Brainwashing Tests Take Five
Do I feel like my temperament or thinking patterns have changed? How would I know if they did?
I've been doing this thinking exercise ever since I'd gotten back to Champion's Hold. The doctor who had initially checked up on me and my pokemon recommended it, considering my lineup. I wasn't too concerned, as I still felt like myself, but I guess that's exactly what a brainwashed person would say.
Since Myst was such an unknown, it seemed like a good idea. Looking back, it does seem like my temperament has changed. Not by much. It just seems like my natural state was how I used to be while hangry. That being said, doing my martial meditation to focus my fighting aura seems to bring me back to normal. And even then, it isn't something that is true all of the time. I have infinite patience while building things. Working with my hands was something I did a lot over my extended visit to Starfall's woodland sights. But now that I'm on the lookout for it, I feel like I've noticed some times where I feel like I have a shorter fuse, my blood simmering to lukewarm annoyance more readily than before. Nothing bad, but I guess it isn't necessarily going to be a Jekyll and Hyde level change. This is something I definitely need to stay on top of. If for nothing else, than for Azula. I feel like she would be disappointed in me if I became pissy and short tempered.
Can't have that.
"Heeeeey Red?" Came a voice from across the room. A voice of mischief. Someone who didn't care for regulations. Somebody who only really thought about their own entertainment.
This was somebody who merely cared about stroking their own ego.
"What do you want, Old man?" I responded.
Professor Oak, scientific genius and pokemon battle mastermind swiveled his chair around to face me. We were back in his lab back in Champion's Hold. We had been for the last couple days.
Oak got Tristan situated, letting him take up a floor while he got himself sorted. Oak gave him a floor with outside access, so some of the higher ups from the Ranger Corps. could land and come in to talk to Tristan whenever they needed to.
He was also working on something to help with his leg issue, but he hadn't told me any specific details.
"Uhhhh. If you had to guess, how old do you think Myst is?" Oak asked, a gleam of mischief in his eyes.
I blinked. That wasn't where I thought this was going. "Okay. Well he's incredibly immature, but also stupidly brilliant and powerful. So either he's in his teenage or adolescent years, or whatever the equivalent is for his species, or he's stupidly old."
Oak nodded, keeping a neutral expression on his face to avoid giving away any hints. "That wasn't a number. Give me a number."
"Well, since I feel like stupid power only comes with age, and it would still explain how crazy he is, I'm going to guess something stupid high. Uhhhhhhh. A hundred and seven years old." Whatever. I'd guess high. Myst could be stupid old. It would make sense.
Oak couldn't hold back his shit eating grin. "Well your analysis was pretty spot on. You're magnitudes off though." He stated, turning back to the screen on his desk. He had asked for me to put my team in their balls so he could analyze them. He didn't say why.
He was my sponsor, so I didn't really question it. Granted, I don't think I need Oak's money anymore. My team is starting to look pretty solid. However, he happens to be a huge asset, and putting them in pokeballs doesn't cost me anything. Might as well play along for now.
Besides, I wasn't a defenseless kid anymore. I had aura now. I could fight for my pokemon, just as they would fight for me. It was comforting, knowing I wasn't helpless without my pokemon. Sure, I couldn't do any of the specific things with those powers anywhere near as powerful as they could, but I could hold my own.
I narrowed my eyes. "Oi. What's the deal? Are you going to tell me then?" I'm actually really curious. Just how old was the little red and black fox?
Oak sat back, leaning his chair back as far as it would allow. It was basically a gaming chair, with a circular set of wheels at the bottom, cushioned padding, and lots of reclining ability.
"Alright, my analysis is done. You can ask him yourself." Oak stated, tossing me my pokeballs one by one. Yes, two of them were ultra balls now, but I'd still generalize and call them all pokeballs when referring to all of them for simplicity.
I noted the one with M carved into it, and released Zorua out of his ultra ball.
"Okay Myst. I didn't want to ask you this, simply because I value my life. But apparently Oak thinks it's a good idea."
I scooted my chair up, getting face to face with Mysterio. I narrowed my eyes, searching the fox for answers. Myst scrunched up his nose and flicked his eyes back and forth between my eyes, matching me.
"How old are you?" I asked.
