victory_road | 01

Entry tags:

01 - Video

[As the gear crackles to life you can see there is a tired looking woman sitting on a stump. She appears to be taking a break on one of the routes.]

Yes, this appears to be broadcasting after all. Very well. Let us try this, little one.

[There is a floating Solosis who floats into view who is probably the one she was speaking to before she looks at the screen. When she speaks it is with a thick German accent.]

I am Dr. Brigid Tenenbaum, I was told to try this device to perhaps get more answers then I have received from the locals in the strange town I woke up in yesterday.

If there is a way back home, I would very much like to know it. I was in the middle of a very important project before I was taken here and I am needing to return to it soon.

However, if such a thing is unknown then if anyone has information on what this world uses pokemon breeders for I would be most grateful. It appears I am one and while I suppose my studies of genetics may be helpful with such things, I refuse to do this work unless I know what the results may be used for.

Thank you.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[A dark, bespectacled man peers back at her.]

As someone who's more or less turning into an amateur pokemon breeder myself, it's really a lot more like being a dog breeder than a geneticist. You introduce a male and a female of the same species or compatible ones to each other and let nature take its course. The female lays eggs, which you then either take from her to trade or sell--or you let her brood over them and they eventually hatch. And presumably you're doing this with multiple pairs at once?

Honestly, though, if you want a really thorough explanation, ask Armin Alert or Dr Spengler. They're actually professionals.

I am speaking to the first already. He is very helpful.

[Armin the helpful strikes again.]

Do you know why it is they all lay eggs?

Honestly? I have no clue. Especially considering that this world by and large has pokemon instead of animals, but I'm fairly certain the local humans still have children the standard way.

Pokemon biology is really strange.

[A moment's pause, then,] Oh. Right. I'm Steven Durante, Dr Tenenbaum. If you'd like, I recently caught some lower level Pokemon which I haven't really started training yet that I could send to you care of the Cherrygrove Pokemon Center, so you'll have a mix of species to work with. And, ah, maybe one or two babies who haven't found a home yet.

[Pause.] That is, if you decide to go with it.

Edited 2020-04-28 17:51 (UTC)

At least something remains the same.

[Not that she would know how to create a human child with just a fertilized egg and science... Nope. ~~actually yes~~]

As long as there is no one using such work for horrible things. I believe I would be interested in such a thing.

Not institutionally, as far as I know of. [But then, he hasn't poked too closely at Rocket biology labs.]

I'll just gather the balls together, then, and mail them onward.

[FINALLY a way to get rid of all of the pokemon he caught for his Rocket quota that weren't quite high enough level. This is wonderful.]

I suppose I will find out if such things happen here.

[Let's just keep her busy so she doesn't decide to break into Silph and figure out wtf is going on there. ...yet.]

Thank you. This is still a very strange world to believe is real and that I have not simply failed to wake up at home.

For example. Do you hear music?

... that. Right.

You learn to tune it out, eventually. It takes practice.

Where is it coming from? I have seen no speakers.

Nobody knows. Not even the people from this world know.

[Please don't be mind control, please don't be mind control.]

Is this a new thing? If the locals do not even know?

I suspect it might be one of the mysteries of this world, such as 'if cubone wears the skull of its dead mother, then why do bred cubones hatch already wearing skulls?'

Admittedly, I've only been in this world for a few months. Someone who's been here longer might know better.

[Sorry wait what. No. Steven what go back.]

........They think the little ones are wearing the skull of the mother und yet are born with such a skull already?

[Is she now muttering under her breath in German? Yes she is. This is clearly a really vivid dream or a place where no one studies anything.]

Do they not have scientists in this world?

I mean, supposedly they do, but they're not-- a lot of the time they're more like scientists in a game or a movie than proper scientists. And the tech here's... pretty weird. Like, my [half-second of hesitation] boyfriend used to be a low-level programmer before he went into business and it's just-- so different that his own skills in that direction aren't actually all that useful.

[HOW MUCH DOES DR TENNENBAUM KNOW ABOUT COMPUTER PROGRAMMING? Because when Steven says 'low-level' he means machine code and assembly language, not that said boyfriend never rose very high as a programmer. But if you don't know what 'low-level' programming is, it's easy to mistake that.]

