Searching Far and Wide

[intricate_engineer]

Glen was creating a prototype for a new gate design. It was meant to be affordable and provide quick transport between individual homes. She tests several objects and a rat and everything seems to be working.

She steps through. Instead of finding herself in the room next door, she finds herself standing on a sidewalk in an empty city. The buildings are tall and perfect, colorless with doorways far too tall for any human. The roads have no straight lines and twist in on themselves. There is no life or sound.
Glen tries to stay calm. She begins to walk along the road, randomly opening doors and exploring buildings that are as silent as the rest of the world.

She opens a door that she hopes will lead onto a roof and is instead met with warmth, and soft noise, and color.

Comments

[intricate_engineer]

"Do people breed Pokémon to get large changes over time?"

[the_very_best]

"...I'm not sure what you mean."

[intricate_engineer]

"Say some Pokémon do something better than others, they are stronger, or faster, or friendlier. Does anyone breed the best Pokémon so that several generations down the line you have Pokémon that are all stronger or all faster?"

[the_very_best]

"Oh, yeah, people do that. Or breed for personality."

[intricate_engineer]

"After enough generations can you get a Pokémon that is significantly different from the original, maybe to the point of being a different species?"

[the_very_best]

"I don't think so?"

[intricate_engineer]

"Okay, well in many worlds that's how new species are made. Instead of individuals breeding them though, they are responding to the environment they live in. That's what we call evolution."

[the_very_best]

"But the breeders who are trying to get strong Eevee or whatever would only breed Eevee - or their evolutions - to do it. It'd be really weird if they got an egg that hatched into something other than an Eevee!"

[intricate_engineer]

"Imagine breeding Eevees for dozens of generations until they no longer looked like Eevees. They were a different size, different color, different body shape, and had different skills. Eventually, you wouldn't even be able to tell it was an Eevee by looking. Would you still call that Pokémon an Eevee or would it be a new species?"

[the_very_best]

"You can get color variant Eevee, or you could breed teacup size ones, but I don't think at any point the type or basic structure of the mon would change..."

[intricate_engineer]

"Hmm, okay. Let me show you an example."
Glen pulls up a pictures of a mountain lion, lion, tiger, bobcat, and several breeds of domesticated house cat.
"These all have a common ancestor. These-" she gestures to the housecats, "were bred by humans. The rest came about on their own. On most worlds, species barriers are not set in stone. Any trait can change over time. Definitions of species are often fairly arbitrary, and based on someone's best judgement. "

[the_very_best]

"...I don't know if it works that way on my world or not, but it doesn't do it fast."

[intricate_engineer]

"It doesn't on other worlds either. It can take millions of years for new species to form."

[the_very_best]

"Then I'm not sure how I'd know about it at all."

[intricate_engineer]

"We learned about it mostly from fossils and from living species that were connected to other living ones. Also, you can see it on a very short time scale with single-celled organisms."

[the_very_best]

"I've never read up much on single-celled organisms so I don't know if we've noticed the phenomenon there. Fossils sometimes are of extinct species of Pokémon - sometimes they can even wake them up - but it's not obvious that they're related to any living species..."

[intricate_engineer]

"You can wake fossils up?" Glen asks incredulously. "How?"

[the_very_best]

"Search me. With a fancy lab? I don't have any fossil 'mon."

[intricate_engineer]

"That's amazing. As far as I know, fossils are just rock formed where bones used to be. Maybe it's different in your world? Wow."

[the_very_best]

"There's probably a step in there where the 'mon is stored as information, 'cause remember we can do that."

[intricate_engineer]

"I really want to learn more about how that works. Is matter converted into energy? Is it stored as a program that can be altered? How much detail is saved? What does the process feel like?"

[the_very_best]

"Could not begin to tell you."

[intricate_engineer]

"Yea. I could not begin to explain ninety percent of the stuff I use every day."

[the_very_best]

"And I didn't get a comprehensive science education before deciding to seek immortality. I consider being immortal a very important time-management skill."

[intricate_engineer]

"True. If you succeed, you'll have time to learn anything you want."