Chapter 3

  I wake up after God-knows how long and stare at the ceiling with wide eyes for a long minute. I look here and there and distinctly sense that I’m still not in my room!

  “No…”

  With some effort, I haul myself up. I’m heavy as ever, and somehow, that makes it worse. This is real. This is happening. A deep growl startles the hell out of me, but I quickly calm down when I realize that it’s my own stomach. My mouth is tasteless and dry, like it’s forgotten what food is.

  I’m on a tiny bed, not even a roll to either side and I’m kissing the floor. The blanket is thick though, and inside, I’m almost swelteringly hot. There’s a single light in the room I’m in, up above the headboard, but its so dim it might as well have been off – I can hardly see a thing.

  “Awake?” a tiny voice speaks, and a chill runs through me. “Awake?” it repeats.

  It’s coming from behind me.

  When I turn, there is nothing there – only the headboard and the wall right next to it.

  “Awake…” It’s coming from the ceiling now, and this time, I catch sights of it.

  “Aghhh!” I scream, yanking at the blanket and covering everything up to my nose.

  It’s a floating shadow with big, glowing red-on-amber eyes. In the low light, I can barely see it, save its faint purple wisps that toss around gently on its disembodied head.

  What fucking house of horrors am I in? First a giant tarantula, now this?!

  But hold on, it looks even more familiar than the yellow-furred arachnid. I know this thing! Slowly, I lower the blanket and let out a breath.

  “Misdreavus?” I whisper to myself in disbelief.

  I ogle at it, and it hovers closer to me. “H-hey! Don’t!” I don’t want that thing anywhere near me. Not until I know what it is – and probably not even then.

  It appears to understand me, because it stops approaching and wags its head gently, blinking slowly. Despite its unsettling appearance, my instincts aren’t blaring danger.

  “Doesn’t this light get any brighter?” I wonder out loud.

  The floating head decides to turn, and I quite clearly watch as it sinks into the shadowy wall, out of sight.

  I take the moment alone to crawl out of bed, wrapping a thin bedsheet around my still-naked self. It’s no longer so cold, and I decide to count my blessings. I’m alive and unhurt. The door to the room is in a straight line across from the bed, so I begin towards it slowly, gazing warily at the darker, pitch-black corners of the room. Was that Misdreavus-looking thing still here? Worse, what if another one of those tarantulas was lurking too?

  The room grows darker, and I shoot a glance at the low-light bulb above the bed – it’s now flickering, almost giving out. Without even debating it, I rush back to the only safe spot I have and get under the covers. The light stops flickering, buzzing slightly as it resumes a steady dimness.

  Not long after, there’s footsteps on the other side of the door, so I drop like a corpse and pretend to be asleep, my heart thumping all the meanwhile.

  *rattle* *rattle* the doorknob goes before a set of keys jingle and rasp into the lock. The next moment, the door opens wide.

  “Amerikan,” the voice of the crazy Japanese man says. He pauses there at the doorway and mumbles something in his language before flicking on a switch at the wall. The light on the wall above my bed flashes on and I flinch in surprise. Footsteps approach.

  My mind races with possible scenarios, debating whether I should try to overpower the crazy man – I’m bigger than him! – or keep pretending to be asleep.

  No extra points for guessing what I choose.

  *poke* a finger jabs at the back of my head, the only visible part of my body.

  *poke* he jabs again.

  “… Sure he’s awake?” The language he utters is perfectly clear and understandable – almost sounds like different person, but for some weird reason it doesn’t sound like English – yet it does. My brain cramps in confusion, and I squirm under the blanket uncomfortably.

  “Ooh!” the man gasps, then, reverting to his thickly accented English, he says, “Wake up! Wake up, Amerikan! He-ey! Come on! You sleep five days! Five!” He is shaking me by the shoulders, and not gently either.

  When I sluggishly pretend to start moving, he grabs a handful of my hair and yanks once.

  The impatience! I finally yell out in pain and sit up quickly.

  It’s the Japanese man alright, still wearing his cracked shades and all. He’s got that same amused and bewildered look he had when he saw me in the glass jar thing. His eyes aren’t quite looking into mine, but slightly above them, like I’ve got something on my head.

  My hand reaches up to my forehead and I feel something I haven’t felt since I was a kid; bangs of hair. The other hand soon follows and I’m running my fingers through a thick mangle of hair which is undoubtedly mine.

  The man cracks a toothy smile and nods as if in agreement.

  “What the …” I pull a bang down to eye-level and scrutinize.

