.”

I jerked my chin towards an empty corner of the main room. I’d set up some cheese and crackers, the absolute cheapest I could find at Saffron Grocery prices. I wished we could have had a tasteful brie, but bargain bin cheddar would have to do. I twisted the cork off with a napkined hand and watched the topper ricochet against the wall before falling ignominiously to the floor. The froth rose and I quickly tipped a tipple into our two plastic champagne flutes.

I like how Emily very clearly is used to a much more extravagant lifestyle but is having to heavily reel things in because “lol, no budget” at the moment. It definitely communicates quite a bit about her in between the lines.

“To NEO-A-LIFE. To Porygon. To the future,” I toasted, and the glasses clinked in union.

“To the future,” said Cassandra, and we both took a sip. It was not very good, but she smiled and said it was tasty. [ ]

“Hey, come to think of it, do you have Pokemon? I don’t think I’ve met yours.”

I think that it probably would’ve made sense to give a bit more of a transition into things before Cassandra speaks up again. e.x. Something showing off her mood or else of Emily’s internal thought process.

“True,” I said, and I walked to my purse and released Clefable from her Love Ball. She took form before Cassandra, her green nylon ribbon tied into a bow behind her ear. “This is Clefable, one of my longest-tenured Pokemon partners.”

I feel that you’re missing something along with “longest” here in context. I wasn’t sure what the best option for it was, but something along the lines of “tenured” likely would’ve fit well.

“Pleased to meet you,” said Cassandra, who knelt and held out her hand. Clefable extended her paw and the two participated in a fascinating facsimile of a handshake. Cassandra then got up.

“Well, you showed me yours, I’ll show you mine. I’ve only really got Magnezone. Normally I wouldn’t let him out indoors, but this place is plenty spacious.” Her voice reverberated in the unfurnished room as if to prove a point.

She headed to her room and returned with a Great Ball. She clicked the white button and released Magnezone. She wasn’t wrong - it was a biggun. Clefable was relatively tall, but Magnezone was broad and dense, and its floating in space somehow made it seem to occupy even more vertical space.

Emily:

“... How did you get by living in a studio apartment with him anyways?”

“Magnezone, as I told you, this is Emily,” said Cassandra. “We’re going to be working together.” Magnezone rotated its enormous body towards me, staring me down with its three eyes. I rarely felt intimidated in the presence of Pokemon, but this one had the same potency of gaze as Cassandra, and I got the distinct impression that I was being judged.

Magnezone: “*I am judging you, just saying.*”

“Magnezone!” I said, eager to make a good impression. I wondered if the handshake thing was something Cassandra expected Pokemon to receive, and I foolishly held out my own hand. “Nice to meet you.”

Magnezone tilted itself towards me and rotated its enormous magnets near my hand before returning to its original position.

“I’ve had Magnezone since I was a kid,” said Cassandra, walking up to the beast. “He’s honestly like a confidante. He was actually a Magneton for a long time, and we were planning on keeping it that way, but I got to do a field trip to Mt. Coronet once and I told him and he really wanted to go. And how can you say no to a face like that?”

Oh, so that’s how she has a Magnezone. I hadn’t really questioned it, but I suppose that Cassandra really did hit the jackpot there.

I could think of a thousand and one ways to say no to a face like that, but I nodded at this story. I felt something at hearing her call this expressionless creature her confidante. Like calling a potted plant your best friend. Perhaps I was rushing to judge because an unblinking red eye and a pair of pinprick pupils were locked on me constantly and I swore I felt a negative vibe emanating from the Steel-type. Or perhaps the prosecco was hitting. I made a mental note to google “are magnezone good judges of character” before going to sleep.

Oh, so ‘Google’ exists in this setting, duly noted.

Clefable walked up to Magnezone. “Clefay!” She twirled her finger, eyes glinting. [ ]

“I think she wants to battle,” I said.

[ ]

“Oh,” said Cassandra, “Magnezone isn’t really for battling.”

Mental record scratch. “Pardon?”

I think that you have a couple points here that would likely benefit from showing off more of Emily’s thought process playing out.

“I mean he can. He has. He’s not half bad, if I say so myself. No, I’m just kind of a terrible trainer. I did the whole rigamarole of your Year of Training. I don’t think I have the stuff for it.”

