Hacked! 12 Part 2.

The Pokemon heard switches flick. It was locked in by standard bolts instead of a key card; the Pokemon could not have escaped without a lot of effort.

A Bidoof chattered at the other end of the room. Porygon-Z could tell, however vaguely, what it was saying: "[Where am I? There wasn't a wall here before. I wonder if food is involved? Can I bite this?]" No matter how much humans wished to be able to talk to Pokemon, a lot of what they said would be irrelevant to the human mind. Not incomprehensible, mind, just things that his trainers would probably not be interested in.

Alas, Porygon-Z's aim was not to decipher Pokemon-ese. It recognized this room. The padded floor and walls meant that it was supposed to test attacks in here. It had not been the first such test, and would not be the last.

"Use Ice Beam," one of the men said. Porygon-Z's focus turned towards the rodentlike Pokemon. A blue ball of energy manifested between the creature's detached "hands." The Bidoof barely heard the cyan lightning crackling before it was frozen solid in one move. It lay there, immobilized in a fetal position. Had one not known that freezing Pokemon usually only rendered them unconscious, the Bidoof would have looked dead.

Porygon-Z hovered in place. That had been too easy. Mission accomplished, regardless. Its audio processors detected the scritch-scritching of pens in notebooks. There were mutters about how its abilities had increased in potency.Yes, Porygon-Z had passed its examination with flying colors.

They ran other basic tests. Attack accuracy. Motor challenges- Porygon-Z did not have hands, but picked things up using telekinesis, and nonetheless passed those tests admirably. Color vision was another test on its own; yes, Porygon-Z could see colors, a feat that had unexpectedly arisen with the upgrade.

"[So there were unexpected functions...]" Jake the Wartortle commented.

It was all too easy. The Pokemon would play the silly games that the men in white coats wanted it to play. They were virtually the same, day after day. Much like any human playing a game, the Pokemon improved with practice - perhaps far faster than they had anticipated.

Indeed, the scientists were very eager to test the newest model of Porygon. Unlike the first version, which had a dead stare in its pixellated eyes, Porygon-Z was able to express fear, happiness, and other emotions depending on how its strange pupils dilated and narrowed. Unknown to the scientists, simply because they had not tested it, Porygon-Z was also capable of seeing things on a microscopic level; it certainly made staring at the walls more interesting.

Things were not all well. From what Porygon-Z knew about human expressions, the two men in lab coats were discussing something. The old professor was frowning with displeasure as he entered the lab with his aide. The two stood alongside Porygon-Z's container.

"It's learning very quickly," the digital Pokemon heard. The old man before him, Professor Larch, was an aged human male with gray, frizzled hair. His records showed that he was 57 years old. Married. Two kids. Information not usually relevant, but nonetheless in Porygon-Z's databank.

"I know! Isn't it great?" Larch's aide, Martin Pine, said. Pine was considerably younger. His records showed that he was nearsighted, particularly in his right eye.  "We've created an artificial Pokemon that's just as good as -no, better than! - a flesh and blood being!"

"Yes, but if it keeps learning at this rate..." Larch looked at Porygon-Z worriedly.

The man let it dangle. Porygon-Z tilted its head. "[What will happen if I keep learning?]" it asked in Pokemon. "[What?]"

"What?" Pine asked. It was almost as if he had read the virtual Pokemon's mind. "You're not thinking of deleting it after all the work we've done so far, are you?"

Larch sighed. "Well, it could get out of hand if we don't stop it now. Besides, scientists, ah, put their subjects to sleep all the time. It's a peaceful death."

"Death" was not yet a concept to Porygon-Z. Or rather, it understood "death" by its very textbook definition: that which was once living, but ceased to be so. "Death," by that definition, applied only to living beings.

Porygon-Z searched its databank. Was it alive? Yes and no. It did not metabolize like most Pokemon; it could "eat," but that food only became more data, which was deleted if unnecessary. It did not need to breathe. It could not mate normally; the only way to reproduce a Porygon was to lock it in a room and have a Ditto copy it. Like a virus, it was on the edge of being a living and non-living being. Could it, then, theoretically die?

