Chapter 18: Finals |
The Poké Balls in the case were bizarre. Actually, they were proprietary, the patent not yet lapsed. An endless thin finger stroked their webbed surfaces. Small plaques under each ball gave names as unusual as the balls themselves.
"These are the ones we recovered," Nilufer said. "Plus, of course, the canister of fuel."
"It's enough. It'll—it's enough."
"If I may be frank, I consider your anxiousness unwarranted. From my perspective, the obvious failure point is not our capacity to exert sufficient force. Instead, it's that we rely on Bill acting a certain way."
"He'll act." MOTHER's finger lingered, stopped on a certain ball, tapped it. "Bill's like me. A fanatic." Her head lolled and she laughed, bitter. "He might be the only one like me in the entire world."
Her words broke apart, wistfully, as she sank into her chair, limned by the light of Nihilego. Nilufer possessed line enough to her heart to know she thought about Aracely, and enough tact to let those thoughts wallow. The reprimand for Nilufer's failure had not been as severe as it might have been—partially because MOTHER needed her, and partially, Nilufer sensed, as surrender, a shrug similar to the settling of a corpse newly dead, an allowance for fate less malleable than the world itself. I'll never see her again, she had said.
"Nilu, I have—a confession to make. I have not been entirely truthful, in my sermons."
"Of course. There are necessary lies."
"When I opened that hole and looked out, at those other worlds... I said they were similar to ours, only dead. That they died recently or long ago, that the cause was, invariably, Pokémon. Either a single godlike creature or a species that spread like weeds. Worlds wrecked by twisted ripples of time and space, or worlds flooded, or worlds without water, or worlds with toxic air, or worlds where monstrous mouths sucked up anything with flesh. Remember?"
"I remember."
"I lied. Not every world was destroyed by Pokémon."
"I see."
"We encountered other worlds. Worlds with no Pokémon at all. There were other creatures, but not Pokémon."
Though Nilufer previously listened in calm, she became excited unexpectedly, even to herself. "That's amazing. No Pokémon at all? But these worlds were dead, too, yes? How did they end without..."
"Without Pokémon, the intellectual evolution of humanity changed course. The natural world produced few weapons, so they built their own, by means mechanical and scientific. To fight these weapons, they built stronger ones, and stronger, until finally their weapons were strong enough to destroy the world. Which they did."
Behind her veil, MOTHER set her gaze on Nilufer, and Nilufer reflexively looked down, at her own hands.
"I looked at these worlds in disbelief. Because what could it mean? That humanity was simply doomed, no matter what? That if Pokémon didn't evolve to end it all, humanity itself did? That we would always, in the end, become too successful for our own good? Fated suicide?"
"That... can't be true."
"The research we conducted to view these worlds, it required killing Pokémon. We had to kill them, cut them open, and harvest their blood. People don't know, or they know and don't see, but scientific research is like that. Vivisections, exsanguinations, decapitations: they create our pills, they pioneer our technology, they push our boundaries. They stimulate our intellectual evolution. I was willing to do it. It was easy to make myself callous, to harden my heart, knowing the sacrifices I made on the altar of progress would bring down rain. But—if that rain flooded the world—a twisted, ironic vengeance—"
The sentence ended abruptly with the suggestion of a conclusion never given.
"I don't know what's worse. Progressing to end the world or ending progress to prolong it. I want both, I crave both: eternal progress and eternal life. God Nilu, I want it all, grasped in my arms"—her unfathomable arms extended—"the things I cherish and hold beautiful, the things I love, there always with me, always the same, even as I work to make them different, greater, more beautiful—it doesn't make sense, this paradox, the paradox of motherhood. To cradle a baby, loving them for the potential they promise, the better version of yourself they'll grow to be, yet wanting them also to remain a baby forever, yours to nurture, yours entirely... a realized orb of mercy... You have no children. Perhaps you can't understand......... Anyway, I finally found one world that wasn't destroyed."
"With Pokémon? Or without?"
"Without. It had the weapons of mass destruction that destroyed the other worlds. But it survived, because it had those weapons... and chose not to use them."
"Why?"
"Harmony. They attained... harmony. There was no reason to fight. The world's peoples were at peace with one another, like our world, without the threat of another species taking our place."
Nilufer thought it over. "That's why you need Aracely."
