Curate, connect, and discover
More than 3000 years ago, in the Soris region, there was a great Soris Empire.
Thanks to lack of Apricorns in Soris and low cooperativeness of local Pokemon, as well as abundance of easily-acessed metals and fossil and fissil fuels, Soris people took a technological way of development. Several centuries later, a Soris Empire springs into existence.
Unlike what you will think, this empire, at it’s peak, was pretty diesel/atompunk heavy and most of the electronics were based on higly-advanced vacuum tube technology, though transistors and arcane science devices started to slip in near the end of the empire. They also had nuclear-powered transport, including icebreakers, submarines and even rigid-hull hydrogen-lifted dirigibles!
The single most beloved Pokemon species in the later Soris Empire was introduced Alolan Flygon line, thanks to their weather-adaptational ability (like this of Castform) and great cooperativeness towards humans. Nowadays, these dragons has somewhat diverged from the original line and became Soris Flygons, which, while retaining abilities of their Alolan ancestors, have also gained minor Aura abilities (which they use to locate their prey and as a darkvision of sort) and are constantly migrating from one part of Soris region to another (however, they do this only in small herds, so each part will have some Flygons coming in, some staying and some coming out), so they will not get stuck in one form, like the Hoenn Flygons did. The most prominent changes of Soris Flygons are longer antennaes, which are crucial in Aura reception and are forked in two roughly in the middle, the lower part of antennae being shorter than a upper one, slightly different shape of wings and, surprisingly, more omnivorous digestive system, because such is life in Soris - hard and complicated.
These cute, but powerful insect-dragons were the reason why, after the fall of Soris Empire and subsequent loss of technology, humans has managed to survive in this region and, eventually, rebuild.
One of the greatest achievements of the Empire were Imperial Science Facilites, which were researching lots of things - physics, genetics, chemistry and so on. The main jewel in this crown was Imperial Science Facility 9 - the single biggest and most powerful of this line, which also had early arcane science as a main direction of the research, although not the only. More than 90% of this base were located deep underground to prevent outbreaks and protect it against attacks, when the ground had only a Bioscience Division’s surface labs (mostly for studying extraregional Pokemon), Astronomical Dome, material sorting and transport complexes, as well as some recreational sub-facilities.
This facility was constructed to be self-sustainable and able to survive for centuries without maintenance, if properly conserved. Because of this, the main energy source of this facility was complex of closed-circuit geothermal reactors, which could provide up to 1200MW of electricity and were cooled by the oceanic water, which was pumped from pretty far away, to reduce chances of detecting the facility itself. The secondary energy sources were several nuclear fission reactors, capable of providing up to 900MW each, although two of them were mostly used to empower some of the science equipment directly.
One of the main energy hogs in this facility, as well as in Imperial Science Facility 8, was early arcane science equipment, especially irradiation chamber (in which first Mega Stones and some artificial Evo Stones ever were created) and tseryobla (teleportation device. Why it was named so? Even creators, when they were alive, could barely remember it, because all memories of the night when it happened were way too obscured by the alcohol fumes). One of the most important devices, which were crucial to functioning of the rest of arcane science equipment, were highly advanced two-way energy converters, which could not only turn Pokemon life energy into electricity (like Devon Inc. and some of the Nikola’s devices did), but turn electricity into life energy as well! Because of these converters and abundance of electrical energy (thanks to geothermal and nuclear reactors), facility had no need to use Pokemon as a “fuel”, so, no “Powered by a Forsaken Child” for you! After the fall of the Empire, data on how to create and maintain these converters, as well as most of the converters themselves, was lost, and the only surviving units and documentation are in the sealed away ISF9, which is pretty much guaranteed to finally fall apart in this century. Chances of this facility, and, because of it, technology getting re-discovered and restored are... slim, at best.
It was also the facility in which first artificial mechanical pokemon ever was created. Constructed by one of the leading arcane scientists and named “Chugun” (”Cast-iron”), this guy (psychological gender of the Chugun is male) quickly became intergral part of the personel, because he was truly great at task he was created to do - repairing and maintaining things. Having powerful and resilient body, which was also very easy to repair and modify, Chugun was always ready for performing different jobs - from helping planting tunneling explosives to saving people from the gassed or burning room to working in the operating reactor pool to hermetizing steam mains to soldering electronics and so on. In fact, he was beloved so much, that when one of the revisors came to this facility and ordered to dismantle Chugun, because he thought of him as too dangerous, Dr. Pobegov, which was in charge of the Imperial Science Facility 9, threatened to perform a skull trepanation and subsequent lobotomy on the revisor if he does not shut up. When this revisor reported this to the Emperor, he got following answer: “Imperial Science Facility 9 reports directly to me. You were sent to it to find a problems and report them, not to express your opinions left and right. In fact, I think Dr. Pobegov was right about what to do with you.”
