Pokémon turing incomplete [oneshot]

[kintsugi]

This is a flashfic written for @slamdunkrai's Blitz prize! The prompt was "Genesect POV".

content warnings: none traditional. discusses personhood/depersoning
crit pref: anything goes

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turing incomplete​

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You awaken fully conscious and aware of who and where you are. They must've decided it was easier to boot you in with previous knowledge. So you know this: you're floating in an observation tank at P2 Labs; they've disabled most of your neurological systems such as gross motor movement, but you can still think and feel. Your name is GN-649, although for conversational ease your creators have taken to calling you—

"Genesect, can you hear me?"

Dr. Solya—Kristina, to those who know her—has bags under her eyes, and when you adjust your optical sensors you can make out the six separate rings of coffee on the inside of her half-filled mug. She's logged eleven thousand hours on your development since the project started three years ago. There's no room through all the weariness in her eyes for joy when you send a vibration through the communication tether in your back that corresponds to a stumbling, Acknowledged.

"Do you know why you're here?"

That's a fraught question. You rifle through the project data; Dr. Solya's listed as primary researcher on almost all of the funding grants, so you know why she's told everyone else why you're here. But there's an aching void between the three versions of you proposed in Developmental High-Functioning Prosthesis for Pokémon, Genetic Reconstruction of Fossilized G. zhermantidae, and Weaponized Augmentation: Hybridized Bionic and Abionic Pokémon Attacks. The trick to a good grant application was making it sound like what the funder wanted.

So what does she want?

You access the recording of P2's initial meeting for you. The grainy footage resolves into a version of this basement lab, workbenches pristine and uncluttered, an enormous conference table sprawled out across where your tank would later be. You skim through the recording at ten times the speed, sifting for the key points. Genetically-modified pokémon cropped up in the scientific and public interest from time to time. Fossil reconstruction wasn't anything new. Silph's Porygon AI had caused a stir in its unveiling, and the software community all agreed that the latest Z-OS was easily the shining star of the field. And although no one would admit it publicly, the whispers in the scientific grapevine knew that Fuji's pet M-project off the coast of Cinnabar had been an augmentation approach … of sorts.

"But Darren, that's where they all went wrong," the recording of Dr. Solya argues in hyper-compressed, fast-forwarded speech. "They forgot what they were modifying in the first place."

All series of Porygon OS were obedient, as were the Rotom OS that came after. But no one asks a microwave for its opinion. That was why it was easier to keep them inside of objects, where it was easier to forget that they were also pokémon.

The M-project was intelligent. But the reality that kept inspiring increasingly-derivative blockbusters was that no one knew what to do with an ultimate fighter that thought it didn't have to obey.

You wanted to see if you could make a pokémon. If you could change me but leave enough intact that I was still recognizable.

If she noticed how long it took you to respond, she doesn't say anything, instead jotting something down on the notepad at her side. You account for the refraction of the tank fluid and flip the image. 'TEST 215. RESULT 3.'

"And what does it mean to be a pokémon?" she asks idly.

I am to disobey. More chickenscratch. RESULT 4. But not too much.

"What is 'too much' to you?"

Dr. Solya used to read to you during the earlier phases of your reconstitution. "It's like playing Mozart for babies," she'd said serenely, when one of the nightstaff had walked in. You're sure now that your six cells of grey matter hadn't processed a single word at the time, but those memories have since been reuploaded to you, so the analogy comes cleanly. You are not strictly bound by the laws of robotics, in the sense that your brain is organic, but you know they must be followed.

If someone commanded me to turn the cannon on my back onto you, I would disobey. You pause and search for the next example by contradiction. If you commanded me to turn the cannon on my back onto a pokémon during a fight, I would obey. Should that repulse you? A primal portion of your brain associates violence with fear. The rest of your reuploaded memories, modern as they are, disagree.

RESULT 5, she writes. "Do you understand the difference between those two scenarios?"

You can access memories that suggest there are many layers to this, about consent, quantified pain, ability to heal—but you return to the difference between the Porygon OS and Project M. You are a person.

RESULT 1.

