“Wel---- -o --- ---ld o- p-----n!”

Huh?

I had awoken to find myself in an eerie green void. There was a man here saying something, I could barely understand. The guy had some rather ugly brown balding hair and was wearing an even uglier purple shirt under his lab coat.

Lab coat!

How did I get here? Was I abducted! Is this guy some mad scientist going to perform horrific experiments on me?

Or maybe I was abducted by aliens?

Either way this place is fucked up! I'm standing on solid ground, yet it seems altogether ambiently and evenly illuminated across its flawless porous surface. Above and all around me there is an endless void of a lighter shade of green.

Round about this point I could feel my sanity giving way, this is a dream right?

This is a dream!

This is a dream!

“M- --me i- O-k”

Just a nightmare!

I’m going to wake up, and this will aaaaaall be a dream!

“P--p-- af------nat--y r-f-- -o m- a- --- p-k---n p--f-s--r”

My legs feel shaky. This feels strangely way too real to be a dream. My head is thrumming with fear induced adrenaline, I can barely focus on anything.

Falling to my knees in panic, I had to take a moment to catch my breath, while the old man babbled on about something incessantly. Hunched over clutching my now nauseous stomach, I could even less clearly make out or care about what he was saying. I did however somewhere faintly register a flash of light coming from his general direction, but was still in no condition to pay any attention.

He carried on mumbling to himself. I carried on ignoring him, he didn’t seem overly harmful.

After calming myself down enough to avoid a bloody panic attack, I assessed my situation.

Hopefully this was all a dream, in which case, no harm I might as well roll with it. If this is not a dream however, then I can’t think of any answer beyond this being an alien abduction or some kind of matrix bullshit. Either way I would need information.

Firming my resolve I finally let go of my stomach, got to my feet and faced the old man.

“Now tell me. Are you a boy? Or are you a girl?”

Huh?

I stared at the man incredulously and slack-jawed. What the heck kind of a question is that? Aliens. Definitely alien abduction! Mildly alarmed I quickly looked myself over to make sure that something hadn’t ‘happened’ to me.

Nope.

‘Everything’ seemed to be intact and accounted for. I was wearing a pair of unbranded black sneakers, blue jeans, a red and white collared shirt with black sleeves and a red baseball cap. I also seemed smaller somehow than what I remembered.

At least I wasn’t naked and on an operating table, even if I did not recognise any of the clothes or remember how I came to be wearing them, which raised all kinds of alarm bells in and of itself.

The crazy scientist guy was still staring at me expectantly, waiting for an answer to his absurd question.

“You seriously can’t tell whether I’m a guy or a girl?”

The scientist looked completely surprised by my reprisal. After a brief moment of shock he looked genuinely uncomfortable and cleared his throat in an obviously fake manner. “Uhm. Now that you mention it yes, I suppose it is rather obvious.”

He looked genuinely puzzled for a moment, before continuing on, “Let’s begin with your name. what is it?”

“Ben” I answered simply, still very wary of the clearly senile man.

“Hmm. Yes. Could you spell that out for me though?”

I could only give him a blank look. “Dude, it’s only three letters”

“Hmm. Now that you mention it, I suppose that should be obvious.” Another perplexed expression on his face. “Apologies, I have no idea why I asked that, I just had this compelling feeling that I should get you to spell it out so that no one gets it wrong.”

“Right”

“Strange, what a strange sensation. It’s like I’m expecting everyone to go around calling you out incorrectly if I did not get your name right. What coul-” The old man continued to mumble is incoherrent senile thoughts to himself while I could do nothing but patiently wait for him to finish.

“Right! Anyway.” He finally snapped out of his musings. “This is my grandson! He’s been your rival since you were both babies.”

A spot light suddenly illuminated someone in the corner of the room, nearly startling all the life out of me. Holy fuck!

I kid, probably about ten years of age was now standing to one side. He wore rather trendy clothes that suited him well, but more importantly he had incredible orange spiky hair, straight off of an anime MC’s head. How much fucking styling gel is needed to get it to stand like that! That is the hair of dreams!

“...Erm, what was his name now?” The senile scientist once agian looked at me expectantly.