  “You change faster, faster,” Japan man observes.

  I feel a headache coming. This is too much…

  “How long was I out? …”

  Japan man blinks as if the question has baffled. “Five days,” he says, holding up his open hand.

  “But it can’t be…” Some knot is tightening in my throat. I feel like desperately knowing what’s happening to me. I feel like yelling.

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  “Five days, Amerikan!”

  I take a deep breath and sigh. “Who are you…”

  “Oh-yah!” Japan man dusts off his black lab coat and adjusts the ridiculous shattered glasses on his face. Still holding the frames, he says, “Sugimori Tajiri…”

  I shoot him a look. “Tajiri… Sugimori… aren’t those the creators of Pokémon?”

  I’ve done it now. Hit a nerve or opened a can of worms, because Japan man’s expression darkens, and behind me, a tiny voice screams, “Yiiiaahhhhhh!”

  I jerk in fright and whirl back in time to see that thing! That Misdreavus-thing! It flies straight at me, straight through me, and an ice-cold chill tickles at my lungs. I cough like a smoker with 3rd stage lung cancer, but manage to turn back to Japan man, who is still eying me with palpable disdain.

  “Oe, oe…” he mutters, but I’m way more interested in the dark, smoky phantom.

  “Misdreavus!” Lights are on and there is no denying it. It looks exactly like the pokémon, Misdreavus.

  Japan man clears his throat and tries again, “Oe, oe…”

  I point at Misdreavus, who is now floating next to him and giving me a similarly bad evil eye. “Isn’t that thing a Pokémon?!” I cry out.

  Japan man has had it. He stamps his foot down and screams, “Oe, oe!!!”

  When I stay silent, he backtracks, de-escalating a tad. I think I was interrupting something cool he wanted to say.

  “Pokémon… has… NOUUU,” he says, putting great emphasis on ‘no’, even slowly waving his arms, “… creators!”

  I nod slowly. “Ok?”

  He seems pleased. “Yess… NOUUU,” he waves his arms again, “Creators…”

  I nod again. “Ok, no creators.”

  “Good, Amerikan. Good.” He thumbs up. He’s so weird. I don’t even understand what he means, but it’s best if I don’t make the only other relatively normal-looking person angry.

  “Come!” He flicks his hand for me to follow and leaves through the open door. Misdreavus stares at me a little longer but soon turns to follow. Wrapping myself in a bedsheet, I step barefooted after them.

  The corridor outside my door is well-lit with similar warm lamps running along the ceiling. We must be underground somewhere, because this looks like a mine. The walls are smooth but with many little contouring lines that leave me perplexed as to how they were built. I don’t think they were even built but probably carved out by some machine or countless years of erosion. It makes little sense.

  “Where are we?” The corridor resounds with my voice.

  “My house, Amerikan!” Japan man replies. What did he say his name was? Sugimori?

  “Your name is Mr. Sugimori?”

  His footsteps send light echoes throughout the corridor. “Come!”

  Misdreavus looks over and I could swear that it pulled out it’s tongue at me!

  Mom…

  For her sake, I hope this is all just a crazy dream, because if it isn’t, then I’m definitely dead.

  We arrive back in the room I remember, with monitors, mainframes, all the strange equipment, and the glass jar, still suspended over the spot I magically appeared in. The memories all come back to me as if only minutes had passed since then.

  Sugimori takes me to the larger monitor by the mainframes and switches it on. I’m looking around the room all over, searching for that massive, dangerous-looking tarantula.

  “Sit.” Sugimori rolls a wheeled chair over to me. I sit. He clicks away at the mouse and within the next few moments, a sheet of data appears on the screen, looking kind of like a Word document.

  There is a name I quickly recognize. Zuqimori.

  “Y-You’re Zuqimori?!” I am aghast. “The ROM hack! SOS!?”

  Japan man is smiling and in that instant, another memory flashes in my mind.

  The stars. The space. Travelling at lightspeed. The other being. It’s him!

  I feel repulsed and afraid, not in any rational way, but more instinctual. This guy had tried to replace me! That’s what I had sensed in that nano-second moment; That something terrible had been done to me.

  “Pokémon… Brightstar!” Zuqimori bows. “My biggest failure.”

  “You mean…” I mutter, unsure of what to say next. “You mean this is real?”

  Zuqimori turns to the monitor and scrolls down. “I am real, Amerikan, so you must be real.”

  I see movement out of the corner of my eye and finally get a glimpse of the tarantula. I turn on my chair to face it. “What is that thing!”

  Slap!