She had finished the glass and was halfway through a second one I hadn’t seen her pour. [ ]

“Look, it’s never really been my dream to become the champion, right? Honestly, the closest thing I had to a dream at that point was to get the hell out of Ecrutreak.”

“Now that, I didn’t expect. You are from Ecruteak?”

She rolled her eyes and took another gulp. “Yeah.”

Oh, there’s a story behind this one, I can already tell.

[ ]

“But it’s so…”

“Stuffy? Conservative? Backwards? Yeah. Yeah, I know.” She scratched her temples. “I stopped leading with that. If you’re from Ecruteak, everyone expects you to be into legendary Pokemon. ‘Oh, you’re gonna study Suicune? Ho-oh? Gonna meet a legendary?’ Like no, I’m not stuck in the past, shut up!”

I feel that it probably would’ve been worth showing off a bit of Emily’s internal thoughts and initial judgements regarding Ecruteak play out in her thought process before Cassandra speaks up here.

I grinned, sipping my prosecco. “Okay, no Ho-oh, but I feel like you could be a kimono girl. You’d look so elegant in a Bellosom print kimono.”

Her expression suggested this line of teasing wasn’t something she was interested in exploring.

So just how piercing is that glare coming from Cassandra right now? :p

“I have nothing to do with anything from that town. Nothing but a monument to worshiping the past. We’re here because we want to create the future.”

Damn, I can already tell that whatever story Cassandra has with Ecruteak, that it’s unhappy, to say the least.

“Hear, hear!” I said, raising my glass. “I’m from Rustboro. Not as stuffy as your Ecruteak, but it’s hard to escape the shadow of the Stone family. The LeVant family is as successful and yet nobody has ever heard of us.”

[ ]

“Same line of business?”

“We’re not quite as diversified as they are, but we are trying. Mostly resource extraction. My dad runs it now, and my two older brothers were groomed to take their place in the company.”

Could be worse, you could be from whatever family Riley is from up north in Sinnoh where… I have no clue what Riley does for his day job given that he apparently owns the defunct mines that are on Iron Island.

[ ]

“Is your dad a chauvinist or something?”

I laughed. “Not quite. He wanted me to take my place, too, but I didn’t want to just take something he’d made. I wanted to make my own thing. Although when I told them I wanted to start my own company, Larry said, ‘what are you doing, cosmetics?’”

Another spot where it probably would make sense to drop in a bit more of a reaction from Cassandra here.

Cassandra stuck out her tongue.

Cassandra: “Sure sounds like he’s a chauvinist to me, just saying…”

“And when I said I wanted to do tech, he said, ‘oh, so wearables?’ He’s a piece of work. They knew I’d been obsessed with Porygon since I was a little girl and they couldn’t connect it to this startup.” I shrugged. “I guess I can’t complain too much since they are still funding this.”

I kinda wonder if that could’ve been played up a bit harder in Emily’s thought process up to this point in the story, since admittedly I didn’t get the vibe that she cared as much about Porygon as Cassandra did up to this point.

[ ]
“I was wondering how you were able to afford all this. I thought maybe you were blowing your life savings on this.”

“I am using a lot of my trust fund,” I admitted. “But my dad liked the gumption to start something of my own and said he’d help. It’s not enough to fund the whole company. But look, Cassandra, if we can get that proof of concept, the first Porygon, and get some investors? We won’t need to rely on him. Well, he is technically an investor and he’s owed a share of profits, but I mean, he won’t be the majority shareholder.”

That sure sounds like you’re dependent on your dad, just saying, Emily. ^^;

[ ]

“He’s majority shareholder? Umm, I’m sorry, I don’t really understand all this… startup language,” she said, embarrassed. I’d forgotten in our tipsy zeal that her background was in academia (and apparently silk kimonos), not business.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “We need to get some helpers to help you in the lab, and then we get our proof of concept, move towards the minimum viable product, and we can start working towards the fundraising round.”

Oh boy, I can already smell the shenanigans since startup culture can be wild in the tech space.

She nodded along, seemingly ignorant of everything I’d just said. [ ]

“When did you get into Porygon?” she asked. “I got into it as a teen. Honestly, not too long after meeting Magnemite. I’d made a trip into Goldenrod to their library and I read about the work Silph was doing in the 90s.”