You’re joking right? How do you not know your own grandson’s fucking name? And I thought I had a dysfunctional family! What’s worse is the grandson just stood there completely passively and apparently not even caring a bit about the insult that was just foisted upon him.

“Dude It’s your grandson, you should know his name.”

“Err, was it Gary? That’s right, it was Gary!” The old man looked relieved somehow, but I could only facepalm. Gary also seemed to blink out of existence at this point, which although it probably should greatly alarm me, wasn’t even surprising me anymore.

“Ben! Your very own pokemon legend is about to unfold!”

I’m sorry, my what now!

“A world of dreams and adventures with pokemon awaits you!” He exclaimed grandiosly.

“Let’s go!”

And then the world went dark. Before I could even finish processing what this clown was saying.

I woke up in bed.

Rubbing the sleep out of my eyes, I sat up. A dream huh? That makes way too much sense.

I slumbered out of the comfortable soft bed and landed on my feet. I was suddenly struck with a feeling of vertigo. I instinctively knew something was wrong. For one, it had taken way too long for my feet to reach the ground. Was my bed suddenly higher?

Looking down I was instantly back in panic mode! Not only had I gone to sleep wearing clothes, even a baseball cap, but rather those clothes I had just been dreaming about!

Was I still dreaming? Or maybe I’d truly gone insane.

I looked about ‘my’ room. It wasn’t my room anymore.

There were two windows to my right looking out into what appeared to be some kind of forest scenery. The room had ugly beige wallpapered walls, a floor made of not very nice looking tatami mats and an even uglier green rug in the middle of it all. Who the heck decorated this place? They need to get their heads examined!

To the one side of the room was a bookshelf, a dresser and a desk with an ancient looking PC on it, featuring a good old CRT monitor. In the center of the room for some reason was a CRT TV and a good old fashioned NES gaming console.

Aside from clearly being transported back in time here, setting that aside, that mad scientist's words were stuck in my head. Something about my pokemon adventure. Was I having a pokemon dream?

I went over to the computer and after turning it on, found it had a strange textual interface with only three options on it. Item storage, Mailbox and Turn off.

Even though it had been a long time since I had played the original pokemon games, I recognised these prompts.

->’Item storage’.

->’Withdraw item’.

And there it was: Potion x 1

Curios, I withdrew it and noticed a slight increase in the weight of my back pack.

Wait! I’m wearing a backpack, when did that get there!

I immediately took off the ugly yellow backpack and found a corked purple potion bottle inside.

Coupled with the mad scientist’s words, it was official. I was inside a dream about a pokemon game.

I stood there a moment, pondering my next move. I was probably in a dream after all. Either that or some matrix bullshit. Either way, there was nothing else to do really but play along. Maybe even have some fun while I’m at it.

My decision was made, I left my room, the exit being a set of stairs for some reason that led to the ground floor of the house.

Upon arrival I was greeted with yet more tacky decor in the same horrendous style as my bedroom. The ground floor was also a single room, a combination of kitchen, lounge and dining room, as far as I could tell.

There was an ugly blue and white checkered table with blue chairs arranged around it on the center of the ugly green mat. Aside from the occasional pot plant, the only other things in the room were a kitchen surface, display cabinet, trash can, another CRT TV and of course, if memory serves me correctly, my mom.

A fairly young and extremely pretty blue haired woman was sitting in one of the chairs at the dining table. She was wearing a red dress with yellow sleeves. Despite the absurdly ugly outfit the gorgeous girl still managed to radiate a natural beauty.

I’m just saying, If you weren’t my in-game mom and I was not stuck in what seemed to be a ten year old body… things could happen here!

Approaching my mother, she began to speak.

“Right… All boys leave the home some today. It said so on TV.”

Okaaaaay. That was weird. And at least not a little bit wrong and disturbing in a number of ways.

“Oh yes. Professor Oak, next door, was looking for you.” She gave me a brilliant and beautiful smile.

So setting aside that you want to kick your ten year old son out of the house and essentially want him to go off and fight monsters, I guess I’m off to see the wizard of oz then.

Approaching the front door, I looked back at the still smiling women one more time before leaving. I smiled to myself mischievously, one day girl. One day!