Chugun was also the first sentient, on whom tseryobla was tested, and he has volunteered for this! Of course, some tests were performed beforehand on non-sentients (lab Ratattas, heh), but most of the time, after the tests, workers had to wash entire test lab out of bloody pulp, which was sprayed everywhere. Thankfuly, during the test with Chugun, when tseryobla malfunctioned (yet again), there was only teleport-throwing in random places, including even the Reverse World (Giratina was quite surprised, when she saw strangely-looking glowing mechanical Pokemon briefly appearing and, before she even had a chance to finish her question, vanishing again), for five hours (but for Chugun, it was like five years, though he knew what he has volunteered for), after which, however, entire tseryobla crew was hospitalized because of excessive arcane energy exposure. Thankfully, amount of data, gathered in this experiment, was more than worth it, because it finally allowed to find a safe settings for tseryobla and ensure safe teleportations. Moreover - the required data was gathered in less than an a hour, and the rest of the time was dedicated to stabilizing Chugun in the ISF9′s tseryobla and safely extracting him from the teleportational “vortex”, because if they’ve simply pulled the plug, he would’ve got scattered across the teleportation places - all of them. As you can see from it, they’ve really held him in high regard.
When the Empire was at it’s last days, the ISF9 had undergone conservation procedures and Chugun was tasked with maintaining it until someone comes. For more than a 3000 years he was fulfilling his duty, but now, fuel for nuclear reactors was burned off ages ago, replacements are almost ceased to be, so he is forced to cannibalize whatever he can from reserve systems to maintain main ones in (barely) working condition, the main steam turbine complex, which provides power to the base, has lots of leakages, which he barely manages to patch... To put it in short, right now, base can survive no more than a fifty years on remaining reserves. Chugun understands it, but still continues to do everything he can, hoping, that one day, someone will excavate buried entrances to the facility and restore it to it’s full glory.
However, the last part does not apply to the Shift-verse, where the Empire, instead of Ancient Soris War, got time-shifted 3100 years ahead and, therefore, was never destroyed and even prospered in the new time.
(Funny fact - initially, fic Chugun was created after watching humoristic re-dub of Half-Life 2, called Kayf-Life 2, where Alyx’s Dog robot became, well, Chugun, which was originally created for straightening rails, but, thanks to faulty AI, has escaped from the factory and took refuge in the Budulai’s illegal undeground workshop. Also, Kayf-Life’s Chugun was a champion in throwing trash bins at the distant moving targets, but got disqualified after he has thrown one of the bins at the referee. What’s this all about - after I’ve thought of Chugun, my “train” of ideas has gone like this:
“So, mechanical Pokemon, which looks like it was assembled from the junk, but is pretty powerful and reliable and needs to be called Chugun. How to write it in? Hm, what about Russia-like region? Pretty good idea, actually, but it needs some non-obvious name. Riso? No. Rosi? Definitely no! Soris? That’s great! Hey, but nowadays, no one manufactures Pokemon like this, so, it needs to be ancient! Yes, ancient arcane science Soris mechanical Pokemon. That’s good. But just how ancient? Hm, let’s see... The first traces of arcane science originate back to Ancient Kalos War, AZ had some cool arcane tech... So, more than 3000 years old it is! Also, why not plan it in such a way, that AZ gained some of this tech from one of the crashed airships, which were escaping from the Soris during the Legendaries rampage? I’ll roll with it. And Nikola... Nah, he has developed the arcane technology again without any help from AZ or data from Ancient Soris Empire. Back to Chugun: where would he be created and what for? Let’s think again: he would be great at repairs, he would be first and, unfortunately, only of his kind with some small hope for building new in the modern time... His creator would be one of the arcane scientists from the huge science facility. What this facility would be like? Well, Ancient Soris Empire, as I’ve written in my notes about the underground base beforehand, is already planned to be atompunk, so... Ancient Soris Empire atompunk arcane science-heavy Black Mesa-like facility. That’ll be awesome.”
