Pokémon NEO-A-LIFE

[Goolix]

Cassandra is a neurotic failed academic blogging about Porygon. Emily is a Rustboro mining heiress with a chip on her shoulder. When the two women start a company to mass-produce custom Porygon, they find out how easily ambition turns into recklessness - and what it costs to stay one step ahead of the system.

Major Content Warnings: None apply so far. Content warnings that apply for individual chapters will appear spoilered at the top of the chapter.

Author's Note: I came up with the concept of NEO-A-LIFE for the Weird and Wonderful contest. The concept has changed a lot since then! If you have read that one-shot, treat it like a non-canonical work. I will also include author’s notes at the end of chapters for clarifications and random unnecessary details. I have seven chapters so far and will be posting them weekly.

After writing the original one-shot, I became a little obsessed with the idea of what it would mean to run a start-up in the Pokemon world! What does it mean to compete against established players like Silph Co? What relationship do adults who don’t participate in training culture have with Pokemon? And Porygon, being one of my favorite Pokemon, is perfect for this. If Porygon is a product Silph Co made, why do they appear to have given up on it? What would it take for Porygon to go from being a Pokemon meant for niche scientific research to being a legitimate disruptor?

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. 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 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.”

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. 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.

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? 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.”

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.”

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?”

Spoiler: Author's Notes

The first three chapters were originally written in first person present tense. I stopped after a while because it felt so unnatural and I wasn't really getting anything from it. If you spot a tense inconsistency, let me know!

 

[Goolix]

Decided to read this on a whim after your comment on my mainline Pokemon retrospectives, and I really enjoyed it!

I love the little tidbits here, like how Cassandra has an online rival in the field of niche Pokemon debates, and the webpage info for NEO-A-LIFE. They really help feel the world feel lived-in!

I'm excited for more! Thank you for writing this!

Ahh, thank you!!! Yes, I had a lot of fun imagining the world of niche Pokemon debates I honestly feel I could write a whole bunch of just academic debates on Pokemon and the personalities behind them.

I had to review this next chapter a few times because the pacing felt off. Let's finally see Emily's side of the story!

Chapter 2: Interview
-Emily-​

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!

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.

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 intriguing - 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.

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.”

“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.

“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!”

“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.”

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?”

“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?

“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.”

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?”

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.”

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.”

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.

“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.”

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.”

“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.”

“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 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.

“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?”

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.”

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 begins.

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…

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.

“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?”

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 free. If things work out, we’re going to have to keep tightening our belts.”

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.

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 wants to wear it. I purchased it and checked my watch. It was late. My shoe shopping spree would have to wait for another day.

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 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.

Spoiler: Author's Notes

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.

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

Clefable!!! I love her. Her passions are vanity and violence. Also being Emily's buddy.

 

[Goolix]

Many thanks to everyone who commented and reviewed!! I will respond to you guys, but I want to get this new chapter out of the way first, so let's take a look at Emily and Cassandra after they've moved in to the Saffron office.

Chapter 3: The Shape of the Future
-Emily-​

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.

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.

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.

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.

“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?”

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.

“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.”

“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 Pokemon partners.”

“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's relatively tall, but Magnezone was broad and dense, and its floating in space somehow made it seem to occupy even more vertical space.

“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 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?”

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.

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 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.”

“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 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.

“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.”

“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.”

“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?’”

Cassandra stuck out her tongue.

“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 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.”

“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 the fundraising round.”

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.

“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.

“Thanks,” she said as she took the stout. “To be fair, it’s not just the battle. Silph was really gung-ho on this idea that Porygon was going to take us into space. It’s 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.”

“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.

“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.”

“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.”

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.

Spoiler: Author's Notes

"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.

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.

“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 😩

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

 

[Goolix]

Many thanks to everyone who has commented so far, and I owe you replies!! I've just been quite overwhelmed by things. Fingers crossed things lighten up soon!!

Chapter 4: Labwork
-Cassandra-​

I woke up in my new room surrounded by my old things. It’s been three weeks I’ve been living here and I’ve gotten pretty used to it. Just as cramped as the old place. Downright glamorous, really, to have the mini-fridge and the hot plate in a separate room. Everything is just in the wrong place - the books aren’t correctly organized yet, my clothes are all jumbled together in my plastic drawers, and I’m convinced that Machoke mover stole my book on machine learning applications in Pokemon biology.