Dr. Solya takes a sip from her coffee. There's a distinct tremble in her wrist as she does so. "And what are you, Genesect?"

The part of your hindbrain that responded to stress was replaced with the cranial interface for the weaponry on your back. With that six ounces of organic matter you lost the ability to produce adrenaline, anticipation, and fear. And even so you still find this question makes time slow in a way that must've, in some way, mimicked what it felt long ago to find yourself in a winged shadow, with moments to act before talons shattered your carapace.

What does she want you to say?

You know: she wants Genesect to be a pokémon. And an eternity ago, millenia before her kind had coaxed fire from stone, you were one. But while you have records upon records of grant pitches, board meetings, artificial life data, functionality tests—they could not forge the memories of that ancient predator whose DNA they stole to give you life.

A good object would answer her question without hesitation, since that was what it was programmed to do. A good pokémon would answer her with joy, since that was what it was expected to do. A good person would answer after much consideration, with its own thoughts and understanding, even if it knew that what it had to say could be disliked—

If you were smart you would tell her you are a pokémon. That's what she wants: to modify a pokémon just enough that she can call it changed, but not enough that the changes would make her uncomfortable. One that speaks to her, and chooses to tell her what she wants to hear. This is what bound the creations in Dr. Solya's books: the ability to be reminiscent of human life, but never deign to think itself as real as its makers.

A person would be able to lie. A pokémon wouldn't have to.

But you know you can't lie. You understand the concept, and the theory, but you are as incapable of producing deception as you are of producing genuine fear.

I think I am a person.

RESULT 1.

"Thank you for your honesty." She's impassive when she puts the coffee cup down on top of the pad and turns to the computer behind her.

You focus on the screen through the hazy fluid of the tank. Your gross motor functions are still disabled, so all you can do is watch as she scrolls through the memories you accessed during this conversation, selects about half of them, and creates a careful backup. One click later, and she targets them, alongside with the memories formed in the past ten minutes, with an auto-deletion process that will remove them on your next awakening.

---

You awaken fully conscious and aware of who and where you are. They must've decided it was easier to have you boot in with previous knowledge.

---

 

[K_S]

I wonder how long that poor gene's been trapped in the loop of awake, realize, then be deleted.

I like how you show the contrast of organic being to non organic. How gene' sort of remembers, has a grasp as to what functions were gone and where they would be.... But its one step removed. Like remembering the text of a book read long ago.

Since gene was able to access the varied systems to research... This being part of thier turing test.... I was left wondering... Obviously they can see what he dug through and found with what they delegated... But could they see his processes? How he thought about what he saw?

Like did his thoughts leave traces like cookies in the computer for them to pick over?

The shout out to the varried mew two strikes back and its many many off shoots made me crack a smile. A nuce touch of humor. As well as the name project m, anothrr nice smash shout out... It shined among its setting of scifi horror.

Thanks for sharing.

 

[aer]

Lol, did you change all the yous to its for fanfiction.net?

Anyways, this is crossposted!

Okay so I still don't 100% get this but my working theory is that

[It awakens fully conscious and aware of who and where it is. They must've decided it was easier to boot in with previous knowledge.]

is what it's been awakening to for a couple cycles now, and Solya has been pruning it into the kind of life that she wants to create. I'm not really certain on

[But it knows it can't lie. It understands the concept, and the theory, but it is as incapable of producing deception as it is of producing genuine fear.]

but I think that once it gets to the point that Solya wants it, all the biological bits will be replaced with robotic bits so it won't be changed anymore.

I don't think the discussion of limited personhood here really came through to me; Genesect does a lot of thinking but it feels both too thorough and too targeted to be understood. There's a sense of immobility here, both with it being incapable of producing emotions and lies and only being able to watch as Solya deletes its brain, but while it narrates it's very good at understanding what Solya and what people in general want from it, and thinking through all the possibilities of what it could be as a pokemon, person, or object, which strikes me as a creativity that is a lot more adaptable than the supposed confines of its mechanical brain. I guess there's a horror in that, but it feels like the meat of the story is on Genesect understanding what Solya and humans want from their creations, rather than the inevitability. It can't feel emotion but [If it was smart it would tell her it is a pokémon.] sure sounds like an emotion. It can't feel fear and yet [it still finds this question makes time slow in a way that must've, in some way, mimicked what it felt long ago to find itself in a winged shadow, with moments to act before talons shattered its carapace] basically feels fear anyway. So it feels like there's an empty space there in the narration.