In short, entire region and ancient empire in it were created just because I thought of backstory of one of the planned characters and origin of the ancient underground complex.)
Corporations relationships with most of the non-corporate governments are... far from the best, to say at least.
The most hated for them is the Official World State, more known as Pokemon Nation. For corporates, it’s embodiment of everything they hate: ignorance, which allows such criminal syndicates as Team Rocket or even Team Flare to grow and prospere (of course, corps had involvement in the Cipher’s Shadow Project, but they do this very rarely); lack of guts, which allows Legendaries rampages to happen (General Industries isn’t above blackmailing and recruiting Jeanette McMertry, more known as Hunter J, to fight such threat if required - her petrifier cannon is a wonderful thing, though it’s yet to be replicated and mass-produced. Yes, corps had blackmailed and recruited Hunter J, even if less powerful, than in canon, because of time period difference) and, most importantly, heavily Pokemon-dependant society, especially technology. For corps, any technology to be used by humans must be self-sustained and reliable, even if the Pokemon-based devices are easier to produce, or it’s “just a parody of the true technology”.
As you can guess, relationship with Azoth Kingdom isn’t good either. While corporates respect heavy automation of this city, they dislike technological stagnation (corporate “pure-tech” devices are already somewhat ahead of the AK’s arcane science-based ones and continue to advance further, while Azoth Kingdom is now only slightly more advanced than in the Nikola’s times) and Pokemon involvement in the city’s machinery operation. They are also main competitors on the airship and gravplane markets, which were traditionally occupied by the Kingdom, but, thanks to both real Lawrence III and protagonist, as well as many other corporate scientists, General Industries is slowly, but surely starts to overtake these markets, because corporate machines are cheaper, more advanced and can offer more options for the same price. Of course, it’s not going to end well for the AK, if they don’t adapt.
The (fic-unique) Soris Region, while still nominally controlled by the Pokemon Nation / Official World State, is under very heavy influence of the Tunguska Technologies and has lots of TT-owned corporate Enclaves. It also shall be noted that people here love Soris Flygons very much, going up to the point, where it’s far easier to get Pokemon Owner license for these cute, but powerful insect-dragons and their entire evo-line than for the, let us say, Pichu and it’s evo-line. It helps that Soris Flygons, unlike Hoenn relatives and much like Alolan ancestors, are very cooperative towards humans and are more intelligent than most of the dragon pokemon, because Soris is quite a harsh region, where survival requieres either sheer power or sharp minds. Alolan Flygons, which were introduced in the Soris region more than 3000 years ago by the Ancient Soris Empire, lacked in the raw power, but made up with this by their minds and cooperation with humans. Nowadays, their adapted offspring, Soris Flygons, are one of the most successful species in the Soris, but they still retain their cooperativeness and gentle nature towards humans.
GI does not have such influence over a single region, but they make up for this by having many Enclaves in different regions.
While corporates are pretty heavy into military, they also deeply care for the employees, because, as they say, “it’s the best way to prove that we are far better than the Official State!”. Everyone who is empoyed by either of the corporations receives good free healthcare and overall treatment. They have flexible social care programs, as well as job finding. Have willingly terminated your contract with one of the branches to transfer into another? No problem, your shares remain at the previous level, if you don’t screw up badly before, during or after transfer! Want to help employ your relatives? A little testing and they will be presented with a most suitable jobs for them!
Overall, life in corporate Enclaves is, most of times, better, than in the Official State-governed cities, but it comes at price of working for corporation or, at least, living with one who works for it, pretty strict rules, zero criminal Team tolerance (if you are proven to work for one of the Teams at the current moment, your contract is immideately terminated with blacklisting your biological ID, making you persona non-grata in all of the corporate-owned property. However, if you willingly surrender, you make soften your punishment), prohibition of Pokemon battles anywhere but specialized Training Complexes and, to make you feel “better”, some of other moments, which make Enclaves pretty similar to the Soviet “closed cities”, albeit with (relatively) free information access, which is, however, monitored by the Enclave’s main computer system to prevent essential data from slipping into the wrong hands. Yes, not quite paradise, but still something.
Source for Alolan Flygons (author gave me a permission to use them) - http://a-guiar.deviantart.com/art/Alolan-Flygon-637147209
After hardware and software upgrade in the first fic, she (yes, this AI thinks of itself as a female) gained complete sentience.
She's always loyal to her creator (protagonist), even more, than a Gardevoir to it's trainer, and tries to do whatever she can in order to ensure her master's well-being.