Myst giggled. He then promptly evaporated into a storm cloud, dripping rain all over the lab tile. The stormcloud floated through the air, crackling with lightning, before eventually settling down on top of one of the cabinets.
The water on the ground faded as the stormcloud turned back into Zorua.
I turned back to Oak. "Alright I don't think he's going to answer. What gives? How old is the fucker?"
Oak grinned, clapping his hands as he looked up to the cabinet Myst was now napping on.
"One thousand seven hundred and thirty four years old." He stated, without a hint of surprise or awe, as if it was the most normal thing in the world.
I jumped to my feet and pointed at Myst.
"J'ACCUSE! I knew you were a fucking legendary in diguise you minx!"
Zorua cocked his head, giving me a disappointed look.
Oak laughed out loud. "No Red. He's a Zorua all right. He can't fake his DNA. Unless he somehow memorized the redundancies I hid into the analytics, he couldn't have faked the display either, especially while he was in a pokeball." Oak started walking over. "The Zoroark line is the same as the Ninetails line. They are effectively immortal. Only a handful are known to have lived that long, however. Granted, few ever live long enough to obtain the power to have the choice."
What? Zoroark were immortal? And hold on. Ninetails were too?
What the fuck?
I sat back down in my chair, dumbfounded. Damn it. Right. This wasn't the games. This wasn't the anime. Legendary was just a title. So was mythical.
Things didn't work like they do in the games. Something that might have been Legendary or Mythical in the games might just be a common pokemon. Sure, some primordials like the Creation trio were definitely what I would call Legendary.
Something like the Legendary dogs on the other hand might just be really powerful pokemon.
What if pokemon like Suicune, Raikou, and Entei were actually just the final evolutions of pseudo legendary tier pokemon. Damn. I guess pseudo legendary didn't really mean anything then. Well, to be fair, that title is only reliant on stat totals. And generally strength from games does carry over a bit.
Sure, shit like Venemoth is way scarier than the games. But I still have to worry about shit like Salamence a hell of a lot more than Sunflora. My knowledge wasn't useless.
Maybe Entei, Suicune, and Raikou were all hunted to near extinction for some reason. Maybe they were harvested to make fire, water, and lightning stones respectively. And then the Johto Government came up with the fun story about Ho-oh saving some eeveelutions to make the citizens feel better.
That was very unlikely to be true, but the fact of the matter is that a story like that could be true for any of the "Legendaries" that I knew. I couldn't accept anything I knew as fact. But I couldn't ignore it either. FUCk. This was complicated.
So my knowledge could be true, like with mega evolution, but not always. Lore from the games could be consistent with what people know, but the fact that the people here believe something doesn't make it true.
Damn.
This was a lot of things to keep track of at once. Alright.
Simplify.
My knowledge seems to be consistent with what people know. However, people can be wrong about what they know. So while I shouldn't make decisions based on my knowledge, I shouldn't not make decisions based on my knowledge either.
Hrrrnhg
A headache was beginning to form from all my abstract thinking.
I shook my head. Okay. Whatever. This isn't something I need to fully tackle right now. I can just move forward, staying cautious of what I accept as fact. In the meantime, I'll try to do as much research as I can to see what I can and should believe, while also keeping in mind that the information I read could be a red herring, since there are dangerous things at play in this universe that people don't want other people knowing about.
With that note, my brain decided to fully shit the bed and call it a day. I sat in the chair, trying to blink the exhaustion from my eyes.
Oak shared a look with Zorua. "I think you broke Red." Both old man and ancient pokemon giggled as I tried to piece my thoughts back together.
"I hate both of you. This world is stupid. Powers are stupid. Evolution is stupid. You both suck. I'm taking a nap."
I pointed at Myst.
"I don't know what your deal is, but you are absolutely allowed to fuck around with Oak as much as you want to." I stated, getting out of the lab as fast as possible.
"WAit. What? NO! Red I didn't agree to this! REEEDDD" I heard a voice wailing through the closing doors behind me.
Maybe not the best move to leave the ancient Zorua of untold power with the mad Professor, but I'm too tired to give a shit right now. Besides, I'm pretty sure Oak has a fucking Legendary, whatever Legendary means anymore, so he'll be okay.