"Exactly. That girl is smart, yes, and skilled. But what she's best at is seeing inside others. Understanding them. Controlling them, without them feeling like they're even being controlled. When we rip this world apart and flee to a new frontier, I need her—I thought I needed her—to ensure harmony, so our progress advances solely against the rigors of the natural world, not against ourselves. That is why I needed Aracely Sosa."
"I see," said Nilufer. "I'll go back to the Plateau. I'll get her, no matter what. If you only told me sooner—"
"No."
"No?"
"If she won't come willingly, it defeats the point... especially if she turns against me, as others have before."
"She has already turned."
"She's neutral now. Besides, when I asked you to bring her back, this wasn't what I was thinking about. I was weak. I simply wanted her, in my arms."
"But if we don't have her, how do we achieve this... harmony? Maybe you, MOTHER, may show your face to them, and with their love for you control them—"
"Ah. What a dream. I'm no fool who makes the same mistake twice."
MOTHER lifted. Under the veil her mouth smiled, a peaceful smile suggestive of calm, and Nilufer realized she was in another sermon now, that everything was arranged.
[No, we must ignore harmony, this impossible harmony, and do as evolution demands: find another way. Rage against the odds!]
"Ah... ah..."
[Consider: it's a miracle life exists at all. Even with an infinity of living worlds, there's an even bigger infinity of void. Planets upon planets inhospitable to microbes. That you, me, we exist is a one in quadrillion chance. Life's tendency toward evolution is its way of fighting those odds, fixing the match, transforming luck into fate. That's the key in our DNA—you cannot abandon it now. If evolution itself tends toward destruction, then embrace it all the stronger and evolve past our own fated self-oblivion!]
She spread her narrow arms; they shone.
[Cast aside your pathetic, anti-scientific fears of progress. Progress is life! If progress brings destruction, then progress again, to survive the destruction your own progress wrought. My children, I already know a way. Yes, I already know a way! There is a lifeform, I discovered, able to survive those weapons of mass destruction. If we only—]
She broke off with what Nilufer first thought was a cough, but revealed itself as a laugh:
"Ha, hahaha, hahaha! I don't need Cely. I need nobody. Myself—I've always been able to rely on myself, at least. I have faith in that!"
"Yes," said Nilufer.
"If I can't control others, I must only exert more control over myself."
Nilufer was about to say "Yes" again, but her earpiece chirped. She cupped a hand around her ear. Message from the front desk. Her face diminished.
"Someone's arrived."
"Who? Police? IPL agents? Their psychic bitch?" MOTHER gripped the edge of her desk. "They have nothing. No cause for a warrant."
"It's Toril Lund."
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Displaced from reality, Toril spent an indeterminate interval of time in the women's restroom trapped with emotions she failed to parse. One feeling bled into another. Was she sad? Mad? At who? Cely? Herself? Every moment of the battle replayed and she plucked apart errors, missed opportunities, inefficiencies to determine where blame lay but it always came to the ending. Her calculations were correct. Mawile won 99 times out of 100. So should she be mad at—fate? Luck? The world?
When the door opened and buoyant steps clip-clopped at her back she knew it was Cely. Why else did Toril linger in the restroom, than that she expected Cely to appear?
When she turned, though, a mishmash assaulted her. Only when the girl bounced to a sink and examined herself in the mirror did a name manifest: Iunno. Iono.
Toril turned to leave when Iono's voice knifed her in the back: "Hey-y-y."
She staggered. Her knees bent. She imagined herself walking downward, into the floor, until she disappeared underground.
"I have to—go—to sleep," she muttered, still moving.
"When you're dead, friendo! Wanna hear a hot tip? Totally exclusive! Not clickbait!"
"Nrnngh..."
"Book a ticket tomorrow. Paldea. Trust me, I'm in the know. It's not just Terastallization coming next year. They're findin' super duper cuh-razy new Pokémon in Area Zero. You gotta get on this before everyone else!"
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New Pokémon. The image of it: capturing, training, et cetera, it drained her blood onto the tile.
"I swear! Pokémon from the past and future. They're callin' em Paradox Pokémon."
Toril stopped. She hadn't been moving anyway. "The future?"
"Rightio. They're made of iron, like robots! Très chouette, non? Sugoi!"