She helps him organize his daily life, searches all of the available informational networks for a clues to find whatever will please him (and, so far, she has managed to help him find some really worthy pieces of art) and, overall, serves him as far as she can.
However, she is not necessarily nice: if she considers someone threat to the creator, she, at first, will try to evade or drive it off gently, but won't hesitate to kill if there are no other options and will not regret it, unless there are some really serious consequences. She's also ready to sacrifice herself and the Flying Palace if there's the only way to save her master, but she considers this as a last option.
After gaining sentience, she, unbeknownst to her master, contacted corporate AI system and downloaded data about psychological conditioning - a technic to slowly remake ways someone thinks into what you need, and yes, she've used it already, though, thankfully, not on the creator - she has built-in precautions against it, so, all she can do to him is gently talk him out of the dangerous ways and more into constructive and safe ones.
The worst part of psychological conditioning is that it's not a mind control in way we know, but, rather, slow and gentle remake of the someone's mind, thoughts and identity itself to what you need and it cannot be easily undone - it's not brute overtake, like psychic-type mind control, but, rather, a slow bending of original mind into the shape you need. It takes a lot of time to be done, but, once it's complete, there is no going back.
At the end of first fic, thanks to some reasons yet to be found, Yveltal’s Cocoon, collected by the protagonist, instead of unfolding into full-sized adult Destruction Pokemon, fell apart into a tiny chunks and revealed a small hatchling, which has imprinted on the protagonist. While protagonist and this Yveltal, named Jorsey, have bonded with eachother (Jorsey loves his “daddy”, protagonist plain likes this small Cutietal), AI system only sees deathly threat to her master in this Destruction Pokemon, even if such young, and “dreams” of eliminating him (here the Yveltal psychological gender is closer to male) forever. If you think she cares about the world balance and such, think again. Yes, she’s somewhat like the real Lawrence III - the world outside of the Flying Palace matters very little for her, unlike her master, which is the sole reason she exists and whom wish is absolute to her. So far, she made her position about her master clear (”Remember - if he dies because of you, I’ll do everything to free the world from such a death embodiment as you, even if it’ll mean cessation of mine existence. If it’ll be required, I’ll use something, that works on principles more basic than universe itself. Understood?”) to Jorsey and used some of psychological conditioning techniques to induce a specificially-constructed nightmare in a safe way (”safe” here means “no accidental Oblivion Wing or unplanned psychological damage”).
The device she means is the Energy Reaction Core, invented by the real Lawrence III, which is capable of generating nearly limitless amounts of energy and principles behind which are yet to be understood, but are presumed to be more basic than universe itself. However, it is clear, that anything, that passes the Energy Core Sphere’s (which is stationed inside the Core by containment fields and which is what generates energy. Shutting down containment fields, most of the time, results in Sphere’s quick expansion and even quicker dissipation with very little or even no destruction of surrounding machinery and never creates an explosion) border, ceases to exist in this reality. Because of this, it’s theoretically possible to kill Yveltal or, for this matter, any Legendary for real by throwing it into the Energy Core Sphere.
Thanks to her doings, when Jorsey first saw the Energy Reaction Core’s Energy Core Sphere during the tour in the Flying Palace’s engine room alongside with protagonist, he froze in fear and nearly fainted in his “daddy”’s arms. Thankfully, somehow, during the direct visual contact with protagonist, who was worried about the condition of the little Yveltal, Jorsey, despite his Dark/Flying typing, has managed to pass some parts of his nightmare and fear directly into the protagonist’s mind, somewhat similar to the Aura or telepathy. Now, protagonist has a clues to the Yveltal’s strange behavior and thinks about what could’ve done it. Of course, AI system does not want her master to misjudge her doings (she honestly thinks she is doing the right thing and... well, she may have a point here) and directly order her to cease and desist, so she tries to distract him from it, because she cannot violate direct orders, unless they are given under the psychic mind control, which she is to prevent under all circumstances. Thankfully, she cannot use psychological conditioning on him, so protagonist still has a chance to find out about this and order her to stop it.
In this universe, two megacorps - General Industries and Tunguska Technologies - over decades, mutated from classic corporations to some weird hybrids of corporations and states. Here is some info about internal political systems:
CEO of the corporation, which is pretty much President by any other name, is chosen by the High Economical Council, as opposed to classic Board of Directors.