Yes the technology is very strange. I wish Porter were here, he would be very interested in seeing what sort of device this is. It seems similar to the computer we were working on just...much smaller and without an A.I. More like a recorder with added parts.

Though I suppose his skills might not be much use here if your boyfriend is not able to use his programming skills for things either.

[Yeah so her knowledge of computers grew a lot but it's also bioshock computers and mostly just about how to build and use one. Titles are of a lesser interest to her so she doesn't really have any opinion on what low-level programmer as a title would mean. To her it's someone working with computers, the end.]

The pokegear? Yes. It's a bit like a smartphone back home--those are mobile telephones that also serve as small handheld computers and they're expensive, higher-status items... although getting more ubiquitous as time goes by.

And if your friend has any engineering skills, they're a little more useful here. Which, again, is something I do know from my boyfriend.

[Legit, legit. Steven's dad is a computer programmer and a good one, so Steven knows a little more than the average layman, although the extent of his own coding ability is strictly HTML/CSS/PHP: mark-up language, rather than actual programing.]

Edited 2020-04-29 15:16 (UTC)

I do not believe we have those.

[She's from 1968, they did not have them. She's just been isolated from society for a while due to Rapture drama so she doesn't know for sure.]

What skills are useful here?

Your tech level might be different than other people's. People like us who are brought here come from different worlds and times, after all, and some of those times are pretty different. I'm from the year 2015, but my boyfriend's not even from the same millennium as me. And I know there's people here who're from places where a 'computer' is a human being who does math.

Ah, that would cause a great difference.

I am from 1968. However there have been advances in- a place I have lived that the rest of the world was not told of. So even in my own world there are different levels of technology.

[That probably sounds pretty normal but she really means a huge difference. Like oh hey we figured out how to mind control people and use dna to raise the dead for certain people.]

Yeah, that's almost half a century's difference right there between us. My dad would have been a kid in your time. Programming would have been done on punch cards--you'd have still been using macrocomputers, not the microcomputers I'm used to.

Or, well, the normal world would have been doing that. For all I know, the computers had GUIs where you lived.

Oh no they still have punch cards and the machines are very large. However there was one that ran the entire city. This is what Porter built. We were rebuilding it at- ...in our new location when I was taken here.

Jesus. I'm sorry, Dr Tennenbaum. That's-- definitely inconvenient for you.

[He's actually genuinely sympathetic to her being taken away from her work. This... might mean she'll get regular Rocket quota leftovers in the future... although at least most of them will be caught instead of stolen.]

It is...not as dire as it sounds. The city fell years ago.

We are just trying to use it to- Well save the rest of the people who are still there.

[No wait that makes it sound more dire. It is kind of dire really.]

I have been informed that time stays still while we are here. I am hoping that is true. I have failed so many people already.

From everything I've heard, it does. I'm sure once this is over, you'll be able to save them.

We shall see.

[Needless to say it's a lot more complicated then what she's mentioning here but still. Time to move on from this.]

I have only been in the one town briefly and looked at the map. Can you tell me about the towns here? Are they all similar in size? Are there bigger cities?

I don't... know a lot about the towns in Johto, unfortunately. I ended up hitching a lift to Goldenrod on someone's banana dinosaur before I even reached Cherrygrove--which turned out to be a mistake because I missed out on warps I needed that way--so I haven't really been to most of the ones in this region. I've been to a few in Kanto, though.

From what I can tell, villages with no pokemarts are generally about the same size as each other--as are towns with pokemarts but no gyms--and the same goes for large towns slash small cities that have gyms and pokemarts.

There are two big cities of note, one in Kanto called Saffron and one in Johto called Goldenrod. I live in Goldenrod. I'd say there's roughly a million people here?

video

video

Re: video

video

Re: video

Re: video

Re: video

Re: video

Re: video

Re: video

Re: video

Re: video

Re: video

video

Re: video

video

Re: video

video

Re: video

video

Re: video

Re: video

Re: video

video

LIES LIKE FUCK TO COVER HIS ROCKET TRACKS