Pokémon Mars

Chapter 20: The Vision

'I shouldn't have come here.'

It was barely two months since Joshua gazed out from the viewing deck of the Mega Wailord, entranced by the starry void and, like Jin, was certain he would never want to go home. Now he gazed out over a Martian playground, where Alec ran after his Natu and Megara slid down the slide after her Bulbasaur, and wondered how he ever justified taking his children a million miles from home.

'Well, I know why... I made a stupid decision because my dad died... and I was greedy... I wanted it for myself instead of leaving it to someone younger, without a family...'

Nessie looked surprised. 'You can't just blame yourself... I wanted to come. I didn't try to stop you. I don't want to make excuses for myself, but... we couldn't know the Ares program was full of liars...'

'Mom tried to tell me...'

The woman he called 'Mom' was actually his stepmother, not his biological mother. The latter hadn't spoken to him since he married Nessie, who was 19 years his junior. It wasn't just the age difference that disgusted her. She hated Nessie herself.

'But I wouldn't listen...'

At that moment, in a park that looked just like Earth but with only a bubble to protect them from certain death, Joshua even regretted retiring from football at 37 to pursue science.

'I was delusional... there's nothing here... what is here is a shitfest... there's no way we'll ever terraform the place...'

'You're being too hard on yourself.'

Nessie gently pulled his hands from his face.

'I know I can't imagine what it's like to lose a Pokémon you can actually speak to... but Professor Mesquite lost a lot of her Pokémon at first, didn't she?'

Professor Jovi Mesquite, Joshua's idol who was responsible for reintroducing all kinds of wild Pokémon to hostile Orre, did indeed lose many of her Pokémon, even in the later years of her project. She was only eight when she started it. At first, she lost Pokémon to a simple lack of knowledge, but some were harder to introduce than others. Deaths were inevitable. This seemed different somehow. Jovi only had books and the scientists at the Pokémon HQ Lab to consult. Joshua and his all-star team put years of professional research and training in to this. They had every resource available at their disposal, including Jovi herself until she died five years ago. She was Callerya and Jin's idol, too. Callerya's ambition was to be just like her great-grandmother. With her help, they narrowed their selections of Pokémon down until they were certain they would only lose the occasional one, to causes that were indeed inevitable... yet they still lost all those Ferroseed to mere negligence and somehow, that group of such intelligent people completely missed that the Ares program was, as Nessie put it, 'full of liars.' Now they were stuck there.

Joshua told Nessie all of that. She thought about her reply for a while. She too idolised Jovi, as a fellow Biology graduate from one of the greatest schools in the world, the University of Daytenne in Sunrise City. She also applied to the Ares program herself, before she met Joshua. Her grades were so perfect that she packed her bags as soon as she submitted her application, but she failed the psychiatric assessment due to anxiety.

'You really can't just blame yourself... I convinced you to go...'

'But you're not even gonna be happy here... you won't get to do any science 'til Alec and Megara grow up...'

'If we find out Firmino isn't some weirdo's kid, I'm thinking about applying to Team Aqua – in Ironville – once the kids go to school. They're desperate for staff. If I'm ever late home, they have a nursery.'