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

[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?

....What are warps?

[Sounds like it would be good not to miss them.]

They're another aspect of this world's tech that's... really kind of crazy. Basically, there's these... portal things at Pokecenters that let you teleport to adjacent cities, but only if you've been to those cities. So people who've done proper Pokemon journeys and didn't just bum a ride to the big city on someone's else's large Flyer can use those to get back quickly to places they've already been.

I've done it myself in Kanto. Just-- not here in Johto, mostly because I've got a part time job with regular hours that keeps me in the city and when I did a little touring before my job started, I mostly did it in Kanto because there were Ubirds around taking people places there back then.

Ah, Ubirds are people with Flying Pokemon who're big enough that they can carry little cab boxes and they'll take you places for money. They're usually around mostly just for special events, though. But it was the Lunar New Year when I got here, so there were a bunch of those all over Kanto at the time.

They teleport only once you have been there yourself? When you go to these cities do you have to have anything done to open the portals to...connect you to them somehow?

[She's seen teleportation before. This sounds more like the vita chambers and how they only bring anyone with the right dna in it back to life.]

I think it's just that you duck into the Pokecenter and passing through the door registers you for the Warp on your pokegear--but honestly, I haven't asked too much about how they do it. [He's regretting that a little.]

Perhaps I will ask when I go there. It would be good to find out more of the technology they have here.

Definitely.

Thank you for the information and the future pokemon. This is...still rather strange but I suppose I will become used to it. There does not seem to be much choice after all. And for better or worse, I seem to survive such things.

[She shakes her head slightly. Half muttering to herself.]

....at least it is not underwater.

[He blinks.]

Underwater?

Yes I was recently briefly trapped again in an underwater city for...well complicated reasons.

[She waves a hand as she says this. Like it's totally normal. This is sadly normal for her.]

You get very tired of being in the leaky ruins of an underwater city filled with people and creatures who would like you dead.....and will not stop making announcements about their political theories.

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LIES LIKE FUCK TO COVER HIS ROCKET TRACKS

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he's such a liar but it's not like he can say he's a rocket

not something to admit to people you just met

NOPE

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