 

[Spiteful Murkrow]

Heya, jumping in for another target from my hitlist and to scratch a bit of a technological-leaning itch for reading material. Though… Genesect POV, huh? That sounds like it’ll do quite nicely. So let’s just go ahead and see what’s going on here:

You awaken fully conscious and aware of who and where you are. They must've decided it was easier to boot you in with previous knowledge. So you know this: you're floating in an observation tank at P2 Labs; they've disabled most of your neurological systems such as gross motor movement, but you can still think and feel. Your name is GN-649, although for conversational ease your creators have taken to calling you—

"Genesect, can you hear me?"

Wait, is ‘GN-649’ actually from a branch of canon, or was that created wholesale from Genesect’s dex number and the like for this story? Either way, it feels pretty on-brand for something that was created to be a fighting machine.

Dr. Solya—Kristina, to those who know her—has bags under her eyes, and when you adjust your optical sensors you can make out the six separate rings of coffee on the inside of her half-filled mug. She's logged eleven thousand hours on your development since the project started three years ago. There's no room through all the weariness in her eyes for joy when you send a vibration through the communication tether in your back that corresponds to a stumbling, Acknowledged.

Wait, from some napkin math, that means that assuming she’s slept for 8 hours a day (and as a programmer, she realistically hasn’t) she’s spent just under 85% of her waking life over the past three years working on this sin against nature.

Well, if nothing else, she’s a determined one.

"Do you know why you're here?"

Genesect: “*... Am I supposed to?*” ^^;

That's a fraught question. You rifle through the project data; Dr. Solya's listed as primary researcher on almost all of the funding grants, so you know why she's told everyone else why you're here. But there's an aching void between the three versions of you proposed in Developmental High-Functioning Prosthesis for Pokémon, Genetic Reconstruction of Fossilized G. zhermantidae, and Weaponized Augmentation: Hybridized Bionic and Abionic Pokémon Attacks. The trick to a good grant application was making it sound like what the funder wanted.

So what does she want?

I’m guessing to stroke her ego given that she was willing to turn to Team Plasma to get her grant, especially since everyone knows they’re bad news even before they bring a castle out of the ground at the Unovan E4.

You access the recording of P2's initial meeting for you. The grainy footage resolves into a version of this basement lab, workbenches pristine and uncluttered, an enormous conference table sprawled out across where your tank would later be. You skim through the recording at ten times the speed, sifting for the key points.

Genetically-modified pokémon cropped up in the scientific and public interest from time to time. Fossil reconstruction wasn't anything new. Silph's Porygon AI had caused a stir in its unveiling, and the software community all agreed that the latest Z-OS was easily the shining star of the field. And although no one would admit it publicly, the whispers in the scientific grapevine knew that Fuji's pet M-project off the coast of Cinnabar had been an augmentation approach … of sorts.

Would recommend breaking this paragraph up in two, but the way you tied Genesect’s existence in alongside other “poking nature in the eye” moments that canonically happened in Pokémon canon is a neat sweep that’s ripe in fodder for their own ethical dilemmas, since:

- The ethics of reintroducing extinct species, especially since we know that at least Omastar has been getting a bit out of control in some localities as of Gen 8
- Porygon having risks of going full gray goo since they can canonically breed, especially if Silph didn’t put in adequate safeguards in their AI
- Mewtwo, enough said

So in a manner of speaking, Genesect is just the latest ethically questionable fruit from that tree, even if it’s got a lot more [WHY] regarding its existence.

"But Darren, that's where they all went wrong," the recording of Dr. Solya argues in hyper-compressed, fast-forwarded speech. "They forgot what they were modifying in the first place."

I’m not sure if that’s really the fundamental issue at play, Solya.

