The Machine

By Horatio Husky

Commissioned by The_Lost_One

Chapter 1: Jenny and Petie

    Jenny, a Rotom Pokemon, checked her watch for what must have been the sixth time in the past ten minutes as she gently guided the wrench around the last bolt.

    Beads of sweat were forming on her brow as she worked away, the day’s list of tasks seemed to be unending as she hoped to complete the machine before her deadline. 

    She had been working on the machine for several months now, after acquiring a contract with the local Pokemon incubation industry. 

    The demand for automated pokemon daycare had been on the significant rise as the amount of local trainers had grown larger, and the Rotom was more than happy to have the opportunity to get to use her inventing and coding skills. 

    The product of her work was a large “Nanotech Automated Nurse and Nurturer of Youth ,” or N.A.N.N.Y. for short. 

    Her work on the machine had not gone unnoticed, and the development of the hardware involved inside of the machine had gained a fair amount of attention. 

    A gaming company had reached out to her when they heard news of her revolutionary technology and had offered her several contracts for her to share some of her technology with them.

    This was also the way that she had managed to persuade her friend Petie to help test her machine out.

    Originally he had been quite reluctant to subject himself as the machine’s baby. After all, although the Teddiursa looked quite childish, it did not mean that he didn’t have his own sense of pride.

    However, Jenny was quite persuasive, offering him the latest game console she had received for free from one of her many contracts which had managed to catch the Teddieursa's interest. 

    Even so, Petie had still been reluctant. He had no doubt in his mind that the machine would be safe to use, after all Jenny truly was brilliant and would never put her friend in harm’s way.

    Still, Jenny was a stubborn scientist and inventor. He knew that once he signed up to test the machine and be placed inside of it there would be no going back.

    Unless he had a really good reason to want to be removed other than simply being embarrassed, he knew he would have to go all the way through Jenny’s troubleshooting process whether he liked it or not.

    Just as Jenny was considering sending her friend another text message, she heard the doorbell ring upstairs.

    Gently depositing her wrench in the toolbox, the Rotom sprinted up her basement steps. 

    “On my way! Just a minute.”

    She strode over to the front door, opening it and greeting her short friend with a smile.

    “Took you long enough kiddo! Ready to be a little baby?”

    “Don’t push it, Jenny. That new system better be worth the humiliation you’re about to put me through. And no photos. I don’t care if you need images to reference for your prototype. I am not going to be photographed through this.”

    Jenny ruffled the teddieursa’s hair conspiratorially, responding in a sing-song tone as she guided her volunteer towards her basement door.

    “Yes, yes. I promised. Look, I just need to know that the identification system works. Everything else was already tested. If everything goes right you should be in and out within the hour with the new console in your paws on the way out.”

    Petie’s ears perked up at that, and he appeared to be a little bit more interested in participating in the test as the two walked down the steps.

    “Whoa… That’s the big…”

    The chamber itself was rather intimidating in size. Equipped with 8 mechanical arms on the interior as well as a robotic caretaker, the chamber itself was equipped to meet all the needs that a baby pokemon would have.

    The shape of the large chamber resembled a pokemon egg, with an impressive dome on the top and various patterns of multi-colored pokemon eggs decorating the furniture and opaque walls on the inside.

    From feeding to diaper changes, from entertainment to lulling little ones to sleep, the chamber could do it all. 

    The robotic arms were equipped with cartoon-like gloved hands, intended to be friendly in appearance and elicit a sense of ease and fun in the charges they took care of.

    The robotic nanny was in the shape of a Miltank, equipped with synthetic lactation of a solution quite similar to the sleep-inducing effects of genuine Miltank milk; the chamber would ensure that the charges it took care of would be well pampered, well fed, and well rested. 

    “So… The chamber… I just walk in there and you turn it on and it sets to work?”

    Petie asked, feeling suddenly apprehensive as he stood next to the chamber. Jenny was lucky that her basement was as vast as it was, as the machine towered over him.

    Inside he could see the changing table, highchair, crib, and playpen, all within reach of the mechanical arms that hung limp from the top of the chamber. 

    The Miltank nanny sat quietly in a rocking chair next to the crib, unmoving as the lights inside of the chamber were set to a dim level. 

    “Yeah, basically. The chamber actually needs a few minutes to calibrate when first starting up. It analyzes various diagnostics like your blood pressure, blood type, size, etc. But it also takes into matter what age, sex, and gender you are.”

    Petie nodded, marveling at just how much thought Jenny had put into the chamber. She had described it to him a few months ago as the universal incubator for all kinds of pokemon species.

    This was quite an undertaking, as some pokemon infants were quite large even after birth. 

    Still, it was not so much the hardware but the A.I. that operated the N.A.N.N.Y. The ability to recognize and understand the specific needs of all types of pokemon would be a revolutionary technology that pokemon moms all around the world would pay good money to have. 

    Jenny was well aware of this, and she knew that she was almost ready to put it on the market. 

    “Okay, I’m just going to set it up for its warm up period and then we can get started. Are you ready?”

    “I guess…”

    Said Petie, unenthused. He walked in front of the glass doors to the chamber, pressing his teddiursa nose against the glass as he looked inside.

    “It’s huge!”

    “Well no duh it is, one of the designs I’m working on would be able to handle an Eternatus! Now take a step back, the glass doors are going to open.”

    Petie obeyed, and watched in fascination as the doors noiselessly opened in front of him.

    A female voice suddenly came from inside, coming out in a pleasant, motherly tone.

    “Warming up inner circuitry, preparing nursery protocols, initiating subject analysis, enabling biometric readings.”

    Jenny pulled up a monitor and began furiously typing code into it as Petie watched in awe as he saw the inside of the chamber begin to whir to life. 

    A few seconds later, the interior lights flickered on and the mechanical hands began to move around. They stretched their fingers, a few of them shaking each other's hands while others cracked their mechanical knuckles.

    Petie took a step back, feeling slightly intimidated by the cartoon-like gloved hands as he realized what he was about to get himself into.

    Over the noise of mechanical whirring, Jenny shouted.

    “Alright buddy! Just step forward and it should initiate its scanning sequence! Once we test that we’ll be done in no time!”

    With the feeling that this would not take as little time as Jenny was promising, Petie hesitantly stepped into the open doors inside of a spotlight inside the chamber.

    He did not hear the doors closing behind him as he watched apprehensively as the mechanical hands seemed to take notice of him.

    “Pokemon detected, initiating analysis.”

    Several rays of laser beams began moving up and down Teddiursa's body as the A.I. scanned him.

    “Assessing physiological interior, simulating ideal homeostatic conditions, identifying age, identifying gender, identifying continence, identifying projected length of stay, computing simulation.”

    The mother tone suddenly brightened, and as the hands moved towards Petie spoke up in a bright, cheery tone.

    “Hi there sweetie! Welcome to the world of Pokemon. You’re going to be a very good girl for N.A.N.N.Y. aren’t you?”

    “Welcome? Girl?! Jenny wai-”

    Petie’s complaints were cut off as one of the arms placed a pacifier inside of his mouth, as two worked away at taking off his clothes while another pair lifted him up by the armpits and began to carry him over to the changing table.

    “Just a moment! I think I know where I made the mistake in the code…”

    “Mmpf!”

    Petie responded, to his dismay, as he heard the motherly tone speak up once again.

    “Subject identified as newborn female Teddiursa, initializing infant care protocol.”

    Petie gulped, somehow he had known that things would simply not go his way that day.