Emily’s been non-stop the whole time. She sat with me one day and walked me through twenty potential lab assistants we could hire in detail. My head was spinning. I still can’t believe that any of this is real, that she trusts me, that I’m not an “accounts receivable representative” anymore but a co-founder of a startup. A startup with no investors and no product, but soon to have two employees.

There was Antonio, an incredible Saffron U student hailing from Paldea. I was honestly amazed that someone would travel so far to study at Saffron. I felt like I was making a pilgrimage taking the Magnet Train from Goldenrod to Saffron. He had an adorable accent, but he was kind of scary. “I don’t do unpaid internships,” he said when we interviewed him. “How much are you paying?” Still, he knew his stuff on Pokemon physiology and synthetic biology, and he was my number one selection from the pile of candidates.

Then there was Kumiko, another star student from Saffron U. Her specialty was process automation and she doubled as a wunderkind in all things computer. She was the age I was when I was in grad school but twice as accomplished as I was now. She was awkwardly proportioned but seemingly entirely bereft of neuroticism. “I’m happy to contribute to this company!” she said when we extended her an offer letter.

I was supposed to be the superior to two young, accomplished students as a washed up office worker who obsessively posted about Porygon on a blog. Emily trusted me to be the one who could guide these guys. The first day the both of them showed up with their dewy lineless skin, I felt as obsolete as Professor Oak’s Pokedex and that I should immediately take my place in the queue for the trash compactor.

The first day the four of us were together was awkward. Emily looked at me to lead everyone and I felt like a little kid at the foot of disapproving adults. “Okay,” I said, “so, I’ve been looking through the source code that Emily has. My experience is with working with Castform, I worked with Johann, he was kind of the guy who spearheaded the whole Castform project, and Castform was written in a much higher level language than Porygon is, so we’re going to need to crunch through the code before we can think of running it. So Kumiko, I need you to get started on that, and we also need to order, like, the materials for Porygon. Antonio, talk to me and I can tell you what I know from the Porygon white paper, and so, um, yeah.”

They didn’t respect me. I knew they didn’t respect me. We were sitting at this cheap plastic table and Emily was sort of nodding serenely at everything and Antonio was frowning and Kumiko was inscrutable. I stood and clapped my hands, hoping that the whole thing would come to an end there, but there were questions.

“Are we using source control?” asked Kumiko.

“I don’t know about that, should we?” I asked.

“It’s pretty standard to use source control. It lets you keep track of changes, let different people work on different things.”

“Then we should use it.”

“Got it,” she said. “Where are the repos set up?”

“Right now we have a zip file passed between me and Emily.”

“Oh,” said Emily, “I can set that up for us. Don’t you guys worry about that.”

Humiliating that Emily somehow knew about how to set up a repository and I, alleged technical lead, did not, but I took the win. “Have you guys read the white paper on Porygon yet?”

Kumiko said nothing. Antonio said, “I’ve read the abstract.”

I nodded, both exasperated and thrilled there’s an area where I can outdo these kids. “How much do you guys know about Porygon?”

“Porygon2 with Eviolite is surprisingly bulky,” chimed Kumiko.

“That’s… interesting. I mean, what do you know about decompositionality?”

Antonio butted in here: “Porygon’s conscience is wrapped in a data structure that can be moved from an organic substance to the digital world and back. The connectome is preserved in the data structure, allowing for continuity of consciousness.”

“Excellent! This is the thing that makes Porygon trickier than Castform or any of the other artificials. And I’m guessing it’s part of why it’s written in such an obtuse language,” I said. “What materials do we need to order?”

“Nothing especially different from Castform,” said Antonio. “Castform is pretty derivative of Porygon, materially speaking.”

“Bingo. Emily, we need you on this one, we need to find a way to get this stuff affordably.”

“Affordable is certainly the word,” said Emily. “But I want you guys to keep your eyes on the prize. Step one is synthesizing a Porygon. Any Porygon at all. From my understanding, we can’t even run the program as is.”