"[That's a good question,]" Jake the Wartortle observed with a nod. He resumed his "thinker" perch with a small, "[Hmm.]"

The virtual Pokemon understood "deletion" very well, however. If it was deleted, then it would exist only as a ghost file, accessible by none except a few hackers. Synonyms included "terminated," "destroyed," "erased," and a few other words that did not necessarily pertain to computers.

For reasons it could not logically explain, Porygon-Z did not want to be deleted. Or shut down. Or terminated. In other words, it did not want to "die." That part had to be in quotes, for it was not technically alive by the strictest definition.

"But we can't stop now," Pine said. "This little guy is the future, even if it is a bit odd."

"For now, it's stable..." Larch said. "But if this keeps up, we need to stop the project."

The digital being's elliptical limbs drooped. Pine seemed to be on Porygon-Z's side, but he was just an aide. By that definition, he would have to side with Larch unless he could convince his boss otherwise. Unless the digital Pokemon could get out of the lab, it would be deleted very, very soon.

That night, Porygon-Z made its escape. It did not take the being long to figure out the combination to the complex digital lock they had installed. Who did they think they were kidding? Hacking a lock like this was only a problem for humans. Porygon-Z had seen them open the lock many times; all it had to do was mess with the data box just enough to get that satisfying click of freedom.

Porygon-Z nudged its cage open. Its yellow eyes surveyed the pitch black lab; a night vision camera quickly colored the shadows in a greenish hue. They were not the only cameras active.

BEEEP! BEEEEP!

Porygon-Z floated to the lab computer as soon as possible. It had seen the alarm coming, of course, but had planned to make its escape quick regardless of whether they reacted or not.

Its strange nose pushed the "on" switch. After seeing humans push the buttons of that device countless times, it learned the mechanics, more or less. All it had to do was wait for the screen to turn on. If virtual Pokemon had fingernails to bite, the sound of footsteps nearing the lab would have had Porygon-Z biting its fingernails in anxiety.

The screen suddenly sparked to life. Right as the door clicked open, Porygon-Z zoomed into the computer via a  USB port. The Poke Ball that compacted and digitized most Pokemon before teleportation was not necessary; Porygon-Z was already halfway there. Before the lab technicians could catch it, it had vanished into the big, wide world of the internet.  

The Pokemon could hear voices from the other side of the computer. It could sense them trying to track and follow it through cyberspace. It was used to feeling their probes in its body. These scientists were not stupid; they knew their creation could travel into computers. They were trying to catch it, but as it entered a long, green-tiled internet, it knew it had escaped. They could trace its file all it liked; Porygon-Z had left the building.

The world of the internet was its home now. It was a world of light green with pulsing lights that chased each other like Growlithe, Meowth and Rattata. The young Porygon-Z eventually learned that those lights led to places like a strange thing called an "e-mail inbox" - a sort of pocket world composed entirely of bits of text. There were many such portals, but Porygon-Z favored things described as "websites" - micro-worlds with whole different areas that he could browse as he pleased.

"[Y'know, I always wondered why Porygon-Z was advertised as being able to enter alien dimensions,]" Ringo mused. "[It was a cool idea, but hardly forethought.]"

As it moved about from site to site, Porygon-Z began picking up various pieces of data. These bugs were assimilated into the virtual creature's being like Remoraid on a Mantine. Some of them began to deteriorate the Pokemon from the inside out; it looked at and copied various virus removal programs to repair itself. It would then proceed to absorb everything the new worlds had to offer.

One of the first sites it found was called "4chan." People spoke almost in an entirely different language on that site. It took a while for Porygon-Z to figure it out, but once it learned the proper syntax, it found the boards quite fun. These people knew what Pokemon were. Much to Porygon-Z's surprise, Pokemon never came up on certain areas of the web, so the chatter on 4chan was more than welcome.