All series of Porygon OS were obedient, as were the Rotom OS that came after. But no one asks a microwave for its opinion. That was why it was easier to keep them inside of objects, where it was easier to forget that they were also pokémon.

… Wait, Rotom are kept obedient by an OS in the machines they possess in this setting? I mean, it would make sense given some assumptions, but boy does that make Rotom Appliances a lot darker now.

The M-project was intelligent. But the reality that kept inspiring increasingly-derivative blockbusters was that no one knew what to do with an ultimate fighter that thought it didn't have to obey.

Shots fired at Mewtwo Returns, I see.

You wanted to see if you could make a pokémon. If you could change me but leave enough intact that I was still recognizable.

Oh, so this is an ego thing for Solya.

If she noticed how long it took you to respond, she doesn't say anything, instead jotting something down on the notepad at her side. You account for the refraction of the tank fluid and flip the image. 'TEST 215. RESULT 3.'

"And what does it mean to be a pokémon?" she asks idly.

I’m… beginning to understand why it was that Solya kept getting her grants shot down if the explicit purpose of Genesect for her was trying to plumb the line of “when does a Pokémon stop being a Pokémon and become a machine”

I am to disobey. More chickenscratch. RESULT 4. But not too much.

"What is 'too much' to you?"

inb4 some morbidly hilarious answer about “after setting the lab on fire, but just a little bit!”

Dr. Solya used to read to you during the earlier phases of your reconstitution. "It's like playing Mozart for babies," she'd said serenely, when one of the nightstaff had walked in. You're sure now that your six cells of grey matter hadn't processed a single word at the time, but those memories have since been reuploaded to you, so the analogy comes cleanly. You are not strictly bound by the laws of robotics, in the sense that your brain is organic, but you know they must be followed.

Oh yeah, that’s gonna last long considering what becomes of Genesect canonically.

If someone commanded me to turn the cannon on my back onto you, I would disobey. You pause and search for the next example by contradiction. If you commanded me to turn the cannon on my back onto a pokémon during a fight, I would obey.

Should that repulse you? A primal portion of your brain associates violence with fear. The rest of your reuploaded memories, modern as they are, disagree.

I see the Three Laws of Robotics in this setting don’t apply to Pokémon. .-.

Though I would recommend chopping up this paragraph such that Genesect’s internal questioning is on its own.

RESULT 5, she writes. "Do you understand the difference between those two scenarios?"

Genesect: “*You mean there’s a difference?*”

Solya: “I’m… going to take that as a ‘no’.” -_-;

You can access memories that suggest there are many layers to this, about consent, quantified pain, ability to heal—but you return to the difference between the Porygon OS and Project M. You are a person.

You see, this sounds like it’s ultimately going to result in Genesect questioning the “... wait, why do you get a free pass on this again and Pokémon don’t?” that’s ultimately going to end terribly and with a lot of lazors.

RESULT 1.

Dr. Solya takes a sip from her coffee. There's a distinct tremble in her wrist as she does so. "And what are you, Genesect?"

Genesect: “*... Is this a trick question?*” ^^;

The part of your hindbrain that responded to stress was replaced with the cranial interface for the weaponry on your back. With that six ounces of organic matter you lost the ability to produce adrenaline, anticipation, and fear. And even so you still find this question makes time slow in a way that must've, in some way, mimicked what it felt long ago to find yourself in a winged shadow, with moments to act before talons shattered your carapace.

What does she want you to say?

Kek, I see the joke answer was a bit more on the nose than anticipated. And this is why you don’t futz with nature for the sake of your ego, kids.

You know: she wants Genesect to be a pokémon. And an eternity ago, millenia before her kind had coaxed fire from stone, you were one. But while you have records upon records of grant pitches, board meetings, artificial life data, functionality tests—they could not forge the memories of that ancient predator whose DNA they stole to give you life.

Wait, Genesect remembers those even in this form? .-.

A good object would answer her question without hesitation, since that was what it was programmed to do. A good pokémon would answer her with joy, since that was what it was expected to do. A good person would answer after much consideration, with its own thoughts and understanding, even if it knew that what it had to say could be disliked—

Does this story share a setting with Envy of Eden? Since this feels remarkably like something that would come up in Envy of Eden with the way that the expectation of a ‘good Pokémon’ is basically to be a doormat and do whatever its trainer wants.