[ ]

“I gotta say, those guys were visionaries. I think I felt my stomach flip when I read that they made a Pokemon. They made a Pokemon! This wasn’t altering a Pokemon that wasn’t already there, no Mewtwo, no Genesect, this is a Pokemon from scratch, and everyone seems to just… not care?”

“Porygon wasn’t exactly a strong battler,” I pointed out.

Cassandra: “Yeah, well so are Pikachu, but that doesn’t stop everyone and their grandmother from having some piece of merch with that yellow rat’s mug on it.” >_>;

“I feel like everything revolves around battle sometimes. Yes, sport is good, we get it, how about like… research? Knowledge? Wisdom?” She reached for the prosecco bottle only to find it empty. “Dangit."

I went to the mini-fridge and fetched us two beers. I’d been saving these for Friday wind-down, but I figured as co-founders we should get to know each other. As I walked back into the room, I saw Clefable and Magnezone had settled into a corner, having their own chat. Goodness only knows what they’re saying about us. I shook the thought out of my head and handed the opened bottle to Cassandra.

Whelp, I suppose that’s a sign that Cassandra is really out of the loop from the professional battling circuit.

“Thanks,” she said as she took the stout. “To be fair, it was not just the battling potential. Silph was really gung-ho on this idea that Porygon was going to take us into space. It was ambitious, really, but it didn’t work out. They poured all this money into making Porygon2 to go into space, and yet when they collaborated with Mossdeep Space Center, the Pokemon can’t even move in zero-g. Really embarrassing.”

Ah yes, there was our reference to the Ultra Moon Pokédex entry. Cute working it in there.

“And you know what incredible, paradigm-busting artificial Pokemon we got after that,” I said, setting up the beat…

“Castform!!” we said in uniform and collapsed laughing.

“Can’t go into space? Why not track the weather?” she giggled.

“Castform - the Pokemon that’s as effective as opening your window and looking at the sky! Only millions of Pokeyen to research!” I add.

I can already hear the frustrated seething from those meteorologists in Hoenn right about now.

“Castform - even worse than Porygon at battling.”

I wiped a tear from my eye. [ ]

“Castform. Yeesh. You want to know why I love Porygon? Say what you will about version 1, but I saw Porygon2 in battle and I was stunned. I’d never seen such a Pokemon like that before. And Porygon-Z is a machine. I knew we were leaving something on the table by not going further with it. Beautiful, incredible, unique.”

And also a glitchy, erratic mess there. Though I actually wonder if Porygon-Z was an official unreleased Silph product, or if it was someone’s homebrew that wound up getting popular.

“I’ve never owned one,” admitted Cassandra. “They’re… not easy to get a hold of in Johto.”

“I had one,” I said. “Didn’t work for my team. I did try the whole League thing out. But I couldn’t bear to get rid of it. It’s… gorgeous. I knew it was the shape of the future.”

I kinda wonder if this should’ve weighed on Emily’s thought process at all up to this point.

We stopped on that beat. She didn’t say anything, but I had the feeling that we were on the same wavelength for the first time. We came from opposite backgrounds, but we shared a vision, an obsession, and the audacity to bring it to life.

"They poured all this money into making Porygon2 to go into space, and yet when they collaborated with Mossdeep Space Center, the Pokemon can’t even move in zero-g."
A reference to the Pokedex entries such as the following from LeafGreen: "This upgraded version of Porygon is designed for space exploration. However, it can't even fly." My first thought for an organization that had gone to space would be Mossdeep, since they have rocket launches. I like to think Porygon2 got put on a test-flight but disappointed by not being able to move. It didn't die from not needing to breathe, which is good, but I guess they wanted full motion in space.

I was thinking more the UM one, since it basically says the same, it’s just more ambiguous about how bad Porygon2’s movement in 0G environments is.

Porygon received no further software updates from Silph, suggesting development on the program was halted. There was an unofficial update from Team Galactic engineers to produce Porygon-Z, but Porygon has seen no official or unofficial work since.

Huh, I completely forgot that you can find a Dubious Disc in the Team Galactic HQ. Not sure if I personally put stock in it being a TG invention since they become fairly widespread, but I could see an argument for TG having a role in things given that Charon’s antics canonically formed the basis for Rotom appliances in more recent generations.