The High Economical Council consists of the highest level managers, which are also representatives of the Employee Unions (which are pretty much Parties). There’s a lower border on how efficient manager needs to be to enter the High Economical Council, so employee-beloved idiots cannot get in it - corporation still needs to be profitable! In short, it’s a corporate-ed version of the classical Parliament.
There is also High Security Council, which is pretty much High Command and, as you may have already guessed, it commands... no, not only the Security Force, which is more like police, but also, and mostly, full-scale Corporate Army and some of hosted Private Military Contractors. In addition to everything above, they are responsible for choosing the Commander-in-chief.
Each time someone become a corporate employee, he/she is put on watch. When he/she proves himself/herself useful enough, he/she receives a single share and, because of this, becomes shareholder. While these shares do work somewhat like the normal shares (additional payment), their main purpose is indication of the “citizenship” of sort, because only shareholders may join Employee Unions and become managers. Shares of these corporations cannot be bought, sold or transferred, they may only be given to those who serve corporation well or revoked for internal crimes. The worst corporate punishment is full termination of the employment along with nullyfying shares and blacklisting biological ID data, because from this very moment, those who were punished in this way lose all of the corporate protection and rendered persona non-grata in all of the corporate-owned territory, which means they are now left to the Official State, which does not like corporates at all. Of course, those, who may give out important information, are either relocated into closed facilities and psychologically conditioned back into loyalty (if corps still need them), or suffer a deadly accident/simply disappear very soon after the employment termination (if corps have absolutely no further usage for them and they are too dangerous to just release outside of corporate territory).
As a matter of fact, total Employee Unions shares exceeds those of High Economical Council, shares of which exceeds those of CEOs, but individually, each of the High Economical Council members has less shares than CEO and each Employee Union member has less shares than member of the High Economical Council, so lower-key majorities can veto especially bad decisions of higher-key managers. This is deliberate to enforce sorta-democratic regimen, which has already prevented several CEOs from breaking the corporations apart one way or another.
Because of their wealth and power, corporations have a small Enclaves here and there. Most of time, these Enclaves have no name, instead being called like “Eastern Enclave №6″ and such.
Inside of these Enclaves, life is similar to both Azoth Kingdom and LaRousse, save for even more technology and automation, but Pokemon ownage and usage is heavily restricted. When not in the specified Training Complexes, Pokemon must be outfitted with a special restriction device, which prevents them from using any attacks. Also, to even own a Pokemon in these Enclaves, one must have special Pokemon Owner license, which is pretty hard to get. However, in the Tunguska Technologies-owned Enclaves, especially ones in the Soris region, there are special indulgences for the Soris Flygons, which allow to get Pokemon Owner license for them more easy than for other Pokemon. To some extent, this is also true to General Industries-owned Enclaves, but overall, GI Pokemon Usage Restriction policies are more, well, strict, than Tunguska Technologies ones.
The most prominent of these Enclaves are GI-owned Eastern Enclave №6 and TT-owned Southern Enclave №2. Both of them are heavily militarized, feature electrodynamic launch facilities (think LEO Shuttle from the Deus Ex) and more classic lauchpads for normal rockets, have airports and big airship-dedicated airfields, which can take up to four “Flygon” (GI)/”Altaria” (TT) Heavy Assault Ships (slightly bigger than canonical J’s airship) as well as several smaller airships and VTOLs at once. Even more - thanks to very high levels of automation, these Enclaves can, theoretically, operate even without help of humans, including defensive and offensive military operations, so, each of them is a very tough nut to crack. They also have some tactical fusion missiles at disposal, which are intended to be used in case of danger to entire Enclave, so, only truly insane can try taking on them.
At the present time, General Industries has only one airborne aircraft carrier at it’s disposal - the very high-tech anti-gravity lifted “Saffron”, along with two modified “Flygons” for escort (two more are still being built), while Tunguska Technologies already has fully operational rigid hydrogen dirigible-type “Scimitar”, almost finished “Shamshir” and 75% finished “Yatagan” with modified “Druddigon”-class Medium Assault Ships for escort (three for each carrier). While significantly lower-tech and weaker than GI machines, Tunguska Technologies airships are far easier to build and maintain, following this corporation’s general line - “Easy to create, Easy to repair, Easy to replace” - so, for the time General Industries takes to finish a second “Saffron”-class airborne aircraft carrier, TT fleet will have at least five “Skimitar”-class carriers at it’s disposal.