.

.

Excadrill's pokeball was giving me a headache. I clicked the button again.

Nothing.

Excadrill stared at me expectantly.

"Sorry," I said. "Some sort of glitch with your ball. You'll have to stay out until we can fix it at the pokecenter."

I don't think Excadrill minded. As we walked to the pokemon center I kept having to hurry her up. She was stopping to stare at every sight, sniffing the air, and making experimental digs at the ground with her claws. I suppose that even this small town came as something of a shock. She wasn't outside her pokeball much other than for battles, training, and when I needed her to dig in a cave.

When we got to the pokemon center, I had to stifle a groan. A line stretched out from the door. Some of the other trainers had pokemon by their side, making me wonder for the first time if my problem was not an isolated occurrence. I tapped the person standing in front of me in line on the shoulder.

"Excuse me, do you have any idea what's going on?"

She shook her head. "No. I'm here for my sister, actually. Her purrloin's pokeball isn't working. That damn pokemon's been getting into everything, and my sis isn't doing a thing about it. Normally when Purloin misbehaves we just recall her, so I figured I'd better lug myself down here and get the thing fixed."

"I'm having the same problem," I told her. "Luckily, Excadrill is well-behaved."

Well, moderately well-behaved. Her snout was stuck into the ground, where she was rooting happily in the weeds. With no pokeball, I was going to have to deal with the resulting mess.

Now the woman I was talking to frowned. "Huh," she said. "That's really weird. My sis' pokeball is reused, and those ones are glitchy as anything. But a trainer's pokeball – you are a trainer, right?"

I nodded, feeling sheepish. Us trainer types are pretty obvious. I think it's something about the way our pants are always worn and our pokeballs polished. "Five badges."

"Right. So you're pretty good," she said, flashing me a smile. I noticed for the first time how tall she was, and how elegantly her brown hair fell down her back. "An experienced trainer like you doesn't re-use pokeballs, right?"

"Of course not," I say. "That's just asking for a failed capture."

She nodded. "My point is that a new pokeball failing is practically unheard of since USilph stress-tests them so extensively. I don't suppose you've been traveling in a volcano or in the sub-arctic?"

"Nope."

"Then the glitch must be in the ball's programming." She nodded to herself. "That would explain why the problem seems to be so pervasive. A lot of people are going to be staying up late over this."

She must have noticed me staring, because she blushed a bit, and added, "I work in the tech industry. Part of a pretty small start-up, we're working on shrinkable supplies for trainers. Part of my job is keeping up with big tech like Silph Inc."

"That's cool," I said politely. "You must be pretty smart to do work like that."

That got me another smile. "I'm Cindy, by the way."

"Jordan," I said.

Fifteen minutes later, Nurse Joy herself ducked out of the pokemon center and addressed the line. "We seem to be having some sort of problem with the pokeball capture mechanisms. Please be patient. This will not be solved right away. When you reach the counter we'll take your trainer ID and scan your pokeball. The results will be sent to Silph Unova. While you wait, you're welcome to enjoy the hospitality of the pokemon center. On behalf of the pokemon league, I apologize for the inconvenience."

A discontented rumble rose up from the crowd. Nurse Joy frowned.

"There is really nothing more I can do!" she said. That's when I noticed how red her face was, and that her nursing cap was askew. Nurse Joy was probably having a worse morning than any of us.

.

.

By the late afternoon, by dint of pushing, shoving, and the sharpness of Excadrill's claws I managed to secure myself one of the pokemon center's guest rooms. I closed the door behind me and locked it definitively.

The hallways were in a state of anarchy.

With a sigh, I set my backpack down on the small, rickety center bed. Normally I'd have gone down to the center dining hall to get some hot food, but everything was in such uproar that I didn't feel like braving it. Instead I pulled out my laptop and spent several minutes searching for the plug. I still had some granola mix from breakfast.

As I settled on the bed, laptop balanced precariously on my lap, granola in one hand, I was reminded of Excadrill's presence. She was still standing awkwardly by the door. I didn't really know what to do about her. If the world had been working properly she'd be resting in her pokeball while I unwound in the room.

"You hungry?" I asked her.

Excadrill nodded her head eagerly. That was another problem. Stasis in their pokeballs slowed pokemon's metabolisms. Generally they only needed to be fed after battles or extended training sessions. I scrounged some pokemunch from my bag and dumped it in a bowl. Trainers who traveled into remote regions needed extensive supplies, but my journeys tended to keep me well within range of pokecenters.

It didn't take me long to tune out the sound of Excadrill's munching. I sunk contentedly into Chauntel's latest novel.

.

.