“I stopped leading with that. If you’re from Ecruteak, everyone expects you to be into legendary Pokemon. ‘Oh, you’re gonna study Suicune? Ho-oh? Gonna meet a legendary?’ Like no, I’m not stuck in the past, shut up!”
I am actually a big fan of fics dealing with legendaries, but I thought it would be funny to have Cassandra be sort of ideologically opposed to being into legendaries, especially once associated with Ecruteak. She's just tired of the stereotype 😩

For what it’s worth, it makes for a pretty fun character dynamic to behold there.

No offense to Castform enthusiasts - I love Castform! But I always thought that it was very funny that this Pokemon was created to help with tracking climate, and yet its primary function is changing form based on the weather... which you can do by looking outside. Weather enthusiasts sometimes say if you want to know if it's going to rain soon, you're better served by looking out your window than checking an app. Castform feels a little overengineered in that regard. :P

I mean, that’s how you know that it was made by engineers outside of a business. Since engineers in general are infamous for overengineering in the absence of someone sitting on their shoulder and telling them to stop.

Alright, I think that I’ll leave things off here for now. But these were a neat set of chapters that helped introduce us to the face behind Cassandra’s cold email from the prior chapter. It’s certainly a fun contrast given how different of a background Emily has to Cassandra, and you got a lot of mileage from bouncing the two off each other in spite of them both being a bit nuts for Porygon there. The champagne scene in the Saffron office was an especial highlight in that regard. I admittedly found myself wishing we could’ve stayed in the technical weeds a bit more, but what was there was already fairly convincing, and we got introduced to the intricacies of the brave new world of startup culture… which I can already tell is going to lead to some scenes to behold down the road. I also liked how you worked in all the little bits and pieces of series lore about Porygon and its line into this story. It’s a refreshing deep dive for a Pokémon line that’s basically a novelty outside of Porygon-Z for most people in the games.

In terms of things that didn’t quite stick the landing for me, while I enjoyed these past two chapters, I did find a number of spots where I found myself wishing that we could’ve seen more of Emily’s thought process playing out. Especially in light of some of the big character reveals about her that come out in Chapter 3 such as her being similarly a fanatic about Porygon and once having a Porygon-Z that she’s at least in some respects trying to recapture the magic of, or her relationship with her father and brothers that feel like they should’ve been things that colored her thought process well before when they get revealed in her back and forth with Cassandra.

But even what’s there before any further revisions was already a lot of fun to read, and definitely one of the most refreshing fics I’ve read in a while (I’m biased towards the premise, sue me). Hope the feedback was helpful, @Goolix , and I’ll be looking forward to coming back for more sometime in the hopefully not-too-distant future.

 

[Dragonfree]

I figured it would be nice to try to review at least one actual new face for this week, and this one is an intriguing premise that also comes highly recommended by several people around me, so here's a review on chapter one!

This is what I repeated to myself as I came home from another uninspiring day at work. The view of my studio apartment was hardly a balm to the soul. The corner of my workdesk was occupied by a used cup of ramen, broth droplets solidified into a cloudy paste. The white refrigerator in the corner froze everything I stored on the top shelf. My tower of folders had toppled and the papers fanned out by the leg of the desk.

Great example of scene-setting and characterization by just choosing the right details to describe. This is a bit of a human disaster living in a dinky apartment where things sort of work and she doesn't bother with trying to go beyond that.

Thirst quenched, I checked the comments on the blog. The regulars were here, posting links to journals I didn’t know, correcting my errors, and, most importantly, there was Antoine, the man who had one-sidedly declared himself my rival. I propped my chin on my hand to see what he’d written today.

“When are you going to stop this nonsense? Artificial Pokemon generation is extremely dangerous. We barely know anything about how Pokemon physiology works and you continue to have the gall to try your hand. You’ve learned nothing from the failures of the Aether foundation. Porygon’s extensibility is not a toy.”

He’d left one hundred such comments on my blog. This one was concise - he would often leave page-long screeds on decision theory and how artificial Pokemon synthesis was objectively foolish. I felt flattered, really, that he thought I had the know-how to create a Pokemon that could destroy the world. For just a moment, I felt I wasn’t a failure from some backwater town trying to edge my way into a world that clearly didn’t want me.

