007. [Anonymous Text / Action for Goldenrod City]

[twinsanity]

[Anonymous Text]

[The text that hits the device tonight is the sort that obviously comes from some sort of hacked ID - it's poorly done, but at the same time well-done enough that you're just going to get a lot of static and glitching if you're going to try to work out who it is. More of an obviously anon setting than a device that's pretending to belong to someone else, basically.]

Tell me about recurring dreams you've had.

Not necessarily nightmares, though I suppose those are fine. Just those dreams you've had over and over again, the ones your mind keeps coming back to.

If you're expecting psychoanalysis you won't get it, since I'm not being paid nearly well enough to do that for the lot of you and I've no interest in it besides. I'm just interested in talking and hoping you'll say something interesting.

[...okay then.]



[Action - Goldenrod City]

[Well, abrasive texts or not, Alfred can actually be found outside today; it's warm today (even if his internal clock is still yelling at him that it shouldn't be, and he is never going to get used to the damn weather in this hemisphere) and he's taking the opportunity to spend time in the park, watching his Pokémon...play? Are they playing? It looks like they might be; it's either that or it's a level one slapfight that's more ineffectual than anything, between a Sewaddle and what looks to be a male Combee.

After a bit of watching it'll become clear that this is, in fact, a slapfight, and one that the poor Sewaddle is not going to be winning; it keeps getting a shot of Gust in the face and unfortunately Tackle isn't landing too well right now, due to the abovementioned...well, Gusting to the face, and after a few rounds of this the Sewaddle is basically ending up spending more time kind of lying on the ground in a universally understood gesture of "I have run out of fucks to give" rather than actually fighting.

Alfred, unfortunately, seems to be taking no pity whatsoever on the poor damn thing - he's sitting on one of the benches nearby, leaning idly over his legs where they're crossed at the knee, chin propped in his hand while he watches; he's also got at least one bug he's not particularly interested in deathmatching, if the ever-present Joltik on his shoulder is any indication. As it is, said Joltik apparently gives no fucks about what's going on and Alfred himself just sort of rolls his eyes when the Sewaddle flops over, reaching out for the bag he's got with him and spraying it in the face with a Potion.]

Oh, no, you don't. Get back in there.

[Alfred, that thing is going to hate you before it even reaches level 5, what are you doing.]

Comments

[twinsanity]

Maybe, though I don't really care about figuring it out.

But suit yourself.

[...Alfred.]

[glaciates]

[...um. That was unexpected.]

You aren't missing out on much. My research isn't exactly interesting to most people.

[twinsanity]

[Well, he doesn't...]

"Interesting" isn't a good thing. My father's research is more interesting than mine and it's banned in multiple countries.

[glaciates]

Mundane isn't a good thing either; it's hardly a suitable topic for any sort of conversation.

[twinsanity]

Why even bother with mundane things at all? Unless it's particularly useful, there's not much point to it, is there?

[glaciates]

It was primarily used for battle, but in comparison to the other soldiers, what I could do was unimpressive. It worked of course, but it wasn't anything that was going to revolutionize the field. If I'd had time and resources, I could have probably come up with something productive, but things happened and I left the military.

[twinsanity]

You make it sound as though your military has an entire legion of battle scientists.

[glaciates]

We do. Doesn't yours?

[...is this a weird Amestrian thing???]

[twinsanity]

Well, we have human weapons but they aren't exactly the same thing.

[glaciates]

What do you mean?

[twinsanity]

Exactly what I said. They're humans that have been enhanced in various ways.

I mean, I suppose that some of them could have been scientists, but that doesn't tend to end well so most avoid doing it to themselves.

[glaciates]

"Enhanced"? How so? How can you enhance a person?

[I am from 1915 and what is this]

[twinsanity]

Genetic manipulation via viruses.

[glaciates]

[.........................

no seriously what is this]

I'm afraid I'm not following. You used viruses to enhance peoples' abilities? How?

[...oh wait.]

I'm from a world where the technology is years behind what we have here in Johto.

[twinsanity]

Oh, you're one of the backwards people. Right.

[ALFRED.]

Do you understand what genes in general are, at least?

[glaciates]

I've never heard of genes. What are they?

[twinsanity]

I suspect it will take entirely too long to explain to you properly and you probably won't understand half of the explanation anyway, but I think I can give you enough of a gist that you'll understand what I'm talking about. There are certain things coded into your body that make you the person that you are - you get them in pairs, half of them from one parent and half of them from another, and that's why you look like your parents and it's usually extremely obvious if somebody's adopted. You can't physically see these codes at all, but they're there, and whatever combination of them you get determines everything about you. Physical appearance, capacity for strength, how well you fight off disease, how intelligent you are, the absolute baseline for your personality (in other words, how you respond to situations you've never been in before - whether you flee or fight, things like that), everything is determined by this bit of coding.

Sometimes the coding has mutations; that's why some people are deformed, or their eye color is strange, or they have no pigmentation in their skin, or their personality is damaged in some way, such as sociopathy or abject insanity.

Now, the reason viruses are so terrible is that they can rewrite some of that coding and cause mutations of their own, resulting in illnesses that you can't get rid of because it's rewriting your genetic code against itself. We've found ways to modify viruses such that they do whatever we want, instead of just randomly rewriting things and wreaking havoc against your system.

...Theoretically, anyway. They still wreak quite a bit of havoc in practice.

But we've found ways to enhance things like speed and strength, as well as do things to one's physical body that will render them effective weapons - physical armor that's a part of the skin as opposed to something removed or forced off, the ability to harden appendages into something like blades, things like that.

I've had some enhancing done on myself, a long time ago; strictly intelligence-heightening, nothing physical.

[glaciates]

[Give him a minute to take all that in...]

It sounds extremely complicated.

How exactly is this done? Is the virus injected into the person or is it something else entirely? Can the virus be passed from one person to another?

[twinsanity]

Injection is usually how it's administered, and we try to ensure they aren't airborne because that would just be a disaster. It can be transferred from person to person via bodily fluids, however, particularly contact with saliva or blood.

[Maybe otherwise? But it's not like anyone tries to fuck the infected or anything because that's really gross.

...And we don't talk about the Birkins.]

In other words, you don't want to be bitten.

[glaciates]

Why would someone infected with it bite anyone?

[...wait...]

You mentioned that it would work theoretically. So what are the problems with it? What happens to the people who are infected?

[twinsanity]

Well, that would depend on the virus. Some of them work just fine, for a given degree of "fine."

Others tend to cause utter insanity at best, along with physical mutations that make the individual ridiculously hard to kill. Still others kill the host outright but they don't exactly stay dead, their bodies keep functioning long after they've been killed by infection.

It's sort of a mess, really.

[glaciates]

[...wait

are you saying your world has literal zombies

oh my god what the hell is wrong with your world]

That's awful. Have you seen this happen?

[twinsanity]

Yes, of course. Why?

[glaciates]

Just curious. It sounds like it would be horrifying to watch.

[twinsanity]

Not really. I've gotten used to it by now.