Date: December 10, 1995

  Location: Indigo Plateau – Meeting Room 3F

  Samuel Oak had always loved the way the Indigo Plateau caught light in the spring.

  Today, though, the windows were shuttered. The air in Room 3F was cool and sterile, filtered through humming ducts above. Only the soft click of Lorelei’s pen broke the silence as she took notes from her seat near the back.

  She was young—barely into her twenties—but already sharper than most league strategists twice her age. That’s why Oak trusted her to record the proceedings. This was not a press conference. It was not public. Not yet.

  This was a threshold.

  Across the polished conference table, three visitors from Hoenn sat in a measured crescent. Norman Maple, Gym Leader of Petalburg City, and Professor Birch of Littleroot Town represented the Hoenn League. Seated beside them was Joseph Stone of Devon Corporation, the region’s leading voice in technological innovation and Hoenn’s foremost advocate for cross-regional development.

  From Indigo, Champion Pryce sat nearest to Oak, with Professor Elm just behind him, still sorting his notes. Lorelei sat quietly at the end, pen poised, recording everything with precision. Bill’s face flickered softly on the holoscreen to Oak’s right, joining from Ecruteak via secure Porynet link. “Let’s begin,” Oak said, folding his hands.

  To his left, Pryce shifted slightly in his seat. The man never fidgeted. But Oak had worked beside him long enough to recognize the flicker of discomfort—controlled, but present.

  The current Champion was a glacier by nature: slow to thaw, but unshakable once he moved. Convincing him to support this expansion had taken months. And even now, Oak could feel the weight of his caution.

  “Thank you all for coming,” Oak said. “This meeting is informal, but the consequences are not. What we discuss today may determine how our two regions connect—not by land, but by thought.”

  He turned to his right. “Bill?”

  Through the screen, Bill Sonezaki looked exhausted, as usual—hair a little disheveled, eyes underslept—but there was energy in him. Bright, nervous, excited energy. His Porygon2 hovered behind him in frame, quiet and bobbing slightly.

  “Good to see everyone,” Bill said, voice tinny through the speaker. “Apologies for not being there in person. I’m currently recalibrating a Storage Hub in Ecruteak. We had a packet sync delay at node 73, and, well—you know how it is.”

  “Not really,” muttered Pryce under his breath, loud enough for Oak to hear. Lorelei’s pen scratched the comment down anyway.

  Joseph Stone, seated just across the table, gave a polite nod. He looked immaculate in his navy-gray suit, Devon Corp’s lapel pin gleaming under the light. Mid-forties, sharp-eyed, and clearly alert despite the early meeting hour.

  “Mr. Stone,” Oak said, “Devon has expressed interest in regional collaboration. Would you like to share your questions before we move into proposals?”

  Stone steepled his fingers, then gave a short nod.

  “Our interest is sincere. The Porynet’s technical documentation is… impressive. Our engineers flagged a few concerns, of course—standard compatibility issues—but there’s one subject we’d like clarity on.”

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  He tapped the datapad in front of him.

  “Metagross. Specifically, whether a neural-parallel species like it could safely interface with Porygon infrastructure.”

  A pause.

  Oak turned slightly. “Elm?”

  Professor Elm, seated near Lorelei with a small stack of folders on his lap, sat up straighter.

  “Well—it’s not just about the signal format,” Elm said, voice tentative but earnest. “Metagross uses a quad-core psychic matrix. Four brains. Operating simultaneously. If we introduce them directly to a linear lattice like the Porynet…”

  He hesitated.

  “There’s a risk of recursive loop. The system might adapt too slowly, or Metagross might over-adapt—flooding the network with parallel routines.”

  “So, is that a no?” asked Norman, the younger of the three Hoenn representatives. He hadn’t said much since the meeting began—just quietly taking notes. Stoic, polite, unshakeable.

  Elm shook his head. “No. Not a no. Just a maybe—if we don’t account for it.”

  “Which we can,” Bill cut in from the monitor. “We’re already building adaptive relays into Indigo’s northern towers. Modular sync rhythms, designed for staggered cognition. If Metagross can learn the signal, they can anchor it.”

  Oak nodded. “Exactly. We’re not proposing Metagross replace Porygon. Just that they might serve as stabilizers. Structural guides. Not inside the flow, but beside it.”

  Birch, seated beside Norman, scratched his beard. The field ecologist was younger than Oak expected—barely thirty—but already known for his work cataloging wild Pokémon behaviors in Hoenn’s outback. He hadn’t stopped smiling since the presentation began.

  “So, essentially…” Birch leaned forward, “...Metagross would be… border guides? Scanning the outer framework, keeping the structure intact while Porygon manages the actual transfers?”

  “Yes,” Oak said. “Or rather, that’s what we’re exploring. Right now, it’s a theoretical framework. But with Devon’s neural architecture models, we could begin testing as early as summer.”

  Stone gave a slow nod. “We’ll need a full review of your sync protocols. But I’ll admit—it’s promising.”

  Norman looked over. “The Hoenn League will want a formal summary for the decision-makers. Security thresholds. Oversight controls.”

  Lorelei scribbled quickly. “Noted.”

  Oak turned slightly, regarding Birch again.

  “You seem less hesitant than your colleagues,” Oak said.

  Birch smiled. “Oh, I am hesitant. But not about the tech.”

  He gestured at Bill’s Porygon on the screen.

  “I saw the reports. Your unit learned to emulate emotional tone from casual observation. It hums to itself now. That’s not code. That’s something else.”

  Bill gave a half-smile on screen. “I didn’t program that.”

  “No,” Birch said. “You raised it.”

  Silence. Lorelei paused, pen hovering over her pad.

  “That’s why I’m here,” Birch continued. “Because if what you’ve built is more than infrastructure—if it’s a shared language—then I want to make sure Hoenn learns to speak it properly.”

  Oak felt a quiet swell in his chest.

  This, he thought, was the moment.

  Pryce cleared his throat. Oak turned.

  “I want to make something clear,” Pryce said, his voice calm but heavy. “I did not support this project in the beginning. Not fully. I believed it moved too fast. Dismissed too much of the old way.”

  He glanced around the room, then toward Oak.

  “But I’ve seen what it can do. What it’s done. Just last month, we had a power station near Cerulean short out during a heat spike—almost collapsed the whole northern grid. In under three minutes, we routed the right Ground- and Electric-types from four different cities. The system matched needs, coordinated arrivals, and stabilized the station before it failed. Before the Porynet, that would’ve taken hours. We would've had casualties. That day, we didn’t.”

  Pryce folded his arms.

  “I may be Champion, but I’m not the future. This—” he gestured to the monitor, the data, the silent Porygon still hovering in frame “—this might be.”

  Bill’s Porygon pulsed a quiet blue. As if it understood.

  The meeting adjourned just after noon.

  Agreements weren’t signed, but hands were shaken. Notes were stored. And in Lorelei’s quiet records, the first line of the final paragraph read simply:

  “Hoenn came not to challenge—but to listen.”

  As the delegates filtered out, Oak lingered.

  He looked at the screen one last time. Bill’s image had flickered out. But the Porygon remained for a moment longer—hovering. Watching.

  Then, with a faint shimmer, it vanished into light.