Oh boy. Definitely making me think of AI doom discourse, but also, this feels like foreshadowing that they will in fact be biting off way more than they can chew here.

There wasn’t as much on NEO-A-LIFE. Just about everything on the company seemed to be made by Emily herself. A slick webpage with stock images of skyscrapers taking up half the page, bold font saying “Pokemon. Reimagined,” “The world is dynamic. Your Pokemon should be, too,” and more vague copy that didn’t really say anything but sure sounded enticing. “Using decompositional biology and identity-preserving eigenstructures, NEO-A-LIFE delivers scalable solutions at an affordable price.”

Hahahaha, amazing. Corporate slop in the Pokémon world.

I'm enjoying the portrayal of Magnezone, and of the narrator's relationship with Magnezone, so far. Having a little race down the stairs that he always wins but gets her blood pressure going is cute. I'm a fan of well-characterized Pokémon who feel like more than an accessory to the trainer, and it's lovely to see especially with a Pokémon that's not as easily anthropomorphized as many other species.

He seemed pleased with this, though for what reason I could not say. I loved his joy anyway.

It strikes me that it might have been fun to hear more about exactly how a Magnezone expresses joy here! It's an unusual Pokémon, so in a story where it seems like an important character it feels appropriate to develop its body language a bit.

I prompted him to enter his Pokeball before entering the department store - he was a little too big to have floating around in cramped spaces. I bought some of his favorite Poke Puffs and felt his Pokeball rattle as I passed through the automatic doors. I tapped the ball twice to let him know it’s safe to come out. He wriggled in anticipation and I tossed him his cupcakes.

I like the portrayal of the Pokéball here; it's lowkey but the way that both sendout and release are something the Pokémon has to choose to do and the trainer just prompts them to is neat and not how you usually see it being done in fanfic.

A short and sweet opening chapter! There's not too much happening, just yet, but with the space you had, you've done a nice job of introducing and characterizing the main character and her Magnezone, introducing the premise of trying to create a new Porygon, and creating intrigue. Emily's vague corporate placeholder website and how she got her hands on the original Porygon whitepaper (which she's claiming as NEO-A-LIFE's intellectual property, hmm) sounds super sketchy and weird, and Antoine's concerns feel like they're going to mean considerably more than the protagonist thinks. And yet, of course our narrator is intrigued: she's been researching artificial Pokémon, holds out a blog on Porygon, and regardless of the sketchiness, there's the whitepaper, and of course she's dying to know where Emily got it.

It's hard to say too much more just yet about where things might be headed, but it's an intriguing start. I don't know exactly how much time I'll have over Blitz, but hopefully I'll be able to return for some more next week (though I'm also working on Will Somebody Stop These Kids?). A few nitpicks below, mostly about tenses and grammar.

Spoiler: Nitpicks

It was only a few years ago that I was in a lab working with the lead of the Castform project before our project was declared obsolete and budget cuts eliminated our department. I couldn’t justify paying Saffron rents anymore, but I had no plans to return to Ecruteak, city of conservatism and stagnation. Celadon rents were more affordable, and I could at least bike to Saffron to borrow books from their library.

With the overall narration being in the past tense, this bit becomes a bit ambiguous - it's actually referring to an even earlier past (a few years ago), but still uses the simple past tense to talk about it as if it's referring to the current past, which legitimately confused me a little as to whether she's currently unable to justify Saffron rents (and thus is currently living in Saffron but planning to move to Celadon) or at the time the project was discontinued was unable to (and thus already moved to Celadon). I think what you're going for should be something like:

It'd been only a few years ago that I'd been in a lab working with the lead of the Castform project before our project had been declared obsolete and budget cuts had eliminated our department. I'd been unable to justify paying the Saffron rents after that, but I'd had no plans to return to Ecruteak, city of conservatism and stagnation. Celadon rents were more affortable, and I could at least bike to Saffron to borrow books from their library.

I pulled out a near frozen bottle of soda pop from the fridge, and cracked it open.

Generally, when you have the comma-and construction, there should be complete sentences with a subject and verb on either side of it; if what comes after the and is not a complete sentence, you don't want the comma there.