I worked with Antonio to put together a base list of materials we needed to order. I listed suppliers I remembered using in my lab days and ran it past Emily, who made minor alterations and approved. Kumiko was tasked with figuring out how to even begin running the Porygon program. A few hours of work later, she told me it’s a miracle that Porygon2 was ever made. Porygon’s source code was a nightmare of spaghetti code. “Comment everything,” I told her, “literally everything. If there’s a stop sign, I want you to write ‘this is a stop sign.’ All knowledge must be formalized. I’ve worked in places with ‘tribal knowledge’ and it’s a nightmare to get everyone coordinated."

Without materials or an understanding of the source code, there wasn’t much for Antonio to do, so I ordered him to read not just the white paper, but several other papers that were relevant to understanding Porygon. “You need to know this like the back of your hand,” I said. “Any ideas you have for making the synthesizing process cheaper, write them down.”

And so progressed our first week of real work. The market research Emily and I had done showed we didn’t have any competitors yet, but we didn’t have the luxury of loafing around. LeVant’s pockets were deep, but even a father’s indulgence can run into limits. We didn’t want to find out where those limits were.

The arrival of the materials was a huge coup, and Antonio and I took a few days to get everything set up. We ran a test to make sure everything worked, a typical 'sanity check' in Pokemon synthesis. The first step was to create the base, which looked like a gray blob. If you can do that, you could be confident the machine was working well. We got the blob generated and I felt a small weight lift off my shoulders. “Good job,” I said, trying to remember I was his superior and not his partner.

Kumiko also made some advances in documenting the codebase. She found the specific compiler and drivers we needed to run it and to connect to the tools we had. The challenge then lay in figuring out how to configure the parameters for Porygon to get what we needed. “I’m going to be perfectly clear,” said Kumiko, “I’m still not sure what command I’m supposed to run to even attempt to try to generate a Porygon. There’s five and yet none of them somehow seem to work.” I told her I’d take a look at it as well, but I felt horrified staring at the codebase. It wasn’t a language I was comfortable working with, and everything about it seemed beyond my knowledge. I forced myself through it anyway, adding my own private clarifying comments to her comments on a personal branch of the code. I needed to understand this if we were ever going to actually get this working.

There was no 9-to-5 in the context of a startup. Every waking hour of my day was dedicated to this project. Even when I ate, I was scrolling through some ancient forum posts trying to grok this ancient programming language. The only peace I had was taking Magnezone for a walk every day. He was about the only constant in this world for me.

If he was worried, he didn’t show it. He was as excited as ever every time we went for a walk. One day I passed by Saffron University for old times’ sake, and he paused by the entrance.

“You remember being here, right?” I said. “It was such a challenge because you were way too big for the dorms. Always had to take you out into the quad for some fresh air.”

Magnezone twirled his screws in affirmation. He turned to me and emitted a high-pitched whining noise.

“Do you want to go in?” He nodded. “Alright.” We stepped onto the grounds of Saffron University, the most exciting place I had ever been to in my younger days. It was dusk, but you could still see students lingering and walking here and there. The campus was marvelously compact, with classrooms and labs concentrated in high-rise buildings like everything else in Saffron. Only a few special labs had their own dedicated structures. I didn’t enter any of the buildings, just walked around, remembering the window that sold breathtakingly melty chocolate chip cookies and the green table I’d colonized for outdoor studying. It was a time when it felt like the arc of my life was finally bending upwards.

Magnezone stayed away from the buildings himself - his electromagnetism had unusual effects on machinery that were not welcome by researchers. We’d trained together to tone it down so he could be indoors, but he felt constrained doing so. He was at his happiest hovering freely through three-dimensional space. He even took off without me to fly to the top of the building. “I’m not racing you to the top of the building,” I warned, but I knew he wasn’t listening. I sat down on the old green table and pondered what I was doing with my life.

I quit my job. A very stable job with a predictable paycheck. Sure, it wasn’t my dream, but it fed the dream, working on the “Porygon Revival” blog. Now I had an uncertain future dedicated full-time to Porygon. This should have been everything I ever wanted and yet I’d never felt more like I was standing on the edge of a precipice with one foot in the air.

The impenetrable legacy codebase hung over my thoughts. If Silph ran it once, we could run it again. It was only logical. But somehow the base task of even running it seemed to elude us, and I found myself doubting that we could make a Porygon at all, let alone customize it as Emily planned. Was anyone going to buy this? Had I trashed my life because of my childish need to see the Porygon source code?