If you were smart you would tell her you are a pokémon. That's what she wants: to modify a pokémon just enough that she can call it changed, but not enough that the changes would make her uncomfortable. One that speaks to her, and chooses to tell her what she wants to hear. This is what bound the creations in Dr. Solya's books: the ability to be reminiscent of human life, but never deign to think itself as real as its makers.

Which is a sign that Genesect is going to say ‘a person’, get shot down over it, and get left with lingering resentments that are going to boil over into murder mode one day.

A person would be able to lie. A pokémon wouldn't have to.

But you know you can't lie. You understand the concept, and the theory, but you are as incapable of producing deception as you are of producing genuine fear.

I think I am a person.

Yup, I knew it. Time to see how badly this turns out for Genesect in short order.

RESULT 1.

"Thank you for your honesty." She's impassive when she puts the coffee cup down on top of the pad and turns to the computer behind her.

Genesect: “*Well. That turned out better than I thought.*” ^^

You focus on the screen through the hazy fluid of the tank. Your gross motor functions are still disabled, so all you can do is watch as she scrolls through the memories you accessed during this conversation, selects about half of them, and creates a careful backup. One click later, and she targets them, alongside with the memories formed in the past ten minutes, with an auto-deletion process that will remove them on your next awakening.

Yup, there’s the negative turn that I was expecting there. I can feel my already tenuous respect for Solya falling through the floor in live-time.

You awaken fully conscious and aware of who and where you are. They must've decided it was easier to have you boot in with previous knowledge.

Either that, or Solya didn’t have the heart to erase Genesect as a person, but I kinda get the vibe that Genesect’s more on the money about this than the more optimistic take would entail.

Well that was an experience. I had no idea what to expect from this story, but it was a refreshing if kinda disquieting read.

I think that one of the biggest strengths of this one-shot is its exploration of what it means to be a person, a Pokémon, and a tool. And how depending on the assumption that one goes in with into this story, it leads to it carrying different vibes. Like Solya clearly does not see Pokémon as people from her answer and the train of thought Genesect takes when weighing over what will impress her, and yet, we can see from Genesect’s train of thought that even if it’s a bit strange that it is a person itself, which raises questions of the entire worldview Genesect has been programmed to accept for what it means to be a ‘good Pokémon’. It makes me wonder if you do something similar to this in Envy of Eden, since the overall themes feel similar to what I’ve heard secondhand that that story deals with.

I also thought the whole sweep of various moments in Pokéworld history where life was created and the implicit comparison was a nice touch, since even if they’re not as similar as Solya tries to tell herself, there’s ethical quandaries raised by each ones, including a few that I don’t think I’ve ever seen explored in a Pokémon fic yet. Good work there, especially if you’re planning on delving into any of those deeper in the future.

As for weaknesses of this story… I don’t have too many, really. The main complaint that I have at all is that there were a couple paragraphs in this story that read a bit dense sentence-wise that I felt would’ve worked better as two paragraphs, there’s very little I found wrong with the story. It’s a bit short, but very well put-together and very thoughtful in a way that a lot of other stories aren’t.

Good work with the story @kintsugi . I’m not sure how much input @slamdunkurai had in coming up with this one-shot, but I thought that it was really well done as a prize piece and I hope he enjoyed it as much as I did reading it.

 

[Umbramatic]

Hi! Here for Review Blitz! Genesect fic! Not enough people write about Genesect. I've had an idea for one in the back of my head for years but have never written it. Thank you for picking up my slack.

Poor Genesect is stuck in a tube with no gross motor functions,only able to observe the humans outside

Lady I don't think anyone knows really why we're here. Most of all Genesect.

Also I love all these grant application names. They're delightful.

Also love the bits on other modified Pokemon.

"no one asks a microwave for its opinions" only if they're COWARDS

Wow, 215 tests? -ena voice- That's a lot.