Sender: NEO A-LIFE

In both the title of the fic and later references, it's NEO-A-LIFE, with hyphens between all three words, but here in the sender there's a space...? Maybe it's intentional as a first-name NEO last-name A-LIFE thing, but it made me pause.

I let Magnezone out of his ball. I saw his silhouette in white before his features became clearer, and he rotated his magnets in happiness at seeing me.

The "I saw..." filtering feels a bit noticeably odd to me here, I think because it sort of calls special attention and weight to the "seeing his silhouette in white" bit, as if it's something unusual for her to witness, only for it to then turn out to just be the routine way that Pokémon come out of a ball, something the narrator would actually presumably barely even notice.

He won, of course, because he can just float down, but it’s a habit we established

With the past tense narration, again, you want "it was a habit we'd established".

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

Review for Ch1-3

I've had this recommended to me by the lovely @Flyg0n, who deserves some kudos for bringing it to my attention. With no exaggeration, it's extremely much my jam.

For starters, I deeply enjoy the specificity of the premise. Like, sure, I do have a soft spot for Porygon myself anyway, but even if that weren't the case, it's just kinda delightful how unique it is. It's almost audaciously unlike most any pokémon fanfic concept I've seen, and not in a glamorous way, but by being about an ostensibly dry topic. Although, of course, both Cass and Emily are passionate enough about ~building the future~ for it to be infectious. I'm rooting for them! It's hard not to root for them, honestly. You've got me rooting for a pair of weirdos doing a tech startup. Nice.

About those weirdos. Cass is, of course, not the first endearingly awkward nerd gal I've taken a liking to in fic. I write plenty of neurotic failgirls of my own. However, I think what I find particularly charming about her is her unapologetic resentment of everything from Ecruteak to Castform, and her... I wanna say, singlemindedness? Stuff like pressing Emily for the white paper, making all her bold declarations, ignoring the obnoxious reply guy, etc. and especially her flat refusal of the request to battle. It's refreshing that she comes off as unconcerned with how she's perceived by others, and that in some sense Emily is the more anxious and people-pleasing of the two. It doesn't really strike me as confident self-assuredness so much as intellectual conviction and knowing very much what she does and doesn't like.

I love that she has a somewhat bizarre objectmon for a partner. and that he's characterised so well. The confidante thing, the judging stare of discernment, the rotating magnet appendage to 'shake hands', and so on. The way his bulk is described as taking up so much office space as to be intimidating, the evo backstory about Mt Coronet, the stair-racing tradition. He gets so much individuality, it's delightful. I also love how the partnership seems almost to be one of peers, despite the compelling way he's said to be thoroughly uninterested in and incapable of appreciating human workplace politics and suchlike – it's not so much that they're colleagues or anything, it's more that I just appreciate any human/'mon dynamic where casual communication and attentiveness demonstrate real consideration for the partner. I love this sort of stuff.

Clefable we've seen a little less of by Ch3, I think, but she's also charming. In particular, I enjoy that she has a taste for certain attire, and no appreciation for budgetary realities when shopping. Kinda like having a child capable of combat sports hanging around with you. I'm curious about the Porygon that Emily previously had, and wonder if we'll see them show up.

And as for Emily herself, I figured she'd be a little bit of an oddball when Cass identified her picture as being adorable. Of course her lexical register and general concerns are those of a business heiress and entrepreneurial CEO, but she's sweet. And a little neurotic in her own right, mostly in that she really wants to connect personally with Cass. I like the little details that show this, like the way she just immediately cracks open the beers instead of calling it at the prosecco, or that she hypothesises that Cass' disheveled weirdo schtick is a bit, rather than just what Cass is like. (Emily, darling, she's just autistic. It's fine. Most everyone in your setting is, anyway.) I think one of my favourite moments from her was when she launched into a canned spiel about the venture, the pitch, and immediately bores/frustrates the woman whose obsessive special interest blog she just spent hours reading and knows all this already.