I rubbed my forehead. No, bad thoughts, time to stop. I got up and paced around the empty space, waiting for Magnezone to come back. We were going to figure it out. Kumiko’s smart. I’m stubborn. And - wait, I’m smart too, what am I saying? Why did Antonio and Kumiko make me feel like an absolute idiot?

The sky was turning indigo. I shouted, “hey, it’s getting late, can we head back?” Magnezone didn't seem to hear me. I waved my arms and that seemed to get his attention. “Glad you enjoyed your flight. Let’s head back. The stupid code won’t understand itself.”

My phone buzzed. I pulled it out to see I had a text from Kumiko: “come back i think i got it figured out!!!!” My heart accelerated. “OMW BACK,” I replied, and I told Magnezone we needed to high-tail it back to the lab.

I arrived with my hair completely disheveled and out of breath, Magnezone safely withdrawn in his ball. “What’s the news?” I said, trying to look like I hadn’t literally jogged to get here.

“Kumiko says she’s pretty sure she knows what to do, but she needs you and Antonio to make sure it’s safe to run,” said Emily. She was also trying to look calm, but her voice carried an earnest hopefulness in it.

Kumiko explained the command we needed to run and confirmed that there was interoperability between our machines and the program. I told Antonio to prep the materials for Porygon synthesis. When he returned, I took a deep breath. This was the moment of truth.

“Run it.”

She pressed the enter key and the command began to run. The synthesis machine hummed, and I saw its screen display a primitive message: “CURPROJ: PRGN. 0%.” The glass tube in the middle filled with liquid, and the machine’s centrifuge began to rotate. The safety shield lowered, and we were left waiting in anticipation as the materials flowed into the glass container. It would take an hour for it to finish, yet none of us could take our eyes off it.

At the halfway point, the project suddenly aborted. The machine ground to a slow halt, and the safety shield lifted to reveal that the materials had failed to cohere into the blob required for sculpting. The screen displayed a cryptic message: “ERR 1047: EXPECTED PN LOAD.”

Spoiler: Author's Notes

"EXPECTED PN LOAD" is loosely inspired by "PC LOAD LETTER", a cryptic error message you'd get from certain printers in the 90s. This impenetrable message was made legendary in the movie "Officespace."

Yeah, the lab work happens a lot quicker than it probably would in a real lab and with a lot fewer people, but I like to think the Pokemon world has progressed to the point that very small teams can do what previously would have been highly intense cutting edge science. :)

 

[Goolix]

Chapter 5: EXPECTED PN LOAD
-Emily-​

“What the hell is PN LOAD?”

Cassandra ran her hands through her hair staring at the display. Kumiko blinked and pawed at her eyes as if to make sure she was seeing what we all were. Antonio and I exchanged wary looks at our tech leads being dumbfounded.

We ran further tests, but got no closer to understanding what PN LOAD was or how it was expected. Cassandra and Antonio had reviewed the reagents, running another basic check to make sure that they weren’t the source of the problem, and were able to get a gray blob to form. That was good news, in a way, because it would have been more wasted time to get new reagents. It was bad news because it meant the problem lay in the labyrinthine scripts Silph had left for us.

This possibility seemed to frighten Cassandra. She told me she had no idea what to do if the error was in the code. I told her that’s why we hired Kumiko. This did not seem to make her any happier.

In fact, about any time I mentioned Kumiko solving something, she curled her lip a little. I thought she was regretting hiring her for some failure of skill. But the dark expression on her face as she watched Kumiko working on the codebase told me it was the opposite issue. Kumiko threatened her.

It was yet another issue to add to my endless list of issues, and not something I could resolve. I went to what passed for our kitchen - a minifridge, a microwave, and a coffee maker - to pour myself a cup of coffee. It was not a good sign that the cofounder of the company was envious of one of our employees. I took my sage green mug out with a Sprigatito on it and decided more was more when pouring. This was a maximum black coffee situation.

In any case, there was no point hanging around them while they got things worked out. Antonio was checking the machines, making sure that everything was ship-shape. I headed to my office to finish up the updates I had made to the website. I felt like we were moving forward when our ‘About’ page went from having my lone headshot to including three more. I’d squeezed out some words for the company’s blog, which I figured we could justify now that we were actually working. Once that was ready, I opened the master document with the steps we needed to take.