  Zuqimori has just socked me round the back of the head. “Watch your manners Amerikan… you are not in Kansas anymore.”

  Saying that line seems to fill Zuqimori with pride, and he breaks out into a short bout of self-absorbed laughter. “Ohhhh, what pleasure, Amerikan, to finally have homie here with me. Do you know how much lonely I have been??” He puts his shattered glasses on the table and takes a second to savor the moment.

  “In this warld, nobody speaks Engrish. NOU-WAN speaks Japanese. Only me.”

  “What do you mean this world…”

  Zuqimori stares at me in the eye and he can’t help but smile. He ignores the question and turns back to the monitor.

  “Your favorite pokémon… Heracrossu…” As he reads, he shakes his head with a grin.

  “Strongest pokémon type… Norumaru… Funny, funny Amerikan.”

  I realize these are the answers I submitted on the Brightstar set up. I lean towards the screen and read silently.

  “Your knowledge of pokémon – 2007… Diaruka, Parukia… Aruseussu.”

  “Giratina…” I mumble, and Zuqimori replies with his surprised “Ooohh”.

  “You are not very stupid.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You are welcome, ah.”

  I steal another glance towards the tarantula, but it’s nowhere in sight, I shift left and right slightly, trying to find it, but Zuqimori continues reading, bringing my attention back to the monitor.

  “You played pokémon in hobby style and compete only for fun.” He shakes his head again. “In different words – you are a hobbit. Undisciplined and lazy.”

  He’s not wrong about those last two things, I guess, but calling me a hobbit when he’s barely 5 feet tall is so provocative. The years I spent being bullied have trained me to take abuse on the surface, so hey, I guess he’s also wrong about the second thing. My discipline lies in taking abuse.

  “Hwa! … Hwa!” he barks with laughter. “Jamaican. This one is too funny when we first read, not so Missy?”

  Misdreavus makes a noise like a cat trying to talk. Its eyes are closed and smiley as it performs a slow twirl through the air.

  “Leave it to an Amerikan to fail this question… Hwa!”

  “I’m not American, actually.”

  Zuqimori breaks out into full blown laughter. “Ohh, you are really Jamaican?”

  “I’m Canadian… From Canada?”

  The smile is wiped off his face, but only for a moment.

  “And I’m not Asian – I’m Japanese!”

  I sigh and roll my eyes. I start feeling impatient, and the tone of my voice becomes more demanding.

  “Alright, where am I?” I stare into his eyes with all the backbone I can muster. “What is that thing, and what the hell is going on?” I say with a nod at Misdreavus.

  Zuqimori meets my gaze, and I know that he knows that I’m as serious this time. The humor leaves his face, and he puts his cracked glasses back on.

  “My friend, we are in Zeria Ruins, Unova.” He pulls away and reaches for Misdreavus, caressing her ghost-like form. “The warld of Pokémon welcomes you, Amerikan. I have spent more than two decades here, feeding data to the warld you come from... My countrymen have abandoned me here…” He pinches the bridge of his nose, a feeling I know well, and grinds his teeth.

  “All pokémon games you know come from here… come from me! I am the one collecting all of the data. I am the one sending back! I am the one trapped on this side with no way home!”

  I’m frowning, mouth slowly opening.

  Zuqimori makes a fist and shakes it. “But I will escape! I will return home! There must be a way!”

  “Brightstar…”

  “Yes! That was my chance! My chance! But you… you… You were too fat! I bounce back here!” He’s getting worked up again, but the revelation is both sickening, and in some pit of my heart, thrilling.

  “Pokémon has no creators…”

  “No creators!” Zuqimori affirms. “All of it is based on real data I have collected. Interviews, spying, studies, romancing pretty woman, television… !!! And still they ask for more! It never ends.”

  “Who asks for more?” I feel like we’re finally getting somewhere.

  “Satoshiii!!!” Zuqimori howls with anger. “Ken-nuuu!!!” Misdreavus joins in, harmonizing with the crazed man in comical fashion. “Futari tomo koroshiteyaru!!!”

  When he calms down, he brings me my own XXXL lab coat and a pair of jeans he bought for me while I was unconscious. When I saw myself in the mirror, my knees almost gave out. I had felt my hair, but actually seeing a full year's worth of growth was bizarre. My eyes too, seemed a lighter shade than normal. I was still fat, but my skin looked rosier than the sickly pale I was used to. I was drastically different, and I still did not believe that only five days had passed.

  There were still so many questions that needed answers. For one, what was I going to tell mom?

  …

  Could I even tell mom?

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