01 - Video

[mothergoose]

[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.

Comments

[mothergoose]

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.

[fingersandteeth]

[He blinks.]

Underwater?

[mothergoose]

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.

[fingersandteeth]

My God. I can only imagine.

How awful are these theories? Are we talking Objectivist level nonsense or mere libertarian or what? [He considers this.] Or I suppose they could be left wing theories, but something about leaky underwater cities screams John Galt.

[mothergoose]

[That actually gets a chuckle.]

Oh no. You see the city was lucky enough to eventually get both. First Andrew Ryan who built it to be run by the free market and nothing else. Always he would go on about the "Great Chain" of Industry.

And then years later from ruins, Sofia Lamb ruled with her collectivist religious cult. Everything was for the Family.

[fingersandteeth]

Oh wow. That's... wow.

[mothergoose]

Just be glad you never had to hear the two of them debate each other.

[fingersandteeth]

Oh, I am.

[mothergoose]

I was glad to hear there did not seem to be anyone here who was running this place in such a way.

[She'll take the vague leadership over let's try political thought experiment #39 on the population.]

[fingersandteeth]

This is a fairly good place in a lot of ways, honestly. Sure, the whole weapons ban is going overboard--I mean, I was for gun control back home, but there's a difference between reasonable gun control and outlawing weapons completely--and I don't love how much travel places seems to rely on going on foot but otherwise? They've got free health care for everyone here and culturally, the natives of this region don't have any problem with same-sex attraction. Honestly, I kind of want to stay here.

[It probably helps that he doesn't really have anything left for him back home, except for maybe his ad hoc motley of fellow escapees from El Pecador. But as much as he liked them, they were also daily reminders of what he'd done for his Keeper.]

[mothergoose]

Do they have any issues with ethnic groups or religions?

[Just things she's learnt to know about.]

[fingersandteeth]

[YEAH NO IT'S ONLY GOOD SENSE.]

... not that I know of as yet, here in Johto or in Kanto the Sevii Islands. The, ah, rest of the world... it doesn't like us transplants from other worlds, so we're still confined to these regions.

[mothergoose]

[She nods.]

I'm afraid the more I am told a place is amazing, the more I look for the cracks it may be hiding.

I would be glad to be proven wrong.

[fingersandteeth]

I mean, it's not perfect. Far from it. But-- it's better than what I left behind, honestly.

[Getting to live under his own name again is nice, if nothing else.]

[mothergoose]

What kind of place did you come from?

[fingersandteeth]

Does your world have America?

I'm originally from San Diego, California, but I... was stuck somewhere else for five years and when I came home, I'd lost a lot of what I'd had before.

[Everything, really.]

[mothergoose]

Yes. It does. Though I have spent most of my time in Europe.

[And underwater.]

....I am sorry to hear that. I believe that happened to many people in my world after the war and the camps.

[She....doesn't think that happened to her because she didn't think she'd had anything to lose. She was just numb to everything but science.]

[fingersandteeth]

[Oh jeez, right. Dr Tannenbaum is old enough and from the right time to have lived through World War II.]

Yeah. That's what I've read.

[mothergoose]

[Yup and with her sleeves rolled up you might just be able to see the start of a line of tattooed numbers on her arm. It's however something she doesn't really bring up much. And she seems distracted by another thought.]

With people from other worlds here. Do any of them come from a place with these pokemon creatures as well?

[fingersandteeth]

I don't think so. [Tyler's occasional seeming recognition of Kanto pokemon nonwithstanding--Tyler was from his world and he knows they didn't have any there. Besides, if the theories he'd discussed with Dirk about this world being in a video game were right, then Tyler had just... probably played that video game as a kid.]

[mothergoose]

A shame, it would be interesting to compare.

[fingersandteeth]

It really would be.