Alison sighed, shrugging off her bag and flopping down in the living room's oversized brown armchair as the door swung shut behind her. She heard a faint sound, like a cloth ball rolling down the wooden stairs. Moments later, her attention was attracted downward to where her cat was staring up at her with wide, imploring eyes, purring faintly against her leg.
"You've got food, Teddy," she told him by habit. She hadn't actually seen his bowls since coming inside. He didn't move. With another sigh she pushed herself back out of the chair.
Teddy ran ahead hopefully, paws silent now on the mottled rug. He paused several times, waiting until she came close enough to stumble on him before continuing. At his bowls, he looked back at her from over his shoulder.
"I get it," she told him, opening a can and dumping the whole thing into the bowl to avoid getting a spoon. He purred loudly and began lapping at the gravy.
"You need to eat your dry food," she said, looking at the untouched second bowl. "Your teeth are bad enough." She resolved momentarily to make more of an effort to feed him the dry food, only to think that maybe he didn't eat it because his teeth hurt. Or that maybe the dry food would just do more damage at this point. She could never decide things like that, so they nagged at her each time they came up.
She dropped the chain of thought, another thing she did each time it came up, retrieving her gameboy from the table as she headed back to the chair. The gold cartridge was already in it. She flicked it on and settled down, curling her legs up under her.
She smiled slightly as the screen came up, informing her of her time and pokedex completion. Gold was her favorite game. Everything she'd done was saved there, all the pokemon she'd raised, items she'd collected, places she'd explored. She could lose herself in it. She didn't want to think about school. She didn't want to think about anything.
Her sprite appeared. She was in Goldenrod, where she'd been hatching eggs. She started to walk towards the center, intending to switch them out for a team of pokemon she'd already raised and then to head for the Elite Four or Red again.
The screen paused as a text box appeared.
...
Great, she thought, another phone call. She didn't like that about the second generation, the static phone system where everyone just repeated the same thing and nothing ever changed. She didn't want to hear that a trainer had almost caught a pokemon for the thousandth time, or that they really thought they were getting stronger just like they always did. She didn't want to be reminded it was just a game and the dialogue, like the rest of it, was meaningless and canned.
If there was one thing she wished was different about the games, it would be for them to be more interactive, expansive. She remembered talking to a friend back in fifth grade not long after she had gotten the game, complaining almost sadly about how she had mewtwo and articuno and moltres and zapdos all on her team and she could fight people with them, but no one ever thought it was strange, and Prof. Oak never wanted to see them, or any of it. Everything was always the same. She wanted it to be different somehow, something new.
But that wasn't possible. She hit A, trying to get through the call as quickly as possible so she could continue on. But then nothing seemed to happen. Impatient, she mashed the A button repeatedly, and only seemed to switch to another ellipsis.
She waited, irrationally irritated. The text changed again. Prof. Elm's name appeared in the box, then his dialogue.
FARLA, could you come to the lab? It's important.
What? She was sure Prof. Elm never called after the game was finished. Was this a glitch? Her fingers tightened around the gameboy, one pressing against the off switch. She didn't want anything to happen to her game.
After a moment, she decided to keep playing. She'd never used her gameshark on Gold, so this wasn't anything she'd done. And if the code hadn't been messed with, then...she hoped nothing would go wrong, at least. She didn't know what she'd do if something happened to Gold.
Maybe it was nothing, a one-time fluke sort of thing. The one pokemon on the team was her fearow. She selected it and chose FLY, then New Bark Town. After a short animation, she landed in front of 'her' house.
Feeling slightly nervous, somewhat curious, and reminding herself that probably nothing would happen and this would just be a waste of time, she aimed the sprite left and into Prof. Elm's lab.
An exclamation mark appeared over the assistant's head as she entered. The Farla sprite froze in place. Alison felt frozen as well, although she couldn't say if it was worry or anticipation. She had wanted to see something new in the game, but glitches...she didn't want everything she'd done to be deleted. She remembered how it had felt when her scizor had been deleted in a trading glitch. And that for all of her pokemon...no. Yet so far things seemed fine. And she had wanted to see something new.
The assistant rushed over. Come with me, he said. Or she, Alison was never sure of their gender. The two sprites headed up towards Elm. I was already going that way, Alison thought sourly as she often did when caught in one of the fixed paths.
The sprite was dropped off in front of Elm. A text box appeared, the letters glitched. Alison hit A and new words appeared. FARLA received MYSTERY EGG it said.
...the hell? she thought to herself, feeling oddly disappointed. She reminded herself that it wasn't like anything else could have happened – it was just a game, it could only do what had already been programmed. Hitting START she went to check if she'd actually gotten the egg and didn't see it. Huh. Oh well. She left the lab and then went to her pokemon team to FLY to Mt. Silver.
The egg was there, filling up the fifth spot on her team. It was still called MYSTERY EGG. That was weird. She exited the menu and took a step. Her sprite was stopped. Another text box appeared. Huh? it asked. She agreed. Was the egg hatching? The third generation addition of bad eggs flashed into her mind suddenly, but she reminded herself that wasn't in Gold and the only what was programmed in could happen. She pressed A and the screen changed to the hatching animation. She watched the egg rock, cracks appear and grow in the shell, break apart –
The screen froze. She hit A a few more times without effect. Then the screen flashed, turned off, and turned on again. She skipped through the opening to see
New Game
Options
Her heart in her throat, she flicked the gameboy back off, then on again. This time the continue option had reappeared. She sighed again, this time in relief. It was ridiculous to care so much about a silly game, she thought, but all the same, she did.
Later, in the darkness, Alison found herself awake suddenly, tears in her eyes. She had been dreaming. In her dream, there had been another world, or perhaps just another part of the world, like the fairy kingdoms underneath hills. When you were there, anything you wanted could be found, everything could happen. She had found it once, when she was younger, but she had left and forgotten and when she remembered she couldn't find the way back. When you were there, anything you wanted could be found, everything could happen, but when you left you left for the old world where there wasn't any magic to make things right and once things were lost they stayed lost.
YOU ARE READING
Reality
FanfictionWhat if pokemon became real? What would you do? Unlikely to be completed.