I deeply enjoy the verisimilitude of this fic. I'm no expert in tech startups or anything else, but I'm broadly knowledgeable enough to clock the stuff in the prose as being realistic. The bit about scalable solutions at an affordable price struck me as being a standard bit of worthless marketing copy that basically translates as "you can pay us to do things at scale". The type of shit you see on generic corporate websites with all the individuality of meticulously-mown suburban lawn grass. Ironically, put here in contrast to Emily's passionate weirdo Porygon fixation, that bland jargon becomes another example of characterising specificity – Emily is a person who tries to meet expectations. Cass is not.

In general, the prose is fuckin great, too. It's got texture. Plenty of little details that efficiently set the scene while also telling us about the characters (I spent a few minutes losing my mind last night after discovering – by way of Cass – that too-low fridge settings are a real problem for some people) while also being very good technically. Small note: few instances of present tense fossilisation in the final paragraphs of Ch2. Anyway. It's good writing, chief.

Naturally, I will be reading the rest of this~

 

[Chibi Pika]

Hi there! I've been wanting to check out your stuff for a while since I just generally enjoy your takes on writing and worldbuilding in the chat, and now seemed like the perfect opportunity! Let's dive in~

First of all, I really like the focus on what life in the Pokemon world is like for adults who aren't involved in training culture, it's something I'm always thinking about in my portrayal of the Pokemon world (despite writing a very standard trainerfic lol). I feel like it's so easy to fall into the trap of "there are Trainers™ and there are normal people" but I love seeing the mundane ways that Pokemon shape people's lives and interactions even and especially when they aren't on a trainer journey. Even aside from the obvious of "this is a fic about two gals making a bunch of Porygon" I'm really liking the charming specificity of the interactions with Magnezone, for instance.

Anyway! Cassandra comes off as very specific right off the bat, you do a good job of indirectly conveying the type of person she is from pretty much the get go, and the relatability of "I am not my job title" is a huge mood. Nice bit of flavor with the online comments having That One Guy who seems to think you are somehow capable of enacting some crazy hyperbolic result that can only be stopped by a noble internet keyboard warrior (although the funny thing is that she actually is about to wind up in the position to make some waves in the artificial Pokemon scene, lol).

The fact that Cassandra regularly gets big mad about how people invented Porygon in the 90s and no one cares is just such a great detail. I feel like a lot of world-changing science very quickly becomes very mundane according to everyday people, even when it really is a big deal! Also, the emphasis that even among artificial Pokemon, Porygon is unique. I feel like Gen 1 made a big deal about omg wow an artificial Pokemon!! and nowadays we just have so many artificial Pokemon, from the dubious side-cases of "Pokemon that arose naturally in response to human enviromental influence" to "genetic freaks (affectionate)" to "oh wait no people just went and made Golett like a thousand years ago, ok." But Porygon still stands alone in the being able to stay conscious and do stuff in cyberspace front, and--okay wait yeah canis is right, Porygon is just a Digimon.

At first I thought that Emily had sent the entire Porygon white paper, which is... quite a showing of trust! But nope, it's just an enticing excerpt--just enough to make it clear that this is the real deal, while also tempting her with the promise of more. Getting to stay home and not leave the house is a compelling pro... but nah, of course she's gotta jump on it. I like to think Magnezone approves of this. Side note, but I liked getting a very clear mental image of Emily from the description about her looking too adorable to be a CEO lol. Also, I think we have all seen that exact stock website template one billion times. Tbh I can't blame Emily for just going for the default Squarespace vibe on that, it's obviously not her main focus here.

I wasn't expecting the switch to Emily POV for chapter 2! I was gonna say she's more analytical than Cassandra, but that's not quite right... I guess she feels analytical about different things. It's fun to get an outside view of the character whose head we've just spent a chapter in, in a way that makes them feel like a bug being studied (affectionately). She comes off as very likable and reasonable while also being very clearly privileged in a realistic and grounded way. It's also convenient for the reader to not have to wonder about how the protagonists' shenanigans are being funded--it's covered, moving on! I enjoyed the two girls bonding over drinks and getting more loose with the banter and rambling in a way that felt very natural and gradual than a lot of media that tends to be like "whoops I am now drunk" as if simply being tipsy weren't a thing.