"The future." That word trapped her. She kept thinking it until it broke apart into a meaningless collection of letters, then she thought it until it became real again. "The future. How?"
"Iunno!" Her accent rendered it identical to her name. "But they're mondo strong. Everyone next year will run em. Like the Ultra Beasts."
Unfit. "Why. Why tell me this?"
"We gotta get more consistent storylines," Iono said. "Everyone knows the key to content is consistency. People love to tune into their favorite streamer because they're always there. It's like seeing your friend every day! La vie quotidienne. We need trainers like that at this tournament, familiar faces. People don't get invested when it's a whole new crop every year. So haul your butt to Paldea pronto and keep ahead of the curve. I better see you at IPL 65!"
This world will end on October 12.
Cut. Toril in her hotel room. Lights off, ostensibly attempting to sleep, but she sat on her bed instead of laying down, and she wore the same uniform she battled in. Her Pokémon, though healed, refused to leave their Poké Balls. Incapable of comprehending fate and chance, incapable of comprehending Aracely Sosa, they thought their failure was their own. Heidi took it especially hard.
Maybe it was Heidi's fault, though. If she hit harder, Slowking fainted. Was it Toril who ascribed chance to what was, fundamentally, written within the biology of her Pokémon? When he gambled on bloodsport, her father sought a mathematics, an order or logic, that superseded fundamental randomness. In doing so he vivisected Pokémon to their physical components, strength and speed and defense. How exactly did Toril see the world?
Cut. Morning. Toril sat on her bed. Confusion turned a new trajectory. Did Sosa use her? Every interaction a mental manipulation? Friendship faked to comprehend a series of mental processes like the physical properties Toril used to comprehend her Pokémon? Did Toril, fundamentally, use her Pokémon? Were they not actually her friends, either? Was friendship possible?
Was it possible to know? Was it possible for it to mean anything or only possible for her to believe it meant something?
The phone rang.
For whatever reason Toril intuited this call to be the hotel kicking her out, so she answered. The receptionist told her someone needed to talk to her.
"I'll leave," Toril said. To Paldea? Why not.
"Toril?"
"I'll be gone in an hour."
"Do you remember me?"
The veil ripped. The voice sounded familiar, but. "No."
"I'm your brother."
"Oh. Right." She had brothers. Step-brothers. Much older. She'd seen them only a few times before she left home.
"It's awkward to call like this. Don't feel like you've got any obligation or anything."
"Right."
"Our father, uh, it's hard to say but, he died last night."
"That's"—awareness of the world returned. She grew suspicious—"a trick. He wants money."
"What? No, he's dead. They had me, uh, identify him."
"Like his cough. Everyone is"—Sosa—"everyone needs something from me."
The voice on the other end coughed too. It might be her father, disguising his voice. "He, they tell me he froze to death. He was walking home from, well, from the bar, and passed out in the gutter. The snow covered him up." Cough. "They're not sure if he passed out because he was, uh, drunk, or if it had something to do with this, sorta, poison wound in his side. They wanna do an autopsy. Anyway, you there? Anyway, you don't need to, come back, or anything. We all, we all had to put up with him, in our way. But if it's something you want, the funeral is—next week—October 12. I think Sunday."
Toril hung up. The phone didn't ring again.
Someone knocked on her door. "Tors? You there?"
Nothing.
Cut. Toril, carefully, crawled to the door. She found a card. Tors! I still want to be friends. Don't you?
What more did she want from Toril? All along, Toril could only rely on herself. She opened the window and escaped.
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Escape to where? Paldea? Kylind? Traps. Anywhere in the world was open, but no names came. Blundering about the Plateau, where everyone recognized her—still in her uniform—she came across the suspended tram down to Pewter. Nobody was boarding, so she slipped in before the doors closed. Why? To go to Bill's museum, to beg to use his machine?
The silence and the vista as the sun rose over the mountains calmed her. She made a logical assessment that shock and sleep deprivation caused her to think and act strangely. The idea that her father was actually dead seemed true, rather than part of an elaborate scam. Not that it saddened her.
As she tried to decide whether to go back and talk to Aracely, the billboard appeared. [Evolve yourself. RISE.]