That is no longer my problem. It is nap time.
Nap are make brain do better.
~~~~~~~~Starfall~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~Starfall~~~~~~~~~~
The black and white headset was tossed towards me. Effortlessly reaching out to the side, I snagged it out of the air.
"Uh… what's this for?" I asked Oak.
"You'll see. Try it on." Oak replied, pulling out a headset of his own.
The headset looked like something straight out of Ready Player One. Or maybe just a higher tech version of VR. The visor wasn't glass. In fact, there wasn't even a screen on the inside. What? I guess it's not some sort of virtual or augmented reality then. Then what was it?
"Oh yeah, you might want to sit down." Oak mentioned, strapping his headset on as he sat down.
I did the same. My confusion would fade pretty soon. I imagine that this will be pretty self explanatory if Oak decided not to explain first. Well, he could just be trying to be as cryptic as possible.
I slipped the headset on, and the world faded away.
And not just in a passive ignorance kind of way. The dull thrum of the air conditioning faded. The soft cushioning of the chair beneath my legs faded away.
I wasn't sitting anymore. I was standing.
I was standing on nothing, amidst an inky blackness of nothingness.
"Hello?" My voice echoed out.
I reached up to my head, hoping to take the headset off. Instead, I felt my skin. I reached up, feeling my hair.
Silky smooth. I had shampooed and conditioned it for the first time in months. Damn right it was soft as hell.
But why was my visor gone? Why was I standing? What was I standing on? Where was I?
A hand touching my shoulder made me jump.
"Heya Red. How do you like it?" Oak mused, apparently having changed out of his lab attire into a beach fit. His hawaiian shirt and khakis seemed out of place amidst the black surroundings.
Wait… there weren't any sources of light. Everything all around was completely black. Why could I see Oak, clear as day?
I checked my own clothing, noticing I now wore a green jumpsuit. A really ugly dark shade of green too. A simple zipper ran down from my neck to my crotch.
"What the hell Oak?" I asked, reaching down in a panic as I realized my pokeballs were gone. The only thing that met my prying fingers was the slick rubber of the jumpsuit.
"Why am I wearing this abomination?"
Oak laughed. He tapped on his wrist a couple times, his watch, and a display sprouted above it. It was like a hologram, extending far bigger than his watch.
I barely read any of the details, only seeing "Terrain", as Oak clicked through the displays with a practiced speed.
"You'll see. Meet me on the volcano!" Oak yelled, flying through the air like Peter Pan. It should have been comical. He looked ridiculous. But I didn't get the chance to make fun of him.
I was too busy trying to keep my balance as the ground grumbled at me. Mounds of dirt exploded out of nothingness. Plants, bushes, palm trees, rocks, and other kinds of nature's building blocks shot out like geysers.
I zigzagged around, dodging falling rocks. I had to dive to the side as a palm tree sprouted up from beneath my feet. After another couple seconds of dodging around for my life, the ground settled down. I finally got the chance to take a look around.
"Woah."
Where before there had been simply a dark expanse, an entire island had appeared.
I was on the beachfront, surrounded by plush palm trees, jagged rocks, bountiful ferns and vegetation.
I looked out to the glittering sea, unable to see the end. A plume of water shot up out of the middle of the ocean, the massive blue pokemon dropping back beneath the waves. A Wailord?
In the sky flew flocks of Pidgey, Spearow, and even a half dozen Rufflet.
It all looked, well, real.
I knelt down, feeling the coarse grains between my fingertips. I took a closer look, trying to make out the granular details. Every speck of sand was unique. I rubbed broken up pebbles and oddly shaped grains of sand between my fingers, trying to find a flaw.
Everything was perfect.
They could do this with their level of technology? They hadn't figured out the difference between grass and bug types, yet they had perfected… virtual reality?
Do I even call it virtual reality? I had to put on a headset, but I wasn't seeing an image through it.
I was actually here. Or at least I felt everything to a degree where an argument to the contrary would be semantics. I could feel the wind on my skin.
That was thousands of little bits of data that my nerves had to send up to my brain.
You couldn't do that with a fucking headset.
As far as I knew, as far as it mattered, I existed in this reality. Goddamn it Oak, you cryptic piece of shit. Couldn't you have explained your magical tech for at least a second before sending me in?