It was frustrating to stare at the bolded, unfinished first step: synthesize a Porygon. I couldn’t even really start asking for funding until we got to the step after that, to customize a Porygon. I’d compiled a list of leads to investigate, potential clients to scope out, but without a working model, it was all in vain. Was I supposed to cold-call a Pokemon Rescue operation with the pitch that we had half a Porygon and if they paid us, maybe in a few months we’d have a regular one? All the same, we needed to be prepared for when we crossed that line to move fast. I wrote down every industry I think could conceivably benefit from custom Porygon and looked up names from the Saffron-Celadon metro area. I paused and then added Goldenrod; with the Magnet Train, we were only a few hours away, and it would do us good to expand our reach.

The fun part of imagining pitching to gyms was over. It was time to face the costs. I flipped to the spreadsheet application. We had a rough estimate for how much it would cost to make Porygon from Cassandra’s estimates and known costs for other artificial Pokemon, and we sliced them down a little by using the cheapest reagents we could, but it was still hefty. We’d need a hell of a markup to make it worth our while to do this, at which point any competitive advantage we had over bred Pokemon would be moot. I added new points to the master doc: “investigate efficiencies of scale; make testing Porygon r&d cheaper?”

I sighed. I peeked out from the doorway to look at the main floor. Cassandra was at her station, also looking through the code. She didn’t seem at all bewildered to me, but I suspected she was more lost than she seemed. She hadn’t even bothered with a ponytail today and her hair seemed barely detangled. I decided to try to do some team management and check up on her.

“How’s work going?” I asked, trying to keep it casual and non-judgmental. She startled and turned to me.

“Please don’t come at me from behind,” she said, trying to collect herself. “And I’m kind of in the zone, so I could do without the interruptions.”

The defensiveness was evident. She was not doing great, and she wasn’t going to tell me unless I drew it out of her. I smiled. “Got it, you’re figuring it out, love to hear it!”

“I mean…” She paused, as I hoped she might. “It’s…” She shot a glance at Kumiko, who was listening to some kind of upbeat dance music on her headphones as her fingers traveled across the keyboard. “We’ve made some progress. Kumiko has tested a ton of potential variations and even found a new error.”

“A new error,” I repeated, unsure how this was good news.

“Error 1002: SET N NOT IN RANGE. She’s pretty sure that means that some of the parameters we passed in are not acceptable by the program. She’s working on a theory that we’re not passing in some flag we need at the correct value. Figuring out what it is has proven to be a lot harder than we thought. We can’t just brute force our way through every possible value without wasting a lot of money synthesizing, so we’re dividing the reasonable value space into chunks and checking those.”

“Sounds like you’ve got a plan,” I said. “Good job.”

She didn’t seem reassured by this and turned back to her work. I wanted to sigh. How the hell do you pump the self-esteem of a renegade academic? When I returned to my desk I found I’d been nibbling on the skin of my knuckles again, and wiped the spit off. One of my bad old habits that dad always told me made me look nervous.

What would he do in a situation like this? I’d only ever known him as a successful corporate head. It’s not that I didn’t see the insecurities and worries he faced as president; those were constant. What I didn’t have access to was him in the beginning, when he was figuring everything out. I wanted to call him and ask how he’d handle this. I wouldn’t. It would undercut what I was doing to have to beg him for advice all the time.

The rest of the day passed with no better news on Porygon. By the time it was 7, Kumiko and Antonio were looking pretty ragged and I told them to head on out. Cassandra was looking a little rough, too, but she refused when I told her to head to bed.

“I’m going to keep poking at this. There’s got to be a solution we haven’t thought of yet.”

You mean Kumiko hasn’t thought of yet? I didn’t want to provoke her, not when she was clearly feeling insecure; she just made it too easy.

“Knock yourself out,” I said, “it’ll still be there in the morning.” I sighed. “Well, I want to polish up the pitch deck before heading home. I can order us some takeout.”

She stopped typing for a second. “Actually, that might not be so bad.”

I ordered us noodles and chicken, and thirty minutes later we sat cross legged in the “kitchen,” forking lo mein from a styrofoam container into our mouths.

“This is good stuff,” I said. “But I’m gonna be a little crazy and say food is better in Celadon.”