Evolve herself? Her life philosophy. From childhood she warred against the innate baseness of her existence. No mentor taught her. Their voices her entire life said only: Unfit. In the wild she stood atop a peak and saw lightning writhe thick as veins. Malnourished, half mad, she dared them to strike her—they did not. Since then she believed in an order to the world, a logic, a design, a something, some inner mechanism, and that if only she became attuned to the mathematics by which it operated she might climb the bodies of the others. In isolated towns in northern Kylind, she scoured paltry libraries to affirm her thoughts and so learned about EVs, IVs, optimal movesets, innate physical capacities of various species. She sought powerful types, evolved them, evolved alongside them. With them she meditated by waterfalls, in forest glens, within serenity and turbulence, and learned from their bodies the world's inner workings. Creatures changed to fit the world, so from their shapes she saw the invisible forms against which they molded themselves. A battle was the same way, a line unseen but nonetheless preordained, leading to a final moment—an out—and the key was to see that out before you reached it, to discern it by the way the invisible line bent the Pokémon that participated.
In the end, Cely was the same. Except the line she saw bent the trainers, not their Pokémon. Toril recognized that, and so evolved herself to account for it. And it worked—until the line itself betrayed her. Until the inner mathematics of the world spat an outcome wholly, unfairly random: chance, not fate.
The RISE Health & Wellness Clinic was one of three notable buildings in Pewter City, the others being the museum and the gym. It was, Toril realized only when her feet took her toward its entrance, visible from everywhere in the city.
It was a giant—purple—cube.
Nowhere on its façade were the words Health & Wellness Clinic or even RISE. Only the upward-facing arrow that Aracely once wore as jewelry signified the building's intention. No other buildings were within one hundred feet, so it rose from a flat plane as though it once hurtled out of space and impacted with enough concentrated force to annihilate anything in a certain radius. After millennia the crater filled with silt and grass regrew, and now a field of flowers swayed around it, but a pulse of otherworldly radiation remained, urging subconsciously to keep away, for it was a thing neither to be touched nor trusted.
Toril approached the cube. All in this city was quiet.
Heavy doors opened onto a strangely modern lobby. An angled counter housed four robed secretaries with nothing to do except stare smiling as Toril entered. A room adjacent contained figures in yoga contortions on mats, as a smooth-voiced instructor exhorted them to "reach inside" for their "true potential." On a television, words faded into existence over clouds: [Have you ever believed there must be something... More?]
"Welcome," said the secretaries. "Please, come here."
Behind the counter, signboards indicated daily itineraries. 15:00—aerobics. 15:45—cardio. 16:30—pursuit of knowledge. 18:45—resistance training. 19:00—ANSWERS (meal 3). 20:00—healing. The next day promised a seminar on cancer.
"Have you lost yourself?" said one secretary.
"Do you wish to be stronger?" said another.
"Please, take these materials." A third handed over a stack of pamphlets and a printed book: DNA: The Unbroken Lines of History, by MOTHER. On the cover, lightning sprouted from a purple sky.
"This way." The fourth opened a divider in the counter and indicated a door. "You're just in time for the free screening."
"What is this place," Toril asked.
"This way. The screening will explain everything."
Toril glanced back. Two smiling robed people stood by the doors now. She almost laughed at the nakedness of the tactic. They underestimated Toril Lund's capacity to violate social faux pas.
Before she turned, though, all eight—eight now—of the robed people snapped to attention. From the doorway opposite the yoga room, someone she recognized appeared.
"Nilufer," said Toril.
"Toril," said Nilufer. "What a great honor to receive you. May I inquire as to the purpose of your visit?"
"You want to know if Cely sent me."
Nilufer kept her hands clasped, though it was impossible to see them because of her long sleeves. Anything might be concealed there.
"Would you come with me? Given you're a VIP, I'll give you a personal tour of the campus."
Toril's own hands rested casually—what she thought was casual—on the Poké Balls affixed to her belt.
"Sure."
"This way, please."
As she followed Nilufer through the door, Toril felt the line again. Her veins, lightning, DNA double helix. Wild fantasies of the next five minutes slideshowed across her aching eyeballs. The whiteness of the cube's interior grew dizzying as the doors brought her into a space of uncertain purpose, where the robed people inside immediately left upon their entry.
Nilufer stopped in the center, back to Toril. Ostentatiously vulnerable. "You seem tired."
