Reality

SURreality: Deciding

Later, as she kept thinking back to what happened, she realized it might be important. It was the first sign of things not happening like they were expected.

Like who expected? She? Or the boy?

Obviously he'd had goals different than hers, but she'd considered characterization in dreams other times. Often. He was a gameplayer from before, but that didn't mean he was from before.

She grew bored of the tangent and moved back to the next line of thought.

So the pokemon were autonomous – or could be. She was reminded of the joke about the economist, logician and mathematician describing cows. Although who was she supposed to use? In those jokes it was always the engineer with the practical view, and there wasn't one in that joke. What she knew, then: one pokemon of one boy once did something she thought was autonomous.

But saying it was unique was at least as foolish as generalizing completely. It was the first and only pokemon he let out, and he was the first boy she'd met who tried to do such. The odds of something unlikely happening...although the odds had always struck her as skewed in the game, following the pattern more like coin flips rather than truly being random.

Seven canons, she thought then. Game, show, mangas. Card game. She'd been thinking in terms of the game.

She thought back to the white and gray pokeballs in her bag, the black ponyta. Eight canons.

She thought of Teddy. Ninth?

She thought – and hope curled horribly in her chest, rose chokingly in her throat, and she almost flung the bag from her shoulders, jerking desperately at the zipper so it caught and she would have cursed if she dared speak. It had to be there and she didn't know to hope or not because she could never decide, she could never deciding if hoping could make something true or if hoping too strongly destroyed it. Alerted a spiteful universe.

And she got a hold of herself, and calmed, because it was as it was as it was, and as she did this she dumped the pokeballs from her bag so the marble-sized things rolled into the grass and it was as it was as it was she told herself as her hands moved rapidly over the pile, identifying each at a touch, and it was already but Schrodinger's cat – cat she almost laughed except she couldn't open her mouth as she tried to not think, to panic and not panic, wish and accept.

And it was not there.

She looked again, this time hoping desperately, able to hope. Flashes of pokemon passed through her mind – arcanine, golduck, zapdos, bellsprout – and even the other ones of the gray and white pokeballs, and it was not there.

She doubled over, crouching on the ground with her arms pressed tightly into her stomach, wanting to scream. "He has to be here," she whispered instead. "I put him in I put him in even, I mentioned him he has to be with the rest. He has to be here!" she screamed finally. Teddy's warmth was there against her side and she hugged him as she hated herself for resenting that he was the one there.

Time passed. She pushed the pokeballs back into her bag, picking carefully through the grass to make sure she hadn't missed any. She kept wiping at her face. Her cheeks felt cold when she touched them.

She knew she should start walking again, but she stayed where she was when she finished picking the pokeballs up, sitting with her bag in front of her as if she was about to stand again.

Legendaries in pokeballs, she thought dimly. Multiples. Moltres. Ho-oh.

Ho-oh.

Ho-oh.

And she stood and swung her backpack onto her back again.

She remembered her dream. If you could only get back you could fix everything but getting back was fixing, getting back couldn't happen unless you were back. Only, maybe, maybe there was still a way left open from before. And you could be back. And then everything could be fixed.

She was there now. If something wasn't right she could fix it.

Ho-oh.