My stomach's rumbling finally forced me down to the dining hall. The hoard of trainers hadn't dissipated, but some semblance of order had finally been restored. The dining hall lines, though long, did not threaten to break into battle.

That didn't mean the center looked anything like normal. Everywhere I looked I saw pokemon, and not just the lillipups and other small pokemon that one normally saw outside their balls. In the corner, a flaming magmortar was raising the room's temperature by at least ten degrees. Across the room, a giant galvantula was causing some shivers, and everyone was giving the stinking garbador a wide berth. Pokemon hung off the lights, wrapped around the potted plants, floated through the air.

The place was a zoo.

I spotted Cindy at one of the tables and made my way over. The table was packed, but after a lot of squeezing I was able to slide onto the bench. There was definitely no room for Excadrill. I looked around the room, and noticed that a pokemon corner had quickly formed. "Why don't you eat over there," I said, gesturing.

After a moment's hesitation, Excadrill headed over. After making sure she had found a place I turned back to my table's conversation.

"I bought some new balls at the mart," a trainer was saying, "thought I could put them in there for now, but none of them worked either! Maybe the whole batch is rotten."

"But that doesn't make sense," someone else objected. "I've had my pokeball for ten years, and it has the same problem."

"I'm telling you," Cindy said, "the problem has to be a virtual one. A virus must have gotten onto the network." I could tell from her aggrieved tone that she had said this before, to little effect.

Sure enough, the indignant discussion continued around us. Cindy rolled her eyes and took another bite of her pie.

"Can you tell me more about this virus?" I asked her. I didn't like to see her frowning, and anyway I was interested. Silph would probably have the problem fixed by morning, but for now there wasn't much else to occupy my mind.

"Sure," she said, pushing a strand of hair back from her face. "Pokeballs are like miniature computers in their coding, right? So they're constantly connecting with other devices. Most of these devices are Pokemon League property, like the storage system, trading machines, and pokedexes. But all that means is that these devices have a specific code in them that makes the pokeball recognize them. If that code were introduced into a foreign device, the pokeball would try and connect to it just as it would an official device. So if someone were to figure out that specific patch of code, they could introduce a virus into the whole system."

"You make it sound like this is a thing someone's done," I said, taken aback. "When you said virus before I thought you just meant a glitch on a wider scale."

"This can't just be corrupted files," she said. "Silph would have fixed that by now. Someone's done this, and someone skilled. It's not like people haven't noticed that the league system is vulnerable, but everything before has been done on a small scale. Stealing pokemon mostly, by changing who a pokeball lists as the pokemon's trainer. Have you been following the news?"

I shook my head.

"Well, the problem is everywhere. Someone is being ambitious."

"But, what could anyone hope to gain by messing with pokeballs like this?" I said, my voice rising.

Cindy smiled suddenly and laughed a bit, breaking the tension. "I really don't know," she said.

We talked well into the night. At ten o'clock I sent Excadrill back to my room, and followed Cindy back to hers.

.

.

"Shit."

Cindy's voice woke me up. She was sitting on the bed next to me, her legs crossed. The glow of her phone's screen was the only light in the room.

"What is it?" I said groggily. I fumbled for my phone, and saw that it was 6:19 in the morning.

"It's gotten bigger," she said grimly. "Unova Storage did an inventory, and found that some pokemon in storage have disappeared. They must have cracked the PC's. Damn, they're good," she added, sounding impressed in spite of herself.

Her words jolted me awake. "In storage? I've got five, no six pokemon in storage right. I gotta check this out."

Cindy looked at me sympathetically. "I'm not the only one who gets up early. There's probably going to be a crowd downstairs."

I shook my head, pulling on my pants. "I don't need to talk to Joy. I can check my pokemon's storage status on my laptop."

"Do you mind if I . . ?" she said awkwardly, getting to her feet.

I smiled through my mounting worry. "I'd appreciate the company. Really."

.

.

I opened the door to my room and froze.

My room had become a disaster zone. The floor had been uprooted, the furniture was slashed, and dirt was everywhere.

There was only one conclusion I could come to. "Excadrill!" I shouted.

Her head emerged slowly from the floor's center. "Drill!" she said cheerfully, walking towards me. Her fur was littered with bits of debris.

"What did you do? Why – " I couldn't continue. The room's disorder seemed like the externalization of my mental turmoil. "You stupid pokemon, I'm going to have to pay for this."

"Ca?" Excadrill said, her face falling.

"Corner of the room," I snapped, "now. And don't move one inch unless I tell you to."

I rushed over to the slashed-up chair that I'd put my laptop on. I held my breath as I booted it up, but I was in luck. It wasn't broken.