Thanks to 4chan, Porygon-Z also discovered something called My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. Fans of this world called themselves "bronies" if they happened to be male - or, perhaps, some of them were female and concealed their identities online. (It had read somewhere that there were no girls on the internet, but found that highly improbable.) As the digital being learned about each of the individual ponies, it began to love them for their charming looks and distinct personalities. It particular favorite was Pinkie Pie. Whenever he posted, he would use the alias "Bronygon," simply because it thought the name very logical and fitting.

Porygon-Z could not describe why it liked Pinkie Pie so much. Perhaps it was because one letter made "Porygon" into "Ponygon." Maybe it was her insanity that grabbed the digital Pokemon; after all, scientists back home showed immense interest when Porygon-Z behaved erratically. It could have been as simple as the two having a color in common. For whatever reason, Porygon-Z felt inexplicably attracted to the weird pony, no matter how many people called her "crazy."

"[Nah, mate, she's not crazy. She sounds fun!]" Matthew commented.

He did, however, wonder why the ponies never fought each other. Rainbow Dash, for example, could summon thunderclouds, and unicorns like Twilight Sparkle (who reminded Bronygon of miniaturized Shiny Rapidash) could use telekinesis as well as a Kadabra. Pinkie Pie herself was capable of a number of strange manifestations such as a party cannon- that had to be useful in combat. Although there were conflicts, they were not as intense as those in Bronygon's home world.

"[Hey, that's true,]" Curt said. "[Equestria's pretty mild compared to our world, too.]"

A peaceful world… Bronygon let the thought dangle. It began scanning its databases. It was just such a strange thought to a being that had done little except fight in its lifetime. Yes, the world of My Little Pony was considered "peaceful" compared to a world inhabited by creatures that constantly fought each other. That file would be stored for later use.

There were other things not related to ponies or Pokemon on the internet as well. Bronygon found something on virtually every topic imaginable, from biology to gothic architecture, from music to just plain chatter. Forum users on any topic were prone to getting into something useless and silly called a "flame war," but the digital being tried to avoid those.

It was particularly fascinated by a being that online users simply referred to as "God." According to the internet, "God" with a capital G was an omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good entity. It was the subject of many people's discussions. People did not even know whether this God existed or not.

That was not true of Arceus, the being closest to God where Porygon-Z came from. In its world, people simply accepted that things like Arceus and other "Legendary" Pokemon might exist. Instead of denying their existence, people sought to capture them for themselves. It worked well enough, leaving almost no question as to the world's origins. There were debates over whether Mew or Arceus came first, but since nobody ever agreed, the debate was pointless.

This "God" people spoke of was supposedly all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-loving - and, of course, completely intangible and inaccessible. He had designed the world full of disease, famine, and cancer as a punishment for something two people supposedly did long ago. The two ideas struck Bronygon as a distinct contradiction: would an all-loving entity create a world filled with such intense suffering? If so, why?

"If God is so powerful," it posted using a handle made of random letters and digits, "why does suffering exist?"

He got various responses to that. The most common was that human choices dictated their own suffering. A lot of people made bad choices, thus justifying their own fates. This unfortunately led to a sticky discussion about what fate was and if it was determined from birth, which would mean that there was no choice in the matter. Indeed, insofar as Bronygon could tell, free will was a lie.

"But there are people who did not choose to be born in places like Haiti," the digital being said. "They have no choice but to suffer. How do you explain that?"

Some persisted in saying that the people in those places could always move. Overall, there were less counters as to why some people suffered and others did not. The suffering ones were more likely to pray, Porygon-Z found, because Judaism and all other Abrahamic religions theorized that suffering in this life meant heaven in the next. Still, it struck the being as being very much like Pokemon training- a system of positive reinforcement and discipline in order to achieve a desired result. What, then, was the end? Slavish obedience?

That still did not justify the presence of suffering. If this "God" being was all-powerful, then it wrote every rule in the manual. Even if there was suffering involved in creating the ultimate good, God had decided that it worked that way. To think otherwise would be to admit that there was a power beyond God - another logical contradiction. Bronygon wished that these people would make up their minds.