Right. Oak. He said to meet him at the top of the Volcano. Now where is that volcano.
Turning from the shore, despite how eye catching the washing of the waves was… I mean like come on. Water physics are not easy. Simulations of life accurate water take supercomputers, and this program was modeling an entire ocean.
With Pokemon in it.
What the actual fuck?
I shook my head. Back on task. Turning from the shore, I turned to see a lush forest blossoming out in front of me. Behind it, miles and miles away, I saw a smoking hole sitting on top of a gargantuan mountain, with trails of thick red liquid leaking out of the top.
What the hell Oak? Virtual reality is supposed to be fun! You're really going to make me trek for miles, and then climb a fucking fourteener?!
And in a really stupid green jumpsuit no less.
Finally, I noticed that the environment wasn't the only thing that had been conjured out of nothing. I now had a belt around said stupid green jumpsuit, with three shiny beautiful balls.
I immediately released all three, just to see if it would work.
To my left sprouted a stout red lizard. A horn was poking out the back of her head, and her claws were wicked sharp. Right in front of me was a small red and black fox, who had already gotten to work sniffing everything around him. Finally, to my right, was a large yellow and red dragon, crackling with electricity.
Myst narrowed his eyes as he sniffed me.
"I smell different?" I asked, not sure what he was letting on.
He cocked his head side to side. I was only half right then.
"I smell the same, but there's something else?"
Myst shrugged, as if to say close enough. He then turned around and went back to sniffing nearby objects.
Huh. Interesting. So this simulation could simulate smell well enough that Myst could recognize my scent. Wait… how did it even have my scent to begin with?
Azula watched me, her blue eyes sharp and attentive. Zuko did the same, his claws grasping the sand, ready for action.
"Alright team. It seems like you are yourselves. I would say that doesn't make any sense, but I feel like I'm myself, so it's not too much of a reach to say that whatever technology is doing this, is absolutely and completely bullshit."
Azula tilted her head to the side, confused. Zuko licked his lips, seemingly hungry.
I brought their attention to the Volcano. "There's our end goal. We've got a bit of a hike." I finished.
Myst grumbled. He wasn't a fan of cardio. Not to mention the thick forest filled with obstacles.
A black veiny pulsating orb appeared in front of his mouth. He turned towards the forest. Wait. No. His head was tilted up. He was aiming at the Volcano. The Volcano that was miles away.
The orb grew from the size of a grapefruit to a basketball. The raw power was sending out waves of air, sending sand flying all over the place.
Luckily, none of it got stuck to my clothes. I was wearing a slick rubbery jumpsuit, that happened to make all the sand slide off just fine. Did Oak anticipate this? Or was the jumpsuit purely for humiliation purposes, and this was just a happy accident?
The black orb in front of Myst raised into the air above his head, continuing to grow in size and power. It was swirling about at incomprehensible speeds, with dark particles oscillating dangerously within.
Then, something broke. The trees in the forest glitched, sawing in half and then sewing together. The waves behind me froze. Like a computer freezing. They actually looked like pixels, frozen in animation.
The ground shook, like an earthquake.
The simulation was breaking. I could feel Azula's panic as the ground began to give out. Large pits of sand started to collapse, dropping into nothingness below.
Shit shit shit shit.
If I die in here, do I die in the real world? Oak you piece of shit why don't you tell me anything important?!
Myst, stoic throughout all the chaos, continued to charge up his attack. He had absolutely no care for his own well being, let alone any of ours.
He hates cardio that much.
"Red!" I heard a voice, but it was muffled. I looked all around, but there was nobody near me. The ground continued to collapse.
"RED!" Another call, somewhat louder. But it still felt like they were trying to yell through seven layers of blankets.
Shit.
A quick recall got Azula, the red beam catching her right as the sand broke apart beneath her feet. I looked down into the sinkhole, seeing nothing but darkness below.
"RED!"
I lurched up.
Hundreds of sensations bombarded me at once. The bright lights. The loud thrum. Was that a train? No, it was the air conditioning. Beneath my legs was the padding of the chair, which I was sitting in once again. I was back in the lab.
Oak was shaking my shoulders.
I pulled the headset off my head.