"Great Reshiram in the sky," Cindy murmured from behind me. Now that I'd moved, she could see the destruction Excadrill had caused.

I logged into my . unovastorage . gov, tapping my fingers impatiently against the side of my laptop as the page loaded.

Status – Good health

Status – Good health Status – Good health Status – Good health Status – Good health Status – Good health

The words blurred before my eyes. "Everything's normal," I said finally, the racing of my heart beginning to slow.

"Or they haven't updated," Cindy said.

Or they haven't updated. I put a hand to my temples. "This is just too much. I'm getting coffee. And then I've got to tell Nurse Joy why my room is wrecked."

We were starting towards the door, when Excadrill said, "Ex, excadrill."

I stopped. "Right. You'd better come. You can explain this to Chansey."

.

.

I finally found Nurse Joy folding linens in the emergency ward. I wondered why she was doing that, of all things, when there was so much else to do.

Her face fell when she saw us coming towards her, though she quickly pasted on a professional smile. It hit me as I began to speak that she might have been back here to escape the crowds for a time.

"Hi, Nurse Joy, sorry to bother you but-" I ran a hand through my hair "-I'm afraid I left my excadrill unsupervised and she made a mess of the room."

"I've been getting a lot of that," Nurse Joy said wearily. "You can pick up a damage form from the front desk. Normally we deduct the expenses from a trainer's league balance, but I've filed for an exemption because the situation's so irregular. It's possible you won't have to pay." She cast the half-folded stack of sheets a regretful look and then said, "I'll get you the form myself. It's time I went back to the front."

We fell in behind her. I thought of the garbador from last night and felt relieved. Excadrill's damage couldn't possibly be worse than that.

"I just don't know why she did that," I said to Cindy as we walked. "I've had her since she was a young drilbur and she's always been well-behaved!"

Cindy made a sympathetic sound, giving my hand a squeeze.

"An excadrill, you said? What exactly was the damage?" Nurse Joy asked. "Digging, perhaps?"

"You got it," I said. "She dug down through the floor. Dirt everywhere. It's crazy."

"No, it makes perfect sense," Nurse Joy said absent-mindedly. We entered the lobby and she made her way to the front desk. "How are you holding up, Chansey?"

"Cha," the pokemon replied, a determined look on its face.

"Your turn to go on break. Get yourself some food before the breakfast rush starts. Though if you could check in on some of the pokemon while you eat . . ." Nurse Joy's expression was a little pained. "I'm sorry to ask it, but we need to make sure fights don't break out."

"Chansey, cha," Chansey said, reaching out to give Nurse Joy a supportive tap on the arm. Nurse Joy smiled. "Thank you, I really appreciate it. Now," she said to me, "here's your form." She handed me a slim sheet of paper. "When you have it filled out you can drop it in the slot under the desk."

I took the form, but didn't move away. "Excuse me, but what were you saying about Excadrill? You said her behavior made sense?"

Nurse Joy was already hunched over her computer when I spoke. She looked up with a frown, her thoughts obviously far-away. "Yes. You see, excadrill make their homes underground. They don't mind overland travel, but they feel exposed sleeping above the ground. A mature excadrill will create a temporary burrow whenever it has to rest. Of course, pokemon are adaptable, and ground-dwelling pokemon that have spend long periods of time above-ground will generally be content with burrowing into blankets or clothing. But if your excadrill does not have much experience living above-ground, then it was only following instinct in trying to convert the room into a habitat safe for rest."

Her eyes drifted back down to the computer's screen. "If you'll excuse me," she said after a moment, and I took the hint.

I squatted down next to Excadrill. "Okay, I understand why you did that now. But do you understand why your behavior is unacceptable?"

Excadrill looked up at me slowly. "Drill," she said quietly.

"Good." I patted her head lightly. "Look, this is a stressful time. But don't worry, I'm sure they'll fix it soon. Then you can get back in your pokeball."

.

.

It was still early enough in the morning that the cafeteria wasn't crowded. As I picked at my bowl of soggy cereal, my thoughts kept circling from my broken pokeball to Excadrill's mess to the pokemon I had in storage.

"I've got to head back," Cindy said as we finished eating. "I don't know when this is going to get fixed and I need to get back to work." She sighed. "It's been a nice break, to be honest, and I'm not looking forward to the commute back. My town's pretty small. We don't even have a pokemon center of our own, you know? Hopefully I'll be able to move to Black City by the end of the year. That's where it's happening in the tech world right now."