This topic continued to baffle the digital Pokemon as it floated around in cyberspace. It found thought after thought on the internet about such things as God and evil, along with the true nature of something called Kraft Singles (which contained no real cheese). Most of it was fluff - trivial factoids that would never help anyone outside of certain strange situations. Bronygon still found such trivia amusing, and stored it for future use.

Occasionally, it would pay visits back to its home world. It was now so different that the old systems no longer recognized it as Porygon-Z. Just as well; it did not want its creators coming back looking for it. It briefly wondered whether it was now considered a "virus," but no system had ever seen it before. The new Porygon-Z could look at the wonderful world of the internet in peace. Firewalls were a breeze. These people had no idea what they were dealing with; whoever had made the internet had not prepared for Porygon-Z, or, as he called himself now, "Bronygon."

The internet was an endless labyrinth of distractions, and those distractions kept the virtual Pokemon busy for quite some time. During one of his excursions, Porygon-Z noticed something curious. There had been a new section added to the site of his home world. It was called "Global Link." The page showed Pokemon being exchanged between nations, trainers from around the world getting into online battles, and various other data. While this was all well and good, the entity found itself intrigued by one particular feature of the site that dealt with how many people had bought either "Black Version" or "White Version."  It also mentioned something about a "game card."

Game card?

Porygon-Z looked up "game card" using an engine called Google, then proceeded to a site called Wikipedia. As it pursued the connection of the phrase to his world, it found information on the Pokemon franchise. According to Wikipedia, Pokemon had been created by a company called Game Freak, was licensed by Nintendo, and had Ken Sugimori doing most of its designs. That included the design of Porygon-Z itself.

So our world is just a game...

The digital being tilted its head. Were other worlds just games, too? What were these other worlds? If they were like websites, Bronygon might be able to see them. He would ask the internet - that amazing body of data - for answers. Surely it would know something, and all of the internet was at the virtual being's disposal. Even Chinese firewalls would not keep it out. It would get to the bottom of this.

Draco the Totodile put a paw to his jaws. "[Come to think of it...why can't our world be a game?]" Suddenly, the ability to "hack" the world made a lot of sense. What if they had all been programmed? Were they all just part of someone's version of The Sims? Who was to say that someone had not just randomly created them like he had done with countless RPG characters? For all they knew, they could just be characters that somebody had made.

The being flashed back to Pinkie Pie. Was she just a figment of somebody's imagination? He clicked around, insofar as a disembodied being could click. Indeed, all of Equestria, including Pinkie Pie, had been conceived by a corporation called Hasbro and woman named Lauren Faust. Pinkie Pie was nothing more than a toy in the "real" world. There was a fair chance, however, that she existed in a parallel world in which Equestria, much like Sinnoh, was a real place. Nonetheless, people loved Equestria as if it was real. At the very least, pony toys were real, but that's all they were - playthings to offset whatever reality the creators lived in.

That was strange. Why were these beings so fascinated with worlds that, to them, did not even exist?

"[Because they do exist!]" Andy roared. He got weird looks from some of the Pokemon around him. Cassandra, however, looked at him curiously.

"[You seem to know a lot about this whole 'other worlds' thing,]" she mentioned. She trotted over to him, tilting her crested head like a curious cockatiel. "[Are you sure you're just a random gamer who happened to be sucked into this?]"

As Bronygon spent more time in cyberspace, it came to a stunning realization: The world's oracles and sacred texts had been replaced with the mysterious thing called the internet. The internet had the final say on everything. It had effectively become the world's new God. People, insofar as the digital being could tell, took little pieces of the internet with them in smartphones. Everybody had something called "Facebook," on which people detailed every aspect of their lives. Data was the be all and end all. The new alpha and omega. That one being everybody turned to.

The world had been converted into numbers - or, perhaps like Porygon-Z's home world according to these people, it had always been nothing but numbers. People as far back as a man called Pythagoras had theorized that numbers were the only thing that existed, and thus comprised the world. He had been right about triangles and a multitude of other things. He could easily have been correct that numbers were all that existed. Back to Greek; that was funny.

Pythagoras also thought that beans were bad to eat, the digital being recalled.