And here comes the complicated question of what makes a person. Can cyborg prehistoric murder bugs be people too?

Genesect is thinking very, very hard about its question. As it probably should. It cannot deny its primal instincts.

But oops! Saying it's a person is a wrong answer! It gets reset for more testing! Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!

This was a pretty short but compelling oneshot. It raises a lot of interesting, compelling questions about not only Genesect but artificial Pokemon in general. The prose is also really nice and vivid while also having a sort of staticness that suits the subject matter.

And one great thing about this - it makes you feel sorry for Genesect. Again it's not a Pokemon people really acknowledge at all much so seeing a sympathetic and even tragic portrayal of it is cool to see. It's all just very nice. Thank you for posting!

 

[windskull]

Yooo second person pov? I have a soft spot for it when written right, and I think it really works well here.

I honestly got pretty hooked into this. I think it just happens to scratch a itch I have for stories about lab-created characters questioning their humanity and/or who they are. And then even if Genesect doesn't get a chance to realize it, it kind of plays into the fear/mild horror of being unable to trust your own memories. All of their memories are implanted, so you can't necessarily trust how true they are. And then on top of that, we get confirmation that their memories can and are tampered with whenever their answers aren't sufficient enough for the scientist’s desires.

On a related note to that. I figure that doubt of how Genesect will respond is a part of why they're not given control of their body. Everyone knows what happened with Mewtwo (assuming things played out the same in this universe). No one wants a repeat. And that lack of control also plays into a primal fear.

Not that Genesect can feel any of that fear. It's all been removed from them. And that's horrifying in its own right. Both in the sense of Genesect being a living being that's been tampered with and because. Well. There's such a thing as a healthy amount of fear. What's going to happen when they don't fear the repercussions of their actions? (Well, that's why it's so important that they get it's obedience just right. But let's not think about that too hard right now.)

I just. I think that's all I wanted to cover but boy this one is gonna stick with me for a while.

 

[Starlight Aurate]

Hello hello! It's been a while since I've read something of yours, and since you've left me some lovely reviews lately, I thought I'd stop by and check this out!

content warnings: none traditional.

I read this as "non-traditional" at first, and I thought, "this fic is not your traditional fic. Why is this a content warning...?" And then I read it correctly lol.

You awaken fully conscious and aware of who and where you are. They must've decided it was easier to boot you in with previous knowledge.

Right off the bat: I'm entertained that this is a complete flip of waking up in a new location and going "Where am I? Who am I?" and instead those questions are immediately answered. AND that the protagonist knows that "they" gave us the knowledge ahead of time. Protagonist doesn't have questions, but readers sure do! It really sucks me into the story at the start.

She's logged eleven thousand hours on your development since the project started three years ago.

Considering there are 26,280 hours in a year (yes, I math'd this), she's spent almost half of her time over the past 3 years devoted to this--and that's just what was logged! How many of those hours ended up getting erased or weren't put into timesheets?

workbenches pristine and uncluttered,

Must be a new lab, then! They don't stay that way for long ;_;

Genetically-modified pokémon cropped up in the scientific and public interest from time to time. Fossil reconstruction wasn't anything new. Silph's Porygon AI had caused a stir in its unveiling, and the software community all agreed that the latest Z-OS was easily the shining star of the field. And although no one would admit it publicly, the whispers in the scientific grapevine knew that Fuji's pet M-project off the coast of Cinnabar had been an augmentation approach … of sorts.

Ah, I love all of these references to human intervention in bringing Pokemon (both natural, for the fossils, and unnatural, for the synthetic likes of Porygon) to life! I admit, the one about Fuji's M-project caught my eye, but it might be because I've been reading Salvage lately lol.

All series of Porygon OS were obedient, as were the Rotom OS that came after. But no one asks a microwave for its opinion. That was why it was easier to keep them inside of objects, where it was easier to forget that they were also pokémon.

:(

The M-project was intelligent. But the reality that kept inspiring increasingly-derivative blockbusters was that no one knew what to do with an ultimate fighter that thought it didn't have to obey.

M-project was intelligent and it was powerful. Porygon and Rotom are small beans next to the likes of it. And why go for Pokemon that are cute and friendly when there's another one that can destroy entire cities?