“Yeah,” she said, “if you can afford it. I survived working in Celadon on ramen, microwavable broccoli, and frozen shrimp.”

“That sounds luxurious. A splash of sriracha and you could open up a new fusion place in Celadon.”

She forced a smile, but her eyes were focused on the food. “You’re from Hoenn, aren’t you? What’s it like?”

I shrugged. “Honestly, one place is like another. Rustboro’s a nice place to grow up in. It’s not Mauville, but I think one day we’ll overtake them.”

We passed our dinner in pointless small talk, trading back and forth observations on Hoenn and Johto and what we both thought was good about Kanto (sense of vitality) and bad (uninspiring radio shows). She seemed curious about my upbringing as a daughter of the LeVant corporation, but was tight-lipped about her own Ecruteak background (she left it at a tantalizing “family stuff”).

She threw away her styrofoam container and headed back to her desk, not at all deterred by the forced break. I sighed for real this time and disposed of my own food in the short black garbage can. Pitch decks didn’t write themselves. When I returned to my own office-bedroom at 9, she was still there, spine curved, face illuminated by the blue glow of her monitor. I don’t think she heard me when I told her good night.

Cassandra’s foray was in vain. We regrouped next morning with nothing advancing but Cass’s undereye circles. Three days were spent on this routine. Three days of having Antonio show up doing nothing but occasionally prepping the reagents for a test run. I could feel the money burning like a sore on my lip.

And then on the fourth morning, Kumiko shows up with a frenzied look in her eyes.

“Guys. Guys. EXPECTED PN LOAD. See, I thought PN was short for Porygon, and we weren’t properly initializing Porygon, but we’d gotten it all wrong. PN is short for Parameters (Normalized). Stupid naming convention but what do we expect from the dinosaurs at Silph? We weren’t passing in the parameters with the correct normalization. That’s why we also ran into SET N NOT IN RANGE - that’s when our parameters weren’t in a remotely acceptable range. I know what we need to do.”

I’d never seen her so animated. I felt she must have had an extra strong brew of the morning coffee. I wanted to find hope in her brown eyes and I wanted to give this team something to hold on to. “What do you say, Cassandra? Let’s give it a shot.”

My cofounder’s arms were crossed high on her chest. “I suppose we can try Kumiko’s idea,” she said dryly. Kumiko immediately slinked into her chair and began pulling up some documents.

“Okay, can you guys do that test prep thing you do?”

Cassandra and Antonio slipped into lab attire and prepared the synthesis machine. I felt like a useless bystander watching them. Kumiko watched attentively, her fingers curled over the enter button.

“Ready,” said Antonio curtly.

Kumiko nodded and ran the command. The machine began its work again, the great centrifuge rotating. The substrate materials were injected into the glass tube, and we watched with anticipation. Cassandra and Antonio didn’t seem so hopeful, as Cassandra watched with bitten lip and Antonio occasionally pulled out his phone to check some news. We got to the fateful halfway mark and I felt my heart in my throat waiting to see if that dreaded error came. The number climbed: 55%, 56, 57, 58, until we broke the 60 mark.

The safety shield prevented us from being able to see clearly, but you could get a picture of what was going on. The substrate had taken on a colored pink and blue hue, differentiating into a bilaterally symmetrical body. My throat ran dry.

“I’m going to get water,” I said, and I ducked to the minifridge to pour myself some water. I didn’t want to look when it failed. When I’d finished my drink, I fiddled with the coffee maker, pouring the remaining coffee and dregs into my Sprigatito mug. The hum of the machine called me, though, and I knew I had to watch.

I brought my horrid concoction with me to see the rest of the development. We were in the 90s. The machine was running hot. I didn’t even look at the glass tube, focusing my eyes on the digit counter. 90. 92. 93. 95.

I made eye contact with Cassandra.

97.
98.
99.
100%.

The centrifuge began to slow down. The display screen read “COMPLETE.” I searched Cassandra’s face to see if there was something wrong I should know about, but her expression was genuinely clear and open.

“It worked,” she said.

When the centrifuge came to a stop, the safety shield retracted. We saw it clear as day in the tube: our first synthesized Porygon.

“Arceus alive,” whispered Antonio. “We did it.”

“We made a Porygon,” said Cassandra.

And the breakthrough was Kumiko’s.