More fun details: Cassandra did the Year Of Training which is normal and unremarkable for pretty much everyone, and the vibe that even non- Trainers are expected to battle Pokemon every now and then, so it stands out that it's not Magnezone's thing. Love that. Also, getting big mad at Ecruteak culture is fun, even though I'm over here like "history and culture are important!" but like, characters having a canned rant that I disagree with is good actually, and it makes perfect sense for her to overreact after being asked the same questions a zillion times. Also canned rants are a really good way to make characters instantly memorable, I always say that the best way to write someone being a fan of something is to have them get big mad at some aspect of that thing that other people are oblivious to, although that's more relevant to the 'artificial Pokemon' side of things here. See also, Castform being a marvel of science and inferior to an open window.

Anyway, good fic, will be back soon enough~

 

[Nekodatta]

Catching up with the new chapter on Week 2!

Spoiler: Chapter 6

It was so compact, so pale. I focused on it to avoid the stone in my heart from knowing I hadn’t brought it into the world.

I feel so bad for Cassandra, this is her lifelong dream and yet she can barely enjoy the moment!

“I have Mimikyu,” said Antonio.

“Arcanine,” said Kumiko.

This is an amazing coincidence, but I'll have you know that in Timeslip I *also* have a guy with a Spanish sounding name part of a research team that has a Mimikyu and this part made me lol
Well.... fanmade Future Paradox Mimikyu, to be exact, but what are the chances...
Also not sure if you did it intentionally or not, but I like that Kumiko has a Pokémon that's supereffective against Magnezone.
Just that little extra thing to subconsciously weigh on Cassandra's mind...

“It’s pretty exciting,” I admit, shoving my hands in my pockets and feeling the miniaturized ball there.

A tense slip here

The saucer-shaped creature beeped,. I

Punctuation typo!

This was old-school. Modern Porygon tended to have more moves at this age. This Porygon was unaltered from how they made them in the 90s.

Ahah, I love this explanation of the different movesets in different gens.
It's the one Pokémon were "moveset changes" in different gens can literally be canon in universe, just make it different patches/updates.

That was a little curious - even among older Porygon, they tended to have a deeper magenta coloration. This sky blue and cotton candy pink color scheme was more reminiscent of a baby’s crib than the average Porygon. A variant I’d seen photos of before, but not a common one.

I'm trying to think back if the different coloration is a reference to an old sprite... Is it referencing the Stadium games model? That one does look much paler than its usual depiction.

Steel types like him were not considered easy Pokemon to keep in a city. I kept him anyway. What wouldn’t you do for a buddy?

That's a good point, but I also like Cassandra not caring about it because she loves her Magnezone so much.
However it does feel a bit strange to have the narration switch in first person suddenly with the "I kept him anyway"

I leaned my head on my hand, incredulous at how the people at Silph created a being with what appeared to be so many emergent characteristics. For a Pokemon meant to go into space, there’s no reason to need to taste, but it sure acts like it can taste.

I really liked this part, mostly because I like thinking about little things like these. It tells a lot about the *people* that created Porygon that they decided to program those little "useless" things that however make it that little bit more life-like. If Porygon couldn't enjoy tasting things, it would act a little less like a living creature and a little more like just a machine.

What value did I add to the team as someone who had last worked in a lab several years ago? I thought back to Emily’s little wink and grin; was it pity that she assigned me the role of Porygon minder?

I think her value is going to be that she's the only one that actually sees Porygon as a living thing and not just an opportunity for money. Emily's reaction was kind of strange: she did have a Porygon in the past yet barely wanted to even touch it, and even Antonio and Kumiko didn't look that eager to do it...

So, this chapter was a lot of fun with Cassandra's first interactions with Porygon. It's so cute! It's quite interesting because it's technically a newborn Pokémon having literally just been "born", but since it has preprogrammed knowledge it doesn't *quite* act like a newborn Pokémon would. It's interesting. I also really liked the detail that since this is a original 1.0 vanilla Porygon with its Gen I moveset, its move literally work differently from how they do in the present.
It's really cool because again, Porygon is maybe the only Pokémon where you can play around with things like that and give them an in universe explanation.
The chapter ends on an exciting note, with them ready to tackle custom typing, so I'm really curious to see how that will go... and also a bit worried, because Kumiko has been commenting and studying the code until now so she would be looking for the function that handles how Conversion works...
Also figuring out how to add the dual type will be a big hurdle they need to overcome!
I'm also kinda worried if messing with the code is going to create some accidents in other Porygons...