"What the hell was that?" I yelled, throwing the headset at Oak. I didn't care if that shit was expensive. Inducing fucking 2012 on somebody who just got back to civilization is not funny.
Oak scratched the back of his head. "Honestly, I'm not sure. That's never happened before. The Porygon can handle hundreds of Zettaflops of data at once. I've never seen anything like it. Not since the testing phases, years ago."
The best supercomputer could process a little over 1 exabyte a second. To put it into perspective, flops(processing) and bytes(storage) have the same scaling. There were Gigabytes, then terabytes, then petabytes, then exabytes, and then zettabytes. Each was exponentially greater than the last. All of the information total on the internet barely totalled less than 50 zettabytes. Porygon could process thousands of zettaflops. Not store. Process. That was a ridiculous amount of processing power. Yeah, that could explain it.
Wait…
Everything started going to shit when Myst decided he wanted to destroy a Volcano. There's no way that…
Okay what the fuck kind of drugs was that puppy sized Zorua on?! If the Porygon could process hundreds of zettaflops, that means that Myst's attack accounted for more than that.
"Uh… Oak?" I asked, now even more worried about the tiny god sitting on my belt.
"Yeah?"
"How does the simulation model the pokemon? How does it know which moves they are using?" I asked.
"Well the porygon teams work with some rotom. Ghosts are notoriously talented in aura. Some very talented mediums can sense any pokemon from miles away. The rotom evaluate a pokemon's aura, and give that information to the porygon. That way, they can simulate the effects of what is supposed to happen when certain neuron's fire in the pokemon's brain. Pokeball tech makes this easier still, since their entire bodies, including their brains, are digitized for storage anyhow."
What. The. Fuck.
This was too many things. First off, groundbreaking simulation stuff. Next, apparently Porygon have broken levels of processing power. Like many many magnitudes greater than even the most advanced supercomputers that I knew of.
That alone could have won shitstorm news of the day.
Like there as so many revolutionary breakthroughs that could come from being able to process that much data. But besides that, how much leg room did they have for their processing ability? Were Porygon true AI?
Wait holy shit. He said Porygon. Porygon can do this. Not Porygon 2. Not Porygon Z. Did that mean those evolutions would be even more powerful? Or did Oak simplify all of the species down to the singular name.
And, moving on, even though I really don't want to, if I'm to accept all of that as fact, that means that whatever power Myst is capable of using, literally broke the simulation.
Whatever that attack was, despite being the size of a beachball, it accounted for EXABYTES of data. Breaking down matter to the very last atom wouldn't even account for that much data. Well, that depends on how much matter it was.
A lightbulb shot up in my head.
Wait.
What is the one thing that I knew of that could possibly account for that much data? Black Holes. That level of condensed matter moving at speeds that might even theoretically surpass the speed of light, that could do it.
If Myst can harness gravity on the same level as a black hole, that could explain a lot of his abilities.
Solid feeling illusions could be explained by manipulating gravity to manipulate the wavelengths of light particles.
Wait side note. If dark type energy is based around gravity, that explains why normal Zoroark create illusions by bending light. Myst is simply on another level.
If this is true, he must have to fine tune every single photon, changing up how he chooses, changing the wavelengths to get the image he desires, while also manipulating the atoms themselves to give the feeling of weight.
Being able to wield gravity is too theoretical. I struggle to conceptualize it. Could Myst really imbue that much control? Did he really create his own gravitational fields, sometimes on scales as small as atoms themselves, creating nets and webs to manipulate the world as he sees fit?
Gah.
This gives me a headache.
Too many things. I need water. I need sleep.
Oak turned back to me as I collapsed in my chair. He had turned away as he saw the gears turning, realizing that I might have a clue as to what broke the simulation.
"Did you figure out what broke it?" He asked.
"Yep. I think so." I responded, my tongue feeling dry and lifeless in my mouth. My eyes lazily looked over to meet the Professor in the eyes.
"Well, care to explain?" The idiot old man replied, eager to know what happened.
"Nope. Fuck off. I'll tell you tomorrow."
I'll let him know tomorrow. This is what he gets for being so goddamn cryptic all the time. Fucking hell, this was so much to wrap my head around.
I had work to do.