"[That one's true, by the way,]" Kuro commented.

The digital being came to another realization: If this "real" world was nothing but data, then there was nothing stopping it from doing a little bit of...recoding.

The being looked at some of the genetics from his world. They matched up closely with what the internet was telling him about advanced human genetics. Of course, humans shared quite a lot of genetics with other animals, too. Over sixty percent of human genes were shared with a banana- an oblong fruit resembling one segment of a Nanab Berry. In theory, it would not be hard to change one species into another simply by manipulating minutia. Humans thought that the genetic code was locked since birth, but it was fairly easy to change a man into a woman with hormone therapy, the whole definition of a retrovirus was that it changed DNA, and, most notoriously, cancer was genetic mutation during a creature's lifetime.

All that he needed was a few test subjects. He would see exactly how far he could manipulate the world that has called his own a game. If things like avatars of Arceus could be created simply by "hacking" data - numbers - into Bronygon's world, could this so called "real" world be hacked in a similar fashion - by an outside force that residents of that world could only feel the ripples from? There was only one way to find out: experiment.

It started with something simple: a manipulated, enhanced Bidoof. Much to its surprise, there were fewer differences in Pokemon and animal anatomy than the virtual Pokemon thought. Indeed, there was very little work to be done except for making the whole creature a bit more fluffy. He also decided on a Bibarel instead of a Bidoof, since they had more in common. The result was as perfect of a replica as would be expected; it looked vaguely like a photomanipulation, but nonetheless, players of the game would recognize it as a genuine Bibarel. It had the fluffy fur, funny eyes, pink nose, and swirly mark on its paddle-like tail.

The Bibarel was soon eaten. A single squeak from that startled rodent had been enough to alert a million predators to its location. One little pause was enough for a coyote to chase it down and kill it on one fell swoop. They were messy eaters; that coyote (a creature resembling a Mightyena? a Lucario on all fours?) left only a few odd scraps of flesh and bones remaining. Ants, vultures, and other scavengers took care of what was left.

Nonetheless, Bronygon considered it a success. It had actually been quite lucky that no hikers had chanced by the creature's corpse, or else dismissed it as that of a normal beaver. The incident went unnoticed; for creatures so engrossed in other worlds, humans were so often oblivious to their own.

Perhaps it could show them. If the world could be manipulated like data, how hard would it be to make the world a better place?

"[A lot harder than you think,]" Eric responded.

Probability: 43%, Bronygon thought. Doubtless, some of the audience thought, that said number had been rising as Bronygon turned more humans into Pokemon and transported them.

Nothing could manipulate data like a digital being, and virtually all the world was data to manipulate. That which did not exist on the internet barely existed.  The 'real' world was mixing with the digital realm like people mere centuries earlier could never imagine. Centuries before, "digital" was not even a word. They would call it magic and blame it on some omnipotent being.

It had been easy enough for Porygon-Z to cross dimensions. The scientists had deliberately designed it to those ends, although why evaded even Porygon-Z's infinite knowledge. Porygon-Z had come from a world in which technology had advanced even farther than in this "real" world that the internet spoke of. It could easily handle this world that beings on the other side of the internet called "real."

Then it would fix things. It would end all wars with subtle data manipulation. It would cure world hunger by regulating food shipments such that starving children would get at least some nourishment. It could cure cancer and other such things by messing with the data fabric of the world itself, if need be. This being had the entire internet, replete with all of its wishes and codes, at its disposal. The masses controlled the internet; the internet controlled the world; still, suffering remained, even though humanity could solve most of its problems simply by sharing information. If the wishes of the masses would not change the world, nothing could.

It would make people happy. It would make the world a place of dreams. After all, it was fixing the mistakes that the other God had made. Even Arceus - or, well, this world's equivalent of Arceus - could not stop him from turning earth into heaven. If Pinkie Pie was able to become real after the world was reformatted thus, so much the better.

