Dinner was quiet.

  Not awkward—measured.

  Carolina cooked them something simple and traditional, the kind of meal that had been prepared the same way in Celestic Town for generations. Ethan sat at the table with Eevee curled at his feet, the steady presence doing more for his nerves than the food itself.

  “You will eat properly here,” Carolina said without looking up from her pte. “Stress and grief are not excuses to neglect your health.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Ethan replied automatically.

  She gave him a sharp look. “…You may call me Professor, or Great-Grandmother. Not ma’am.”

  “Right. Sorry.”

  Eevee snorted softly.

  ===

  After dinner, Carolina rose and gestured toward the back of the house. “You said you were curious.”

  Ethan blinked. “About the b?”

  “About everything,” she corrected. “Come.”

  The b's electronics left much to be desired.

  Ethan froze just inside the doorway.

  The main computer alone was nearly the size of the room—a towering block of metal and humming components, its interface dispyed in stark green text scrolling endlessly across a bck screen. Some kind of command-line system. No icons. No windows. Just raw input and output.

  CMD.

  “…Wow,” Ethan said weakly.

  “Everything here is state of the art,” Carolina stated, waving a hand around the b with absolute certainty.

  Ethan bit his tongue.

  Here, everything did have a pce. Ancient stone tablets rested beside what passed for “modern” scanning equipment. Thick cables ran along the walls like exposed veins. The computers didn’t hum so much as cck—physical reys flipping back and forth with audible clicks as magnetic tapes reversed direction.

  Tick—cck. Whirr. Tick.

  He stared.

  Have they even discovered the microprocessor yet?

  His gaze drifted to a rack of spinning tape reels, then to a scanner made of polished steel and gss that looked like it belonged in a museum exhibit rather than an active boratory.

  How did Professor Oak get a Pokédex working with tech like this? Ethan wondered. Did he invent silicon from scratch, or just… ignore the rest of the world?

  Eevee padded forward, sniffed a cable suspiciously, then sat down, tail flicking once—as if deciding the b was strange, but acceptable.

  Carolina noticed Ethan’s expression and regarded him coolly. “You are judging it by appearances.”

  “…A little,” he admitted.

  “What is there to judge?” Carolina asked.

  Ethan hesitated, then decided honesty was easier. “Is there no network for communication? How do you reach other professors? How do you share research data? Even store vast amounts of it?”

  “Microfilm,” Carolina replied smoothly. “And carrier Pidgeys.”

  Ethan visibly flinched.

  Either Carolina missed it—or chose to ignore it.

  Maybe my phone has internet, he thought. And even if it doesn’t…

  He swallowed, just trying to comprehend the horror that was the current tech level of Pokémon. He had enough technical manuals rattling around in his phone’s bookshelf to give this world an entire technological leap.

  I could drag this world forward by a decade or two in a few years.

  “You seem to have some ideas,” Carolina said, watching him closely now.

  “I do,” Ethan replied, stifling a yawn that was only half fake. “But it’s not something I can do today.”

  He turned toward the door, Eevee trotting after him, while his mind raced.

  Manufacturing, he thought. That’s the bottleneck.

  The architecture behind microcircuits wasn’t simple—but he wasn’t alone. If his abilities worked the way he suspected…

  Maybe a pokemon could help with it?

  ====

  Ethan y on his back, staring at the ceiling, Eevee curled against his side like a warm, breathing anchor.

  The house was quiet in the way old pces were—stone settling, distant wind brushing against carved walls, the faint hum of something mechanical deeper in the b. Moonlight filtered in through the window, catching on ancient patterns etched into the frame.

  He blinked.

  And the interface was still there.

  With a thought—not a gesture, not a feeling, just intent—it slid fully into focus.

  Pokémon GO.

  The familiar map filled his vision, semi-transparent over the dark room. Roads traced in soft pastels. A pulsing blue circle centered on him. His avatar stood exactly where he was lying, absurdly calm for someone who had just had their entire life rewritten.

  “…You’ve gotta be kidding me,” Ethan muttered.

  “Vee?” Eevee lifted its head slightly, one ear twitching.

  “No, not you,” he said absently. “Reality.”

  The game behaved exactly like it always had.

  Nearby Pokémon spawned and despawned on a timer. A Bidoof flickered near the edge of the his character's vision. A Shinx appeared, blinked, vanished as if the RNG had decided against it. The weather indicator even matched what he’d seen earlier—clear, with a light breeze icon.

  He focused on the nearest point of interest.

  Professor Carolina’s Lab.

  No—

  Professor Carolina’s Lab (Gym).

  The structure on the map glowed faintly, a tall Gym marker rising directly over the house. The color wasn’t cimed yet—neutral gray—but the designation made his breath hitch.

  “…Grandma’s house is a Gym,” he whispered.

  Eevee huffed softly, clearly unconcerned by the implications.

  Ethan swallowed, then hesitated—just for a second. He opened his item bag.

  Don’t be stupid, he told himself. This is already stupid enough.

  Still.

  He reached into his inventory and pulled out a Charged TM.

  In the real world, a holographic disc in his hand— it was glowing, yet had no weight. Even more interesting was the fact that Eevee didn't seem to react to it.

  It took a moment of thought an he set it gently on top of Eevee’s head, reality… complied.

  The TM vanished mid-motion, dissolving into pixels that sank into Eevee’s fur.

  Eevee stiffened.

  Light fred.

  Not blinding, but intense—white-gold lines racing across its body like circuitry sketching itself into existence. The air hummed, low and resonant, as if something far rger than Eevee had briefly acknowledged the action.

  “Eevee!” Ethan hissed, half-panicked, half-awestruck.

  The glow sted barely a second.

  Then it was gone.

  Eevee blinked, shook itself once, and sneezed.

  “Vee.”

  Ethan stared.

  The interface has been updated... It was now showing him Eevee, yet it was utterly wrong.

  Eevee’s model… wasn’t right, it was constantly shifting between Eevee and its evolutions.

  Its fur texture jittered slightly, clipping at the edges. Its idle animation looped a fraction too fast, like a video pying at 1.05x speed. Stats flickered when he focused on them, numbers stabilizing only after a heartbeat.

  And then he saw the move list.

  Quick Attack

  Swift

  Bite

  Hyper Beam

  Ethan’s brain stalled.

  “…That’s something I can contempte tomorrow,” Ethan mutters, realizing maybe it's time to sleep.