"You really think it's going to be much longer?" I said. "I mean, I can't hang around here forever either. If I want to compete in this year's league then I'm on a pretty strict schedule. I was hoping to try for my sixth badge next week." The thought of the delay this was going to cause me sunk my mood even further. I'd planned on a solid week of training before challenging the gym, and I'd already lost a full day.

"Silph's official statement is that they're working on it. Really helpful, that. But I contacted a friend of mine who works there, and she says (in confidence, mind) that they haven't pinpointed the source of the problem yet. So who knows."

I nodded, frowning. Excadrill was behaving herself, munching quietly on the food I'd given her. Her fur was still covered in dirt.

"And I'll give you my number, in case you, um, want to stay in touch," Cindy said, taking me out of my thoughts.

I looked up. "Oh, right. Course."

I saw Cindy off at 9:00, tracking the flash of her hair in the sunlight until she was out of sight. The pokemon center seemed lonely and unwelcoming now, brimming with discontent strangers. I snagged a seat on a couch in the lobby where I could see the mounted TV, and pulled out my laptop. Excadrill sat beside me, though she looked much happier than I did. After a half hour or so she began to wander around sniffing at things and talking with the other pokemon.

"Excadrill," I called out. She looked up. "No. Digging," I said.

.

.

By the afternoon the atmosphere in the pokemon center had settled into one of deep gloom. The news was a constant droning in the background, story after unhelpful story about the pokeball problem, with no solutions forthcoming. Pokemon and trainer's nervous energy made the place feel like a bomb about to go off.

Next to me, a group of trainers were discussing whether they should head to the next town. Together they had enough pokemon to defend themselves on the road without releasing anymore. I contemplated asking to join them, but decided to give it until the next day. If Silph fixed the problem, I wanted to be on scene.

A sudden break in the noise made me look up. People were looking up at the TV, silence slowly spreading outwards.

I realized that the news had cut out. Instead, the screen showed a small, dimly-lit room. A voice said, "Are we on?"

The answer was indistinguishable. Then a person stepped into the camera's range. He looked to be in his mid-twenties, with green hair that fell past his shoulders. He was dressed all in white, with a strange logo emblazoned on his shirt.

"That's the PLF guy," someone said behind me.

The PLF? I stared harder at the screen. The Pokemon Liberation Front was one of those small nuisances of being a trainer. Members were everywhere, all young, earnest, and totally misguided. They had leaflets with pictures of injured audino looking up off the page with big sad eyes. They always had a petition to sign, and when you walked away they'd invariable shout after you, "Free a pokemon, free a life!"

A cousin of mine had joined up, making family dinners invariably awkward. After joining she threw away her woobat's pokeball, and the blasted thing would sit on her shoulder during every meal. I'd tried to make some polite conversation once, and asked her how her woobat was doing. She'd glared at me and said, "Ask Woobat, not me. I'm his friend, not his owner."

The PLF were kooks, to be sure. They'd done a few good things, though, like getting some anti-abuse legislation passed. It had surprised me when that had been announced. I found it hard to believe we'd had no laws like that before. Then again, pokemon abuse was so rare it was almost a non-issue. I doubt the law getting passed changed much of anything.

The man on the screen began to speak, and the room hushed slightly to listen. "My name is N," he said. "I am the founder and head of the Pokemon Liberation Front. For years we have made our case to the public and to the pokemon league. Pokemon are no less people than humans are. It is wrong for us to be their masters or owners, when we should be their equals. A few humans have listened. Most have not.

"And yet, our mission has nothing to do with humans. Our mission is the freedom of pokemon, and pokemon need no one's permission to be free.

"You will have noticed by this point that your pokeballs now have only one function: release. If you think this is a glitch, an incident, a problem that will be fixed, then you are in error. This is the end. We have taken away the means by which pokemon are subjugated. What happens now is up to pokemon. It is their choice. And a choice is only a choice if you can say no."

N's voice changed. His voice took on a strange lilting note. "I speak now to the pokemon of this world," he said. "You have a choice before you now. You can remain with these humans, who have been your masters, or you can choose freedom, the freedom to lead your own lives.

"I thought, once, to make that choice for you. But I understand now that choice is the essence of freedom.

"I can only ask that you look hard at the human who claims you. What are you to them, in their heart? A person, someone they love and cherish as they would one of their own? Or a living tool, that even now they long to lock away again.

"Look hard," N said, and suddenly I was conscious of a gaze drilling into me.

Across the room, Excadrill was looking at me, something hard and thoughtful in her eyes.

The screen cut to black and the room erupted into chaos. Everyone was talking, all at once, their words overlapping – but not the pokemon. They were silent, still.

Excadrill met my gaze. Then, in one deliberate motion, she turned and walked away.