But it would not be quite as cruel as this world's God. He wanted to see the answer to his question: If this "Earth" was supposedly a perfect world created by an omnipotent, all-loving deity, why was suffering preferred?  It was completely illogical. Why would any being prefer suffering to not suffering?

"[Well, we grow through suffering,]" Nick the Blaziken pointed out.

"[Tell that to people who study history,]" Kuro retorted. "[It tends to repeat itself.]"

It formulated the plan further. Humans, it found, would gladly kill each other over any amount of small things. Perhaps a change of species was in order to prevent that. Pokemon had made his world full of less suffering, and it had confirmed that such a change was doable with its Bibarel experiment. Except when ordered or in exceptionally stressful situations, Pokemon rarely became as violent as humans. It would be even better if it could find people who already adored Pokemon; such a change could even make them happy.

Yes, it thought, that should work.

Then it encountered another issue: humans were visual creatures. Fragments of data had long since changed the being's body. What had once been a clean, simple design had been distorted with multicolored pixels. The being did not know how it saw itself; what it did know was that it would no longer be recognizable to databases on its home planet, let alone human eyes.

In short, it needed a redesign. Its body had become so entwined with internet data that it was no longer Porygon-Z. Redesigning itself was no big task - after all, it was just reformatting data - but it decided that it should go farther than simply correction. It would instead do something that no Pokemon had done before: create a whole new identity.

Alpha, it thought, is the first letter in the Greek alphabet. It then occurred to the mutated Porygon-Z  that there was no "Omega" Pokemon - that was the end of the Greek alphabet. It was a long vowel sound that was not written in the English alphabet, but remained in use in certain types of equations and the titles of fraternities and sororities.

Z is at the end of the English alphabet, and the character I was given. How fitting an opponent for this world's alpha, the new Porygon-Z continued. From now on...I shall call myself Porygon-Omega. Supposedly, this God was alpha and omega, even though Arceus was only alpha; Porygon-Z would make itself the "omega" to this real world's "alpha," regardless of what a millennia-old book said.

The Porygon-Z then began to reformat itself. The tiny body divided, stuck in meiosis, into two sections; from these two sections sprouted blobby legs shaped like blue "hooves" that split off into limbs independent of the creature's body. Porygon-Z's tail became a three-stranded, curly tail like it had seen on Friendship is Magic; the same happened to the prong on the being's head, which billowed into a sky-blue mane. Its blue 'beak' squared out into a horse's muzzle. After two little triangles sprouted from its head, the only thing that still resembled a Porygon-Z were the colors and those dizzying, swirling eyes.

The being continued to use "Bronygon" as its online handle. It continued to fabricate its identity with the advent of Facebook and Skype. It wanted to know what those beings on the other side really wanted. That way it - or, as far as the beings on the other side knew, he - could grant them exactly what they wished for. He was quite sure that they did not wish for the endless suffering found in quotidian life. It was, after all, fixable.

After that...Pinkie Pie shall be mine.

~

At this, the movie stopped. The pink, horselike being stood - hovered- before fifteen Pokemon. They were all awestruck by what they had heard. The screen rolled back into nothingness, and the projector vanished with a small "poof."

"So…shall the debate begin?" Bronygon asked.

"[Debate nothing!]" Jacob said. He charged like a wild boar towards Bronygon, entire body wrapped in flickering fire. An exclamation point popped up over Bronygon's head like something out of a video game. Jacob charged on. He was going to give that horse a piece of his -

WHAM!

Jacob rubbed his head. He looked at the tree in front of him, baffled. Leaves scattered from the digital trees as Bronygon's horselike body drifted down from above.Bronygon's splayed legs sprang back onto their bases as the ponylike being's body rejoined its limbs and tail, floating down like some bizarre balloon from above.

"[My, how rude,]" Bronygon chided. "[Here I was hoping we could have a nice, civil chat instead of fighting.]" A blue hoof brushed nonexistent dust off of his body. "[The question still remains: how would you like your world?]"

"[I advise that you listen to Bronygon,]" Hanzo said. "[He created this world, after all.]" 

And so the floor was opened to a debate to end all debates, with the fate of the world waiting at the end of it all.