Gotta Catch The Pretty Ones

© 2011-2014 by Mr. David R. Dorrycott

Chapter Two

Four months later and after nine long days travel on a rural bus line Sara had what she wanted. She had been posted to the little village of Stonehome, a village so far in the boonies that there wasn’t even a train line for over a hundred miles. Stonehome’s long time technician had died of old age over a month ago and Sara’s guardian angel (actually Professor BeeBob she would one day discover) had arranged for her to take his place.

Stonehome turned out to be a little place of less than two hundred people, it was an off the beaten tract farming community on the crossroads of two lesser used Poketrails and one secondary paved road. She arrived to discover that her new station was no more than a small two story cottage, more a defensive tower she thought with a one story shop attached. The shop it turned out was also her work area. All the previous technician’s private property had already been packed up and shipped to whatever family would take it, the bed replaced and new linens in the pantry. Sara had brought her own bed sheets and pillow though, worried that the old ones would still be there.

She was still puttering about, placing her things where they should belong and cleaning the bedroom of assorted trash when there was a knock on the shops door. Going downstairs and walking through the tiny cottage she entered what was now her shop, noting the dust about. It needed cleaning, that she could start attending to tomorrow. Making her way through the dim shop to its front door, a split door design she noted, the redhead opened the top section, noting immediately that it too needed attention as she found it difficult to open.

Facing her was a group of around a dozen children running the ages from fourteen to sixteen she thought. Each wore some version of the typical, almost standard Pokemon Hunter outfit. The oldest, a boy she noted, spoke for the rest.

“Hello. Are you the new Pokeball Technician?” he asked, apparently surprised to see a woman’s face. His reasons for asking were pretty much obvious. Mr. Lincoln had died over a month ago and had been bedridden at least a month before that. These then must be his last customers, all probably waiting for repairs or to buy additional Pokeball’s. Sara decided to be as polite as she could be, considering that she was exhausted.

“I am the new Technician yes but I am not open for business as yet as I arrived just hours ago, I must first clean the shop, perform a complete inventory and read Mr. Lincoln’ journals to see what is what. Sadly I am exhausted and was busy trying to make the bedroom habitual, I’m sorry but that will take at least a week to sort things through. I will though read his work book tonight to see who’s Pokeball’s are here, what needs to be done and where they are stored. But I cannot open a Pokeball in a dusty environment you understand. Is that what you wanted to know?”

The boys expression fell a bit, but he managed to cheer up a bit with her giving him a schedule. “Yes Mam” he answered. “We have been waiting months so another week won’t be that bad.” He indicated the group behind him. “Most of us just need extra Pokeball’s and this is the only place in eighty miles to get new ones since the local Hall has run out of stock and can’t get any more for at least another month. Would you be able to sell any in a few days?”

“Well” Sara answered, thinking. “I brought a case of type elevens with me, they have the newest software update and I well know what I was charged for them. I tell you what, those that just need balls come back about noon tomorrow and I will have those available. I don’t know what Mr. Lincoln was selling his type tens for but the elevens are only cost me a quarter credit more than type tens would have. I promise you all that I won’t cheat you.”

“Thank you Mam, tomorrow at noon and I’m Lars.”

“Hello Lars, I am Sara. So I’ll see a lot of you tomorrow at noon. The rest, I promise to get to your property as quickly as I can.” She watched as the somewhat disappointed, but still happy group walked away. Lars she would discover would soon became a fixture around the shop, being as he was a local boy.

Closing and locking the door she turned around and leaned against it. Lincoln had been a very tidy man, that was evident from his shop. But two months of neglect and the spiders had moved in, as had the roaches. It was going to be at least a hard two days work cleaning this place, she noted a shelf of books above the work area and walked over to it. Yes, they were Lincoln’s journals, all neat, tidy and in order. She pulled down the last one, noting that the last entry was two months ago. Well, she could read it after dinner. Dinner which would consist of her last travel meal and water sadly. One of the problems of a tiny posting was that the only inn had served dinner an hour ago. 

And so her life went. Once the shop was open there was a small but steady customer base. Lars dropped by day after day pestering her with questions until she handed him her first Technicians book. “Its all the basic stuff. You can not take it out of the shop but if you sit in a waiting chair to read it you may ask questions” she told him. After that the boy was bearable.

Two or three older Hunters would drop by each week with one of two basic problems. “Della and I were goofing off trying to capture each other and now it won’t reset.” To “I dropped it off a cliff. It broke in two and my best Pokemon escaped. It took days tracking and my last Pokeball to get her back.” For the first problem there was a special reset button within the ball itself, one not serviceable by the owner. That and a rather stern warning that “If you try that too often it will fry the capture circuit and that is half the cost of a new Pokeball to replace.” For the other, all she could do was offer to sell the butterfingered Hunter a replacement. After all, his was now in three or more pieces.

Then there was the monthly report to be sent to her Guild, orders of parts and new Pokeball’s, sending half of her profits back to pay for her posting along with any capture grids from ruined Pokeball’s thus proving their removal from service. Cleaning and cooking were a daily chore as well and Sara found that she was rapidly becoming a daily market girl now. People of the village were beginning to know her by face and she seemed to be making a good impression. Though there was no shortness of men interested in her she wasn’t a mans woman, a thing that thankfully the villagers understood and accepted. She was of course a bit lonely, still there were all the previous technician’s journals to read (going back nearly two hundred years she discovered) along with starting her own series. Finally there was her own research into why Pokeball’s were limited to one creature no matter how small. That Sara knew was in the coding, but where and why? There were at least ten billion of lines of coding that she could access to work her way through. Gods knew how many lines of code were in the core circuits, circuits that if she even tried to access would automatically fry themselves.

Then there were the secrets of her own building to explore. An ancient stone structure it had originally been built with a family in mind. When she found the packed away Pokeball collection hidden in a closet Sara carefully carried them out to the forest and released each one. Not because they wouldn’t be loyal, but because she didn’t want them. An amazing variety of Pokemon went back to their freedom, with more than one looking wistfully back as though wondering what they had done wrong to be released. A couple she had never heard of before still she was careful to make a certain adjustment with each Pokeball and allow it a day before releasing each Pokemon. What the Hunters didn’t know was that, when a Pokemon was successfully captured and converted to data a loyalty file was written into their digital brain. Thus when released from the ball they were completely loyal to their new owner otherwise they would at least try to escape, if they didn’t try to kill their captor first. As time passed the file became more complex, thus, a recently captured Pokemon might still resist a little while, one held within the ball for a week was completely loyal to its owner. After a year they inseparable, until one or the other died.

By making the adjustment she had, the ball’s internal program carefully re-wrote part of each creatures mind removing completely their loyalty file. It doing so it returned their independence, which hadn’t been actually removed but had been blocked away. It gave them the greatest chance to survive in the wild and once released this way they would be almost impossible to recapture. Still it was Sara’s habit to wait a full day to insure that the file had been completely removed.

 It was another reason that Pokeball’s would not capture humans. A week within the ball and the strongest willed human would be completely loyal to the one who captured him or her. A very frightening event to the Guilds and thus why all Technicians were sworn to report any meddling they discovered with the balls software. When it was a choice between your career and some hunters fiddling with the program it was a lead pipe chinch which mattered most to her. It was also something that she might run across no more than once in her lifetime.