"I slept bad."
"You haven't slept in days. You know, a healthy body is the first step toward a healthy mind, and vice versa. That's one of RISE's core tenets."
"What wisdom."
"How tempted are you by death, Toril?"
The question didn't sound real. "Huh?"
"When I heard you were here, I did think Cely sent you. She's far too good at getting people to do what she wants."
"Yep."
"But you came of your own volition."
"Who can say? Maybe I only think so. Maybe Cely mentioned something five days ago knowing I'd lose the battle on a one percent chance, knowing the loss would put me in such-and-such state of mind, knowing I'd then remember her words subconsciously and come to what I thought was my own conclusion. Playing to her outs."
"Her—outs?"
"A saying."
"I'm unfamiliar."
This area was all tile, all white, filled with a veneer of steam that only confirmed its existence in such belabored stillness. Notches in the walls for showers. No curtains. No indication of division by gender.
"I don't think that's the case anyway." Nilufer turned and pulled her sleeved arms apart to reveal two empty hands, which she held at her sides. "Maybe I can help you, though. Would you enjoy a massage?"
Defenses burst from the ground and sequestered Toril into an unassailable square.
"A—a what?"
"A massage," Nilufer repeated. "It's one of my skills as a human being."
"You're insane!"
"A steam bath and massage offer many therapeutic benefits. Relaxation, stress and pain relief, improved blood flow, lowered blood pressure, muscle repair, detoxification."
"This is—it's nonsense. What does this have to do with anything?"
"It's why you're here, isn't it?"
"For a massage? No."
"For connection." Nilufer's robes rippled. All air was warm. "For harmony."
"There's no such thing."
"For solace."
Toril's posture loosened. In her drowsiness she laughed. It was—it had to be—an attempt to distract. So when the knife lashed out—but there was no knife. Arms held outward and upward, Nilufer's sleeves rolled down veinless arms. Toril noticed pale crescent moon scars on each wrist.
"Are those..."
"It's common, here," Nilufer said. "Aracely has them too."
She too.
"Okay," Toril said. "What more do I have to lose?"
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She stripped herself bare, remembering the state of her body while the loose white robe contained her gelatinizing form within the sauna. Supposed relaxation was, in fact, a test of endurance, a heat dripping out her every pore, but one word of many—detoxification—consumed her brain and she imagined her spite escaping with the contaminated sweat and also the idea that Nilufer waited outside the cabinet door to bring down the knife and how apathetic Toril was to that thought. She swayed.
When Aracely gave her clothes Toril insisted on retreating to the bathroom to change, never an inch of herself revealed. Her body, Toril once thought, was an affront, and for others to view it the highest embarrassment. Seeing Nilufer's wrists, imagining Aracely's, her mindset changed: her body was still an affront, but a weapon she possessed even nude, even shed of her Pokémon.
As she lay facedown on the table, covered by only a strip of cloth, her head turned to her outfit—cleaned, pressed, folded—on a square object of no other discernable purpose, her Poké Balls and a pink card arranged atop. She waited for Nilufer to enter, to see the cataclysm of Toril's skin, the scars and blotches, the waves of purple from wounds poorly healed, the chunks of flesh missing. Her hands, spread on either side, with no gloves: fragments of fingers like stones of an ancient civilization rising out the sand. Grotesque and unseemly body hair, uneven because so many slices of her had been shorn off to the quick. This was Toril Lund. The her only she saw, the her that was worse than the her she actually showed. Both the creatures of this world and the world itself had bitten her, eaten parts of her. Dragon fangs or sharp rocks at the base of an incline, all the same. Relaxation? What remained to relax? Her own underlying form lost its order. No part of her surface remained according to natural design, unmodified by violent alteration.
She laughed when Nilufer came in. The room was so white—so faded by steam—and Nilufer herself so faded—anyone who came in here would be faded—except Toril, the human blot. Nilufer said nothing and Toril wished she detected perturbation, disgust, but while her laughter grew coarse and thorny Nilufer's oiled hands slathered Toril's back and shoulders.
"Here's evolution for you," Toril said. By the end of it she was crying, for herself, for the parts that remained.
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Afterward they let her go. She dragged herself and melted blobs of her remained in her wake, until she shambled onto a park bench and descended into a deep and dreamless slumber.