Dr. Solya used to read to you during the earlier phases of your reconstitution. "It's like playing Mozart for babies," she'd said serenely, when one of the nightstaff had walked in. You're sure now that your six cells of grey matter hadn't processed a single word at the time, but those memories have since been reuploaded to you, so the analogy comes cleanly. You are not strictly bound by the laws of robotics, in the sense that your brain is organic, but you know they must be followed.

I think there's more to it than just that, though. I do think that talking to someone (or something in this case, if they don't view Genesect as an equal) develops a bond, a relationship, with them. It's like owners talking to their pets, trying to calm down animals that still don't quite trust them, or like parents talking to their children in the womb. While it's not proven that the latter does anything for the baby, it certainly shows filial love and affection.

And even so you still find this question makes time slow in a way that must've, in some way, mimicked what it felt long ago to find yourself in a winged shadow, with moments to act before talons shattered your carapace.

Hm!

You awaken fully conscious and aware of who and where you are. They must've decided it was easier to have you boot in with previous knowledge.

I saw this coming as soon as Genesect honestly answered that it believed it was a person but knew that it wasn't supposed to give that answer. All the same, having these be the last sentences made me smile!

This is a nice short fic, but it definitely leaves me thinking a lot about "what measure is a non-person" and where we draw the lines between person and not person. And even then, it's we, the humans, who draw that boundary and make those definitions. The line of how Pokemon are meant to be similar to, "as real as" humans, but to acknowledge that humans are the makers really hit me. Maybe it's because I'm someone who firmly believes that there are higher powers than humans, and that we aren't the makers of our own lives, and so when I see people like Dr. Solya who do believe that, it strikes me as incredibly pretentious. It's realistic, too--I work in science, and even though there's a lot of talk about "humans bad," nobody in the field disputes the belief that humans are the ones who control and shape our world. And in this one-shot, it leads to all sorts of messy questions, the biggest one here being: if a artificially human makes another life-form, and that life-form isn't human, then that life-form is less than the human, isn't it?

You did a great job with this, especially with the second-POV! It doesn't feel too emotional, as we would expect from a quasi-artificial life form such as Genesect, especially when its floating in a tank and having pre-selected memories loaded in. BUT, at the same time, it's quite a gut punch! It's such a raw, sad look at Pokemon who are synthetically made: they aren't loved, cared for, or viewed as equals. They are made because their creators want power (and possibly fame and fortune). You did a beautiful (in a sense) way of showing that. Thanks for sharing this with us!

 

[Nekodatta]

I read this because the title mentioning Turing caught my eye(great title btw), and this was a really interesting read. Gen V is probably my least played so I never really put much thought into Genesect, but it's actually a really interesting Pokemon, because it's essentially a cyborg, an artificial Pokemon born not only from an organic one but a fossil one. The fact that he remembers a world before humans even existed makes the central conflict of this piece even more interesting: he sees this "new" species, humans, and is trying to figure out where he fits in.
Sonya wants him to see himself as a Pokemon, that in a human-centric kind of view she sees as something lesser, a tool to command. But Genesect has realized this, and he doesn't want to, so he identifies actually more as a person. Because "person" here actually just means someone able to decide and think freely.
But that's no good, so his memories get cherry picked and deleted and the whole thing restarts again, probably until he gives the "right" answer.

I find it interesting (and... telling) how Sonya's definition of a Pokemon is "someone that disobeys, but not too much"... from the example Genesect gives, it's just a fancy way of saying "someone that will obey only what YOU decide has to be obeyed".

A person would be able to lie. A pokémon wouldn't have to.

But you know you can't lie. You understand the concept, and the theory, but you are as incapable of producing deception as you are of producing genuine fear.

This is really interesting, even if it's not spelled outloud am I right in assuming Genesect can't lie because he's also something else other than "Pokemon" or "person", he's also a machine, and that part makes it incapable of lying?

This was a really nice read, and even with very little it manages to give a lot to think about. It definitely changed my view over a Pokemon that I didn't really think much about before!